LATEST NEWS Diana is thrilled to announce several new publications in poetry. First is a supplement to the magazine Poet Lore of 12 poems from Diana's new work-in-progress: Walk Me to Schenectady, a collection of poems about Diana's husband, Mel Fiske, who died on January 17, 2008. The poems both celebrate his life and mourn his death. In introducing the collection for Poet Lore, critic Sandra Gilbert says, "...private as they may seem, these are brilliantly artful public poems in the mode of the letters to the dead produced by such poets as Donald Hall and Ted Hughes, but with at times an almost surreally comic twist." Diana's second recent publication in poetry is a beautiful survey of her older poems edited by Chana Bloch and published in Persimmon Tree for Fall 2009. And thirdly will be the publication of the completed book Walk Me to Schenectady, by Depot Press and printed by Arion Press. This book is scheduled for release in Spring 2012. Readers of this website—you'll be kept more fully informed! SUMMONED SUMMONED was my first book of poems, published in 1976; it was the winner of the Devins Award of the University of Missouri, and was published by their press. I said on the flyleaf that I thought of my poetry as rhythmic, visual, and surreal, and that I hoped that the poems evoked strong feelings. BUY THE BOOK from Booksense or Amazon. "Lightning" I've been struck my lightning only once, It soaks you down, dissolves your bones to soup, Rattles your eyes like castanets. THE POWER TO CHANGE GEOGRAPHY THE POWER TO CHANGE GEOGRAPHY was published in 1979 by Princeton University press and was the winner of their nationwide contest to select the new entry in their Contemporary Poets Series. Carolyn Kizer said of these poems: "Diana O'Hehir's passionate vitality so suffuses her tragic sense of life that we are exhilarated by it." BUY THE BOOK from Booksense, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. "They Arrive This Morning" Those invaders from space will set down in a blue light, climb out of their Pale machine carrying their charts, globes, Maps of the rivers of the heart, their diagrams showing That country we all long for. HOME FREE HOME FREE, my third poetry publication, was published in 1988 by Atheneum Publishers and was a winner of the Di Castagnola Award. The New York Times said of this collection, "The oblique and private darkness of Diana O'Hehir's earlier work has been wrenched open in these new poems, its latent violence confronted. . . In this catalogue of farewells, she betrays an otherworldliness that chafes against its own disassociation. The elegiac character of these poems shows us that the human spirit is tenuous in this earthly realm, tethered only by language, by memory and imagination." BUY THE BOOK from Booksense, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. "Waking" They buried me in gold, stopped my mouth in copper, Coated my chest with a turquoise bird, Swaddled my thighs in a metal pouch, Poured over me the lid of night, Perfectly fitting, not heavy enough. SPELLS FOR NOT DYING AGAIN SPELLS FOR NOT DYING AGAIN was published in 1996 by Eastern Washington University Press and received the Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award. Reviewer Jack Foley, writing in Agni Review, says: "In affirming magic ("spells") as the center of her work, Diana O'Hehir is not merely dealing with a theme. She is attempting at some level to turn her book into a power object, she is conceiving of the book as something magical, alive. Spells for Not Dying Again constantly moves us towards the perception of the inextricable mixture of life and death which is the center of any writing. In like a Falcon, out like a Phoenix." BUY THE BOOK from Booksense, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. "Spell for Protecting the Heart After Death" My heart, my mother heart, Heart of my living on earth. Spirits, don't grab this heart with your fingers, Don't steal and crush my heart, It belongs to the living who walk about in the city. When I was a child my heart shone in its egg, My grown heart rose like a heron, cackled like a goose, my aged heart Lay under the back-bent sky, was a dark stone in the sky's belt. I have also been the author of two poetry chapbooks: GRACE, Eucalyptus Press, 1992, and LOVE AFFAIRS, Depot Books, 2002. And I am co-editor, with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, of an anthology, MOTHER SONGS, Poems for, by and about Mothers, Norton, 1995.