Los Angeles’s Silver Birch Press just released an anthology dedicated to “The Great Gatsby,” and I am thrilled that my poem “Oh, Zelda” was selected as part of the book. The poem is about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda, who was a tumultuous part of Fitzgerald’s fame, fortune and misfortune.
If anyone is interested in ordering copies of the book, please click here to be directed to Amazon.
Below is my poem:
Oh, Zelda
Pretty much, you
were a crazy bitch.
Incensed by beauty
in others, talent in others.
No one else was Zelda.
Zelda painting. Zelda
writing. Zelda dancing.
Zelda loving. Zelda
interrupting. No one had
your husband. Or your
name. A belle,
at times, more often
a tease. Bad Zelda, who
silenced entire books.
Drunk Zelda, who shut
them down like boys.
All the rage, all of it,
yours. Sorry Zelda,
making the cottage
beds, blowing softly
at the suffering fire.
Sweet Zelda, who says
it won’t be so. Again
the happy host. Again
the righteous muse, who,
for a second, stood right
upon the floor. But,
silly Zelda, you boiled
a pot of rings and gold,
and you got taken
to the crazy home.
The unwell woman
in the attic, with you,
told decades too late.
No new love
or worried young girl
could save you from
the locked doors above,
the savage blaze below.
After Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”