Miriam Sagan was born in Manhattan and raised in New Jersey. She holds a BA from Harvard and an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She is a writing teacher and author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She has held residency grants at Yaddo and MacDowell and is the recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Foundation and a Border Regional Library Association Award. She recently had a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas. Her work has appeared internationally in over 200 magazines. She has taught writing at Santa Fe Community College, University of New Mexico, Taos Institute of the Arts, Aspen Writers Conference, and in workshops across the United States. She currently teaches on-line for UCLA-Extension and at writers.com. She is Writer's Digest's poetry columnist for 2003 and writes the monthly column "Words on Poetry" for the Santa Fe New Mexican. She has lived in New Mexico for almost twenty years.

(August, 2003)

A Sample of Miriam Sagan's work follows. You can find more of her work and information about the poet by following the link(s) provided at the end of this document.

Purple Nightie in A White Room

I was afraid I would bleed--
The house was so white--
White comforter, white blanket.
Woman in perimenopause
My periods were uncertain.
Also my commas, my semi-colons:
All my punctation.
Then I slit my thumb
On the lid of a can of artichoke hearts
A drop of blood appeared
At uneven intervals throughout the day.
I went to the Dollar store
And searched the aisles
Full of jigsaw puzzles of lighthhouses, covered bridges; 
Mexican orange blossom cologne,
Remedios of iodine. 
The Permian baisin stretched away
A lifetime in each direction 
As if insisting that the earth were flat. 
I bought a purple nightie In an artificial glowing fabric 
And wore it defiantly In the white white house.


Copyright © Miriam Sagan

Links:

• Miram Sagan's Web Page