ellen Goldsmith

Something happy happened for me on Jan. 16 this year. An email from a friend and fellow poet congratulated on me on my poem featured in George Bilgere’s "Poetry Town." I was already a fan of Bilgere’s poems but didn’t know about "Poetry Town." Clicking the link, I found “The Secret of Life.” This poem appeared in my second chapbook, "Such Distances," in 2009 and was read on "The Writer’s Almanac" on May 10, 2010. And here it is again.

Ellen Goldsmith reads, writes and teaches poetry. Professor emeritus of the City University of New York and a Cushing resident, her first full-length collection — "Are We There Yet?" — is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. I sit in a gracious room. kAm(:?5@H A2?6D 3C62< FA E96 G:6H]k^Am kAm$F? D9:?6D @? E96 3@2ED :? E96 92C3@C]k^Am kAm(:?5 >@G6D 3C2?496D 2?5 =62G6D]k^Am kAmx? E96 C@@> E@@[ E96C6’D 2 3C66K6]k^Am kAm$@>6 52JD[ ;FDE E9:D :D 6?@F89 E@ 3=@E @FE 4@?7FD:@?]k^Am

This week’s poem, Ellen Goldsmith’s “Navigating New Waters,” offers a wonderfully subtle meditation on precarity, flux and the different “homes” we inhabit – a house, a body, a windy coast. I love how much feeling this poem conveys through its seemingly simple lyric observations, and the breathtaking leap in the voice of the final line. Goldsmith reads, writes and teaches poetry.