Louise Jaffe

Louise Jaffe, is Professor Emerita of English at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, where she still teaches part-time.  She has also recently been hired as a consultant to teach a weekly memoir-writing workshop for the Jewish Association of Services to the Aging.  Her poems have been published in a wide variety of anthologies and literary magazines, and she has been a warmly received feature reader throughout New York City and environs.  In addition, she has won prizes in several poetry contests.   Professor Jaffe has published four poetry chapbooks, Hyacinths and Biscuits, Wisdom Revisited: Athena Speaks, Light Breaks, and The Great Horned Owl's Proclamation and Other Hoots.  These books can be ordered from the address below, or you can contact the poet at her e-mail address: Athena9x@aol.com.

Louise Jaffe
2411 East 3rd Street
Brooklyn, New York 11223



Pantomime

Along the shore she stationed shells in rows
and waited till swift waves foamed them away.
She did not sing of where the summer goes

but wore frayed dreams the way some wear old clothes
on what they deem an ordinary day.
Along the shore she stationed shells in rows 

quite stealthily so no one might suppose
she had her self-styled, magic games to play.
She did not sing of where the summer goes

but danced on sand as zephyrs spread her clothes.
Sans time to care who noticed this array,
along the shore she stationed shells in rows

and coaxed cooled waves to make friends with her toes,
from wordless journeys have a glad delay.
She did not sing of where the summer goes

or kingdoms that the wing-free seagull knows
or things no nomad wind will ever say.
Along the shore she stationed shells in rows.
She did not sing of where the summer goes.

Published in Poetry Digest, Spring, 1995



Exclusions

Muses will not do windows.  What is more
they frown on scouring pots.  They'd rather gaze
and contemplate what contemplation's for

if not to graph the paths that fancies soar
before they thud to earth and scrounge for praise.
Muses will not do windows.  What is more

they taste no bliss from buying.  Hellish bore!
they tell themselves.  Better to use our days
to contemplate what contemplation's for

and mysteries at inspiration's core,
histories of this white-hot, short-lived blaze.
Muses will not do windows.  What is more 

they invent words, not menus, and abhor
fools who prefer to find a triter phrase
to contemplate what contemplation's for

or what's the sagest way they can ignore
whinings of those not tuned to muses' ways.
Muses will not do windows.  What is more?
To contemplate what contemplation's for.



In Academic Circles: Birds of a Feather

Some of us, schooled in foolings,
pretend that we can fly.
Some of us, perched on ego-stilts,
spout lectures to the sky.

Still others stretch our snaky tails
like landlords of the earth
owed homage from the underlings
who covet our great worth.

Whether we profess from on high
or strut upon the ground,
we court sweet immortality
cum laude, capped and gowned.

Published in American Poets and Poetry, January, 1999