On The Horizon

A winter wonderland

Presented by Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. With readings by:

Timons Esaias
Judith R. Robinson
Alyssa Sineni

Saturday, January 11, 2025
7:00 p.m.
At the Bantha Tea Bar
5002 Penn Avenue
15224

Free Admission. Books by the poets will be available for purchase.

For further information contact 412-404-8359 or 412-481-POEM

Wild Greens: Joy

From Wild Greens:
We’ve bundled up our favorite poems, stories, paintings, illustrations, and disco oyster shells (you heard that right!) into our Wild Greens Joy issue. Read along and share our joy; we're happy to have you here with us….Judith R. Robinson’s painting “JOYFUL MORNING” depicts nourishment and gratitude in bright primary colors

AROHO

What does my writing/art mean to me? The act of creating art takes me deep inside myself while at the same time takes me away from my ordinary or everyday preoccupations. So I both shed myself and receive myself, and occupy a blessed place.

Vox Populi

I APOLOGIZE

to my precious elders;
the valuable ones, 
those thick-fleshed
indestructible Jews
I have known, 
those who 
endured; those who
had the clenched tooth
grit to flee before 
the ovens were lit, 
those –bergs and –steins
and –skis 
those tailors artists bakers
peddlers scholars music-makers
who did not become the incinerated trash of Europe:
My own people, once stalwart as the stars, 
must now weep as we, their stunning progeny,
disappear like shadows 
into the cracked cement of sweet America
our brainless heads sucked under the white foam,
merging, whistling, forgetting, drowning, dancing,
no lessons learned, refusing to keep anything.

Aunt Jenny and Her Kitchen

The fire does its work: flames sizzle, warmth envelopes.
Aunt Jenny rests: she is peaceful, quiet; are her chores finished?
Has the family that works so hard been fed?
No, the kitchen is bright with cold daylight, 
Surely an evening meal must be prepared.
Which brings us to the presence of the chicken.
There it stands, centered, still, unaware of what might be.
Stewed, fricasseed, roasted or deep fried…?
Of course it could remain fine, Aunt Jenny’s pet, raised from a chick.
All we know is that it once stood still, and had its picture painted. 

Painting by Mary Ellen Raneri

Books by Judith

buy a ticket

“All of it, though, the suffering and joy, the innocence and experience, are in Robinson’s poems all of one piece, a whole cloth, a brilliant heartbreaking tapestry.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This is a collection of poems about life—its imperfect beauty, its poignance, and the forces that propel it forward. Toggling among life stages—from a child’s recollections of school with its “blue-lined grainy first-grade paper” to an adult’s look back through the eyes of shared reminiscence with a boon companion, these poems resonate with a sense of time’s passage, its transience and elasticity. Grief and disappointment compete with an indomitable will to continue despite setbacks and loss. Whether through the eyes of teenage Holocaust survivor, Dora, who gleans the forest floors in her quest to live, or the “jobless-wounded-welfar-ians” who keep on dreaming of the windfall that will make it all better, the human beings in Judith R. Robinson’s poems may be beaten and bruised by life’s hard knocks—but they are not down for the count.

SPEAK, SPEAK
Poetry by gene hirsh

Dr. Eugene Hirsch, Gene, to all who know him, has extended to me the privilege of editing his poetry, an assignment I accepted with pleasure. This collection, “Speak, Speak,” is the culmination of Gene’s long career of writing, and reflects the complexity of his mind and experience. As a physician/writer he joins a distinguished list, and in my opinion as a reader/editor, he earns his place among the others, notably Maugham, Chekhov, William Carlos Williams.

Read press/reviews about Speak, Speak:
Goodreads
Times of Israel
Littsburgh
Uppagus

Carousel
New & Selected Poetry & Fiction

While Carousel contains new material, it is also the culmination of many years of work and publication.  I am grateful to my publisher, Lummox Press, and its editor, RD Armstrong,  for an opportunity to share this writing with an expanded audience.  For me, reading and writing are the two sides of world-exploration. Poems and stories, at their best, are at once personal and universal, and as necessary to a fully realized life as food and drink—and more, a human pleasure. My hope is that this book will bring some measure of that to readers.
— Judith R. Robinson

INNOCENT PEOPLE

In its examination of both the front lines and the home front, Innocent People is an exploration of the Viet Nam era in small town/midsize city America. It is a depiction of innocence and innocence lost as these characters – much like the country as a whole – struggle through a turbulent and disillusioning time, sustain terrible losses, and begin to recover and heal, if never to be fully restored. 

WHEN I LOVED YOU

Finishing Line Press is proud to announce the publication of When I Love You, a collection of poems by Judith R. Robinson that "leads on a search for answers" and where "[m]emory flows through ... lean, spare lines with unexpected imagery: a fold of memory/near the dotted/wing of owlet (No Rest); dream.../a boomerang that hits back (When I Loved You); blonde days in Rome/unclutchable as quicksilver: (Losing a Jewel). “Modesty” concludes with compelling insight, answering what you most want/to express is—I matter//I once lived//what I once said.”    
—  PEARL KARRER is Managing Editor for the poetry journal, California Quarterly.    

When I Loved You will be published by Finishing Line Press on August 21, 2015. Pre-sale ends June 26. 

The Blue Heart
Finishing Line Press
Purchase at Finishing Line
Purchase on Amazon

Living Inland
Bennington Press
Purchase on Amazon

BOOKS BY JUDITH
 

The Beautiful Wife & Other Stories
Univ Editions
Purchase on Amazon
 

Orange Fire
Main Street Rag
Purchase on Main Street Rag

Even Then
University of Pittsburgh Press
Purchase on UPitt Press

Only The Sea Keeps:
Poetry of the Tsunami
Bayeaux Arts
Purchase on Amazon

Along These Rivers:
Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh
Quadrant Publishing
Purchase at Along These Rivers
Purchase on Amazon

JUDITH R. ROBINSON

Judith R. Robinson is a poet, editor, fiction writer and artist.  A 1980 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers.