Grace Paley, Forever
Cat in the Stack
Grace Paley (1922-2007) died this week at the age of 84. I had the privilege to meet Grace Paley a few times, which is to say I was in the same room with her, awestruck by the passion and compassion of the great writer I had read and reread, taught and retaught. She was lovely to me and others, kind and sincere, and I could barely find my voice to speak back, so moved by the immensity of the person, the politics, the poetry. May she live among us forever. Let me rephrase that. Grace Paley does and will live forever. That's a pledge.
For a moving tribute to Grace Paley, and one to which you can contribute your own words of memory and memorial, you can go to the PEN website, "PEN Pays Tribute to Grace Paley."
Go to this url for the comment wiki:
PEN Tribute to Grace Paley
And for an even more wonderful tribute, paid to Grace before she died by her dear friend (and my friend and co-author) novelist and playwright E. M. (Esther) Broner, see "My Pal Paley," on the online journal Persimmon Tree.
It's wonderful. Persimmon Tree also includes ten poems by Grace Paley, among the last she ever wrote. Subscribe free now, at www.persimmontree.org.
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Here are two photos from persimmontree.com, one of the late and beloved Grace Paley, whose "Ten Poems"in PersimmonTree.com (an online journal of writing by older women) were among her last writings. The second photo is of my dear friend E. M. (Esther) Broner, whose "My Pal Paley" prefaces Paley's poems. E. M. Broner is a novelist, playwright, scholar, poet, and, like Grace, an eternal activist. E. M. Broner just finished a major novel about Detroit, protest, and the Vietnam War and is at work on a mystery. She was an inspiration to me in the earliest moments of my career, and like Grace Paley, inspires me by her example and her tireless energy, wit, and grace every day.
Subscribe, free, now at www.persimmontree.org