Joan Murray in the Times Union

Poet Joan Murray discusses her friendship with poet Alicia Ostriker in the Times Union. The two poets will visit together on Thursday, April 23rd:

"I've known Alicia since we were both young poets in the second wave feminist movement in the '70s. We were attracted to each other's work, because we were both young moms writing about motherhood and war. We've kept up a literary friendship since then, staying in touch and seeing each other now and then. Alicia is fun, but she's also famous and brilliant in a down-to-earth way."

"While our poems are different, we're both dramatic, and we can riff like the old masters when we want to. We both deal with serious social and political issues. We also write about God, though we're not believers. (Alicia has a whole book talking with him.) And we're both risk-takers: I have that book in the voice of the Niagara woman, and Alicia's new book is in the voices of an old woman, a tulip and a dog."

More in the Times Union interview with Elizabeth Floyd Mair:  http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Writing-from-experiences-6204800.php

More about the upcoming visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ostriker_murray15.html