"Every poem is a set of choices." That's the pithy definition Humanities teacher and poet Suzanne Bottelli offers of her craft, but it also could serve as an apt description of her life.
Considering Suzanne's quiet, almost serene demeanor, the particular type of choices she's had might come as a surprise. Growing up with three brothers in a patriarchal, German-Irish and Italian family, Suzanne always has been subject to competition and high expectation. Early on she played tennis, field hockey, soccer, basketball and softball, and was one of the first girls in Summit, New Jersey, to play baseball on a boy's team. She played varsity tennis in high school, and added track almost as an afterthought. "But I was really good at track," she says frankly, so good that her relay team broke the national record for the distance medley and won the state championship in 1981, her junior year.
The same year, Suzanne's team won the national title in the two-mile relay in front of thousands of people at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Relays. In her senior year, the team trained six days a week and went to state again. (Suzanne still holds the school record in the 800 meters.) She was a track captain, and a captain of the tennis team, which also went to state.
Her track career accelerated at the University of Virginia, where she was the only walk-on runner to make the team. However, Suzanne recalls, "Division I competition is not fun." Her coaches frowned on her taking classes that were challenging or that met after noon. Finding it impossible to balance the demands of Division I track with a well-rounded college experience, she explains, "I chose education." She left the team but kept playing intramural sports and running road races. She taught tennis to at-risk children in the city of Charlottesville, and worked as a tennis club pro in the summers to help pay for college. "I've been at a high level of competition and achievement and I'm glad I have the skills and discipline it gave me," Suzanne says. "But I decided that it's important not to focus on outcome at the expense of process. I find this to be true in teaching and writing, as well."
Suzanne made a similar choice as an artist. At the same time her athletic star was rising, she was active in community theatre. She developed a mini-career doing TV and radio voice-overs and joined the American Federation of TV and Radio Actors. "I was a well-paid jingle singer," she grins. It was fun at first, but not when people started expecting her become a teen actress. "It got to be about competing with hundreds of girls taking the train to New York City for cattle calls. I was good at singing, but I wasn't suited to the rest of it."
So Suzanne stepped off that train, choosing instead to focus on musical theatre, madrigal choirs and singing solos in church. "I recognized what was rewarding, which parts of competition I agree with and which parts aren't for me," she explains. "I decided on what gave me joy."
By the time Suzanne reached college, she knew that her joy lay in poetry and teaching. She had read huge amounts of Walt Whitman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and John Ashbery, and wondered, "how such different writing all could be called poetry." Then she read Elizabeth Bishop, and realized, "I wanted to speak like that. It's what seemed most true to me."
She pursued this passion with characteristic intensity. While teaching English at a prep school outside of Washington, DC from 1986 to 1990, Suzanne participated in several poetry workshops. During the summers, she worked on an M.A. for English teachers at the Bread Loaf School of English, part of Middlebury College. She was accepted into the M.F.A. program at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop with a teaching fellowship in 1990, and won a scholarship to finish her degree at Bread Loaf simultaneously. While at Iowa, Suzanne met her partner and fellow poet, Jennifer Moss.
Today, Suzanne still faces choices about how to find balance in her life. Writing is a serious matter for her. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Prairie Schooner, West Branch, Poet Lore and The Plum Review. She published her first book review last fall, and is working hard on the manuscript she hopes will be her first published book of poetry. "I'd love to find more time to write," she admits. "I don't even have time to send out my poems."
That's because her other passion, teaching, is equally demanding. Her experience in the highly disciplined environment of the Bullis School in Potomac, MD helped to clarify "who I wanted to be as a teacher," just as her experiences with high-level competition convinced her of the importance of focusing on the process of learning. Both helped to lead her to NWS, where she has taught 9th, 10th and 11th grade Humanities courses, as well as senior electives in creative writing, comparative literature, and women's studies. "My life today is an ongoing struggle between my two passions," she laughs.
In addition to teaching and writing, Suzanne is one of three faculty coordinators of the NWS Environment program. She acts as advisor to Kibali, the student group that promotes diversity-awareness. And, as a co-coordinator of the school's diversity plan, she has spent a huge amount of time during the last three years helping to develop and implement the plan throughout the school.
But Suzanne is used to making choices, and she knows how to do it. Perhaps describing teaching or writing, she says: "You always need to find the internal music."
-- NWS News Magazine, April 2003