CONFLUX PRESS FEATURED AUTHOR: Blema Wolin Blema Wolin's fourth and most recent chapbook, So Long Toots, was published by Conflux Press in 2011. Conflux also published Divine Dictation, her third chapbook, in 2008. Two earlier chapbooks were published by Small Poetry Press: With Half an Eye in 2001, and Constructed Cosmos in 2004. Her poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Bellowing Ark, California Quarterly, and Hawai'i Review, among other journals. Blema grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and was educated at the University of Chicago. After a career teaching English to junior high school students, she earned her MFA in poetry from Mills College. She has studied with some of today's leading poets, including Galway Kinnell, Sherod Santos, and John Yau. In 1992, she was a resident at MacDowell Colony after being awarded a Dewitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Fellowship. She has attended Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Squaw Valley Writers Conference, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Santa Fe Writers Conference, and RopeWalk Writers Conference, among others. Of Blema's work, her long-time teacher David St. John says: "Blema Wolin is one of my all-time favorite poets. There is a gorgeous abstract lyricism to her poetry as well a shrewd intelligence and a constant, heart-breaking compassion. She is a poet whose poems one can savor again and again." Small Comfort Place this cool rag on your brow, And don't let the caged baboon Rattle his dish tonight. The spaniel splashes his shampoo Over the pleated foyer, but you and I Know the folly of deflecting his wisdom Longer than six hours. Before the antelopes Disappear, each novice will make demands. Move your needlepoint closer to the lamp, my dear. At night, the inmates slide down gently. No doubt you feel amazed at that ravaged child, But I have always held that any trespass On ribbed whalebone would produce A disastrous future. - from So Long Toots, Conflux Press 2011