Description
Blame It on the Serpent
by Susan Vespoli
$19.99, Full-length, paper
978-1-64662-732-5
2022
Susan Vespoli lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she relies on the power of writing to stay sane. She’s taught Montessori preschoolers and ENG101 to community college students, owned a school, delivered newspapers, bicycled up a mountain, rehabbed a few extreme fixer-upper houses, and currently facilitates virtual writing circles on writers.com. Her work has been published in Rattle, Mom Egg Review, NASTY WOMEN POETS: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, Nailed Magazine, and other cool spots. For more, check out her website at https://susanvespoli.com/
Gary Bowers –
“Blame it on the Serpent” is a painful, honest look at the effects of hard drug addiction, alcoholism, and what was once called “wretched excess” on the poet and members of her family. The poems are arranged in four sections, much like the movements of a symphony or the acts of a play. Readers see through the poet’s eyes the journeys of her afflicted children, the powerlessness she feels in the face of enormous forces beyond her control, and the immense relief and joy when a child turns a life around.
Vespoli’s poems all have that in-the-moment immediacy that compels the reader to feel the anguish of a mother who remembers a child in that innocent time before the specter of addiction, the “Serpent” of the title, stole that innocence away. In “I Dream of Him Somersaulting Underwater” she uses the phrase “tender tadpole” to describe her child, capturing in two words the ephemeral nature of childhood innocence. And in “Why I Go to Al-Anon” an incident involving an attempt to rescue a bird, while not directly referring to addiction, underscores what the aspiring rescuer is up against, with shock and disappointment juxtaposed with a comparison of her 5 foot 3 inch height to that of a nearby Ponderosa pine. In such deft and heartbreaking comparisons we feel her frustrated powerlessness.
Snapshots of a doomed marriage, a delicate, fragile interaction between mother and daughter, a wedding with slurred vows, and a bout with sleeplessness at 3 AM read like clues to the mystery that family members of addicts agonize over constantly: How did she or he or I come to this? And Will there be Light for this darkness? Vespoli shows us that light as well, with a journey that leads to blessed relief, a relief that transports the reader.
Alyson Lie (verified owner) –
I took BLAME IT ON THE SERPENT off my bookshelf, read one poem, then sat down and continued reading all the way through. Never once was I tempted to stop. Each word, each poem, bled so wholly, so necessarily into the next, each emotional crest and trough pulling me further into Susan Vespoli’s world of profoundly fierce, wise mothering filled with so much ash and icing. Ten thousand joys and sorrows — they are all there.
BLAME IT ON THE SERPENT is an American classic and should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the works of Grace Paley and Tillie Olson.
Susan B –
This is some of the most powerful writing I have ever come across. This is my favorite work from Susan so far. Had me in tears by page 2 only to have me laughing by page 6. I was having a hard time finishing because I couldn’t stop going back and rereading the earlier pages. I never knew someone could put these kind of experiences into words but Blame it on the Serpent does it so wonderfully from start to finish.