Remembering Miriam Goodman - Her Church, The Chicken; Her Guests, Her Minyan
Happy National Poetry Month! To celebrate, I've been reading some new poems and revisiting old favorites by women like Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, and Maxine Kumin.
It's also quite timely that JWA just received a piece about the poet Miriam Goodman for We Remember, our online collection of engaging narratives and personal reminiscences about American Jewish women who died in the 21st century. I had never heard of Miriam Goodman until I'd read her obituary in the Boston Globe several months ago. And when I read the remembrance piece submitted to JWA by Leslie Lawrence, I began to miss Miriam even though I clearly never knew her. Lawrence's piece begins:
"One of Miriam Goodman's greatest pleasures was bringing people together. Often, she did so by inviting them for a meal. ‘My ritual is the dinner party;' she writes in her prose-poem ‘Dinner on the Mowing,' ‘... my church the chicken, my guests my minyan." I love this, and would have very much wanted to be part of her minyan. Check out the rest of this moving piece at We Remember.
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