Joan Didion was an accomplished American writer
Wrote “The Year of Magical Thinking”, portrays a true fighter
Her first book -“Run, River”, her last -“Let me tell you what I mean"
Fiction, non-fiction, plays, screenplays, awards ~ much loved writing queen.
02.03.2022
(She was born on December 5, 1934 and passed away on December 23, 2021. In 2005, she won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for "The Year of Magical Thinking". She later adapted the book into a play, which premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary "The Center Will Not Hold", directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.)
For Michelle Faulkner's "A Celebrity Epitaph" contest
Categories:
joan didion, celebrity, dedication,
Form: Epitaph
Rereading the poems of others
and my own. Community across
time and graves. What's left
exceeds in significance
one's last moment. Yet
his last moment must have been
exceedingly important
for the poet.
Nothing he did that day will seem meaningful.
While we prosecute the war
a pileated woodpecker and red squirrel
compete for sunflower seeds.
A winter slow
to assert itself.
I can still see my mother's father and his bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts
quiet weekday mornings.
Both grandfathers read sports
pages religiously. I don't know
if my grandmother who gave me the
anthology of, to date, dated
unreadable poems read poetry.
I remember my mother's mother spoke
rarely as an animal.
Writing but not knowing where I'm going
unlike Joan Didion justly
cannibalizing candidates
who didn't read the Constitution, Bill of Rights or
Federalist Papers. It's late,
I have not vacuumed or shopped for food.
Instead I reread
Phil Levine's Salami.
Categories:
joan didion, animal, community, grandfather, morning,
Form: Verse