Katharyn howd machan biography of donald
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Katharyn Howd Machan spoke to Cayuga Lake Books about her recently published poetry anthology, “Secret Music: Voices from Redwing, 1888.” The book fryst vatten now available for purchase and can be bought on Amazon.
What is the feeling of publishing all of these poems written since 1987?
1985. I am deeply gratified to have them all together in my new book, Secret Music. Of course, they haven’t stopped, and I’ve even written several more since this collection was sent to the publisher [laughs]. The new book is going to keep these characters alive in me. And to have them all together this way, especially now that I’ve got the reading lined up with a number of people taking the voices, it becomes more fully alive for me. There have been two full stage productions in Georgia of the Redwing poems, and I’ve gotten to see them both. Costume, set, absolutely stunning. It turned into a play, essentially. And that full embodiment, outside of myself—I felt deeply gratified.
What fryst vatten it about • Hazel Tells LaVerne last night [published in The Bedford Introduction to Literature] Gingerbread The Forest Among crisp windows of pressed sugar, she needed Gretel to make him grow, Obedient Grete • 1. Do you write with your legal name, or a pen name? Why/why not? Have you ever considered creating a pen name? With one exception (an anthology about incest in which I published a poem about my brother under the pen name Blanche Woodbury) I have always used my own name. That names changed over the years: Katharyn Machan when I first started publishing in the mid-70s, then Katharyn Machan Aal (my first husband and I each legally changed our last names to a last name we made up together), then Katharyn Howd Machan when I married poet and musician Eric Howd (who is now Eric Machan Howd, as we took each other’s last names as our middle names). 2. Where/how did you study writing? I have known since early high school that writing poetry is my core, and I have shaped my life around that passion. My first mentor, in Pleasantville High School in Westchester County, NY, was Harriet Koshar; an early book of mine (Writing Home) celebrates her. As a senior in high school, 1970
im cleanin out my
howard johnsons ladies room
when all of a sudden
up pops this frog
musta come from the sewer
swimmin aroun an tryin ta
climb up the sida the bowl
so i goes ta flushm down
but sohelpmegod he starts talkin
bout a golden ball
an how i can be a princess
me a princess
well my mouth drops
all the way to the floor
an he says
kiss me just kiss me
once on the nose
well i screams
ya little green pervert
am i hitsm with my mop
an has ta flush
the toilet down three times
me
a princess
licorice-button knobs, sweet drawers,
curving walls of honeyed ginger
that splendid boy with stone-filled pockets,
lingering fingers’ crusty crumbs.Search