Nita Penfold

Literature: American Poetry/Women’s Studies One of the army of Whitman’s democratic poets, a decorated veteran—this is Nita Penfold and her poetry. Chances are, if you’ve been following poetry over the last two decades, you’ve already encountered her fierce, funny, bone deep honest verse. This book-length collection, boiled down to the essentials from over 300 published works, is a chronicle of the late 20th century life of America’s do-right, feisty, laboring sisters/mothers/daughters. In what seems like innumerable anthologies from CRIES OF THE SPIRIT, to CATHOLIC GIRLS, to IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER I WOULD PICK MORE DAISIES, Nita’s unflinching, mischievous verse has soldiered up next to works by Lucille Clifton, Denise Levertov, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds and other modern luminaries. Here, in this collection, holding its own, testifying, singing of poem-polyps, of the toilet paper treatise, of cock-thunderers, it carries on, affirming the unheralded histories that are mostly un-HIS-toried. Her direct, powerful, delicious verse stands witness to the anonymous survivors of daily battles, that never seem to win the war. This collection, shot through with her bravery, inhabiting a known and contested world, filled with recognizable warriors, their practical dilemmas, and the unending struggle for grace, is a rare gift. Nita Penfold is a diamond of a poet and this is a gem of a collection. —David Earl Williams, writer, director, editor author of Superman Dreams THIS BOOK WON THE 2006 WRITER'S DIGEST INTERNATIONAL SELF-PUBLISHED BOOK AWARD!!!!!!!