Jean Tupper
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Jean Tupper has worked as a magazine writer and editor, but her first writing love is poetry. As Pit Menousek Pinegar says, "Jean writes poetry that sings with humor, irony, wit, wisdom, and the gentle touch that so distinguishes both woman and poet." She presents poetry both solo and with the Fine Line Poets in Massachusetts. She also reads and workshops with the Wood Thrush Poets, a Connecticut-based group of six published poets who have been colleagues and friends for more than 25 years. She has given many readings, with both groups, in schools, libraries, and bookstores throughout New England. A graduate of Simmons College's School of Publication, Jean later completed her MA in English at Central Connecticut State University, with a thesis on the Irish poet Seamus Hean ey's use of metaphor. She has studied with Brendan Galvin, Gerald Stern, Paul Zimmer, Heather McHugh, Gail Mazur, Melanie Braverman, Kinereth Gensler, and others: at CCSU, The Frost Place in Franconia, NH, Mt. Holyoke Writers' Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. While living in Connecticut (until 1990 when she returned to the Boston area), Jean was a member and past secretary of the Connecticut Poetry Society and taught creative writing at New Horizons in Farmington, CT.
A frequent workshop facilitator and mentor to developing writers, her work has been published in many fine literary magazines, such as Carquinez Review, The Madison Review, The MacGuffin, The Nebraska Review, Oregon East, The Paterson Literary Review, Rio Grand Review, THEMA, Southern Poetry Review, West Wind Review, Wisconsin Review, Worcester Review.
Jean has recently completed a book of poems written over the past two decades entitled Woman in Rainlight and a chapbook of "mother poems," expressive of the mother-daughter bond and bind in those last poignant years, entitled "The Unravelings."
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MOTHER NASTY
is after me again.
She’s been eating
her redhot pepper pills
and the devil
pops out of her
medicine kit
with an idea that’s
really twisted,
devious
something she just
remembered
I did as a little girl
like wetting my pants
& coming home from
school with chapped legs
& nbsp;
or burying
the book I threw up on
in the backyard.
Now she’s telling
everyone at the beauty shop
my age—Doesn’t my little girl
look young for 60?—
all the while
she’s sticking pins in
her Jeanie voodoo doll.
My head feels like
that old man’s in church
that never stops bobbing
up and down, up and down.
I’m shaking inside too
like the flu’s got me—
first the chills,
then dizzying hot waves.
It’s sick how
she loves and hates
at the same time:
clings and squeezes
the life out of me
with her love tentacles
then walks over me
like an army of red ants,
stinging my flesh raw.
If she really loved me
wouldn’t she
make me some wings?
Stitch them with
her finest needles?
Lift me with her blessings as I fly?
from the Paterson Literary Review
JANUARY
“Life’s too much for ordinary mortals.”
Mary Tyler
Everything’s falling apart,
right down to the handle
on the front door
that broke off this morning
like an icicle;
but the blue spruce
on this New England deck,
wrapped, roots and all, in burlap,
0D
was our choice: a living tree
to drape in multi-colored lights
for Christmas. Now under siege,
her branches look like arms
weighed down in sorrow,
from the weight of many snows.
In a fresh blizzard
tree drifts like the ghost
of a white ship in a white-out
and vanishes beneath
billowing waves of snow;
but somewhere down under
this sea tonight: a muffled glow,
like the memory of light.
from the Wisconsin Review
WHITE-OUT
Rather than cross out fait accompli
items on your To Do List
with inky Bic or black magic
that invariably bleeds through
to the next page and makes it look
even more thick and threatening
than the original commands,
why not make them disappear?
What you do is buy a little bottle
of super-white, super-smooth
cleanup fluid, the goop that promises
to make all the corrections you need.
Unscrew the top and start painting over
assignments you’ve hated for months,
names that gave you heartburn.
Slather gobs on ex-dastardly deeds.
You slap the white stuff on everything
you’re done with, or want to be.
Make white clouds all over the page,
covering bills you’ve decided not to pay,
R.S.V.P.s you won’t respond to.
Pretty soon, white to the knuckles,
you’re loving the absence of
demanding things and people.
Eradication empowers. Your mood
lightens and pressure drops as you
whiten up. You’re the artist,
adding white space; the domestic
engineer, uncluttering closets. Or, like me,
you’re Lady Macbeth, “Out, out...”
removing those treacherous spots
till there’s nothing left but white on white.
from Carquinez Poetry Review
