Jane Blue’s
poems have appeared such magazines as Avatar, Poetry International, The Chatahoochee Review, The Louisville Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.
She has an M.A. from the creative writing program at U.C. Davis and has taught in women’s centers, colleges and prisons.
She was born and raised in Berkeley, California and now lives near the Sacramento River.
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The Secret Editor
She marks up library books with a number 2 pencil,
thick with disdain. She corrects British usage
to reflect what she considers proper, that is,
American. She crosses out typos, adding letters
and schoolteacher exclamation points. She reads
the same books I do, but seems to take no joy in them.
She is the type of person who sees grammar lapses
as personally affronting. But language is glorious,
like people, in its variation and its flaws.
In a novel about Daphne du Maurier the author
refers to “the azalea-scented handkerchief”
and the secret editor inserts a question mark,
an upside-down caret, and the words,
“azaleas
have no scent.” But I remember,
in southern Oregon,
being overwhelmed
by the cloying smell of wild azaleas
even before I saw them, as I came up over the hill.
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