Lost Orchard: Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community(Excelsior Editions)

A unique literary anthology with contributions from former members of Kirkland College, the last established women's college in the United States.

Table of Contents:
Preface Foreword by William Rosenfeld Nin Andrews Star How the Poem Dies The Other Girl Natalie Babbitt and Samuel Fisher Babbitt from Tuck Everlasting Nina Bogin The Lost Hare The Old World The Orchards Michael Burkard Planetary Nebula in Vulpecula Sometimes When the Street Was Weeping Thirteen Ways Selma Burkom Recondite Relations Leslie Cook A Sudden Vision of Upstate New York as Dakota Territory What of landscapes? Grandfather Poem Nancy Avery Dafoe from The Writing Contest Kathy Durland Dewart Grey Fox What Is Already Here Rachel Dickinson Scotland or How I Flunked Europe 101 Carol Durst-Wertheim Zemel Stephanie Feuer What Counts Elizabeth Fletcher Seagull Beach Fox Doris Friedensohn from Eating As I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad Elias Friedensohn from My Lovely Impassioned Students, 1972-73 Tess Gallagher Instructions to the Double I Stop Writing the Poem The Red Devil Judy Silverstein Gray On My Bookshelf Susan Hartman Nine-Month-Old Boy Gloria In the Generation That Laughed at Me Martha Hawley Becoming What You've Always Been Alice Aldrich Hildebrand A Dream of Our Own Imagination Advent, 2008 After My College Reunion Ellen Horan from 31 Bond Street Elisabeth Horwitt Taking Care of Marilyn Monroe Deborah Pender Hutchison Left to My Own Devices First Ice Lynn Kanter from Her Own Vietnam Peggy Dills Kelter Solitaire Naomi Lazard In Memoriam Elegy to the Twenty Skiers Notes for the Recording Angel Denise Levertov The Footprints Hut 'Life Is Not a Walk across a Field' Kathryn E. Livingston Chance of a Lifetime Donna French McArdle How Surf Works on Soul My Daughter's Sketches Penelope's Work Victoria Kohn Michels Spring in Clinton New York At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Abilene Liz Morrison The Meaning of Meat Ilene Moskin High School Prom My Mother's Body as Territory Poem Isabel Weinger Nielsen She Might Break Barbara Elizabeth Nixon Chemo My Comfort Gwynn O'Gara Fallen Apples Vagabond Sky Let Me Be Beautiful Like Sea Glass Gwynn O'Gara, Nancy Dafoe, and Nicole Dafoe The Kirkland Experience Joanne Papanek Orlando To the VVAW (after Lexington) Jo Pitkin The Lakehouse Loss The Mollusk Clare Guzzo Robert Tea Ball Mind Irma Rosenfeld Pavane Antique William Rosenfeld Astronaut At Shishevo Deborah Ross Frommer's Historical Guide to Upstate New York Betty Sarvey Salek from The Fish in the Mirror Amy Schiffman The Past Decade Susan Shopmaker Steak-Night 1978 Maria Stadtmueller Taking Francis Hostage Constance Stellas Building Billie Jean Stratton White Welkin Rafting Epitaph For Every Zipped Fly Who Once Stood at Hoot's Bar Shed Song Jane Summer Mrs. Chretien Listened to Elgar Zan Tewksbury Last Train to Bhutan Ellie Tupper Ping Julie Weinstein Train Abigail Wender Thanksgiving The Winter My Runaway Brother Returned Yellow Balloon Valerie Worth Crows Acorn Mushroom Contributor Biographies Acknowledgments About Kirkland by Samuel Fisher Babbitt

About the Author :
Jo Pitkin is the author of The Measure and Cradle of the American Circus: Poems from Somers, New York. She received her BA in creative writing and literature from Kirkland College and MFA in poetry from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She lives in Cold Spring, New York.

Review :
"Lost Orchard is a paradise regained. How wonderful to have the brilliant and beautiful work of so many talented writers, all once part of the Edenic community that was Kirkland College, collected and preserved. Jo Pitkin's editorial eye is both acute and sensitive, and I salute and thank her." - Peter Cameron, author of Coral Glynn: A Novel "Lost Orchard dazzles me for its wild romp through New York's urban and pastoral landscapes (as well as its journeys hither and yon), its revolutionary ideas (revisited and revised), its diverse family portraits and reflections, its variety of forms (poetry, fiction, essays, plays, even a recipe), and its delightfully weird mix of pathos, grit, wit, and collective intelligence." - Jane Springer, author of Murder Ballad "Lost Orchard is a testament to higher education at its best, when intellectual curiosity and experimentation create an enduring community-something far richer than a sequence of classes. Kirkland College generated a literary community of astonishing breadth and depth-writers who continue to make significant contributions to contemporary literature. Still efflorescent, this lost orchard has been very fruitful indeed." - David Fenza, Executive Director, The Association of Writers and Writing Programs "The contributions to this anthology are as diverse and interesting as one would expect of alumnae and faculty at Kirkland, the last founded, progressive women's college in the United States. Short stories, plays, and poems cover a broad range of subjects, including breast cancer, dementia of a parent, traveling in Macedonia, recent political events, fantasy, and what it was like being a student at Kirkland. True to the ethos of Kirkland, the collection is not organized by topic or by whether the author was a student, faculty member, or president, but rather in a more anarchic manner-alphabetically by last name. The result is deeply satisfying as a book to read in any manner one chooses, to dip into again and again. And one will want to!" - Leslie Miller-Bernal, author of Separate by Degree: Women Students' Experiences in Single-Sex and Coeducational Colleges