Description

Life in No Ordinary Time

by Laurel Feigenbaum

While the ninety-six-year-old poet’s personal life and that of her family remains stable, the world suffers increasing turmoil—be it war, displacement, or threats to our democracy. Laurel Feigenbaum’s poems of time and place reflect her observations, thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the crosscurrents of events over the recent decade. Politics, advancing technology, climate change, a lingering virus, family and aging are all topics she tackles in Life in No Ordinary Time with her trademark wit and poetic voice.

 

Early Praise for Life in No Ordinary Time:

Wildfires and calving glaciers, war mongers, cryptocurrency, woke culture, unchecked technocracy, a demented demagogue, the surveillance state, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer—the dreary earmarks of our zeitgeist seem endless. Laurel Feigenbaum takes them on with the perspicacity of her 96 years on earth and her trademark wit, dry as a three-olive martini.

Detailing the global mishigas, she remarks, as if she were Issa’s shadow, “Meanwhile—I’m busy battling ants in my kitchen.” Regarding genetic engineering: “Despite my unease…/ at least there’ll be chocolate.” She imagines her time here as “a practice life,” preparing her to “scat like Ella,” “Get down and dirty with Etta,” and even take on a new lover, all in the next life. Lucky for us, we don’t have to wait that long to see Laurel in action. Her Life in No Ordinary Time is a savvy, bracing, and thankfully entertaining antidote to our time, our place.

—Thomas Centolella, author of Almost Human

About the Author

Laurel Feigenbaum was born and raised in San Francisco and Beverly Hills. She credits her interest in poetry to Wordsworth and her father who loved word play, and often quoted lines he admired. After careers in education and business, in her early eighties she gathered courage to begin writing. Poetry is her way of exploring and coping with the often-absurd world in which we live and the inevitable changes that come. Matriarch of her family now, she is the mother of three, grandmother of seven, and great-grandmother of eight. Author of The Daily Absurd (2015) and Matrimony (The Poetry Box, 2020), her most recent work can be found in The Amsterdam Quarterly and The Marin Poetry Center Anthology. She can be heard reading her poetry on Voetica.com.