Quote:
Originally posted by Tim Murphy:
Please tell us about your early collaboration with Katherine McAlpine, who wrote:
Sitting at Christmas dinner you're appalled
to note your baby brother's going bald.
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With pleasure, Tim. Katherine and I co-edited "The Muse Strikes Back: A Poetic Response by Women to Men" (Story Line Press, 1997. Now available from Alibris for $8.00 -
Advt.)
This was Katherine's bright idea. She wrote me that she had written some pieces she called "reply poems" and she noticed that I had done the same, and did I think there were enough similar poems out there to make a book? At that point you could have seen the cartoon light bulb going off over my head. I thought the idea was perfect for Story Line Press. They liked it, and we had collected the poems, got the permissions, and had it in print in the record time (poetry-wise)of two years. Without using computers.
I still love this book. It has 7 poems of Alicia's and 5 of Rhina's, from the days before they won their Wilbur prizes. Plus a lot of other good people.
Katherine is a fine poet, great with light verse, but I've also heard her read a tragic sonnet sequence about a Dutch wife and mother living through (and dying in) World War II that would chill your marrow. The last I heard of her, she was living in Eastport, Maine, enjoying the frosty solitude, and writing a novel about her eccentric neighbors.