Joan murray poet biography projects
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Only then would you have
touched the caved-in door that held the
sudden wave-like thud of her wriggling spine.
Only then, Demeter-like, would you have
brushed the tufts of fur, still stuck in the
rear window gasket--and probed
a finger through the wet grassy smear
that her flailing hoof had left there.
Only then would you have figured out the strength
to go after her into the dark place where she'd gone--
to search for her and keep searching--
just the way you'd have done if you'd come to
in a dark room after labor, and found no one there,
not a cry, not a sound--like that time--
when I slid down on a sheet below a mirror--
so I couldn't watch my daughter come or go.
But this time, with the cars rushing by,
I watched in the mirror.
.
She is a National Poetry Series Winner, a two-time National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship Winner, a two-time Pushcart Prize Winner for poetry, a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship Winner, a Wesleyan New Poets Series Winner, and Winner of Poetry Society of America's Gordon Barber Award. She has also read her work on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, The Bob Edwards Show, and Radio Lab.
whose work remains accessible
to both the scholar of poetry
and the casual reader .
She was commissioned by Broadway's Jujamcyn Theatres, and invited by L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum, to develop Queen of the Mist for the stage. If you'd seen how many times
her spindly forelegs dug themselves forward, trying to
lift the stone cart of herself off her yearling flanks--
if you'd watched her head toss left and right,
searching for instructions from any corner--
if you'd seen how she finally broke through
the cowl of her pain and pulled
herself upright, you'd know
why I sat there paralyzed.
Then you'd have seen how she was denied the heady
moment given to any flimsy fawn who makes it to its feet--
how she couldn't pause a second to feel gravity
pull away from her hooves and slink back in the earth.
And you'd have stayed there with her too,
hanging onto the wheel like an exhausted god
till she tossed her death on the heap of her shadow
and hauled herself to the woods,
one leg scratching jaggedly behind her
like a lie on a lie-detector test
until she disappeared.
Only then would you have pulled apart your harness
and stepped out and seen the smashed side mirror
pressed flush against the window where your shoulder
had just been.
Former Poet-in-Residence at the New York State Writers Institute, she has given readings and workshops at hundreds of conferences, universities and cultural centers, including the Chautauqua Institution, the International Poetry Forum, the Lark Theatre in Manhattan, and the Associated Writing Programs.
She is also a Pushcart Prize finalist for both fiction and non-fiction. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. I watched.
And I saw where she'd gone.
And I followed her in.
(Originally published in TheAmerican Poetry Review)
Joan Murray is a poet, writer, and playwright, whose books include: Swimming for the Ark: New & Selected Poems 1990-2015 (White Pine Press Distinguished Poets Series), Looking for the Parade (W.
She has contributed poetry, fiction, and essays to The Atlantic, Harper's, The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review,The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and The Sun, and to such anthologies as The Pushcart Prize and The Best American Poetry.
She has also twice been awarded the Pushcart Prize for Poetry and received the Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Award. She has also been a Pushcart Prize finalist in both fiction and nonfiction.
Murray, a former poet in residence at the New York State Writers Institute, has given readings and workshops at hundreds of conferences, universities and cultural centers, including the Chautauqua Institution, the International Poetry Forum, the Lark Theatre in Manhattan, and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP).
Rear View Mirror
If you'd seen her there, trying to rise, you'd understand
why I didn't make a sound.
W. Norton), Dancing on the Edge and Queen of the Mist (both from Beacon Press), and The Same Water (Wesleyan University Press).
She has contributed poetry, fiction, and essays to such journals as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Sun, The Village Voice, and to such anthologies as The Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize.
She is also the editor of The Pushcart Book of Poetry and the Poems to Live By anthologies from Beacon.
She is the author of five books of poetry: Swimming for the Ark: New & Selected Poems 1990–2015 (White Pine Press Distinguished Poets Series, 2015); Dancing on the Edge (Beacon Press, 2002); Looking for the Parade (W. W. Norton), Dancing on the Edge and Queen of the Mist (both from Beacon Press), and The Same Water (Wesleyan University Press).
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She is also the editor of The Pushcart Book of Poetry and the Poems to Live By anthologies from Beacon. .
Her finely wrought free-form verse
reads as easily as prose
despite its dense, lush imagery."
- The Harvard Review
"Working in free verse, Murray is a master of the single, unforgettable detail.
W. Norton, 2000); Queen of the Mist: The Forgotten Heroine of Niagara (Beacon Press, 2000); and The Same Water (Wesleyan University Press, 1990).
Murray has also edited and coedited four anthologies: The Pushcart Book of Poetry: The Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize (Pushcart Press, 2006); Poems to Live By in Troubling Times (Beacon Press, 2006); Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times (Beacon Press, 2001); and The Pushcart Prize XXV: Best of the Small Presses, 25th Anniversary Edition, 2001 (Pushcart Press, 2001), coedited with Billy Collins and Bill Henderson, the founder of Pushcart Press.
Murray is a National Poetry Series winner and a Wesleyan New Poets Series winner.
Joan Murray
Joan Murray is a poet, writer, and playwright, whose books include: Swimming for the Ark: New & Selected Poems 1990-2015 (White Pine Press Distinguished Poets Series), Looking for the Parade (W.