Dear Readers,
My first plunge into the blog, eeek ...
Lise and I receive many witty and insightful letters to the editor, and it finally dawned on me that the blog is the perfect place to share them with
Trivia readers. So, with her permission, what follows is a letter that Barbara Mor sent to triviaeds@triviavoices.net in February 2007, shortly after issue #5 was published.
"Lovely Ladies:
This issue #5 is wonderful & so much more FUN that I expected. Thank you for the beautiful portrait accompanying Captain Joan.
The first piece I opened was Illit Rosenblum's “Borderlands” ... my desert nostalgia. Her art too is gorgeous online, full of light, this is how we get the stained glass effect most of us always wanted illustrating our words, I love it. (Re Illit's text & image mix, I wonder if she, or you, know the work of Doris Cross? She lives/lived in Santa Fe, I don't know her mortality status; she made powerful visual poetry working with Dictionary columns -- using only the old Noah Webster's editions. Once seen, never forgotten; she was a pioneer in visual poetry.)
Issue 5 has so many of my favorite writers, it is thus awful to realize this means Dead Writers. But hey: it brings us all together.
You've done such a wonderful thing. Am so glad Stein is here too. And -- I didn't know Monique Wittig lived her last years in Tucson. I was there 1986-89, Joy Harjo & Leslie Marmon Silko were there also (Silko working on Almanac of the Dead). I didn't know them, but hallucinogenic Tucson did have something waiting in it for a presence of great women writers, those strong i.e. visionary enough to endure it, for it was tough. Anyway, one of the many things I learned from this issue, I've just spent past 2 hours reading it, HOORAY HIPS HIPS!
All you write re Barbara MacDonald & age is true, Lise, unfortunately, One Just Has to Be There -- the victory of Age is, though, that one does live that long. Wonder what Dworkin & Acker would've done if they became 70 or 80 or 90 -- I knew Meridel LeSueur when she was 86, & she was just a Great Babe, nothing in her diminished -- that comes through in your portrait of Barbara, very fine. And so is Marge Piercy's poem on Audre Lorde. And the funny Sappho......you should get at least one of those Dixie Chix grammies, they have 5, they should share!" (Barbara Mor)
Best wishes to all of you, dear readers, and now may Serifa, the goddess of typesetting, assist me in figuring out how to publish this post ...
Harriet Ellenberger
