Conversations During Sleep

by Michele Wolf

Poetry. "CONVERSATIONS DURING SLEEP feels like a logbook of gutsy revelations, transporting us to a territory both ethereal and earthy. We care about the lives that nudge us awake in this dark luminosity, a heartfelt journey we don't want to miss" -Yusef Komunyakaa.

75 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Michele Wolf was raised near Miami, spent much of her life in New York City, and since 2001 has lived in Maryland outside Washington, D.C. An editor, writer, and teacher, she holds degrees from Boston University and Columbia.
Her newest poetry book, Immersion (Spring 2011), was selected by Denise Duhamel for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection, published by The Word Works. Her previous books are Conversations During Sleep (1998, Anhinga Press), winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry, judged by Peter Meinke, and The Keeper of Light (1995, Painted Bride Quarterly Poetry Chapbook Series), judged by J.T. Barbarese.

Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Hudson Review, Boulevard, North American Review, The Antioch Review, and the award-winning, best-selling When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple. She has written articles, essays, and reviews for Smithsonian, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and many other publications. A contributing editor for Poet Lore and a former contributing editor for Kirkus Reviews, she has received an Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award and fellowships from Yaddo, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Maryland. For several years she served on the administrative staff of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, where she was also a National Arts Club Scholar in Poetry.

Michele has been a featured poet or guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, American University, Hood College, the University of New Mexico, Florida State University, California State University, Long Beach and elsewhere. Since 2002 she has taught at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. She has given more than a hundred readingsat the Spoleto Festival USA, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, the Miami Book Fair International, the Library of Congress, and bookstores, arts centers, and other venues nationwide. Her poetry papers will be part of the Washington Writers Archive housed at The George Washington Universitys Gelman Library. She lives with her husband and daughter in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Her website is http://michelewolf.com.
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Reviews

[Emily Holland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michele Wolf is a talented poet with a clear appreciation for life's small moments. In her lyrical near-prose, she weaves minutiae into detailed sensory portraits that also deal with some of the larger events in her life, such as the deaths of her sister and her father. These connections between seemingly insignificant and momentous things (often subconscious but here brought to light) are what I appreciated most about the collection-- I really felt that Wolf saw meaning in everything and knew how to give that meaning life on the page.

[Travel Writing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need we say more...

For My Mother

I sharpen more and more to your
Likeness every year, your mirror
In height, autonomous
Flying cloud of hair,
In torso, curve of the leg,
In high-arched, prim, meticulous
Feet. I watch my aging face,
In a speeding time lapse,
Become yours. Notice the eyes,
Their heavy inherited sadness,
The inertia that sags the cheeks,
The sense of limits that sets
The grooves along the mouth.
Grip my hand.
Let me show you the way
To revolt against what
We are born to,
To bash through the walls,
To burn a warning torch
In the darkness,
To leave home.