feel, because it cares about others and it studies myself and my dissolution at the time in order to document a crisis, brain chemistry and emotional muddle. My dear Existentialist, Linda Allen, who is now over 90, was a literary agent, in NYC and SF, for fiction and other prose writers. I wanted to learn how her swimming and her Existentialism might overlap, so I interviewed her a few years ago. This piece evolved. I so admire her strength and balance. We laugh together. “Establishments” is as clear as can be. I might add that I studied with Elizabeth Bishop, along with my first husband, who additionally studied with Theodore Roethke. The smoking poem is a grievous elegy for so many of our beloveds. With a dig at the end at a poet-tobacco-grower, I had to name names. The group coheres because it tears me apart and reassembles me or whoever is willing to go through that “procedure.” * photo credit: Malia McCarthy Volume 8 No 1 - Page 49
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