Poetry graduate Victoria Chang recently reflected on her collection of poems, “Obit,” for the Poetry Society of America. Read an excerpt of this reflection below:

On “Obit”

I have many memories of my mother’s teeth fizzing in a cup in the bathroom. I also remember my mother and her mouth sucked in and her funny talking when her teeth were soaking. When she died, there was the usual cleaning out of her things, deciding what to toss and what to keep. Since this task fell onto me and not my sister, I got first dibs on everything. So I kept my mother’s teeth. She must have had her main dentures in her mouth when she was cremated so this must have been an old pair or a spare.

I’ve learned so much about grief and myself since my mother’s death. Grieving in some ways, is a mirror or proxy of one’s personality. I learned that I preferred to grieve privately. Once, while in the garage alone, I opened the blue plastic container with my mother’s teeth in them. It was a strange experience, holding someone’s teeth in my hands. I, like my mother, have a strong nose. The teeth smelled like her. I sat in the garage, alone, sobbing from a smell I had never once considered before. A smell that was probably just Polident.

My understanding of grief before my mother died was very shallow. The ending of this poem addresses that shallowness—I couldn’t even get its grammar right. There was so much to learn, so much to try and distill. I also felt very alone through this process because I think, looking back on it, there were very few people around me who had experienced a parent dying. Even though my father is still alive, in my mind, the father I knew had died a decade ago from his stroke. But his vessel is still here. My mother’s death was an actual physical death… 

Read the rest of Chang’s reflection here: https://poetrysociety.org/features/in-their-own-words/victoria-chang-on-obit

Two poems by MFA faculty member Matthew Olzmann were recently featured in the Leon Literary Review. Read an excerpt of “Sleep on a Bed of Nails” below:

Sleep on a Bed of Nails

The trick is: more nails.
Enough of them, and with your weight
distributed evenly among a thousand or so,
any given nail, individually, cannot generate
enough pressure to inflict its judgment.

Read the rest of this poem (and “Field Guide for Identifying Winged Creatures”) here: http://leonliteraryreview.com/2020/03/sleep-on-a-bed-of-nails-by-matthew-olzmann-2/

Dearest Writer Community, 

I expect this announcement will come as no great shock, but I am nonetheless weary to deliver it: 

The Alumni Conference for 2020 is cancelled. 

In conversation with the FOW board and fellow conference coordinators, to declare a large gathering of us a no-go seemed the only sensible course of action, though, to add yet another event to the growing pile of “not now; but when?” events leaves a metal taste in my mouth.  

To have breath meet the body day and in day out seems gift enough for now, and in the great After, we will gather again.  Next year is an anniversary year, and I believe with all the magic a beating heart inspires in this season of illness and fear that we will shiver the leaves from the trees with the force of our joy.  Details forthcoming in the coming months, but the current plan is to give this year’s plans another go and meet at Mt. Holyoke for ten days in July, 2021.  

We’re all already pretty damn good at staying home and keeping the faith when every action feels futile.  Stay true and keep at those pages, lovelies.  

Your 2021 Conference Coordinator & Biggest Fan—

Jen

“Ligature,” a poem by faculty member Christine Kitano, recently appeared in the Leon Literary Review. Read an excerpt below:

Ligature

After years of knowing its meaning, I encounter
the word out of expected context and must look up the definition,

one I know I learned early, studying music—ligature, a mark
to indicate notes that belong together, a phrasal unit.

Now, I read the word and think binding, picture the figure-eight
cuffs around a person’s wrists or, on a crime show, the red

circling the victim’s neck. I think then of the word frenulum,
a misstep in my synapses, but my tongue demands

I now pronounce its syllables: fren-u-lum, the sounds
like small hills, rolling…

Find the rest of this poem here: http://leonliteraryreview.com/2020/03/ligature-christine-kitano/