Marsha de la O – författare

Author of two previous collections of poetry: BLACK HOPE (1997) and ANTIDOTE FOR NIGHT (2015). de la O is also the publisher of the journal ASKEW.Keats at FourteenShe dozes, her nails fretted against the linen’s border,a hectic rose flaming each cheek. Her lips move, no words. The boy is guardian spirit, no one but he enters this sickroom where his mother fades, home finally after six years—failures,disgrace. Scarlet daughter, neighbors hiss, slave to appetite, but John is single-minded—she will live. No one but he gives her the tincture of mercury—one tenth of a grain daily, dabs the sweat of her fevers away, a basket of withered poppies at his feet. He pierces each capsule with a needle, drops it in a small glazed crock to warm near the stove, sweat out the opium. Then he’ll add wine, saffron, nutmeg. It takes time, the hour darkens. He cups his hand to light the votive. She moans a furred voice from webbed lungs, a cup of black blood brimming, the pilgrim is fleeing the City, he leans in closer, the City of Destruction, takes her clammy hand, that place also where he was born, so close now he’s breathing her, “Johnny,” she cries, “lift me up, Johnny, your father is here in the room.

Written during the last five years of the poet’s father’s life, Creature is a book about love, destruction, and the self, all standing in relation to family and the natural world. The poems themselves try to move toward what can’t be said by finding connection with other life forms: hawks, hummingbirds, pelicans, lizards, horses, ravens, squid. By moving past linguistic walls into otherness, words become proximate to mystery and inhabit territory where expanses open and embodiment is always on the verge of transformation.

“Whether her subject is mental illness, the oppression of one human being by another, or the constantly-cast shadow of our mortality, Marsha de la O’s resilient, unpretentious, sharply intelligent and unsentimental voice speaks to us of what we need to know. This is a disturbing and memorable book.”—Chase Twichell, from the foreword

WINNER OF THE 2015 ISABELLA GARDNER POETRY AWARD Set in present-day Southern California, Antidote for Night is a heartbreak lyric, a corrido, a love song to California's city lights and far-flung outskirts--the San Diego backcountry, the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, and the Mojave Desert. Marsha de la O's voice is a kind of free jazz, musically rich with LA noir and the vastness of metropolitan Southern California. Marsha de la O's Black Hope won the New Issues Prize from the University of Western Michigan and an Editor's Choice Award. She has taught Spanish-speaking children in Los Angeles and Ventura County for thirty years.