Published in Written in Arlington

Written in Arlington edited by Katherine E. Young has launched from Paycock Press. It’s a handsome 254-page anthology of poetry by approximately 90 or fewer poets. Overall the work is accessible and often connected in some way to Arlington, Virginia, where Kate Young has served as the Arlington Poet Laureate.  

Steiny, a.k.a. Karren Alenier, has one rather long poem (three pages) in this collection entitled “You Can Tell ‘Em I’ll Be There.” The poem is a letter to the poet’s step-father and makes reference to her half sister Nancy who at some point learned that Dad was not her biological father, but, worse, he and other family members over the years had the gall to die on the anniversary of her birth. “Pick another day,” she complains. The poem is pinpointed in time by the politics of the day. It’s a poem of memory like the poems by Susan Mockler and the late Karenne Woods that flank it. Alenier reads her poem on the Spoken in Arlington YouTube website where you can sample poems  by others, such as Miles Moore, Jacqueline Jules, and Henry Crawford.