Click Here to View: Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell by Archibald MacLeish.

Archibald MacLeish

Chard deNiord

I have admired Chard deNiord’s poems for some time, but his life — the whole tale of how he came to pursue a career in poetry — is so impressive as an example of the sacrifices that some people make for poetry that I want to share it with you before telling you of his publishing history.  Following his graduation from Yale Divinity School, where he had considered pursuing ordination as an Episcopal minister, he followed the advice of his bishop to gain some work experience first. For five years (1978-1983) he worked at the Connecticut Mental Health Center in New Haven, spending three years on the research floor, where he helped to carry out many double blind protocols in the treatment of depression, schizophrenia and heroin addiction and later moving to the outpatient department, where he worked as a therapist for two years. At that point – and here is where the fields of poetry and psychoanalysis intersect most interestingly – he learned that he had been accepted at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His supervisor in New Haven was the analyst and psychiatric historian, Dr. Stanley Jackson, who had been a friend and doctor to the eminent American poet, Theodore Roethke.  Jackson advised deNiord that this “once in a lifetime opportunity” had to be pursued. Continue reading March Poetry Monday: Chard deNiord

Irene Willis

 We’ve had requests to feature more of the poems and background of our Poetry Editor, so here she is.

Irene Willis has been publishing in different genres and venues for many years –   children’s books (including four co-authored with Arlene Kramer Richards), textbooks, articles and poetry. Her first published  poems, in the  1970’s, appeared in Cosmopolitan, which at the time, she tells us, had a good poetry editor and featured poets like Robert Graves and Erica Jong.  Later she began appearing in literary journals such as  Crazyhorse, Laurel Review, Literary Review, and New York Quarterly.  Since the 1990’s she has devoted herself primarily to poetry, with considerable success. Continue reading Poetry Monday: Irene Willis

Kathleen Fagley

To all our readers, a Happy, Healthy and (Reasonably) Prosperous New Year!

I’m pleased to introduce our featured poet for January, Kathleen Fagley. A 2005 graduate of the New England College MFA Program in Poetry, she has had poems published in a number of print and online journals, such as The Comstock Review, Slipstream, Houston Literary Review and DMQ Review. Currently, she is also a poetry editor of Amoskeag: The Poetry Journal of Southern New Hampshire University.

Kathleen lives in Keene, NH, with her husband Paul and teaches at Keene State University.

Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
Continue reading January Poetry Monday: Kathleen Fagley

Click Here To Read: Arlene Kramer Richards’s Pearls from Tears on this website.

Kimberly Mahler

 Kimberly Mahler, former editor of Caesura, the literary magazine of Poetry Center San Jose, California, is executive director of The  International Poetry Library of San Francisco. Her recent poems and other writing have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cimarron Review, Naugatuck River Review, 5 A.M. and other publications.  She teaches college writing in the San Francisco Bay Area and lives in Half Moon Bay with her nine-year-old autistic son, whom she calls “the inspiration behind much of my writing and life.”

Irene Willis
Poetry Editor

Continue reading Poetry Monday: Kimberly Mahler