"Chicken & in Love" by Natalie Goldberg

This is a small book of poetry, probably out of print now, published in the late 70s I think. The library says 1980 but the photo of the author looks like a 70s photo.

Anyway, a writing instructor has recommended a different book by Natalie Goldberg, and while I was looking for that one in the card catalog of the library, I ran across this one. I was a bit surprised when I first opened the book because the very first poem "Green split level" (I think) mentions the word "penis". It was not what I expecting! Still I read through the rest of the poetry, and while some of it was about sex, there were other pieces that were about visiting a grandmother in a nursing home, and being lonely, and other things. It was a pretty quick book to read through since it was so short, and I thought it was interesting to see some of Natalie's writings before moving on to hear/read what she says about how other people should write. I will be reading "Writing Down the Bones: freeing the writer within" at some point soon. I actually bought that book at the bookstore in case I wanted to make notes in it, etc.

Natalie has several other books that she has written as well. Many available at local libraries, and also through Amazon or Barnes and Noble or from your local bookseller. I will be reading more of her stuff I am sure. In the coming months, I hope to read "Long quiet highway", "Thunder and Lightening....", "Top of my Lungs", and "Wild Mind".

In the meantime though I still have another book to read, which I am slowly getting through, that is about a Dutch kid who was living in Indonesia living through WWII in Japanese concentration camps. I don't have the book in front of me now so I can't tell you the title etc yet, but I'll write more about that one when I'm done.