As many of you might know, I have eighteen PUBLISHED books -- the latest of which are Crossing the Equal Sign (Plain View Press, TX), poetry about the experience of mathematics, and Surviving the Alphabet, a poetry chapbook (Huge Pathetic Force, PA) (my first UNthemed collection). Other books are An Ambitious Sort of Grief (my pregnancy loss journal, from The Liberal Press, TX), Epsilon Country (poetry about being a well spouse, which is the spouse of someone who is chronically ill and/or disabled -- from The Center for Thanatology Research, NY), The Weirdest Is the Sphere (my first chapbook, poetry about the experience of mathematics, from Seven Woods Press, NY), and Dirty Details: The Days and Nights of a Well Spouse (Temple University Press, PA).

By way of brief introduction to Crossing the Equal Sign, and to me: I am a mathematician, with a math Ph.D. from Connecticut Wesleyan; I currently teach math at Arcadia University in Glenside PA. The poems in Crossing were written during or about the period when I was working furiously on a particular math problem (which had to do with partially ordered sets).Some of the images in the poems come from math concepts, but readers dont have to understand the math in order to feel whatever the poem makes them feel. In fact, sometimes something is ADDED by not-understanding. Non-mathematicians can and do experience math in positive and/ or meaningful ways, and the poems have appeared in literary as well as math journals. At any rate, Crossing the Equal Sign is about passion for math, and for all truth.

To briefly continue the introduction, my writings about pregnancy loss and about chronic illness and spousal caregiving are well known in certain circles. My third baby, a little girl named Kerin, died at the age of two days, and eventually my pregnancy loss trilogy appeared from The Liberal Press (TX). Also, She Was Born She Died, a chapbook of my Kerin-poems, was released from Centering Corporation. Around the time that Kerin was born and died, my then-husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The above-mentioned Dirty Details is a memoir about my familys life while he was in an advanced stage of that disease and still lived in home; its about struggling and care giving while continuing to live. In my non-writing and non-math life, I love classical piano, singing (first soprano), Scrabble (worked almost an hour last night trying to get a bingo...), and thrift-shopping (Look for my posts on thethriftshopper.com). I have four grown children and two grans, and babies and children are another passion. Plenty more about all this appears in the books on this site, also in what follows:

A couple of years ago I decided that I didnt want to wait years to place my as-yet unpublished books, but instead to cyber-self-publish. The books on this site are currently 13 in number, and are described immediately below:

The first book posted is Cruel and Unusual, well-spouse prose non-fiction written over the course of the years after the publication of Dirty Details. It is NOT a sequel to Dirty Details (although I do bring Dirty Details readers up to date as to how, ten years later, my family and I were doing). Rather, its a collection of related essays, gleaned partly from my experience promoting Dirty Details; readers and audiences asked questions which gave me new ideas! Also, more things happened, well-spouse-wise. One of the main thrusts of this book is my belief that the health care system, and society in general, should be such that well spouses, and at-home care givers in general, should be given the OPTION to discontinue their service as care givers. This means that social workers should be trained to inform and council at-home care givers, all throughout their at-home care giving odessey, about their options, and that the system should be able to back them up. Of course, society is not currently like that, but (1) individual health care workers can, day by day, act in ways that will promote this, and in the meantime, make differences big and small in the lives of care givers and family members, and (2) this is the MINDSET that I believe should be encouraged and cultivated. Related to this idea are the chapters Is It Nursing-Home Time yet?, Wanting Out, Getting Out, and Suggestions for Those in Charge.

Another book on this site is Oaktag and Eyeballs: Thoughts on Children, Education, and Society. This is my manifesto on just that, and it reflects my familys experience with home-schooling for eight years. However, it departs from many home-schooling books in that (1) it is not meant to be a how-to book, and (2) the chapter Whats Wrong is not only about whats wrong with many traditional (and non-traditional) schools, but also whats wrong with many HOME-SCHOOLS -- and with societys attitude toward children (and parents) in general.

Progressive is the the last in the series of well spouse poetry. This is a true sequel to The Sitting-Down Hug, Extreme Points, and Epsilon Country (already published poetry books -- check Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Borders.)

Not Erma Bombeck is my feminist motherhood book from the 70s. Being a mother and also a radical feminist was in many ways challenging, and of course in many ways exciting. I felt, and still feel, that mothers constitute an oppressed class but, as mentioned in the book, that doesnt mean that people shouldnt become mothers. (For mothers substitute black or woman.) Not Erma Bombeck is a collection of related true story/ essays, many of them adapted from diary excerpts.

Permission to Add: The Math Limericks -- This is perhaps self-explanatory. Ive written limericks for pretty much every math course that Ive taught. That includes calc, differential equations, partial differential equations, complex analysis, abstract algebra, and vector analysis. There are also limericks on Topology, which I havent taught but which I know, and Category Theory (inspired by a book of the same title, which I reviewed for MAA Online).

The Woman Mathematician is a short collection of prose-poems (or perhaps poetic prose), again about the experience of living with math. (Some of these poems have been converted to get into the newly-published collection Crossing the Equal Sign; I feel that theyre better this way; they more accurately express what I want to say.)

The Fuss and the Fury consists of the poems that I wrote during my youngest son Devins very early years. Motherhood is an ecstacy, and its deep. Mothering babies gives me a feeling which I wish would last. It probably comes form the same place within me as math.

Closer to Dying -- I wrote these when I was approaching fifty. (Some of these poems also found their way into Crossing the Equal Sign.)

The Life and Habits of the Child-of-Misfortune -- I am NOT a child-of-misfortune, though I have often been given occasion to feel as though I am. Many people have said that Ive had more than my share, and so I feel that I have permission to write these poems, at least sometimes, and I DO say, in one of them, The child of misfortune / is also a child of FORTUNE -- at least in my case.

The Loneliness of the Short-Distance Runner -- These are the earliest poems that I wrote, from 75 to 85. They are collected poems; I havent yet had this sort of thing as a published book (only the recent chapbook, Surviving the Alphabet).

The Three-Pointed Star -- poems spanning 85 to 95.

One Things about Angels -- poems from 95 to present.

The final post (so far) on this site is not a literary thing but an actual math paper, Arithmetic: More of the Story. These ideas go way back to when I was a teen-ager, 15 or 16, but the problem that I solved (or partially solved) is more sophisticated.

Anyway, welcome! I hope that you enjoy browsing through, or actually reading from cover to cover, some or all of these books. Of course, I would appreciate and love feedback (or information leading to a real publisher -- though as a writer, Im well seasoned along those lines...) Id love to hear from you!

Have a wonderful day! -- Marion