Mary Dezember

Still Howling Mary Dezember

"I see the best souls of my sex thrive despite the madness, defiant Aphrodites rising above the sea, naked in their wakefulness, determined to love in the charge of night and the terror of the day . . ." With language both piercing and uplifting, Mary Dezember explores the importance of creative expression and of finding a voice in hurtful or oppressive situations and to question hegemony - with the realization that the embracing of life happens through the alchemy of forgiveness. Graced with cover art painted by her nephew, Steve Dezember II, using his wheelchair, the book includes poems about or in tribute to courageous life-embracing innovators, such as Steve and his wife, Hope, Allen Ginsberg, Rosalind Franklin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. The title poem "Still Howling" and the poem "Endnote to Still Howling" are an homage to Allen Ginsberg and to his poems "Howl" and "Footnote to Howl," in celebration of their publication 60 years ago, in 1956, and a tribute to his publisher, City Lights Publishers, and to Allen's influences, namely Walt Whitman, but, as Dezember states in this collection, "mostly to Allen and what he gave us - the right to howl." "Still Howling" and "Endnote to Still Howling" are the First Place Winner of the Best Beat Poem Contest, 2016, sponsored by Beatlick Press. They were first published by the journal Cacti Fur.