Help in the Dark Season

The poems in Help in the Dark Season expose lessons of adult and childhood trauma, relationship joys and failures, and the all-around hard work of true togetherness.

Help in the Dark Season explores the pathway of human love as it begins in the dark, moves into parental hands, transfers into experiments of the heart, grows, breaks, and ultimately transforms us more than any other experience we withstand. Each poem walks us into Jacqueline Suskin’s world, where dreams and sacred visions are just as important as reality, where planet earth is an active character and spouse, and every attempt at love adds up as wisdom worth remembering. There are so many ways for us to access love; these poems map this personal process, uncovering the helpful tools and healing realizations that Suskin has gathered while conjuring up and relentlessly believing in love. Even when it hurts us the most and causes the worst confusion, even when it’s laughable and foolish, these poems aim to provide proof that human connection is crucial and always worth the risk.

Praise for Help in the Dark Season

“With each poem a new spell is cast, for Jacqueline teaches us over and over again that there is indeed a light in the darkest seasons of our hearts, our communities, and our futures.”

--Marlee Grace, author of How to Not Always Be Working

“Jacqueline writes about love not in the one-dimensional, heart-emoji sense but as it truly feels: mysterious, insane, ever shifting--a force that binds us to one another, to this earth, and to ourselves.”

--Hallie Bateman, author of What to Do When I'm Gone

“Suskin has ascended to a heart surgeon's level of ability in her poetry with this book, taking the blood of the matter and humanizing the cure with her words.”

--Jena Malone, actor