Are You Experienced?
“This rich anthology tracks boomer girls from birth to, well, knowingness. . . . Their poems are about loss, loneliness, violence, and love. The writers in Boomer Girls touch themes that all generations experience but this generation can express for all of us—in ways that quietly bred Emily Dickinson, say, never could—what it is to be a girl baby, then adolescent, then woman growing up in America..” —Susan Stamberg, NPR's All Things Considered
In this timely and reflective anthology, the generation that sought to stay forever young reveals that midlife should mean more than jokes about thinning hair, creaking joints, and thickening waistlines. Midlife's insights—whether they be physical, spiritual, or emotional—are indeed startling, and who better than poets to deliver them?
Contributors Include:
Kim Addonizio, Julia Alvarez, Doug Anderson, Dorothy Barresi, Bruce Bond, Nick Carbó, Denise Duhamel, Cornelius Eady, Louis Jenkins, Allison Joseph, Yusef Komunyakaa, Maureen Seaton, Gary Soto, David Wojahn
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Pamela Gemin, David Graham, and Betsy Sholl
I. Bless This House
Bob Hicok, Choosing My Conception
Cornelius Eady, I’m a Fool to Love You
Kyoko Mori, To My Ancestral Spirits
Jim Daniels, Blessing This House
Rick Campbell, How the Streets in Front of Kaufmann’s Departments Store Tell Me I Am Home
Gary Soto, Braly Street
David Mura, Issei Strawberry
Ginger Andrews, Habitiual Offender
Andrea Hollander Budy, Reading Aloud to My Mother
David Graham, Sundowning at the Dementia Unit
David Graham, On the Eve of My Mother’s Surgery
Tony Hoagland, Lucky
Kim Addonizio, The Moment
Jan Heller Levi, My Father Calls Me Every Sunday Morning
Charles Harper Webb, It’s Good That Old People Get Crotchety
Philip Bryant, Early Inheritance
Robin Becker, Adult Child
Yusef Komunyakaa, My Father’s Loveletters
Janet Holmes, My Mother’s Clown
Andrea Hollander Budy, My Father’s Sweater
Amy Dryansky, Beneath the Canopy of Trees
II. Extending the Lines
Kathleen Norris, Land of the Living
Denise Duhamel, Reminded of My Biological Clock--While Looking at Georgia O’Keeffe’ Pelvis One
Leslie Adrienne Miller, When Hope Goes to Hug Me
Jim Daniels, What I Did
Judith Vollmer, What She Didn’t Tell Him
David Mura, Listening
Cathy Song, Lucky
Afaa Micheal Weaver, Abiku
Norbert Krapf, When the Call Came
Laurel Mills, Geography of Love
Bruce Bond, Open Throat
Jim Daniels, Falling Bricks
Cortney Davis, Teasing Was Only the Beginning
Roger Weingarten, From the Temple of Longing
Kathleen Norris, Children of Divorce
Jeredith Merrin, Family Reunion
Kate Sontag, Making Step Beautiful in Maine
David Graham, Father of the Man
Betsy Sholl, Chances
Mark Cox, Fatherhood
Walter bargen, Those Things
Deborah Keenan, Comfort
III. Woven in My Walk
Paula McLain, Willing
Julia Kasdorf, Freight
Yusef Komunyakaa, Providence
Nick Carbó, Ang Tunay Na Lalaki Moves into Sally’s Apartment
Maureen Seaton, When I Was Straight
Timothy Liu, Two Men on a Swing Watching Their Shadows Lengthen
Allison Joseph, Wedding Party
Deborah Keenan, Marriage
Rebecca McClanahan, Making Love
Kel Munger, After Making Love, We Hear Sirens
Philip Bryant, Looking at Your Body
Laurie Kutchins, Milk
Natasha Sajé, What Difference Does It Make?
Ronald Wallace, Wild Strawberries
Louis Jenkins, The Couple
Kate Gleason, After Fighting for Hours
Kim Addonizio, Near Heron Lake
Luis Rodriguez, The Bull’s Eye Inn
Leslie Ullman, Peace
Belle Waring, So Get Over It, Honey
Julie King, Hives
David Baker, The Affair
Jan Heller Levi, Marriage 2
Dorothy Barresi, At the Pioneer Valley Legal Clinic
John Reinhard, After Skinnydipping, the Old Couple Fishes for Brown Trout in the Root River
Mark Doty, The Embrace
IV. In This Strange Land We Sing Our Song
Timothy Liu, Thoreau
Heid Erdrich, TV News: Detox Closed
Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton, Exquisite Candidate
Nick Carbó, Secret Asian Man
John Reinhard, Jimmy Pohoski’s a Woman Now
Rachel Loden, Lingerie Ads in the Sixties
Martín Espada, For the Jim Crow Mexican Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachussets Where My Cousin Esteban Was Forbidden to Wait Tables Because He Wears Dreadlocks
Maureen Seaton, When I Was White
Bruce Jacobs, Black on Black
Heid Erdrich, Human Map
Bob Hicok, To the Moon, Alice
Erin Belieu, The Man Who Tried to Rape You
Ellen Bass, Bearing Witness
Wendy Bishop, Evidence of Death’s Voodoo--Inside and outside the “Gun as Art Exhibit”
Albert Goldbarth, Columbine High School/Littleton, CO
William Olsen, Blood
Bruce Weigl, And we came home
Afaa Michael Weaver, To the Vietnam Vet
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It
Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton, Exquisite Communist
Bob Holman, Cement Cloud
Louis Jenkins, The Way Things Used To Be
Andrew Hudgins, Heaven
Marcia Southwick, A Star Is Born in the Eagle Nebula
Heid Erdrich, Future Debris
Josie Kearns, Sping
David Wojahn, Rajah in Babylon
V. The Strenuous Work of Vanishing
Leslie Ullman, Estrogen
Rodney Jones, Variation on a Sundial
Diane Seuss, Kansas
Alison Townsend, At the Hairdresser, Reading Elle Magazine
Charles Harper Webb, Losing My Hair
Stephen Dunn, The Sexual Revolution
Holly Iglesias, Epitome Café
Lisa Lewis, The Young
Ann Hostetler, Priestess of Love
Bill Bauer, Wildflowers
Kim Addonizio, Getting Older
Judith Vollmer, Scan
Doug Anderson, Outliving Our Ghosts
David Baker, The Art of Comedy
Cynthia Huntington, The Rapture
Karen Donovan, Chemo
Kate Sontag, Caribbean Breast Lullaby
Andrew Hudgins, Ashes
Marie Howe, What the Living Do
Bob Hicok, Heroin
Tony Hoagland, Are You Experienced?
Virginia Chase Sutton, Drunk
Thomas Lux, Loudmouth Soup
Jane Mead, After Detox
Louis Jenkins, February
Dorothy Barresi, Late Summer News
Dorianne Laux, Antilamentation
Susan Firer, These Are My Buddhist Shoes
Tony Hoagland, Memory as a Hearing Aid
VI. Why the Dog Howls at the Moon
Martín Espada, The Owl and the Lightning
Jeanne Bryner, Lourdes
Diane Seuss, Viceroy
Kel Munger, Why the Dog Howls at the Moon
Kyoko Mori, Not Believing
Ellen Bass, If There Is No God
Andrew Hudgins, We Were Simply Talking
Laura Kasischke, A Long Commute
Thylias Moss, Dennis’s Sky Leopard
Monifa A. Love, Mount Olive
Amy Gerstler, A Non-Christian on Sunday
Rodney Jones, Refusing to Baptize a Son
Julia Alvarez, The Dashboard Virgencita
Bruce Weigl, What Saves Us
Thomas Lux, Fundamental
Eleanor Lerman, The Mystery of Meteors
Laura Kasischke, Dear Earth
Belle Waring, Look
Jane Mead, Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty
Contributors’ Notes
Permissions
Index