POETRY FEATURED PROSE FEATURED ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES ABOUT TIMELINE
Barbara Crooker


For Geri

in memory of Geri Rosenzweig

The door was open and the house was dark
Wherefore I called his name, although I knew
The answer this time would be silence
That kept me standing listening while it grew
Seamus Heaney, "The Door Was Open and the House was Dark"


I open my email, find a post from you,
except it's signed by your younger son Paul.
He said suddenly and unexpectedly you were gone,
and I became a flame felled by a gust
of wind. You and I exchanged every poem
written in the past forty years, every mark
we'd made on paper: the good, the bad,
the ugly, we used to joke. But now, there's no
inbox where you've gone, no note that I can start.
The door was open, and the house was dark.

My heart is heavy, and the screen is black.
I've finished something new: a bulb
that shoots a stalk, then the green fire
of leaves, tongued flame of blossom,
all the more striking against the snow.
I never send a poem out until you
take a look, make comments: "loverly,"
or "Can you lose this line?" But now there's no reply.
I could hit "Send," pretend that it'd go through,
wherefore I called your name, although I knew.

In the middle of a friendship, who thinks of endings?
Each poem of yours made me look forward to the next.
They journeyed back to Ireland, your family, the buttons
on your father's coat, your mother's kettle, the birds
whistling in hedgerows and lanes. Your address
remains in my contact list, plain evidence
of your existence. Denial says you're busy or away,
not checking mail. I compose a long letter, subject:
Catching Up, press "Enter," believe in this pretense.
The answer this time would be silence.

How can you be gone? And so abruptly.
Okay, you smoked. So what?
Your life was rich with family, grandkids,
poems. The manuscript unfinished.
Submissions in the mail. So many strings
untied. How you loved summer, hated it when days drew
short, the shadows longer. Once you wrote about a long-gone lily
that, like Orpheus, came back from the dead. From bare ground,
unexpected bloom. It returned; could you?
I'm left standing, listening while it grew.


Dry Martini

The only American invention as perfect as a sonnet.
H. L. Mencken


The cold shimmer of a glass of gin,
kissed with vermouth. Or, as Noel Coward
said, waved in the general direction
of Italy
. E. B. White called it the elixir

of quietude
. Louis Buñuel: a reverie in a bar.
Let the molecules lie sensuously, calm
on top of one another, stirred
not shaken
wrote Somerset Maugham.

Let's not forget the olives, groups of three,
sinking beneath the horizon of the glassy sea.



































AUTHOR BIO

A previous contributor to Mezzo Cammin, Barbara Crooker's work has appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. She is the author of eight books of poetry; Les Fauves is the most recent. She has received a number of awards, including the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships.

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS

Jane Blanchard
Lesley Clinton
Maryann Corbett
Barbara Lydecker Crane
Barbara Crooker
Midge Goldberg (Featured Poet)
Grace Marie Grafton
Jaimee Hills
Kathryn Hinds
Kathryn Jacobs
Jean L. Kreiling
Charlotte Mandel
Jennifer Davis Michael
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Leslie Schultz
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins
Marilyn Taylor
Cara Valle
Doris Watts

NEWS

The most recent addition to The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline is Etel Adnan by Joyce Wilson.

Save the date: A Celebration of the Timeline reaching 75 essays. Lincoln Center, Fordham University (Sponsored by Fordham's Curran Center) Friday, October 20th, 7 p.m.

FEATURED ARTIST
Sacred Sisters is a collaboration between visual artist Holly Trostle Brigham and award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson, touching on such issues as gender and creativity, connections between the visual and literary arts, and religion and history. Brigham met Nelson at the all-girls prep school, the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in the Fall of 2012. Nelson was visiting the school as part of the Baldwin Write Now program and Brigham was a parent who co-founded the program and was her liaison for the day. They had the opportunity to visit and when Nelson asked about Brigham's work it started a conversation about nuns who were artists and writers. Brigham had already completed three paintings in her Seven Sisters II Series, later renamed Sacred Sisters.

ARCHIVES
LINKS
POETRY
32 Poems
The Academy of American Poets
The Atlantic
The Christian Science Monitor
The Cortland Review
Favorite Poem Project
The Frost Place
The Iowa Review
Light Quarterly
Modern American Poetry
Measure
The Poem Tree
Poetry
Poetry Daily
Poetry Society of America
Poets House
Raintown Review
Slate
String Poet
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Verse Daily
Women's Poetry Listserv
The Yale Review

CONFERENCES
AWP
Bread Loaf
Poetry by the Sea
Sewanee


PUBLISHERS

Barefoot Muse Press
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Waywiser Press
White Violet Press

BOOKS
Alibris
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Grolier Poetry Bookshop
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Tattered Cover Bookstore

OTHER RESOURCES
92nd Street Y
Literary Mothers
NewPages.com
Poets & Writers
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