Taking Leave

By Beverly Fenig-Ducat

While exploring the universal themes of love, loss, aging and desire, many of the poems in this volume also speak of the conflict the poet experiences in attempting to reconcile the claims of feminism with traditional Judaism. Add to the mix poetry about a failed marriage, the frustrations of being at once a college instructor and a contingent worker, and the joys of being a mother, these poems reveal, in both lyric and narrative style, the voice of a woman in search of an authentic and celebratory spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504927642

Beverly Fenig-Ducat

Beverly Fenig-Ducat’s poems have appeared in small press journals, online publications, and poetry anthologies. She is an instructor at CUNY, where she has taught writing courses for many years.

Book preview

Here Where We Celebrate

The landscape language makes,

I live in the place

Where my mind moves

To poetry,

And only then does love

Have the power

To move me,

Only then does heart

Become the art

I ache for.

Part 1

Wanting

Wanting to be frugal,

She chooses the brown banana,

Passes over the ripe one,

Proud of her thrift, remembering her mother,

Who drank sour milk, curdled in her coffee,

The daughter disdainful,

Her mother a mixture

Of mildness and anger,

Who defended the sour

Swirl in her cup, good enough

For her, who wasted nothing.

Once promising herself better,

The daughter peels the fruit oozing

And consumes what’s bruised.

In Praise of Pippi Longstocking

Almost orphan-free

As heroines had to be,

You roamed the world

Of my imagination

When I, a shy, red-haired,

Freckled face