Author: Robin Standish
Pages: 76
Year of Publication: 2011
Price: HB Rs 150 / $10 (USD), FB $7
ISBN:
HB 978-81-8157-987-4 (9788181579874)
FB 978-81-8157-988-1 (9788181579881)
 
About the Author:
Robin Standish’s poems have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Gargoyle and other American journals as well as Ajanta, an international journal published in Calcutta. Her work has been translated into Bengali, Shona as well as European languages. Her participation in the Metaphor Project links her writing and social change interests.
Following graduate work in cultural anthropology and journalism, Robin worked with women-serving and environmental non-profit organizations. Through the Global Fund for Women, she consulted collaboratively with international NGOs during the 1990s, primarily in India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire. At present, she lives in Berkeley, California.
Teaser:
Suppressed Identity
We weren’t prepared, Mother,
to hear your startling wish to drive
a huge, red logging truck
down Donner Pass;
you, the woman of impeccably
manicured hands, who never sat
without attending to the parallel slant
of her legs.
Driving through the Sierras that day,
we saw a flash of you as you might have been –
concert pianist, CFO, or, yes, even
mountain truck driver.
Let this poem be a cautionary tale for mothers
who’d suppress their impish joy “for the children’s sake”;
know that we celebrate not
your perfect ladyness,
but those rare occasions when you
plucked flowers from a stranger’s garden,
served French Toast for dinner, or firmly placed
your perfect feet on Don’t Walk grass.
Contents:
PART ONE
WHAT THE CHILD KNEW
Under the Grand Piano / 11
At Home / 14
No One Knew / 16
August 6, 1945: How She Remembers the Day / 17
What the Child Learned / 18
The Sibling Cycle (seven short poems) / 19
Wayward Opal / 26
Small Debut / 28
Aunt Lucy’s Lesson / 30
The Pack / 32
Suppressed Identity / 33
Ties / 34
What My Parents Loved / 35
PART TWO
MORE THAN THE MEASURED WORLD
First Light / 39
Summit Road Duet / 40
Quakers in the Orchard / 42
Dream Lesson / 44
In Praise of Persimmons / 47
Window / 49
Blessed by Magic / 50
Function, Space, Capture (three small poems) / 51
Doing Her / 52
On Being Led through Aural Light / 54
Within the Body of the Cloth / 56
The Angel of the Future / 59
Winged Man / 60
Fallow Dreams / 62
Blood Pool / 64
Crossing / 66
Inclining toward Grace / 68