Mary Ellen Sanger

Poetry and digital art produced from April 2017 to March 2018.

In April of 2010 (National Poetry Month for those of you who don't know this already), we agreed to take part in the annual "Poem-a-Day" Challenge - a project wherein poets (and other brave souls) write at least one poem a day for the entire month of April. There are myriad blogs and websites that encourage posting these poems but being the private people we are, Mary Ellen set up a Wiggio site that only the two of us could view. Here, over the course of the month, we posted a variety of poems - sometimes only one a day, sometimes more. These poems were written during breaks at work, during lunch hours, on long subway rides, in parks in the rain or sun, in front of the 11pm news (or the 4am news), while avoiding conversations in the Laundromat, instead of doing our taxes (or because we'd just done our taxes), and so on. April soon became May and we continued - through summer and then fall and winter and finally on into another April. In 2011, we selected 25 poems from the year and put them into a book-length collection which many of you now own, waiting for the end of the world: thoughts of bullfrogs and guerillas. Instead of ending it there, we continued on and wrote straight through for another year. In 2012, we released Icarus Cannonballed: lessons in cave diving in the Bahamas. And again, we continued on through 2012 into 2013 releasing and the waxing moon: back country skiing in Afghanistan. In 2014, we released Osmium: your ancestor is a jellyfish and in 2015 The art of last night: a song of dancing narwhals. All still available on Amazon Out of many, many poems we have distilled this new collection. Again, the only rules: every poem must have been written between the two Aprils (2015 and 2016 for this volume) and no editing allowed (except for obvious typos). The idea again is not so much to show that we are great poets (there are already enough people in this world claiming that) but instead to simply show friends, family and fellow writers something we did over the past year - in spite of or because of everything else that fills our lives. Themes in these new poems are broad in range and yet, often repeat over the course of days or months: mountains, love, loss, NYC, love, Mexico, gardens, growth, the universe, loss, anger, love, sex, food, recovery, mountains, rain, love, injustice, sleep, nightmares, politics, sex, food, the ocean, grief, family, love, broken bones, loud guitars - you get the idea. Like lovers or meals or rivers, some poems are better than others. Some are only a few lines, some cover pages. What is important here is not that this is "great art" but instead that we once again set out to write a poem every day. And (mostly) we did. We have. We still do. As we move into our seventh year of poem-a-day, certain themes repeat, new ones are introduced, but again, what is important is that we do this, every day (or nearly so) and we will keep doing this until we run out of things to say about Mexico, NYC, Colorado, Arizona, love, food, sex, the ocean, the world, loss, injustice, prison, family, music, sex, cancer, and life in all its stinking, brutal, glorious beauty. We hope you will enjoy our words as much as we have enjoyed writing them and sharing them with each other.

In April of 2010 (National Poetry Month for those of you who don't this already), we agreed to take part in the annual "Poem-a-Day" Challenge - a project wherein poets (and other brave souls) write at least one poem a day for the entire month of April. There are myriad blogs and websites that encourage posting these poems but being the private people we are, Mary Ellen set up a Wiggio site that only we could view. Here, over the course of the month, we posted a variety of poems - sometimes only one a day, sometimes more. These poems were written during breaks at work, during lunch hours, on long subway rides, in parks in the rain or sun, in front of the 11pm news (or the 4am news), and so on. April soon became May became another summer and then fall and winter and finally on into another April. In 2011, we selected poems from the year and put them into a book-length collection which many of you now own: waiting for the end of the world: thoughts of bullfrogs and guerillas. Instead of ending it there, we continued on that April and wrote straight through for another year. In April of 2012, we created another full-length collection, Icarus Cannonballed: a lesson in cave diving in the Bahamas. From April 2012 - April 2013, the Universe provided us both with some seismic shifts. Yvonne was hit by a cargo van while walking across 5th Avenue at 12th Street & Mary Ellen fell in love. Despite, in spite, or because of these changes, we continued to write and in the summer of 2013, we released our third chapbook, And the waxing moon: back country skiing in Afghanistan. 2013-2014 brought yet more changes with Mary Ellen moving to Fort Collins and Yvonne finishing up two Masters degrees. What you're reading now is our fourth effort - the only rules: every poem must have been written between the two Aprils (2013 and 2014) and no editing allowed. Themes are broad in range and yet, often repeat over the course of days or months: love, pain, summer, NYC, loss, silence, love, sex, food, mountains, rain, injustice, sleep, nightmares, politics, sex, food, the ocean, grief, family, loud guitars, things that bloom, things that don't & things that go bump in the night. Like lovers or days some poems are better than others. Some are only a few lines, some cover pages. What is important here is not that this is "great art" but instead that we once again set out to write a poem every day. When we stopped, we cajoled each other into starting again. As we move into our fifth year of poem-a-day, certain themes repeat, new ones are introduced, but again, what is important is that we will keep doing this until we run out of things to say. From Mary Ellen: I confess to having poor grace in a dance, and the new rhythm in my life causes me to stumble with my poetry - now paired, now moved to Colorado, now working several jobs, now tending a garden. I trust I will find the steps and the time to urge more poetry onto the page, though for now much of it lives in my heart. Funny, for a person who spends so much time urging others to write But it is a testament to tradition and to tenacity, that I produced JUST enough poems to hold up my end of the book this year. No choosing between good ones and poor ones, they all go in. This is all I have. But I do have these. We hope you will enjoy our words as much as we have enjoyed writing them and sharing them with each other.

Mary Ellen Sanger had made her life in Mexico for 17 years when she suddenly found herself in prison in Oaxaca, Mexico, arrested on invented charges. She spent 33 days in Ixcotel State Prison in the fall of 2003. These stories of the women she met there, illuminate her biggest surprise and her only consolation in prison: the solidarity that formed among the women she lived, ate, swept and passed long days with while inside. Nine lyrical tales show the depth of emotions that insist on their own space, even in these harshest of circumstances. The largest and brawniest woman in the prison, doing time for armed robbery, kills a rat with her foot, then turns to the author for help with a very special letter. Another young woman, only nineteen years old, has already been in for three years, guilty of kidnapping her own child. And Ana, a political prisoner, teaches the author about creative ways to turn the tide, one including frog-eating snakes. Mary Ellen weaves her own tale through the stories. Accused of a crime that doesn't exist by a powerful man in Mexico, she depends on the fierce solidarity of friends on the outside, and a brilliant lawyer who trusts in the rule of law... even in Mexico. The women incarcerated in Ixcotel State Prison said that the blackbirds chattered in the lone pomegranate tree in the courtyard whenever a woman was about to be released. They are chattering now. ________________________________ Excerpt from introduction by Elena Poniatowska: Mary Ellen's hands blister, but she never shows her wounds. Nor does she show her resulting callouses. She assembles in the courtyard and joins the circle of women who at first reject her for her blond hair and her blue eyes. She shares pistachios with them, and when she innocently tells them that she likes to write poetry but the words won't come here in the pen, Concha sends her a lifeline: "Don't worry, blondie, someday you'll write the good stuff again." ... "Blackbirds in the Pomegranate Tree" is a life lesson. If they were to throw me in jail, I would carry it with me to read each night, as some read the Bible or the Gospels. In its pages I would find strength and faith in humankind, and I would know that to believe in "the others" is a path to salvation. I suppose and believe that I am not wrong in saying that for Mary Ellen, Mexico is a woman who one day, will find herself.