Desire Path is written by four women whose poems take different paths, turning here, meandering there, giving the reader (as all good art does) various ways of perceiving the world. The writers met at Sarah Lawrence College where they worked with 2004 National Book Award Winner, Jean Valentine. They have met each month since 1995 to offer support and community in the poets’ art, an otherwise solitary endeavor.

The book takes its title from a term used by landscape architects; "desire path" is an informal walkway people make by meandering across a grassy space instead of taking the more usual, formal path.

REVIEWERS' COMMENTS
In his foreword to the book, Thomas Lux calls the poems: “wry, irreverent, lush, musical, ambitious, technically complex, powerful and fearlessly sensual.”

National Book Award Winner, JEAN VALENTINE writes, “I admire the life force of Myrna Goodman’s poems, both in her customary witty high energy and in her occasional quieter energy. I admire Maxine Silverman’s pensive, spirited, musical lines. I cherish the wisdom of Meredith Trede’s complex tracings of memory, of her unspoiled evocations of these haunting lives. And I rest and wonder at Jennifer Wallace’s still, almost painted reflections.”

Former President of the Poetry Society of America, MOLLY PEACOCK “salutes” the authors, “each a member of a rare writer’s group that plays like a string quartet, their voices balanced, but utterly individual, in this dashing new concept for a book of poems — authored by four hands.”

And from New York poet Kate Knapp Johnson: “A masterful collection by four very distinct poets who manage to complement and complete each other with grace. The book is rife with a kind of longing, a hopefulness of inquiry. . . . These are poems that attempt to hold both flesh and spirit together without denying the paradoxical, without overlooking the odd vocation of being human.”

MEET THE DESIRE PATH AUTHORS
Myrna Goodman's first poem, "To Be A Boy," was rejected by Seventeen Magazine when she was 11. Despite rejection, the young feminist pursued playing with the mystery of words — to have a say. As an award winning ceramic artist, she wrote her words in clay. As a teacher, she helped disabled and gifted children, old people and shy immigrants have their say — using the language of words or sculpture. Her poems have been published in many literary journals and anthologies. She frequently writes in her Westchester County garden where she also paints dead trees. Read Myrna Goodman's poetry.

Maxine Silverman's poetry and essays have been published in journals and anthologies, among them Pushcart Prize III, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, Heliotrope, Lilith, WomanPoet/Midwest, Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets, and as a chapbook, Survival Song. A native of Sedalia, MO, she now lives with her family in the Hudson River Valley where she is a Master Gardener and Congregation B'nei Yisrael's psalmist-in-residence. Her poems have been set to music by jazz composer Paulette Thompson. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon. Read Maxine Silverman's poetry.

Meredith Trede lives in Sleepy Hollow, NY where she and her husband are partners in a management consulting business. She's had over sixty poems published in journals including The Paris Review, The Nebraska Review, West Branch, Diner and The MacGuffin. Meredith has had residencies from the Saltonstall Foundation, Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Virginia and France, a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Read Meredith Trede's poetry.

Jennifer Wallace teaches at the Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, MD. She is a poetry editor at The Cortland Review and is co-editor of the chapbook, Voices from Behind Bars. Her collaborations include the exhibition, Subject to Change, with sculptor Linda Bills and Psalms of Water and Stone, with poet, Heidi Hart and composer, Richard Smith. In 2004, she exhibited the installation, "A Nostalgic Object of Desire/Metaphysic" at MICA's Decker Gallery. Her poems and prose have been published in numerous literary journals. Read Jennifer Wallace's poetry.

For review copies and/or to schedule readings, contact [email protected].

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