Gardner, a writer and visual artist based in New Mexico, presents a sonically and linguistically rich set of verses mined from foreign travels, personal interactions, and experiences of the natural world. “Locked Gate” tells the story of a Guatemalan woman who disappeared in 1980. “No body. No grave. Not a strand of hair” remains, yet, “Remembered…she’s alive as you or me.” Other protest poems address the mistreatment of women (“we know the sorrow of / our younger sisters”) and the pervasiveness of violence (“Any time is the time / to go to war”). Elsewhere, verses resemble haiku in their concision and natural focus…. Fresh metaphors and vivid images linger: “Thunder rolls its baritone song nearby” and “white-whiskered crane alone / in morning stillness.” “Cezanne’s Apples” and “Garden Bench” are two of the strongest poems….“Yellow,” a frequent adjective, lends a nostalgic glow to “Montserrat Revisited,” one of several standout travel poems: “last tenacious yellow cleaves to sycamore.” The gentle eroticism of “Desiderata” finds muted resonance in “Bedtime Story”…. Physics and Internet security, respectively, provide the unusual vocabulary for two later poems. Care has clearly been taken over the varied stanza lengths and indentation, while Gardner’s brush-stroke images are germane illustrations. Twenty-five poems are accompanied by Spanish versions—an additional gift for bilingual readers.

Precise language and imagery reinforce the conclusion that noticing leads to enlightenment: “a few things / unremarked / awaken us to this life.” 
– Kirkus Reviews

It stopped me in my tracks…. Poems inspired by art, a process called ekphrasis, are legion…. But what happens when poet and painter inhabit the same body? Well, Susan Gardner’s work is what happens. She invites you to see a poem and, I suspect, read a painting. The poems are invitations to set aside your narrative expectations and let the mind rest, take in an image, a detail, participate in a meditative process, a sort of sensory and spiritual inventory. They are painterly snapshots inviting us to view a world largely unmediated, the “I” noticeably absent, giving precedence to the “eye.”
– Gary Geddes, author of What Does A House Want? and winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Americas Region) and Gabriela Mistral Prize.

Susan Gardner creates a recursive chain of splendid poems in Lifted to the Wind: Poems 1974-2015. She splashes lasting images across pages, defining aesthetic moments that indeed are “lifted” outside chronologies. This innovative collection is a primer for other writers…. Her painterly perspective celebrates colors, textures, and shapes…. Readers may lose themselves in this and other individual poems—or read the book straight through. In either case, they will return to savor Gardner’s words over and over. This book, embellished with the poet’s own illustrations, is a lasting work of art.
– Denise Low, author of Jackalope and Mélange Block

In Susan Gardner’s expansive new poetry collection, she pays homage to those gone, those still here, and the quiet motions of what’s alive all around us, available through pilgrimages across great distances and also by staying still enough to open our peripheral vision. Some of the poems, translated into Spanish, tell in two languages the nuances of place and the other-than-human species inhabiting wherever we are. From the New York City public library to a Nebraska sunrise to a “body of light” in Barcelona, these poems celebrate the vibrancy and vision of a lifetime. 
– Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate

San Francisco Book Review

https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/product/drawing-the-line-a-passionate-life/

Sometimes words paint their own pictures. Drawing The Line is the recollections of Susan Gardner, from her early childhood to last love. It covers the indifference of her mother to her married life as a diplomat’s wife to finally living life in Santa Fe. It is a life filled with a need to be herself, and finding just who that self is, from having to subvert herself into the expectations of the era she lived in to the expectations she had for herself. 

It is a fascinating look at a woman’s life. Each (section) is a verbal painting of what was happening at that time. Here it is in brush strokes, with each word chosen for particular effect like one would with colors… growing stronger from the greater context of the total experience. 

Drawing The Line is a beautiful story of a woman’s struggle to be herself. For those looking for a personal exploration of the last six decades, and a peek into the formation of an artist, this is a fun read.

Reviewed By: Jamais Jochim  

Susan Gardner’s latest book feels special to the touch. The texture of the cover and the following pages, displaying imagistic poems and supplemental ink paintings and calligraphy, effectively move the reader to contemplate the glory of the natural world. Gardner’s poems draw on her wide-ranging travels and her knowledge of several world cultures and religions. Her collection draws the reader into a timeless, holy conversation—as if prayer is a pattern of observation and response, a way of seeking truth beyond the immediate surface. A careful reading of Lifted to the Wind requires a reflective, contemplative mood. The work functions as ritual. The aesthetic control that Gardner exhibits rewards such careful attention. Her work connects readers to a poetic tradition that endures despite the limits of time and the restraints of language and society.
 – Ken Hada, author of Persimmon Sunday, in Whale Rider Review

Some of the poems I recognized from her other books. Reading them altogether makes her voice even clearer. Her love for nature and keen observation of natural cycles, seasons, places and spaces is strongest in the short haiku-like poems…. She has brought her unique vision of the world, her concerns, passions, and intelligence to the page. – Ann Filemyr, author of Love Enough