Reassigning Blake

I had a psychic tell me my spirit guide was William Blake. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Blake just fine, but even in the area of spirit guidedom, women writers get short shrift. Blake? What's he to do with me? Akhmatova, Plath, Parker, St. Vincent Millay, Wolf (as in Virginia)--THOSE would be my kind of spirit guides. In fact, I am requesting right now that Akhmatova and Blake change spirt guide assignments. Let Blake go inspire some aspiring, tigerish boy poet. I'd like some of Akhmatova's wisdom and fortitude (with a touch of St. Petersburg Cafe Society Glam and Stalin Era sadness and Stoicism) in my soul.

Instead of a Preface


In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad.

Once, someone “recognized” me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who l of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):

“Can you describe this?”

And I answered, “Yes, I can.”

Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.



April 1, 1957

Leningrad