Welcome to The Lily Pad. This so-called "pad" is where artists of all types can submit their work to me (via email: sunflour1125@aol.com, or via Facebook). I will also post somewhat recent news about artists of today or different events involving the arts. If anyone has anything that they have found information on and think would make an interesting story just email me and let me know! :)
1, 12, 2008
Vivian Shipley
by Merissa Blitz
Vivian Shipley is a 65 year old woman from East Haven, Connecticut. She is the editor of the Connecticut Review and is the Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor. She's won multiple awards such as the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Prize, the Daniel Varoujan Prize from the New England Poetry Club, the Marble Faun Award from the William Faulkner Society, the Thin Air Magazine Poetry Prize from Northern Arizona University, was named Faculty Scholar at Southern Connecticut State University where she teaches creative writing, and many other awards.
One of my favorite poems that I have come across by her is called Sister:
Sister
by Vivian Shipley
A brother I was born to, like the grave, Adolph,
you must have had a roadmap I didn't get.
In interviews, I use sibling, avoid your name.
As a child, I chameleoned, never used I after one
of your lectures: It's always about you, Paula.
Be quiet. Listen to me when I speak. I tried,
but I didn't hear the word my heart needed.
I hung on to promises of afternoons together
for so long, they became beans our grandmother
left to dry on Spital's fences that rattled in wind,
in my heart. If I sleep, in dreams about you,
my brother, I cry out: Take me to the Berghof,
not Angela, our half-sister. Let me keep house
for you, cook for Mussolini, King Boris of Bulgaria,
brew the Duke of Windsor's tea. Put my picture
by your bed, not Geli's, your niece who spattered
her blood over your apartment walls, woke up
your neighbors on Munich's Prinzregentenplatz.
I would have been more considerate, never have
chosen your gun as a way to die. Years accordion,
but mostly they stick together. A few stand out:
Angela calling Eva Braun a stupid goose right
to her face; two weeks I spent at the Berghof
nursing you back to health. You even remembered
how I came to visit you in the hospital after you
were gassed in 1918. I was the proudest sister
in Germany as you received the Iron Cross,
First Class. I still feel heat of August when I
Touch the picture of you, my corporal, my brother,
as I pretended to pin the medal on your jacket.
As usual, my tongue would not stay in my mouth
and I begged you to put your arm around me,
if only for the photographer, for the record.
Will my anger ever lift its weight from me,
a crescent moon rising over Mein Kampf
where you did not mention me, Paula Hitler,
even though you were writing it in your cell
the day I was there? Words you did not say
will not release me, even when I am laid under
Sister cut in stone. What is done cannot be
undone except by my heart which has no teeth
to chew, will not swallow what I cannot digest.
