Late Afternoon
Who dares consider da Bronx a less respectable borough,
the poor relative of glitzy Manhattan, when Else reigns in large
sunglasses, high cheekbones, skin smoothed nightly by Nivea?
She’s sitting out on her balcony, a sweep of yellow petunias
reaching toward her, pearly everlasting, deep blue campanula,
re-blooming year after year, bumble bees and sparrows returning.
Silver-blonde hair in a bun, loose strands blowing in the breeze,
why should she mind, when she’s the monarch at ninety--New
York Times already read, Sunday’s crossword puzzle completed?
New Jersey’s Palisades glow green across the river. She continues
sipping her cabernet sauvignon and toasting tangerine sunsets,
the rose-wool shawl she knitted wrapped snugly around her.
the poor relative of glitzy Manhattan, when Else reigns in large
sunglasses, high cheekbones, skin smoothed nightly by Nivea?
She’s sitting out on her balcony, a sweep of yellow petunias
reaching toward her, pearly everlasting, deep blue campanula,
re-blooming year after year, bumble bees and sparrows returning.
Silver-blonde hair in a bun, loose strands blowing in the breeze,
why should she mind, when she’s the monarch at ninety--New
York Times already read, Sunday’s crossword puzzle completed?
New Jersey’s Palisades glow green across the river. She continues
sipping her cabernet sauvignon and toasting tangerine sunsets,
the rose-wool shawl she knitted wrapped snugly around her.
A Conversation with Lois Rosen
Since you published with Crab Creek Review, how has your work grown or changed? What excites you now that maybe didn't back then?
My first publication in Crab Creek Review was “Cordate Shape” in 2013. I wrote it following a prompt offered in Kelli Russell Agodon’s delightful workshop, “Poets at the Coast.” PDX Writers Workshops, led by Alida Thatcher and Jennifer Springsteen, inspired me to train as a workshop leader in Salem, Oregon using the Amherst Writers and Artist Method. I’ve been leading generative writing workshops in Salem, Oregon for the past six years. For the most part, I don’t know what I’m going to create until I write. The groups are supportive and uplifting.
What has excited me most recently relates to my award-winning poem “Late Afternoon” about my dear friend Else. Last month, her daughter-in-law sent me a letter telling me Else’s family is creating a notebook about my elderly friend’s life, including when we taught middle-school English together in the South Bronx in the early 1970’s. The daughter-in-law hadn’t known that I’d written many poems and prose pieces about my dear friend, during our precious fifty-year friendship. The daughter-in-law phoned and emailed enthusiastic responses after reading what I’d written and published about her mom and is including the prose and poetry in the notebook. I’m happy that Crab Creek Review and Camille T. Dungy honored Else’s poem.
Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
It’s a joy to find so much encouragement and camaraderie among poets. For me, it’s been a boon to attend events the Oregon Poetry Association Conferences, The Community of Writers Workshops, the Port Townsend Centrum Writing Conference, and to enjoy opportunities that pop up. I’ve learned so much over the 23 years the Peregrine Poetry Group in Salem, Oregon has been meeting. The outpouring of support and insightful suggestions have been precious to me.
Submitting has become so much easier these days with email and Submittable. It helps, of course, to become familiar with the journals, read the poems, and find what appeals to you.
What are you reading?
Recently I’ve been reading Stealing Flowers from the Neighbors by Sherri Levine, published by Kelsay Books. Sounds of the poet’s sorrow crumble, crunch, kick, and whack, yank and snap. She opens her heart, ending with a dozen poems that lovingly memorialize her mother. Sherri Levine offers brave, touching poetry to read again and again.
What are you working on?
I’m working on Mint Misfit, a feminist, literary YA novel, set in 1962. Cora Terrell, and Italian-Jewish-American, heads the uphill fight for equality and civil rights for girls in rural Mint, Oregon.
I’m also writing new poems, which are sometimes prose poems, sometimes about nature, at times political, and very often, even now, about my childhood in Yonkers.
My first publication in Crab Creek Review was “Cordate Shape” in 2013. I wrote it following a prompt offered in Kelli Russell Agodon’s delightful workshop, “Poets at the Coast.” PDX Writers Workshops, led by Alida Thatcher and Jennifer Springsteen, inspired me to train as a workshop leader in Salem, Oregon using the Amherst Writers and Artist Method. I’ve been leading generative writing workshops in Salem, Oregon for the past six years. For the most part, I don’t know what I’m going to create until I write. The groups are supportive and uplifting.
What has excited me most recently relates to my award-winning poem “Late Afternoon” about my dear friend Else. Last month, her daughter-in-law sent me a letter telling me Else’s family is creating a notebook about my elderly friend’s life, including when we taught middle-school English together in the South Bronx in the early 1970’s. The daughter-in-law hadn’t known that I’d written many poems and prose pieces about my dear friend, during our precious fifty-year friendship. The daughter-in-law phoned and emailed enthusiastic responses after reading what I’d written and published about her mom and is including the prose and poetry in the notebook. I’m happy that Crab Creek Review and Camille T. Dungy honored Else’s poem.
Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
It’s a joy to find so much encouragement and camaraderie among poets. For me, it’s been a boon to attend events the Oregon Poetry Association Conferences, The Community of Writers Workshops, the Port Townsend Centrum Writing Conference, and to enjoy opportunities that pop up. I’ve learned so much over the 23 years the Peregrine Poetry Group in Salem, Oregon has been meeting. The outpouring of support and insightful suggestions have been precious to me.
Submitting has become so much easier these days with email and Submittable. It helps, of course, to become familiar with the journals, read the poems, and find what appeals to you.
What are you reading?
Recently I’ve been reading Stealing Flowers from the Neighbors by Sherri Levine, published by Kelsay Books. Sounds of the poet’s sorrow crumble, crunch, kick, and whack, yank and snap. She opens her heart, ending with a dozen poems that lovingly memorialize her mother. Sherri Levine offers brave, touching poetry to read again and again.
What are you working on?
I’m working on Mint Misfit, a feminist, literary YA novel, set in 1962. Cora Terrell, and Italian-Jewish-American, heads the uphill fight for equality and civil rights for girls in rural Mint, Oregon.
I’m also writing new poems, which are sometimes prose poems, sometimes about nature, at times political, and very often, even now, about my childhood in Yonkers.
Lois Rosen joyfully leads Salem, Oregon’s Trillium Writers’ Workshop, the ICL Writing Group at Willamette University, and co-founded the Peregrine Poets. Her poetry collections are Pigeons (Traprock Books, 2004), Nice and Loud (Tebot Bach, 2015), and Diving and Rising (Finishing Line Press, 2021).