And Another Thing: Poems - Softcover

Willis, Irene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1956864474 ISBN 13: 9781956864472

Publisher: Ipbooks, 2023

Synopsis

Irene Willis' And Another Thing reminds me of Doctorow's view of poetry as not only something one practices, but as "a state of being in which every moment of one's existence" is "amplified." These are poems that rejoice in the "modest happiness" of the present while sifting through the past to honor and immortalize, to extract insight and wrestle with the unresolved. Deep loss and illness share the space with the mottled skin of a banana at its "peak of ripeness," a trapped mouse, Tasmanian pademelons, spayed dogs, a baseball glove, a piece of toast with "jam and butter spread to perfect thickness. " Poems braid into a "wreath of memory" that shimmers with compassion, humor, and sharp honesty, a testament to a life in poetry that has become its own memorable poem.

-Mihaela Moscaliuc, author of Cemetery Ink (2021)

About this title

About the Author

Irene Willis is a poet, writer and longtime educator who has taught at many schools and colleges. Before she ever published poetry, she co-authored a children's book and two volumes in a major textbook series with her first husband, the late Richard Willis. Years later, with psychoanalyst Arlene Kramer Richards, she co-authored four books for young adults. Her published poems began to appear in the 1970's, but it wasn't until 1995, after she had been awarded a Distinguished Artist fellowship by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, that her first full-length collection, They Tell Me You Danced (University Press of Florida), appeared in print. Since then, she has published three more books of poems: At the Fortune Café (Snake Nation Press, 2005, ) winner of the Violet Reed Haas Award and nominated for a National Book Award; Those Flames, a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize and released by Bay Oak Publishers, Ltd.(2009), and Reminder (Word Poetry, 2014). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she has had grants and awards from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts; the Millay Colony for the Arts; the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Berkshire/Taconic Foundation. The holder of an M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University and M.F.A. in Poetry from New England College, she is Poetry Editor of the web-based International Psychoanalysis, where her column "Poetry Monday" appears monthly. She is a member of the Authors' Guild, and an Educator Associate of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ipbooks
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1956864474
• ISBN 13: 9781956864472
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 154