A celebration of Suzanna Somers

I SPENT ABOUT an hour last Saturday night staring out into space, during the course of which, I realized that there seems to be something stirring about the open night sky, the stars, the brisk air, that inspires the artist inside of all of us.

God help those people who looked at the stars with me that night and were suddenly struck with more-than-likely misguided impulse to go and write a poem, as it is doubtful the scene stimulated any latent poets among us, which isn’t to say that it did not have that capacity: at the same time, God bless the night that actress and sometimes-infomercial personality Suzanne Somers must’ve looked at that same night sky and been moved to pursue her own calling in poetry.

Besides the legendary work on “Three’s Company” and “Step By Step” that we are all familiar with, Somers has also established herself as one of the most important — if perhaps less recognized — talents in the realm of American poetry.

It frightens me now that I very nearly overlooked this literary goddess; I discovered Somers’s work by chance, as the result of a very kind gift in the form of a worn copy of Somers’s collection “Touch Me: The Poems of Suzanne Somers.”

The copy bears an inscription from my friend: “Her words, like her buns, are pure steel.”

It is a bold statement, I admit, but one with which I can only agree.

Though a slim book, the work still manages to speak volumes about women’s loves, fears and desires.

In lean, lucid, heartrending verse, Somers touches on her very soul, illuminating a sort of innocence and fragility as well as a profound capacity for both anger and love. If ever there was anything pure or true about Somers’s output, this is certainly the apex.

Critics might be inclined to unfairly dismiss the work, by arguing that it attempts to capitalize on the television success of Somers.

Somers, however, swiftly quashes this argument, reminding us in the foreword that the anthology was first published in 1973, “long before ‘Three’s Company’ was ever conceived and long before I ever became Suzanne Somers.”

This demonstrates — to me, at the very least — that Somers was not merely trying to use her fame to dabble in other areas: this is no “pet project.”

Rather, in her language, Somers demonstrates herself a veritable “artiste,” an imaginative jack-of-all-trades.

This is really only bolstered by the portraits of herself she includes alongside the text of each poem within the collection — each features Somers in a variety of expressive poses that parallel her content for a given poem, and are indicative of an obvious photographic prowess as well (though the photographer is cited as Hank Saroyan, one can easily see that this is all Somers’s work, conceptually).

The collection is timely, as it is in line with a burgeoning cultural interest with civil rights and Somers takes an active role in trying to dismantle the model of the prototypical American woman.

Yet, simultaneously timeless because it still manages to speak of essential truths about that woman, the title poem “Touch Me” touched me in a way no piece of feminist poetry ever has before and in a way that none may ever again.

Particularly insightful in this poem is the way that Somers redefines her femininity in terms of what it is not:

“Touch me
Not like a cat
Or a tree
Or even a flower
For I am more than all of these
Yet akin to them: a woman.”

I hadn’t, until reading this passage, realized my precise error in approaching women, but too often, I now realize, I’d approached women exactly as I’d approached felines — with timid hand, for fear of being scratched; or as a tree — indifferent and unloving; or as a flower — with a cold, shallow appreciation and a distant admiration.

Somers, though — indeed, all women — are much more than this, and deserve to be respected, and loved, and touched.

Besides transforming my ideas about how a woman should be treated though, Somers has effectively transformed my notions about art — what it can be, and where it can exist.

And so, to “American Graffiti’s” Blonde in the T-Bird, the star of “Serial Mom,” the “Queen of the Jiggles,” and to the thighmistress herself, I give my deepest, most earnest, appreciation.

Thank you, Ms. Somers, and may God bless, guide and light your way to many more beautiful and poetry-filled tomorrows.

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