Two Poems Now Online

Thanks to Redux: A Literary Journal, the following two poems of mine live on in cyberspace. Here’s the link: http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2013/10/101-two-poems-by-meredith-pond.html

Redux is “an invitation-only literary journal of writers’ favorite, previously published stories and poems, not found elsewhere on the web.” This journal is edited by novelist Leslie Pietrzyk. Leslie has two published novels, teaches in a low-residency MFA program, and is a hands-on visitor to writer birthplaces, such as the homes of Flannery O’Connor, Willa Cather, and Edgar Alan Poe, to name a few.

I’m lucky to have these two poems of mine “up.” Thank you, Leslie P!

“Peeling Psyche Off the Wall,” for example, is one of my own favorites — because the story lives in the world of ancient mythology. The tale of “Cupid  and Psyche” is most familiar to me in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, one of my text books in high school. It’s online now in a longer version than the one I first read 40 years ago.

After I ordered a few extra copies of “Psyche” published in the Georgetown Review in spring 2008 (big cow on the cover), there were no more available. And the editors did not plan to post any poems online. Redux to the rescue. 🙂

The second poem, “The Butterfly Syndrome,” is the only poem included in my MFA thesis. My thesis advisor, Richard McCann, a poet in his own right and the author of Mother of Sorrows, recommended I include a poem in my thesis. I had studied poetry with Henry Taylor, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Flying Change in the late 1980s, and with Jean Valentine, a visiting writer my first semester at AU.  It was Henry’s class on form, however, that somehow inspired “Butterfly.” His class and my encounter with a real butterfly a few weeks before.

That story is another poem, I think . . . 20 years later. 🙂

About meredith

Born in Rhode Island, Meredith now lives in Takoma Park, Maryland. She wrote her first poem, "Leaves," in third grade at the Quidnick School shortly after her good friend Bradley got spanked with a wooden ruler behind the upright piano by Miss Barr who to this day fills our dreams with scary images. To read more from Meredith, visit www.meredithpond.blogspot.com. Thanks for visiting!!
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