Description
- Kind: Perfect
- Pages: 64
- Language: English
- Published: November, 2012
- ISBN: 978-1-933675-73-2
Praise
Pam Laskin’s PLAGIARIST issues from the poet’s imagination and her abiding empathy. The humanity and love that inform many of her books and stories for children also inform these poems. They are rich in affection for family and grounded in the inspiration that comes from reading and experiencing other arts and artists. Well-earned borrowings, combined with wit, clear emotion and craft, add up to Laskin’s true originality. – Barry Wallenstein
Excerpt
Plagiarist
Consonants click in my consciousness
like castanets,
these are mine, but I don’t want them;
what I want
is the slow, steady sound
of a horses’ heart-beat
luscious land
I’ve never traveled to,
rural Ohio, perhaps
where calves are birthed beautifully
behind the barn.
I want to be
on the farm,
allow the boys
to burst through my body
and bleed me dry.
I will journey there
even if there is no plane;
I will sail with the wind of your words
and claim them
as my own.
Author
Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department at The City College of New York, where she directs the Poetry Outreach Center. Ms. Laskin started out as a poet; consequently, hundreds of her poems have been published as well as four poetry chapbooks. GRAND CENTRAL STATION, a full-length collection, was published in 2003, and since that time REMEMBERING FIREFLIES (Plain View Press); SECRETS OF SHEETS (Plain View Press); GHOSTS, GOBLINS, GODS AND GEODES (World Audience); VAN GOGH’S EAR; (Cervena Barva Press) and DARING DAUGHTERS/DEFIANT DREAMS (A Gathering of Tribes) have been published. Publish America recently published a book of children’s poetry that she co-authored with Ms. Jeanette Adams, a well-known African American children’s poet, and also Ms. Elise Buchman, ANIMALS CRACKERS AND THEIR FRIENDS. Tudor Press published GETTING TO KNOW YOU, a YA novel, in 2003, and Diversion Press published VISITATION RITES, an expansion of a young adult story originally published in SASSY magazine. Her published children’s books include A WISH UPON A STAR (Magination Press); HISTORICAL HEROIC HORSES (McGraw-Hill); MUSIC FROM THE HEART (Bantam) and THE BURIED TREASURE (McGraw-Hill). Dozens of her short stories have been published, too, including two YA stories, one in YOUNG MISS and the other in SASSY. She edited two collections: THE HEROIC YOUNG WOMAN (2006), a collection of original feminist fairy tales, and LIFE ON THE MOON: MY BEST FRIEND’S SECRETS (Linus Publication), a collection of young adult fiction.
Academic interests (aside from children’s literature and writing and poetry), include fairy tales (a sub-genre of children’s literature) and creative fiction and non-fiction.
