Green Line Cafe

THE GREEN LINE CAFE PRESENTS

KATHLEEN SHEEDER BONANNO

Poetry Reading & Interview

TUESDAY, May 18, 7 PM
Green Line Locust
HOSTED BY LEONARD GONTAREK
& LISA GRUNBERGER
This Event Is Free

Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno received the Beatrice Hawley Award for
her book of poetry, Slamming Open the Door, published by
Alice James Books in April, 2009 and was one of the top-ten-
selling books of contemporary poetry in 2009. Two poems
from her book were nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Slamming Open the Door is a collection of poems recounting the
true story of the murder of her daughter, Leidy Bonanno, in 2003.

Bonanno’s heartrending collection inspires both compassion for and awe of the human spirit. Of all the losses we may be asked to bear, the murder of one’s child must be the most terrible. These poems evoke that keenly, seeking justice but transcending judgment as they grieve loss, celebrate love, and find healing.

In 2007, Kathleen received the Purple Ribbon Award from the Lutheran Settlement Home for her advocacy on behalf of domestic violence issues. She is a contributing editor of The American Poetry Review and teaches English and creative writing in Montgomery County.

The poet Sharon Olds calls Slamming Open the Door “a gift of power, truth, rage and beauty.”   David Kirby in the New York Times Book Review says, “Readers will have to step outside of a familiar, comforting tradition of poetic grief while reading this book … to read this book is not to behold a completed work but to stand onstage with a writer who finds herself in the middle of a story in which she has been reluctantly cast.”

“When Emily Dickinson wrote the line ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’ I think she was referring to poems—and the occasions that make them impossible to not write—like these. Spare, unflinching, and powerful, the poems in Slamming Open the Door move me to the bone. How does one say I love this book, which I wish never had to be written? Only one way: I love this book. I wish it did not have to be written.”
—Thomas Lux

Death Barged In

In his Russian greatcoat
slamming open the door
with an unpardonable bang,
and he has been here ever since.

He changes everything,
rearranges the furniture,
his hand hovers
by the phone;
he will answer now, he says;
he will be the answer.

Tonight he sits down to dinner
at the head of the table
as we eat, mute;
later, he climbs into bed between us.

Even as I sit here,
he stands behind me
clamping two
colossal hands on my shoulders
and bends down
and whispers to my neck,
From now on,
you write about me.

Posted May 17, 2010