Notes from the Column of Memory

From the first poem "Red-Eared Slider" through to the final "All the Hours the Night Has Left," Drexler weaves a tapestry of love, loss, grief, and acceptance-an elaborate kaddish in which she celebrates and sanctifies the names of the things, events, and persons she remembers. Notes from the Column of Memory is a much needed collection that will underscore for every reader the need to document, accept, and sing the hardships, the sorrows, and joys we are all born to-bound to. This is one of the most moving offerings of poetry I have read in a long time. And, for me, the experience of reading it is captured in one of the volumes many memorable lines: it is . . . a hustle of tart and sweet so sharp it hurt.

-Regie Gibson

Wendy Drexler is recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the author of two earlier collections, most recently, Before There Was Before (Iris Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, The Threepenny Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and WBUR, and in numerous anthologies. She's been the Poet-in-Residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, since 2018, and is programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club. She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.