“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
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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.
The Heart of Summer
Presented by Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. With readings by:
KRISTOFER COLLINS
JUDITH R. ROBINSON
MICHAEL SIMMS
Saturday, July 15, 2023, 7:00 pm
Round Table Coffeehouse
5830 Ellsworth Ave.
Shadyside
Free Admission. Books by the poets will be available for purchase.
For further information contact 412-626-3942 or 412-681-3018
Click the Persimmon Tree banner above to visit their website.
Stuffed with wonderful writing and art, of which I am proud to say I am a contributor.
LATEST FROM
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
LATEST PUBLICATION
Speak, Speak
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
Available March 2017 from Lummox Press
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.
BOOKS BY JUDITH
The Blue Heart
Finishing Line Press
Purchase at Finishing Line
Purchase on Amazon
Living Inland
Bennington Press
Purchase on Amazon
The Beautiful Wife & Other Stories
Univ Editions
Purchase on Amazon
Dinner Date
Finishing Line Press
Purchase at Finishing Line
Purchase on Amazon
The Brentwood Anthology
Lummox Press
Purchase at Lummox Press
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.
Hello from Pittsburgh.
Facing some grim facts today. Sorry!
Antisemitism is on the rise again. A virus, metaphorically. Always there, always waxing and waning, never leaving, always adapting. Jews were once hated for their religion (think Spanish Inquisition) for their race (think Holocaust) currently for their state. (think Israel).
Here is a poem on the subject, published several years ago: