IT WAS THEN: Diagram of the elemental

by Diane Glancy

Diane Glancy's new book of verse experiments with biography as lyric. She shares the compelling story of her Cherokee father's work in a meatpacking plant. She selects memories and images that dramatize his story, one that speaks to me because my Native grandfather also worked in the same meatpacking plant in Kansas City. This is poor people's work, dangerous and physically difficult. This is the backdrop for Glancy's book-length meditation on children's resilience, families, loss, survival, and faith. This is one of Glancy's most emotional and effective compositions. Diane Glancy is the award-winning author of 30 books of poetry, prose, and drama. Her film Dome of Heaven was shown at the Los Angeles Skins Film Festival and other national venues. She is professor at Azusa Pacific University. "The speaker in Glancy's work articulates the importance of knowing her past, of searching it out, of celebrating it, for it is this past that mends the loneliness and fragmentation that she feels in the present. By bringing it all in, all together, the speaker finds continual, albeit temporary, restoration." Molly McGlennen, Studies in American Indian Literature

80 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 2012

About the author

(Helen) Diane Glancy is a Cherokee poet, author and playwright.

Glancy was born in 1941 in Kansas City, Missouri. She received her Bachelor of Arts (English literature) from the University of Missouri in 1964, then later continued her education at the University of Central Oklahoma, earning her a Masters degree in English in 1983. In 1988, she received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.

Glancy is an English professor and began teaching in 1989 at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, teaching Native American literature and creative writing courses. Glancy's literary works have been recognized and highlighted at Michigan State University in their Michigan Writers Series.

(from Wikipedia)