Writing Naked

Writing Naked illuminates a life like a series of lightning flashes allowing us glimpsesranging over seven decades and six generations from sepia-toned great-grandmothersto a vivid little grandson. The opening poem Its Time with its Hey Im onlyseventy-five and I always do better with deadlines sets the tone for a collectionalways imbued with wit and joy considering the sacred in the day-to-day the humorousin the tragic the profound in simple clothing. This collection touches on personalexperiences with feisty kindness and startling drollery. Even the poems of bereavementand loss are run through by a current of celebration and homage of the particular personsand through them to life itself. Those dedicated to her father and to the husband who wasthe one of her life are particularly strong and poignant. The title poem shows us the Iof this book writing sitting naked on a blanket in full sunshine under a sky of Canalettoblue hiding nothing as the poems themselves seem to do. Writing Naked is ColeenMarks début collection and yes its time.Enriqueta Carrington Translator of Treasury of Mexican Love Poems Quotations & ProverbsIn Writing Naked Coleen Marks gives us personal poems with a wider resonance: childhood and coming of age in a large working class Irish-American family then anadult life of love work relationships and growing older in a long and close marriage.She is an engaging story-teller--in fact the word stories crops up as a motif throughoutthe book as she observes stories...on the see saw between too simple and too complex.She writes about day jobs and earning a living (not often the subject of poetry) as well asher developing feminist consciousness in a male-dominated social milieu. These firstpersonpoems tell of loved ones and strangers hardship and play art and ardor capturedwith a down-to-earth thoughtfulness that evokes emotions from carefree (A Room with aView) to deeply touching (Sgt. Gomez At Ninety-One). Writing Naked conveys anopen-hearted yet clear-eyed optimism and an ethical commitment to taking ones place inthe world.Maxine Susman Author of Gogama and Provincelands