As soon as I came up with that title I realized I just can’t help myself—I am an ad man’s daughter after all; I come by the glib and the slick naturally. That said (and perhaps as a counter to the genetic link!), I also put my heart and soul into most of the works …
It’s a bright sunny January day and I’m cold—freezing actually—even though the frost on the lawn melted hours ago, wafting up in ghostly drifts—even though I’m wearing several layers of clothes, like Heidi when she arrived at her grandfather’s house in the Alps. The poet in me paces, turns the heat to 68 (a rare …
If you walked into my kitchen right now you’d see the cartoon I snipped from a December 2006 New Yorker posted on a cupboard door beside one of Snoopy typing away on the roof of his doghouse, and a photograph of our now not-so-new new president signing something into law. In the New Yorker cartoon …
I’m on the train to my home city, traveling east rather unsteadily through the flooded marshlands. I’m reading a strange little book I found on my daughter’s shelf a few hours ago—Soulstorm, a collection of short stories by Clarice Lispector (1925-1977), translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin, and first published in 1974. I’ve never …
I painted my first Emily Dickinson in 1992, probably as a kind of totem. I had spent my early childhood living in a cottage my parents rented on the property of a defunct artist’s colony in the hills outside Honolulu. Founded by artists Lillie Gay and George Burroughs Torrey after they eloped (with some scandal …
Once, while searching for an old photo, my mother unearthed an envelope that contained: • My father’s obituary, dated 11/5/69 • A holy card (Saint Francis) from his funeral • A dried four-leaf clover in clear plastic wrap • A card with emergency air raid instructions • Another card with a list of emergency alerts …
Our first “Poet’s Club” was held at Kathleen Lynch’s house. Our group included Catherine French (Side Show), Carol Frith, (her latest, two for a journey just came out from David Robert Books), Victoria Dalkey (twenty-nine poems and In the Absence of Silver) Lisa Dominguez Abraham (Low Notes), Mary Zeppa (Little Ship of Blessing and The …
I’m not quite sure what got me thinking about Irina Ratushinskaya recently but something did, and brought back how closely I followed her work during the eighties; Poets all over the world took her case very personally. Many of us wrote letters protesting her imprisonment and asking for her release. (Here is a link to …