Mammoth author Maryfrances Wagner publishes new chapbook POUF

Maryfrances Wagner, Mammoth Publications author of the collection Dioramas, has published a new

chapbook of monologue poems in the voice of Aunt Mary, an Italian woman with one foot in America and one foot in Italy. Pouf is from Finishing Line Press. Wagner and William Trowbridge, Poet Laureate of Missouri, read together for the Thomas Zvi Wilson Reading series March 15, 6 pm, Johnson County Central Library on 87th St., Overland Park.

The character Aunt Mary is in a nursing home but does not have dementia other than a couple of hours a day she suffers from Sundowers. During those times, she thinks she's at home, in a hotel, a motel or anything on television is in real time and happening to her family. Her niece can become her mother, her son a doctor. The poems are humorous, but there is an underlying current of what it's like to be in a nursing home. This Italian American writer explores identities as they shift among geographies and inner landscapes.

See poems from Dioramas at the We Wanted To Be Writers website. 

Maryfrances Wagner has taught creative and academic writing for over twenty years, taught workshops at all levels, served as President of The Writers Place and is currently chair of TWP Programming Committee and board secretary for KC Creates. She is co-editor of I-70 Review and co-edited Whirlybird Anthology of Greater Kansas City Writers. She has published six collections to include Salvatore's Daughter, Red Silk (Thorpe Menn Book Award winner for literary excellence), Light Subtracts Itself (A KC Star Notable book of the year), and Dioramas. She has edited or co-edited three anthologies and also served as co-editor of New Letters Review of Books.