Matrimony

Matrimony is the story of a long marriage, a family, and the inevitable changes that occur over time. Married for 66 years when her husband passed away, the poet shares her journey of learning to live alone for the first time, her grief, and recognition of the natural aging process as it affects us all.

Early Praise:

“Matrimony’s gorgeous elegy to a husband casts a tender and unflinching eye into aging, illness, and love’s ‘armory of memory.’ These poems speak to the natural absolute of death with Yeatsian candor, but they also remind me of contemporary masters of the short form—Jane Kenyon and Jean Valentine—in their precision. Feigenbaum’s accuracy also calls to mind the photographer Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment,’ in which spontaneous and ephemeral events record, in one deft impress, the essence of pure feeling. I’m so grateful to these poems for lessons in how to write, and, more importantly, how to live.”
—Jane Miller, acclaimed poet & author of Who is Trixie the Trasher? and Other Questions

Laurel Feigenbaum was born and raised in San Francisco and Beverly Hills. She holds a BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley, and an MA in Educational Research and Psychology. She credits her interest in poetry to Wordsworth and her father who loved wordplay, and often quoted lines he admired or found useful. After family and careers in education and business, she gathered what she refers to as "late-life courage" and began writing in class and workshop settings. Writing for her is a way of exploring and coping with the often-absurd world in which we live, and the inevitable changes that come with a long life or any life. Matriarch of her family now, she is the mother of three, grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of two. She is a past board member of the Marin Poetry Center and author of The Daily Absurd. She received Honorable Mention for work from the Highland Park poetry challenge, and Ida Coolbrith Circle. Her work also appears on-line, Women For Change Poetry Sunday.