Cooking in Key West

by Ed Ochester

The dozen poems in this chapbook range from childhood memories of neighbors, family and reading Joyce at age 12 to satirizing political correctness to paying homage to deceased poet, William Stafford. Ochester’s style is free and easy like good conversation. He is a story teller, a creator of believable characters like “Norman Silvertsen, Sr.,” a childhood neighbor, who calls eight-year-old Ochester a “stuck-up little snot,” or Aunt Barbara and her best friend, Minnie, who found out the amazing truth about seventy-year-old Barb that became part of the family narrative.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

Published January 1, 2000

About the author

Ed Ochester is the editor of the Pitt Poetry Series and is a member of the core faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars. He has published seven books of poems, as well as eight limited editions, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the George Garrett Award from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and the "artist of the year" award from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Poems of his were selected for Best American Poems 2007 and 2013.