BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – “Under water/ leaves are paws, ferns are wings/ and your mother’s skirt is an orange flame/ melting the sap from the pool’s pine edge.” So reads a line from Joanne Diaz’s book of poems, The Lessons (Silverfish Review Press, 2011), winner of the 2009 Gerald Cable First Book Award, and listed as one of the Poetry Foundation’s Small Press Distribution February Best Sellers.
Many of Diaz’s poems in her first published novel weave a tale that place the reader in the middle of the narrator’s thoughts, as if capturing a personal moment. “Some of the poems are about family relationships, some about the speaker’s travels, some about the experience of illness, recovery and sometimes death,” she said.
Several of the pieces in the book are inspired directly from her life and Boston upbringing. The title poem “The Lessons” recalls childhood swim lessons, complete with the instructor calling the children “Back to the watah!” Influences also infuse the poem “Epigram for the Boston Accent,” which brings together Diaz’s love of ancient Roman writer Martial and her love of Boston – even playing off playwright Oscar Wilde’s reference to the city as a ‘paradise of prigs.’