Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

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  • So This Is It: The Glass and the Flame

    My First book ever selected and published by an independent press. I knew that one day I would have my own book published. It is not arrogance disguised as confidence. Writing has always been part of who I am.

    The Glass and the Flame is a fugue of the heart, woven from multiple strands of longing and sorrow into a polyphony of eros and psyche. I have learned that you can write the felt without being met.

    The axiom that “you are who you are” is not necessarily true in my writing. Rather, I am what I write.

    In terms of Orwell’s reasons for writing, I write from aesthetic enthusiasm and sheer egoism. Neither political purpose nor historical impulse belongs to my work.

    If you dare, walk with me in the garden where Eros freely roams with Psyche.

    Listen to what I sing.

    The Glass and the Flame now lives in the world.
    You can find it here: https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/suh

    Sincerely,

    Stefania

  • Saturday, October 24, 2026 — Reading of Chloë Ashby’s Review of Alone with a Book by Tessa Hadley, Published in The Guardian on October 20,2026 (Saturday Reading Essay)

    One reason I don’t like books by contemporary writers is that many of them seem to come from privileged backgrounds, with prestigious academic credentials and a socioeconomic status that protects them from the burden of working for a living. Poets are not much different: they find meaning in the everyday tasks that the rest of us must perform simply to live. Ashby’s review of Alone with a Book by Tessa Hadley sets a bell ringing in my spirit, instantly piquing my interest in the life of a kindred spirit in stories. What makes Hadley unique among her contemporaries is her delight in the ordinary, the seemingly mundane and trivial.

    My literary heroines are Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre, Prudence in A View of the Harbour, Macabéa in The Hour of the Star, and Renée in The Elegance of the Hedgehog. What do these women have in common? They have no glamorous jobs with PPO health insurance or weeks of paid vacation, nor the kind of intricate intellectual vertigo that places them on a higher pedestal. And if a character is the opposite of these women, she usually rebels against social norms or thrusts her fist toward the sky while chanting for social equality without knowing what it is. Have I forgotten books about ideology and identity, which are so in vogue? Or the confessional memoirs published by celebrities, and so forth? What a medley of public existential angst, clamoring to become bestsellers or national bestsellers.

    Hadley is a woman of letters who draws wisdom and beauty from life through her intellectual curiosity about the three value paths in logotherapy: creative, experiential, and attitudinal, which can be achieved by fulfilling the duties daily life gives us. I am uncertain whether Hadley wrote her essay and her other books with the tenets of logotherapy in mind, but these values seem to match her worldview and her literary world. In Charlotte Brontë’s terms, an author should write what is true to herself and therefore true to life, just as her little sister Anne Brontë did in Agnes Grey. Anne drew on her own experience as a governess, enduring—with the grace of a swan and the attentiveness of a cat—the haughtiness of those who employed her to educate their children. Agnes saw the precarious human emotions in her employers’ flaunting of influence and beauty. I am certain that Hadley would love to write about an Agnes Grey of our time.

    What distinguishes Hadley from others is her view of Christianity as a positive influence that has shaped cultural imagination and our idea of beauty, a way to see beauty in human life. This is remarkable because it is uncommon to find Christianity as a foundation for artistic inspiration in the aesthetic expression of human emotions. She remains in awe of religious paintings, including The Coronation of the Virgin by Jacopo di Cione and The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr by Giovanni Bellini. Hadley finds Christianity’s magnanimity in life and art rather than in the Church’s catechism.

    I regard myself as a ghost lover, as many of my beloved writers have become stars in literature’s constellation. To me, their work feels more inviting, letting me know more about the characters through whom the writers delineate silhouettes of themselves. But I cannot help but think that writing about someone with no six-figure income, a big house without a mortgage, and/or glittering academic credentials and beauty has become an oddly rare literary subject, at least for now.

  • Saturday, October 17th, 2026 – Reading of Yiyun Li’s “‘Infinite Genius’: On Anne Carson,” published in The Guardian

    When I read Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony & God, I felt as though I were reading riddles in prose poetry, imagining the Pythia speaking Apollo’s words from her tripod at Delphi. It is strange in its arrangement of simple language, beautiful in its narrative of her inner world—a maze where she lets readers or listeners find her. Guy Davenport’s introduction summed up this collection: she wrote philosophy as poetry in language accessible to the layperson, with a poet’s eye, speaking to general readers, not a select few.

    Reading Li’s article on Carson becoming a Nobel laureate in literature this year confirmed my appreciation of the rare beauty of Carson’s poetry. I knew Carson was different from poets of our time because her poems were personal yet relatable, with themes ranging from her elderly mother to her former lover and her experiences in Italy. Li’s admiration for Carson’s literary world comes from Carson’s alchemy of words, which Carson conjures as her fingers move across a blank page. She has no grimoire for poetry, but she possesses the poetic mania that Plato regarded as sacred. Words will come when you write. Let the spirit move your hand.

    Although Li’s essay grows from her grief over the loss of her two sons and her reading of Carson’s Grief Lessons, which I have not yet read, her praise seems to idolize Carson’s work, contrary to Carson’s intentional use of plain language to reach the hearts of general readers. Moreover, Li’s effusive lionization of Carson’s work makes it seem to belong only to Li. Carson writes of love, of life, and of herself through the mind of a poet singing in plain English. She is something of a Socrates, who brought philosophy from heaven to the world by knocking on people’s doors to speak of the love of wisdom.

    I believe what is good for the mind—and ultimately the body, as the Romans said, mens sana in corpore sano, “a sound mind in a sound body”—should be shared. Carson’s status as a Nobel laureate should not distance her work from general readers by placing it among the untouchable literati. Carson invites readers into her maze and gives them language as a ball of thread, leading them toward the riveting light of her enchanting mind. I believe this is what Carson wants.

  • 2027 Pushcart Prize Nomination

    I am delighted to share that my poem “The Last Light of October” has been nominated for the 2027 Pushcart Prize by Belladonna’s Garden.

    My heartfelt thanks to Editor-in-Chief Shari Wilder for this honor.

    Announcement image courtesy of https://www.belladonnasgardenlit.com/issues/winter-2026-issue-2/stephanie-suh

  • Writers of Extraordinary Hearts

    Saturday Reading of Kerry Clare’s “Beyond ‘Women’s Fiction…’ On the Quiet Brilliance of Barbara Pym,”

    published by Literary Hub on March 16, 2026

    October 10, 2026

    Muriel Barbery, Clarice Lispector, and Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress) could give voices to women whose quiet presences belied the flame within. They could see the stories in what others dismissed as insignificant and draw readers’ attention to their lives. Renée from Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog was a sophisticated, erudite woman with an unacknowledged sultriness. Macabéa from Lispector’s The Hour of the Star might have been a shy typist but was an undercover beauty with her red lipstick. Prudence from Taylor’s A View of the Harbour was a lonely, beautiful girl who was never popular. Now Barbara Pym joins these writers of extraordinary hearts.

    I haven’t yet landed on Barbara Pym’s universe, and I’m happy to read Clare’s essay on her work and characters who sound a lot like the aforesaid characters. Her characters revolve around the daily tasks of ordinary life. Other writers often avoid such lives because the material is either (1) too unglamorous to attract readers from a milieu similar to that of the authors and their characters, or (2) too mundane to accommodate the fashionable existential dilemmas so prevalently narrated within elite literary circles. Some of today’s women writers also fall into this pattern, creating expensively educated women—or scholarship winners risen from rags—who are beautiful, independent, and supplied with lovers for passionate nights and days anywhere. Okay, I get it. I may be too biased, or too inaccurately accusatory, toward writers who don’t write like writers with extraordinary hearts. But if you know my point, I am sure you get it—don’t you?

    Writing about something you do every day can bore you and your readers. But if you find a story in how you do it, why you do it, and what you do—or will do—about it, that is the gem of the story; it makes the simple powerful. I remember reading a book about a legal secretary at a large New York City law firm, written by an author who drew on her own working life. Her narrative shows readers what routine work can conceal, giving them a reason to understand why people are the way they are.

    When I look at some of those who advocate for the rights of the oppressed and underprivileged, I notice that they do not always acknowledge the people around them in daily life. At times, ideology comes before humanity because writing about diaspora, social injustice, and identity crises is now presumed to be intellectual, just, and conscientious. Charlotte Brontë, who wrote about women compelled to work—usually under less-than-gracious employers—said that an author’s first duty was “a faithful allegiance to Truth and Nature.” What could be truer than telling a story of a woman ignored and invisible?

  • The Books Have Come Home

    My author’s copies of The Glass and the Flame have finally arrived. As you can see, Toro, my LA Praetorian Guard, is inspecting the copies to make sure we received them all.

    Now I know how Sappho must have felt when she wrote to leave her legacy as proof of her existence for posterity. Who knows? A thousand years from now—as long as humanity continues—perhaps a future Stephanie will happen upon my book and do the same.

    Ars longa, vita brevis.
    (Art is long, life is short.)

    P.S. The Glass and the Flame is available at:
    https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/suh

  • A Real Witch Pretending to Be a Sister

    Reading Nick Holland’s “The Brontë Love of Pets”

    October 4, 2026

    Branwell drew this cat when he was just 11!, courtesy of Annebronte,org

    Pets are like your children or friends, depending upon how you see them in your own surroundings. I am a sister to my two cats: Toro the Tabby and Camille the Black. Not a Cat Lady or Cat Mom—both burlesque images of a woman living alone with her cats. And I don’t see myself as either—or, for greater atmospheric enchantment, perhaps I am a witch who writes beneath a lustral moon at night. Enough of the self-defense. And Toro and Camille are my lucky stars in my otherwise not-so-lucky life. You got that?

    Camille the Black knows when I cast a spell

    So, reading Holland’s article about the Brontë sisters’ love of their pets at home was a simple pleasure of one Saturday afternoon. Before reading it, I already knew that Emily Brontë had a pet merlin named Nero, whom she fed in the kitchen when Charlotte wasn’t around, since Charlotte wasn’t fond of seeing him there. But I didn’t know they had cats at Haworth Parsonage until I saw their only brother Branwell’s adorable drawing of a cat loafing like bread, much like my Toro. In fact, the Brontës were very fine artists, as seen in their pictures of Nero, Flossy (Anne’s spaniel), and Grasper (Emily’s mastiff).

    The dogs seem more like the sisters’ familiars than the cats do, given the sensibilities and personalities concealed beneath the narrative veneer of their novels. Still, Haworth Parsonage was filled with the pets’ amiability and the family’s moments of contentment. No wonder the sisters frowned upon and judged anyone who displayed indifference or irritation toward pets or other animals beyond the parsonage.

    My Practorian Guard Toro at Ease

    Back in my tiny apartment in LA, I am writing this note with Toro under my legs. He looks at me with large emerald eyes full of liquid tenderness and affection. He knows I am writing, and if he likes what I am writing through our special astral connection, he stays still as a gesture of approval. I know Edgar Allan Poe’s cat Catterina used to do something similar, but Toro is more like my Roman Praetorian Guard, standing watch over my writing. As for Camille, he is sleeping in his secret hideaway in my bedroom, but soon he will come out and look at me with his amber eyes, saying “Meow,” which means, “I am hungry.”

    I don’t care if I am a real witch pretending to be a sister.