With lyrical acuity, philosophical insight, and deep reverence for girlhood, womanhood, and the wildly intelligent spirit that is the female imagination, Susan L. Leary's newest collection, More Flowers, unfolds as self-interrogation, tribute, and template for survival. At its center is the figure of the mother, whose fierce brutality in navigating the world offers the speaker ambition, tender affirmation, and a necessary understanding of her origins. In particular, images of nature abound: at each turn, animals, weather patterns, changing landscapes, and the strength and fragility of flowers mirror life's emotional complications and teach the will to outlast. Most of all, these poems celebrate the idea of excess, that sensation of always wanting more-more time, more meaning, more love, more flowers-because despite every trial and every sadness, this life, quite simply, is never enough.

Susan L. Leary is the author of four previous poetry collections: Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser to win the 2023 Louise Bogan Award; A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize; Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021); and This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Indiana Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, Harpur Palate, Tahoma Literary Review, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN. Visit her at www.susanlleary.com.