Note from Arnold Richards, new editor of Poetry Monday: I am very sad to report that the poetry editor of International psychoanalytic blog, Irene Willis, has died. Irene Willis was a world class poet and for one year the poet laureate of New Jersey. She made a major contribution to this effort and she will be missed very much. We have decided to continue Poetry Monday and I will replace Irene Willis as the editor. We welcome contributions from other poets. Pease send any poems for consideration to Psypsa@aol.com
Below, in keeping with Irene’s Poetry Monday format, are three of Irene’s own poems:
Tornado Watch
I don’t mean to make light of this
but when the first warning came
after that piercing signal
I deliberated, before going down
into my basement tornado room
about what I should wear.
Maybe it was akin to my mother’s bit
about not being found in an accident
with safety pins—or was it something
more—like not flying through the sky
on your rooftop in an old bathrobe—
and so threw choice after choice
on the bed until I found a top and pants
that looked tornado-respectable,
washed my face, put on lipstick,
and brushed my hair before
descending with my book, flashlight,
blanket, bottled water, radio and chair.
from And Another Thing by Irene Willis.
Click Here to Purchase: And Another Thing by Irene Wills from IPBooks
Almost There
Gifts in tow, they tumble from the van,
nieces and nephews, ready to take a look,
now that I’m ancestral and they’re grown.
Slowly, I’ve turned into the matriarch.
I feel it creeping up my legs like stone,
my knees now angled to the floor
in case a little one
should toddle in with something like a book
that must be read aloud to be understood,
with pictures for the looking and the turning,
like those in the big album I’ve uncovered—
the one with pages black from the beginning
and blurry snapshots sliding from their slots.
I am very sad to report that the poetry editor of International psychoanalytic blog has died Irene Willis. Irene Willis was a world class poet and for one year the poet laureate of New Jersey. She made a major contribution to this effort and she will be missed very much. We have decided to continue poetry Monday and I will replace Irene Willis as the editor, We welcome contributions from other poets.
Yes
In our home, books in glass cases.
In my grandparents’ too. Good books.
Behind glass. Complete sets of Thackeray,
DeMaupassant, delightful as marzipan.
So when I found a man
With complete sets of Sir Walter Scott,
buckram-bound Dickens, a well-marked
Bullfinch, Roget’s—all that—
plus a Royal portable in a gray case,
Tweed jacket with elbow patches, pipe
(and not just any pipe, a genuine meerschaum),
Everything in me shook and jelled,
Shimmered, shouted, I will! I do!
from And Another Thing by Irene Willis.
Click Here to Purchase: And Another Thing by Irene Wills from IPBooks
Click Here to Purchase: Green Dialogue: poems by Irene Willis
Click Here to Purchase: Rehearsal: Poems by Irene Willis
Click Here To Purchase: Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry Edited and With an Introduction by Irene Willis
Click Here to Purchase: What They Bring: The Poetry of Migration and Immigration edited by Irene Willis and Jim Haba