Poetry. African American Studies. The sweetest insanity is love. This is a love story: Gloria Oden, now 80, her life, her loves, and the rediscovery of love. The youngest of 6 children in a church-centered African American family, Oden grew up in the same town as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and later became a close friend of Kenneth Rexroth and Marianne Moore. "Thank you for these poems and for a lifetime of keeping alive, in flames and in embers, this really, this wonderful person--yourself"--William I. Elliott, Poetry Kanto.

Gloria Oden was born in Yonkers, New York on October 30, 1923. She is a graduate of Howard University (1944) and its law school (1948). She taught at the New School for Social Research (1966), University of Maryland-Baltimore (1971-1996). Before she took up academic life, Oden worked as an editor of technical magazines, scientific and language arts books (1961-1972). Her poetry has been published in various periodicals and is anthologized in Robert Hayden's Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negro Poets (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967). She is the author of The Naked Frame, A Love Poem and Sonnets (Exposition Press, 1952), and three collections of poetry: Resurrections (Olivant Press, 1978); The Tie That Binds (Olivant Press, 1980), Appearances (SARU, 2003). Oden lives in Cantonsville, Maryland. [Source: Personal communication with Gloria Oden]