Published by The Puddin’head Press
Perfect Bound, 57 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches, 1999
ISBN# 0-9615879-6-2
$10.00
SOLD OUT
(This book is no longer available)
About Nina Corwin
Nina Corwin was born in Philadelphia and came to Chicago via Boston, where she earned a degree from Boston University. Her poetry has been featured at numerous venues, festivals, universities, libraries, and mental health related events around the country and in Bermuda. She has been featured at Chicago’s Green Mill, the Poetry Center of Chicago, and the Albuquerque Poetry Festival, as well as radio and TV appearances including National Public Radio, WZRD, WLUW, and Chicago Cable Networks. She has also performed in several Theatre Wyrzuk productions around Chicago.
A graduate of the University of Chicago, she currently resides in Chicago where she practices psychotherapy. Nina is a psychotherapist and lecturer in private practice. She has given numerous seminars, consultations, workshops, and presentations locally and nationally on topics ranging from child abuse, trauma and domestic violence, to chemical dependency. She was previously the President and Spokesperson for a national organization dealing with issues of child sexual abuse, VOICES In Action (Victims of Incest Can Emerge Survivors), Inc. and has a national reputation for her work on behalf of victims of violence.
She has been active in the local arts community, serving as a panelist for arts grants through the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and has curated arts events, including the poetry events at Chicago’s well known Around the Coyote Festival and the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Praise For Conversations
“Whether she is upbraiding the arrogance of gods or protesting the injustices inflicted on America’s downtrodden, Corwin exhibits rock-solid wisdom washed by an ocean of empathy.”
Tim W. Brown, editor of Tomorrow Magazine
“The mythic and the mundane merge intelligently in Nina Corwin’s conversational tone. In Conversations, Nina, gives a funky literary accounting of lessons to remember.”
Angela Jackson, author of Dark Legs And Silk Kisses
“Nina Corwin’s poems resonate like the ring of fine crystal. Her insights into matters of the heart and soul combined with the beauty with which she expresses them will both inform and delight.”
Leonard Shlain, author of The Alphabet And The Goddess
The music of Corwin’s poetry, you will soon discover, is without many audible peers.
Brian Gary Kirst
Pressing beyond the too common all-on-the-surface style of many others who specifically prepare their work for performance, Nina Corwin brings a nuanced literary awareness to her poems which embraces reference and allusion and freshens the wide spectrum of traditions which she selectively echoes with a new take that is totally her own. In poems like “Daphne Reflects On Becoming A Tree” and “Exhorting Orpheus,” classical Greek mythology serves as source, or rather as a point of departure for contemporary introspection. In “Please, Doctor Pangloss,” Voltaire’s Candide becomes the catalyst for commentary and in “Looking For Mental Hygiene,” Corwin’s experience as a working psychotherapist informs her lines with an authority that moves well beyond the merely self-centered outpourings of those who turn to the cathartic creation of verse in the hope of releasing through exposure their own personal demons. Clearly, Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints is a volume of poetry to sit down with, to savor, and to revisit. It is a collection of new verse which brings rich traditions into a modern mode and provides a perspective that is both intelligent and emotionally aware.
Wilbert Bledsoe, Editor, The Oyez Review, Roosevelt University
Nina Corwin is a poet and psychotherapist with a national reputation for her work on behalf of victims of violence. She has been featured at poetry events and radio programs across North America and is the producer of poetry ensemble pieces such as Odes on The Whimsy of Gender.
Originally conceived as an ensemble performance piece, most of the themed poems in the book take a probing look at mythological figures and other heroes. Nina views them (God, Zeus, psychologists, for example) as mere self-important, ineffectual males who continue to oppress the women who have to deal with them – Eve talking back to God; Daphne defying her father and paying dearly; Orpheus chided for his lack of absolute trust, etc. Before dismissing these poems as a PC feminist treatise, though, read them.
Larry Winfield, City Table Review, 1999.
Contents
Eve Speaks
Lost Testament
Salome
When Therapy Works
Suicide Of The God-Seeker
The Year We Learned About Santa Claus
Balancing The Books, Viet Nam 1995
Cambodian Refugee, 1997
Daphne Reflects On Becoming A Tree
The Lotus And The Rose
Exhorting Orpheus
Welfare Man
Sister Magdalene
The Other Kennedy
Please, Doctor Pangloss
Faith Healer Of The Western World
Where Is Wonder Woman
Canticle Of The Golfer
Delilah’s Rejoinder
Revival
Out Of Exile
Lady Sisyphus
Witness To A Coffee Klatch
Born A Midge Doll
Sisters’ Finale
Ugly Duckling Awaits The Pie In The Fairy Tale Sky
Thief Of Light
Reflections of a Side Man
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