Author: Cynthia Haven
Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year.
Join me at twitter: @chaven
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I take a walk-
His mocking words whisper in my head..
You , a writer?
Soap does not wash away inner demons.
Nightmares of frozen feet appear
As I search for words.
I cannot make an apple pie,
I try in vain.
The knife bleeds an apple red
Stain of contempt on my right finger.
Music around me, blue lights of meditation
My left knee aches, words fail to soothe
As I increase the incline.
I pick up my phone
My mother speaks-
There is nothing you cannot do,
The reassurance floods,
As strong, as steely, as firm
As forty two years of living.
I organise a party,
Hey, my block is all gone!