Why would The Reasonable Woman become unreasonable?
By: LAUREL ANN BOGEN
Photographer: GREG TUCKER
Location: Beyond Baroque, Venice CA
The Reasonable Woman is a hope chest, a locked cabinet.
The Reasonable Woman is pleasant enough.
The Reasonable Woman is the converse of sex.
The Reasonable Woman is durable good, a sound diagnosis.
The Reasonable Woman is a subordinate clause.
The Reasonable Woman is childproof, although Heidi is already up to her knee.
The Reasonable Woman is a skillet, a war bond.
The Reasonable Woman is a fugue heard on the intercom.
The Reasonable Woman is a graph of stock options, the percentage of return.
The Reasonable Woman is open to suggestion.
The Reasonable Woman is a string bean, a cauliflower, a field of potatoes.
The Reasonable Woman is a packet of Alka-Seltzer in the Accounts Payable file.
The Reasonable Woman is considering bankruptcy.
The Reasonable Woman is a stacked heel, a running shoe.
The Reasonable Woman is a pair of pantyhose in the bathroom sink.
The Reasonable Woman is fat free.
The Reasonable Woman is a shadow of herself.
Why would The Reasonable Woman become unreasonable?
© 2016 Laurel Ann Bogen: from the book Psychosis in the Produce Department, I Dream the Light of Reason 2 (Red Hen Press)
Poet, performance artist, teacher — Laurel Ann Bogen embodies the concept of a 30-year overnight sensation. She is the author of eleven books including Washing a Language, The Last Girl in the Land of the Butterflies, and her new collection from Red Hen Press, Psychosis in the Produce Department: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2015. The arc of her poetic career began in harrowing years of confinement on back wards of psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s. From this she carved her own redemption through poetry and, along the way, influenced not only other poets in Los Angeles but also people who did not know they enjoyed poetry.
Since 1990 she has been an instructor of poetry and performance for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where she received the Outstanding Instructor of the Year. Well known for her lively readings, Bogen has read her work (solo and/or with the Nearly Fatal Women) at Cornell University, The Savannah College of Art and Design, The Austin Writers’ League, The Knitting Factory (NYC), The L.A. Metropolitan Transit Authority, MOCA, LACE and a host of other venues. She is a recipient of the Pacificus Foundation’s Curtis Zahn Poetry Prize, two awards from the Academy of American Poets and a 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination. Her work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines and anthologies including The Maverick Poets, California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Upstreet, The Jacaranda Review, Stand Up Poetry, Wide Awake: the Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond and Miramar.
