Tag Archives: mother

What is a Ruffed Grouse?

(Here’s the bird behind “My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse.”) Woodland hikers in my part of the world (the Northeastern United States) know ruffed grouse as the birds that nearly give us heart attacks when they shoot out of … Continue reading

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Who Was My Mother?

(December 13th is my birthday. Really, it should be my mother’s day. Here’s the woman who became “My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse.”) Born Anne Fletcher in 1926 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but Nancy Nixon by the time I arrived, … Continue reading

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The Chronogram Poets: Barbara Blatner

(Reviewing Barbara Blatner’s The Still Position in the November Chronogram roundup, Lee Gould writes that “Blatner addresses her dying mother in a verse memoir of unflinching physicality: In these vivid imagistic poems, we see the weakening mother become a swamped … Continue reading

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