Description
Poetry. In NOTES FOR A LOVE POEM we listen to the magnificent ruminations of an insomniac, the blue hours around 3 a.m. fermenting du Passage's sensuous Southerner imagination. Her nightscape of Mozart and La Traviata when the quiet is her companion. Can the poet's anxiety be alleviated by her defiant love poem for Gérard, her husband for decades, now remarried? "You tell me orchids grow wild / all around your house / you share with your love / in Thailand now." Thailand, a world away from Mary in Louisiana. The NOTES have a wonderful rambling quality, freewheeling, as if we are privy to the poet's thinking, as if there is nothing not poem-worthy — her Honda, her death wish, a catalogue's silk scarves, a friend's breast cancer. She serves pomegranate ice cream with Jane Austin, underscoring the nature of our lives, in its mix of the mundane and the exalted. The reader experiences so much pleasure as we taste the era du Passage writes from, sprinkled with the piquant flavors of the French language and heritage. Post-it-notes of the sublime.
Author Bio
Mary du Passage was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1939, and then lived in New York City for 32 years where she was the founding co-editor of The Bad Henry Review (1981 - 1991). Her chapbook, 4 Squares Declare 5 was published by the Groundwater Press in 1992 with an introduction by Gilbert Sorrentino. Her book, MARBLES, was published by Box Turtle Press in 2008 and NOTES FOR A LOVE POEM in 2018. Her poems have also appeared in Mudfish. She married Gerard du Passage in 1963 and in 2000 they moved back to Louisiana. They divorced in 2004. Mary died in April 2017. NOTES FOR A LOVE POEM is her love poem for her divorced husband who has remarried.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA