Description

Bye Bye Blackbird

by Doreen Stock

In Bye Bye Blackbird, Doreen Stock explores the last days of her 93-year-old mother, Annetta Winnick. In this theme-based suite of poems, we move in mythic time and through the moments of loss and conveyance that characterized this woman’s journey toward the end of her life—always against the background of the mother-daughter relationship.

About the Author

Fairfax, Californian poet, literary translator, and memoir practitioner, Doreen Stock, recently launched a chapbook of poems, Tango Man, (Finishing Line Press) in August 2020. Other works include: My Name Is Y, (Norfolk Press, 2019), an anti-nuclear memoir; Three Tales from the Archives of Love, (Norfolk Press, 2018), a work of historical fiction; Talking with Marcelo, (Mine Gallery Editions, 2017), a book-length interview of Argentine Journalist Marcelo Holot; In Place of Me, Poems Selected and with an Introduction by Jack Hirschman, (Mine Gallery Editions, 2015); The Politics of Splendor, (Alcatraz Editions, Santa Cruz, 1984), poems and translations. An interview and reading of Doreen’s poetry can be viewed online at Marin Poet’s Live! She is a founding member of The Marin Poetry Center.

Visit doreenstock.com or facebook.com/doreen.stock.52, for further information and current ruminations.

Early Praise for Bye Bye Blackbird:

In Bye Bye Blackbird, poet Doreen Stock leads us through a dark tempest where navigating a torrent of family matters, she witnesses with vivid imagery and an unflinching eye, the final strains of a mother who’s lived a long, exuberant life.

—Michael D. Amitin, Parisian musician, International Beat Poet Laureate, 2020-2021

A medley of poems and prose-poems revealing with compassion, humor and musical remembrances the loving relationship between a daughter and her mother, in life and death. Of the poems I was particularly moved by the especial brilliance of “Mother Horse.”

—Jack Hirschman, American poet & activist

Doreen Stock is a master of her craft, and her newest collection of poems captures her mother’s last days and beyond with heart-wrenching grace, beauty, humanity, and artistry. Each poem is a jewel, a layered world of story, memory, love and senses, light and dark. Her work does what only the best art can: it connects readers with what it is to love, to lose, and to be fully alive in this world. You will keep this book on your shelf as a reminder of what matters, and you will want to come back to it again and again.

—Julie Fingersh, freelance journalist and writer, The New York Times and O: The Oprah Magazine