Black Dog Poems

Meat For Tea Press (February 24, 2022)
with Peter Tacy
ISBN-10: 0997529881

Peter and I had dated for two months in college. He was known as the Williams College Poet at that time, and I as the Smith College Poet and someone (neither of us remember who that was!) thought it was a good idea to have us meet. We spent the entire two months discussing poetry, and most particularly Emily Dickinson, who was not highly prized way back in the 1950’s! We lost contact after that. Both ended up in happy marriages, but my husband died at 69 and Peter’s wife battled cancer for 28 years before dying. We were two sad-sack widowed people. We found each other again because of a New Yorker article about my Holocaust novels. Our first date in that second round was at the Dickinson Museum. Peter brought his gorgeous standard Poodle Gracie with him. She and I immediately fell for one another. It took another couple of weeks before Peter and I did the same. And then Covid closed down the USA and Peter and I were stranded at this house for three months in Connecticut, not seeing other people except when we were outside walking the dog.

Inside, the house, we were both writing a lot of poems, many of them about Gracie. And then at age 18—a long life for poodles—she died as we held her at the vet’s. The book of poems became her memorial.

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