Contributor Spotlight: Linda Baldanzi

“Never Spoken Tryst” and “Careful Woman” by Linda Baldanzi appeared in Issue 13 and can be read here.

Tell us a little about these pieces.

Never Spoken Tryst: I wanted to keep the poem to one page. I wrote seven pages, and then cherry picked. I tried to hint at the joy of the relationship, while speaking of how time changes every thing, and of how hard it is to speak about what has been hidden.

Careful Woman: For a long time I wrote more stanzas, put them in then took them out. Finally I decided to take Emily Dickinson’s advice and “tell it slant”. I reasoned this way the poem would say more to more readers, at least that is what I hoped.

An aside: I wonder if Emily D. was an emerging writer today would she even survive the submission process?

Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox.

What are you working on now?

I am working on a manuscript about Alice Kober.

Our thanks to Linda for taking the time to answer a few questions and share her work. Read her poems “Never Spoken Tryst” and “Careful Woman” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/poetry-by-linda-baldanzi.

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Linda Baldanzi earned an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, Master in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University, Master in Psychology from Fairleigh University, and a BA from Mount Holyoke College. She teaches poetry at the Fort Lee Public Library and has been published in Barrow StreetThin Noon, Redivider, and others.