ORDINARY WISDOM - Tapa blanda

In May of 2004, a wildfire swept through the Temecula Valley in Southern California, destroying in its path Dorland Mountain Colony, the place where the poems in Ordinary Wisdom were written. Dorland was unique among artists’ retreats in an electronic age in that there was no electricity or phones in the cabins. Adjusting to the rhythms of light and darkness was the first task in settling in to work. It was the perfect setting for a project that meant to deal with daily life—its most ordinary manifestations and its most significant messages.

Eloise Klein Healy, Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing Emerita at Antioch University Los Angeles, is the author of eight books of poetry: A Wild Surmise (Red Hen Press, 2013); The Islands Project: Poems For Sappho (Red Hen Press 2007); Passing (Red Hen Press 2002); Artemis in Echo Park (Firebrand 1991); Ordinary Wisdom (Red Hen Press 2005); A Packet Beating Like a Heart (Books of a Feather 1981); and Building Some Changes (Beyond Baroque 1976). The newest, A Wild Surmise, will be published by Red Hen in Spring 2013. Healy's work is widely anthologized in collections such as California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present; The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave; and Another City: Writing from Los Angeles. Healy is the founder of Antioch University's MFA in Creative Writing program and the founder of Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press specializing in the work of lesbian authors. Healy is the co-founder of Eco-Arts, an ecotourism/arts venture.