Featured Poetry: "Toytown" by Grace Cavalieri
The name of Grace Cavalieri's legacy book, Other Voices, Other Lives, is not only a poetic turn, but a statement of intent. In her Legacy Book there are several sections in 3rd person omnipotent which aim to breathe the same air as famous women who have suffered adversity. Tragic figure Anna Nicole Smith, feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Cora from William Carlos William's Kora in Hell. All in all they are an admix of Grace Cavalieri's poetic life, brought together in one beautiful volume; so, perhaps, we might figure that Anna Nicole Smith converses with Mary Wollstonecraft for the very first time in the pages of Other Voices, Other Lives.
Today, from the Anna section we have the heart-rending "Toytown"
Event Update: Catch Grace Cavalieri at this years National Press Club Book Fair NOV, 2nd! #NPCBookFair
Toytown
At the edge of thought, a frozen pond melted.
The Guy in armor had taken it all off, and was
sitting on the floor sobbing.
Anna never saw such a thing. She should run...
tell him she was expected somewhere...or...
someone was waiting...she needed to be alone...
This strapping brute of a man had suddenly
become a minute creature, shaking with shame.
Anna knew she needed imagination for this one,
but trained otherwise from birth,
never had a chance.
She tried to look serious. She tried to look
dignified, but the naked man on the floor
reduced her to simplicity.
Could she name the problem?
Name her darkness?
The side of her sleeve was offered to his running nose.
Her field of vision blurred.
He told her this was his first day on the job
and he couldn't go through with it.
He was a PhD student working his way through anthropology.
She bent down and took his head and arms.
Now what would she do with her unused understanding.
There, under the bed, she saw her other satin slipper.
Somehow she knew it would fit.
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Grace Cavalieri’s Interview on Midday with Tom Hall
Grace Cavalieri stopped by WYPR last week for an interview on “Midday” with Tom Hall. The Poet Laureate and author of ASP’s Other Voices, Other Lives, mused on her life and work, meditating on the loss of her late husband, and reading from her deep poetry catalog. This interview is well worth the 40 minutes it takes to impart the important wisdom of one of Maryland’s foremost sages.