Transport of the Aim

Maxine Silverman

During her life, Celia Thaxter (1835-1894) was one of the most celebrated writers of her time, while Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was known only to a small cherished group of family and friends. The two women never met, but would have been known to each other through Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a leading figure in the 19th-century literary culture centered in New England. In Transport of the Aim, Maxine Silverman imagines the inner lives of these two women (and other literary figures of their time), connected in her poetic meditations through their mutual passion for gardening, their love of place – Appledore on the Isle of Shoals for Thaxter, Amherst, MA, for Dickinson – and their shared experience as female writers in the patriarchal culture of the time.

Maxine Silverman’s poetry and essays have been published in many journals, anthologies, and Enskyment: Online Archive of American Poetry.  Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she is the author of three previous chapbooks: Survival Song (Sunbury Press); Red Delicious published in Desire Path, the inaugural volume of the Quartet Series from Toadlily Press; and 52 Ways of Looking. In addition to poetry, she creates collage, bricolage, and visual midrash. A native of Sedalia, MO, she now lives with her family in one of the river villages of the Hudson Valley. Her website is www.maxinegsilverman.com.

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Excerpt

MacGregor Jenkins Sums Up

. . .  There she stood
radiant as Christmas among orchis and oleander
where a late celadon chrysalis had grown more
and more translucent, bursting its gold bands.
On warm scented air, the Monarch drifted,

last autumn leaf.  “Mac, Mac,” she whispered,
turning slowly with that royal flight, the light
catching her auburn hair, “just in time
for his great Migration.