Like the pools, rivers and mountain lakes I’ve been so blissfully immersing myself in this summer, now, in foggy San Francisco I’m diving with equal abandon into a volume of poetry. “Poems new and collected by Wistawa Szymborska” is sublime, funny, poignant and occasionally ecstatic. After years of reading Szymborska, Winner of the Nobel Prize [...]
Greetings, Deadheads. So it’s August. Jerry’s Birthday is August 1. He died August 9th. On August 3 I had a dream. I’m singing with Jerry (first dream I ever had about it – so no worries this is not the post of an obsessive Deadhead, just a fan…) and my voice is shaky. He gathers [...]
Inspired by the Women’s National Book Association’s sponsorship of National Reading Group Month, I started a book group last January. “The Sailors” as we’ve come to call ourselves, is a little different kind of book group – we’re “slow.” Our goal is to read, and think deeply about Norman Fischer’s “Sailing Home: Using Homer’s Odyssey [...]
“A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities” San Francisco Bay Press, Virginia/San Francisco: 2009
In her second full-length poetry collection, Joan Gelfand explores the poignancy of living in a world that is war-torn and environmentally damaged. With a nod to the humorous paradox of modern life, Gelfand writes from the vantage point of a mother, an artist, and a Zen meditator. “A Dreamer’s Guide…” looks beyond the surface of our lives at the connections that make live worth living, and the sensual details that color it. Read More
Seeking Center: A Collection of Poems by Joan Gelfand, Two Bridges Press, Richmond CA: 2006
In Seeking Center, Joan Gelfand joins the reader in a free-wheeling discussion, beyond the poems themselves, regarding what is poetry today, here at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Read More