May 26 2009 5PM Poet Wendy Mnookin:
"I am a poet living in Newton, Massachusetts. I received my BA from Radcliffe College and my MFA in Writing from Vermont College. My latest book, THE MOON MAKES ITS OWN PLEA was published by BOA Editions in 2008. My other collections are WHAT HE TOOK, TO GET HERE, and GUENEVER SPEAKS.
I teach poetry at Emerson College in Boston and at Grub Street, a non-profit Boston writing center. I have taught poetry at Boston College, to children in schools throughout the Boston area, and in workshops around the country.
In THE MOON MAKES ITS OWN PLEA I explore the idea of self and how that self is strengthened and abraded by relationships. The poems coalesce around the condition of mortality--not a specific death, although these also occur, but the state of being mortal.
In WHAT HE TOOK I revisit the death of my father in a car accident when I was two. I move from the accident itself to my efforts to understand the loss and how it has shaped my adult life.
TO GET HERE explores loss of a different kind: the inability to save those we love. In this book, I look at our family's struggle to come to terms with my son's drug addiction.
GUENEVER SPEAKS is a cycle of persona poems about the woman at the center of the Arthurian legend. Malory's MORTE D'ARTHUR leaves much unsaid about Guenever, whose voice speaks in these poems.
My poems have been published in journals, online publications, and anthologies. New work appears in The Greensboro Review, the Harvard Review, Pool, Prairie Schooner, and Runes.
My poems have won prizes from various journals, including The Comstock Review, The Kansas Quarterly and New Millennium Writings. I received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and WHAT HE TOOK won the 2002 Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club."