Congratulations go out to the 2009 November PAD Chapbook Challenge winner, Nancy Posey, for her collection Let the Lady Speak.

I enjoyed reading Nancy's entire collection, which includes poems referencing Gone With the Wind, Amelia Earhart, William Shakespeare, and more. As you may be able to guess from the title, this chapbook collects the voices of various women and shares them with the reader. It was a nice idea around which to build a collection.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Or Maybe the Day After That

I'm tired of thinking about Tara,
trying to save her for God knows what.
I'm tired of plenty
after all those months
of making do.
Sometimes I miss boiled turnips
and dirt under my nails.
I'm tired of dresses
made to order, petticoats
and ball gowns,
so tired I could rip these curtains
from the windows too.
I'm too tired to bear anyone's grief
but my own,
tired of apologizing
for misplaced jealousy.
I don't care if I have to loosen
my corsets after a hearty meal,
one I cooked myself.
Right now I have no plans
to make plans. Instead,
I'm going to sit right here
at the foot of the stairs
and have a good cry,
and I don't care if anyone
gives a damn or not.
Maybe tomorrow, my thoughts
will come clearer--or
maybe the day after that.

Attachment

"It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." -James Baldwin

I was no good at being a child,
she said:
No tree-climbing or bike-riding
captured my attention.
I lived for books.

I formed my first attachments
to the people I met
between the pages
of books. Jo March
breathed air to me more
tangible than that of students
I met in my fourth grade
classroom. I knew her;
I wanted to be her.

Never having seen a farm,
I knew nonetheless the
feel of Black Beauty
beneath my saddle.

Like Pippi Longstocking,
I slept for weeks
with my feet on the pillow,
my head at the foot of the bed,
despite warnings
of the danger to my eyes,
encountering by flashlight
the lives of my other friends:
Charlotte, Wilbur,
Nancy, Bess, and George,
Freddy and Flossie,
the Count of Monte Cristo.
I too plotted my escape.

Feet

"I grant I never saw a goddess go;
my mistress when she walks treads on the ground."
                                 -William Shakespeare

Heavy footed, even back when I didn't
weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet,
I could never slip up on anyone. I clomped
when barefoot, and in high heels, I clicked.

No one could accuse me of not trying,
though. Aware of more graceful girls,
I aspired--to no avail--to steal, unnoticed,
into their ranks but lived and breathed--

and walked--the personification of
two left feet. Dances were no different:
I trampled on the toes of luckless boys,
even tripping over my own two feet.

What vast relief, when I discovered poetry,
to find there feet content to trip along
as I directed; dactyls, iambs, trochees
all do my bidding, with unmatched grace.

*****

I asked Nancy to share a little of her thoughts on the collection, and here's what she had to say:

Tuesday, February 02, 2010 4:18:48 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [42]