This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Amanda Judd, is from Stress Positions by Marion Deutsche Cohen, released by Alien Buddha Press in 2020.
Statement, 2019
I have had physical pain that precludes sleep. And during those months I take a vacation from knowing. I find that I not only must but can forget those headlines and those movies. To have insomnia due simultaneously to pain and to knowing to know and to experience at the same time to feel the pain of others while feeling my own is something I cannot do.
Marion Deutsche Cohen is known, in particular, for her writings (poetry and memoir) on three topics: spousal chronic illness, late pregnancy loss, and math. She is the author of 33 books; her newest poetry collection is Negative Aspects (dancing girl press), and her latest prose collection is Not Erma Bombeck: Diary of a Feminist 70s Mother (Alien Buddha Press). Forthcoming are Disturbing Shapes (New Plains Press) and Reasons and Remedies for Insomnia (dancing girl press). She teaches a course she developed, Mathematics in Literature, at Drexel University’s Honors College.
After a 25-year career as a paralegal, Amanda Valerie Judd returned to school to earn her AFA in Creative Writing from Normandale Community College. She is currently attending Southern New Hampshire University working to earn her BFA in Creative Writing – Poetry. In 2020, she won the Patsy Lea Core Prize for Poetry. In 2021, her poem “My Only Label” was nominated for “Best of the Net 2021.” Her work has been published or is forthcoming in PAN-O-PLY Magazine, MockingOwl Roost, Trouvaille Review, Prospectus, and Talking Stick 31.
