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Sunday Sentence

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled


In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

Eventually a poem was accepted by Poetry (Submission No. 179) and then The New Yorker (Submission No. 240), and that changed everything.

Source: Jesse Lichtenstein, “The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas” (profile of Patricia Lockwood), The New York Times Magazine.

Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress: A Poetic “Duet”

by Erika Dreifus on
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On Friday, May 2, The Forward‘s Arty Semite blog published my poem “Mount Zion.” And on Friday, May 9, my poem “September 1, 1946” appeared on the same.

Initially, I thought that I might share both poems with you. A pair.

But then, something better came along. And I mean that quite literally.

Last Friday, I shared the link to “September 1, 1946”–which uses W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” to jump-start a poem about my father’s maternal grandmother–with some family and friends.

My great-grandmother, who is the woman at the center of "September 1, 1946," along with her grown-up "baby grandson" and HIS first baby--me.
My great-grandmother, who is the woman at the center of “September 1, 1946,” along with her grown-up “baby grandson” and HIS first baby–me.

Within hours, one member of that community–Jon Racherbaumer–posted a poem in response. It represents an effort, in Jon’s words, to express “how I imagine you imagining as you wrote.”

After reading both my poem and Jon’s, my friend and poetry teacher Sage Cohen commented, “What a duet!” And that’s how I hope you may also see them.

Here, again, is “September 1, 1946.” I hope that you’ll read it, and then return here for “Erika’s Vision,” re-posted here with Jon’s permission. (more…)