4 Los Angeles Poets

2003 128pp

A collection of poems from four Los Angeles writers.

The Authors

ellen

ellen teaches creative writing at Emeritus College, a division of Santa Monica College in California. She has had hundreds of poems published in literary journals and magazines, including Slant, Turnstile, Another Chicago Magazine, Pavement Saw, Spillway, and Mudfish. Her fiction and poetry have been represented in a number of antologies. She has won writing awards from Blue Unicorn, Z Miscellaneous, Verve, Prime Time, and others. Also an artist, ellen won first prize for watercolor paintings in the Malibu Art Association’s 2000 juried show. Her paintings have been shown in galleries and in the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art in Malibu. Her art has appeared on the cover of Red Dancefloor and in Vernal Calibrations and Isis Rising.

Mima Pereira

Her mother crossed the Brooklyn Bridge so she could be born in Manhattan. She never appreciated her sentiment, through it does remain poetic. She came through the Panama Canal in 1932, landed in California, where her father had signed a contract with RKO studios to write write for Carol Lombard. She settled in Beverly Hills, where for the next 15 years she made side trips to schools in Hollywood, Pasadena and New Hampshire. In the summer of 1948 she came down with polio. She will never know, of course, how much it changed her life, or informed her poetry, which she began her to write in the late seventies. Her first published poem was in Helen Friedland’s Poetry L.A. It was followed by many published poems, including an honorable mention in Sculpture Garden’s Anne Stanford’s Poetry Contest. Poetry for her is not about publishing, but the miracle of poetry that keeps your feet on the ground while flying in disturbing directions. Ms. Pereira lives with her husband, architect Arthur Pereira, in Brentwood, California.

Shirley Love

Shirley was born in Syracuse, Kansas at the height of the dust bowl. She grew up in small prairie towns along the Kansas River in southeastern Colorado. After high school, she moved to the Los Angeles area and attended UCLA where she received a degree in Philosophy. She is married and has three children, two step-children and four grandchildren. Her poetry has been published in a number of literary journals, including The Spoon River Poetry Review, South Dakota Review, California Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, West/Word, and the anthologies The New Los Angeles Poets and Truth and Lies that Press for Life. Her poem “When What We Have Done” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she received The Language Arts Poetry Award from West Los Angeles College.

Anne Marple

Anne, a former kindergarten teacher, lives in a Westwood condo with an assortment of foreign students and cats. During the first half of her writing life she wrote short stories and articles, appearing in New Republic, GQ, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Teen and Jack and Jill, winning awards from Vogue, Mademoiselle, Glamour and Everywoman. Anne began writing poetry seriously in 1976. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and five anthologies. Her poetry has won awards from Blue Unicorn and Writers’ Digest. Anne combines her genealogical compulsion with her love of travel, visiting ancestral sites in England, Scotland, Wales, Holland and Sweden. In this country, she and her sister Marilyn recently left rosemary wreaths on 30 ancestral graves from Burbank to Baltimore.

Review

Four Los Angeles Poets is a long overdue collection. Each of these poets has a unique vision. The strength of ellen’s poems lies in her celebration of human relationships. Mima Pereira’s powerful poems are enlivened by a cryptic and quirky imagery. Shirley Love’s poetry reflects a fine philosophical mind and is expressed in unique metaphors and a lovely lyricism. The work of Anne Marple carries echoes of the Elizabethans, both in the elegance of her language and in her keen observations of the natural world.

Joan LaBombard