Mishima (Divinations, #5 of 5)

We end this cycle the way we began, with a fascinating but tortured personality. From my first reading of John Nathan’s biography of Yukio Mishima, the legendary Japanese writer haunted me for years. I read over a dozen of his novels in translation including, of...

Twilight Child (Divinations, #4 of 5)

A depressing piece, but I thought it one of the better ones. Another female character study; to me the most telling aspect is that she could be of any age. Twilight Child Another glittering frigid April sun Shivering trees and coasting birds   prove the wind...

Quasimodo’s Bones (Divinations, #3 of 5)

Where was I? Musing on impermanence… I wonder if this piece will survive me. Victor Hugo probably had no such doubt about his legendary hunchback character. That novel’s final image birthed and informed my piece, over 160 years later. Jack or Jive named...

Surface Tension (Divinations, #2 of 5)

This poem was the next one written after Camille Claudel, and the thematic connections are clear enough. I was reading books like The Beauty Myth as my daughter approached her third birthday, and contemplating her place in this… well, Marilyn French’s...

Camille Claudel (Divinations, #1 of 5)

Back in the mid-90s, I wrote some poems to indulge my love of wordplay, which also served as helpful venting. Some of them were published in various periodicals from 1993-96. I was going to publish them as a book called Divinations, but circumstance intervened. Maybe...