Read Marian’s sonnet ‘Dumb and Brave’ as part of NPR’s celebration of National Poetry Month 2023 and ‘I Love the Lincoln Tunnel’ as part of NPR’s celebration of National Poetry Month 2024.

Poetry

I love poetry. I love to write it, read it, share it, and teach it, especially poetry in forms ranging from the classic sonnet to the silly limerick. One of my most popular workshops is “The Ode Less Traveled,” inspired by the Stephen Fry book of the same name. Although I don’t actively pursue publication, my work has appeared in Boston University’s Clarion magazine, a few online venues, and every annual edition of the Red Wheelbarrow Poets anthology (I live and work a few miles from Rutherford, NJ, home of the 20th-century genius William Carlos Williams and many of his contemporary fans). Mostly I love to attend poetry open mikes. One of my favorites was an evening at the East Orange Public Library, part of a Montclair Poetry Festival.

Plays

Theater is my most frequently practiced form of religion. In high school I was a summer stock and drama club “Gleek” before the word was invented. At Rutgers I took lots of classes and reviewed dozens of Broadway and off-Broadway plays for the college daily paper. My playwriting teachers have included Betty Comtois (Rutgers/Douglass), Stuart Spencer, and Nikkole Salter. In recent years I’ve been thrilled to have my work produced on these local stages:

• Mile Square Theater in Hoboken, which staged four of my plays as part of the 7th and 8th Annual New Jersey One-Minute Play Festivals
• Luna Stage in West Orange, where my 10-minute play “The First Woman President” was part of a Civic Playwriting reading
• Radburn Players in Fair Lawn, where my short plays “Testa Dura” and “The Fake Book” won back-to-back Best New Work awards
• Cabrini Repertory Theater in Manhattan, where “The Fake Book” opened the Venus Theatre Festival

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