Poetry & Poets

Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri

Grace is Maryland’s Tenth Poet Laureate. She has 21 books and chapbooks of poetry and 26 produced short-form and full-length plays. Her newest poetry publication is Showboat, 2019. Grace founded and still produces "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, celebrating 43 years on-air in 2019. The show’s recorded at the Library of Congress and transmitted via Pacifica Network. She holds two Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (1993 & 2013), A Paterson Poetry Prize, a Pen Fiction Award, the Bordighera Award for Poetry, The CPB Silver Metal and received the Associated Writers' Program George Garrett Award for 2013.

Poetry by Grace Cavalieri

What the Psychic Said promo
 
Grace Cavalieri, with paper and pen, her imagination wanders fresh and bold, leaving us poetry for our comprehension and delight, which has a life longer than our own.
                                                               Janice F. Booth
If patience were a ray or sweet word
       It would never fail here
The keen bone of quiet is like faith
        Listen to the heat
        Feel the violet view ...
It was a day much like this,
grey, with drizzle,
my mother took me visiting,
which was a big event –
She didn’t drive a car,
seldom went out.
How did we get there?
Too late I found what’s truly mine.
This time, a pile of papers,
 
poems, on huge scraps, meant
to be nailed to his cut boards.
She always wanted to make love to a clock so she'd know when to stop.
She always wanted to be standing in the limelight in a white satin dress ...
This isn't so bad I said two days after you died, Everything's the same. You're just not here. Look. I get up and make tea and you're just not here, that's all. ...
When you were in the 9th grade and I was in the 7th you were
a crossing guard keeping order at Junior High School number 3. No one
was disobedient when you wore that wide yellow strap across your chest ...
Silence, wanderer, you, with your purposeful imagery -
 Nothing inflames the past as much as you do!
How many places can you lead the mind at once ...
Flat and cold. The place you didn't
want to go. A covenant comes alive, leads you here:
a person,  moment,  event,  you'd
rather go past the door than see. ...
for painter Erick Jackson
 
A rhapsody encircles his walls
without interruption,

Fate and fortune are
in a drawer filled with light,

like a pair of gloves
illuminating the ideal room, ...