Please Treasure Yourself: Zen Poems

poetry by Susan F. Glassmeyer

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Please Treasure Yourself is a collection of ninety cinquains inspired by a ninety-day period of sitting meditation led by the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care during the summer of 2023. The poems are five-line distillations of daily reading material—wisdom teachings by Japanese Zen priest Kōshō Uchiyama—that accompanied this three-month period of committed meditation practice. Readers who wish to begin or deepen their practices of meditation and mindful living, along with those who love poetry, will appreciate and enjoy these carefully crafted poems.

POETRY / General

ISBN: 978-1-962082-60-0 (print; softcover; perfect bound)

LCCN: 2025934587

Released April 15, 2025  |  Copyright 2025

116 pages

Author Biography

Susan F. Glassmeyer is Codirector of the Holistic Health Center of Cincinnati where she works as a somatic therapist and Feldenkrais® Practitioner, helping people heal from trauma in order to experience the poetry of presence in their bodies. Susan was named Ohio Poet of the Year for her 2018 collection Invisible Fish (Dos Madres Press). She is also the author of Four Blue Eggs: American Cinquains (Little Pocket Poetry Press), Body Matters (Pudding House Press), and Cook’s Luck (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, JAMA, Naugatuck River Review, Dunes Review, Pulse, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Grateful Living (grateful.org), and other print and online journals. She is a longtime member of the Greater Cincinnati Writers League and Ohio Poetry Association, and is the creator of April Gifts, a ten-year poetry project honoring National Poetry Month. Susan traces the roots of her interest in both meditation and poetry to early childhood when her railroad worker grandfather taught her to pay close attention to the language of train whistles. To learn more, visit www.susanglassmeyer.com.

Endorsements

“Susan Glassmeyer exalts the form of the cinquain—a mere five-line poem—allowing her whole body and mind to receive and brilliantly articulate a deluge of human experiences. Glassmeyer’s meditation practice with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care opened a wide poetic door for us to walk through and partake in her utterly keen musings, where even the silence of a meditation sings its own melody. These poems feel their way into our heart and constantly stir our imagination. Susan Glassmeyer writes with deep affection and a generous spirit.”
—Jeffrey Hillard, poet, novelist, and professor emeritus at Mount St. Joseph University

“Because this writer is careful and pays attention and has a funny bone, I read her. These cinquains are like butterflies. They change the room. They are a sign of health. They dress up time spent with them. And they do this with ease.”
—Valerie Chronis Bickett, poet, author of Triandafilo

“Thought and cinquain meld seamlessly in Susan Glassmeyer’s poems to create, if read in one sitting, a space of contemplative silence or, if read individually over time, moments of deep reflection. These smoothly honed pebbles turned over and over in the mind inspire both aesthetic pleasure and a simple peace.”
—Claudia Skutar, poet, and professor at the University of Cincinnati

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