It was the summer of 1972. At the time I lived with my parents on a modest 110-acre dairy farm. Imagine a white clapboard farmhouse with a front porch, a weathered gray barn, pastures abuzz with grasshoppers, and black-and-white cows slurping water out of a...
Which woman most influenced my creative life? First, I think of Virginia Woolf, then Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Roosevelt and Betty Friedan. What about Tillie Olsen? Surely, Sylvia Plath or Adrienne Rich. Rearrange them in whichever order you wish. It...
Every time I sit to write a poem, essay, or even a journal entry, I sense the collective muse of women from the past, whose courage and vision allowed my generation of women the luxury and privilege of putting our pens to paper. From the Suffragists to the...
keep it real sister teacher arrived on the scene with instructions from the master, sowing love among the exotic herbs and wild flowers of her gardens. up came a harvest of children who caught her challenge to learn in spite of color, status, or address....
It’s oxymoronic, isn’t it, to speak up as a voice for silence? Maybe that comes from the perspective of this poet with a voice disability. What I say out loud is a cross between edgy and strangled. I’ve wondered if it isn’t a clue that I should listen more. The...
