Margaret Van Every

Margaret Van Every will read from her new book of poetry Holding Hands with a Stranger on Wednesday, April 23, in the Oasis garden. Holding Hands is a collection of 100 wry tanka on life and wisdom gleaned from her experience and observation.

What others are saying about this book:

As if from a fountain that is apparently inexhaustible, poetry continues to flow from the pen of Margaret Van Every. One of her tanka announces, “she dissolves the nonessential.” Indeed, to “dissolve the nonessential” is at the heart of tanka and at the heart of Margaret’s own life. In these very personal tanka, “the bad girl emerges from the closet.” Many of us who identify with these tanka might emerge with her.
--James Tipton, author of Letters from a Stranger and The Alphabet of Longing

What can tanka say? What can tanka do? Van Every's poetry continues to advance the form, to stretch its competence. Her last tanka, a tribute to Basho, has this marvelous line: "gratitude detains me." .  –Neil Schmitz, Professor of English at SUNY/Buffalo, author of Of Huck and Alice and White Robe's Dilemma. His present work is on the early poetry of Gertrude Stein.

An intoxicating tour of life, one sip at a time. –Jeritza McCarter, actor

In every woman there is a wild bird longing to be free and at the same time looking for connection. Margaret Van Every's tanka address this tension with a fearless and compassionate eye. This is a kind of elliptical autobiography of all women as they make their way through the beautiful and treacherous world.—Barbara Hamby, Distinguished University Scholar, Writer in Residence, Florida State University, Guggenheim Fellow, author of On the Divine Street of Love