Living in the Fire Nest

Ridgeway Press
Detroit, MI
1996

“This is a big book, forceful and tender, encompassing Chartres and Woodward Ave., magicians and nightmares, Jonah and Jesse James, Chinese acrobats, Zambian women drying fish, and La Dolce Vita in the living room. Families are here with all their nuances of feeling, yet many poems have the scope of myth or fairy tale.”

Conrad Hilberry

Notable Review

“In poem after brilliant poem, Linda Nemec Foster presents us with the balancing acts people perform as they move between their ordinary lives and the secret lives they imagine. A housewife burns the dinner she is cooking while she imagines herself as a glamorous character in the movie she is watching. A man scanning the tabloid headlines at the supermarket checkout is overwhelmed by his insignificance. A mother dreams herself as a sparrow outside her daughter’s window. Even in her most autobiographical poems, Foster finds the strangeness that gives meaning to everyday events, her imagination being as boundless as her sympathy. Her inventiveness culminates in the book’s final section, “A History of the Body,” a tour de force consisting of twenty-four exuberant, origin legends.”

Lisel Mueller

News

Linda Nemec Foster’s Poetry was Selected for the Poetry X Hunger Website

Linda’s poem, “History of the Hand,” was selected to be included on this important website which advocates for an end to hunger in America and worldwide. To read the poem, please click here to visit Poetry X Hunger’s official website. For more information about this project, contact Hiram Larew at: [email protected]

WHY I WRITE – by Linda Nemec Foster

Linda Nemec Foster’s essay is featured on the website, Write Across Chicago, which is sponsored by the Illinois Writing Project based at Northeastern Illinois University. A member of the Society of Midland Authors, Linda is the only non-Illinois resident featured on the website.

Michigan Writers Series First Interview in 1999

Audio: Interview with Jane Arnold Program Introduction by Diane Wakoski Selected Readings: “Postcard“ “History of the Toenails“ “History of the Hand“ “Heat Lightning“ Movie Poems: “Absurdity of the Sweet Life,” “At 69,” “My Mother Sees Her First Foreign Film“ “Ars Poetica“ “The Therapeutist: After Magritte“ “The Rain in Bielsko,” and “Mazovian Willows: Chopin’s Nocturn, Opus […]

Accolades

YearHonorPrizeDescription
1997Finalist The Poet’s Prize Linda’s book, Living in the Fire Nest, was selected by juror Colette Inez for this honor that is sponsored by the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City

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