Pink Lady: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Duhamel, Denise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822967367 ISBN 13: 9780822967361

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025

Synopsis

When her mother agrees to enter a Rhode Island nursing home in December of 2019, Denise Duhamel promises she’ll visit at least once a month. By March of 2020, everyone is in lockdown. The elegies in Pink Lady explore the resiliency of her elderly mother and nurses on the frontline, as well as the personal and universally experienced anxieties faced during pandemic policies. With focus, obsession, and even humor, Duhamel chronicles the separation of a mother and daughter, documenting the power of imagination, the aging body, and the limits of caregiving.

About this title

About the Author

Denise Duhamel is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami. Her previous books include Second Story, Scald, Blowout, Ka-Ching!, Two and Two, and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Pink Lady: Poems by Denise Duhamel


LAST PICNIC

We bundled her up and took her to Iggy’s in Narragansett.
It was still chilly, early May, as she perched in her hooded jacket
on the seat of her walker so she didn’t have to slide onto the wooden bench.
Her great-grandsons ran to the playground spinner and slides.
My mother’s chowder flipped in the wind and landed on her lap.
I wiped her up with a bunch of napkins.
My sister rescued the rolling bag of clam cakes.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822967367
• ISBN 13: 9780822967361
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88