On A Wednesday Night

Kay Murphy (Goddard College, 1980) is Professor Emerita at the University of New Orleans where she taught in the English Department, the Creative Writing Workshop, the Honors Program, and served as Poetry Editor for Bayou.  She was awarded the Louisiana Division of the Arts Individual Artist Grant for her poetry and a University-wide Excellence in Teaching Award.  During her tenure at UNO (1984-2010) she has published over fifty essay/reviews of contemporary poetry in national journals such as The American Book Review, Chelsea, andThe Spoon River Poetry Review. Besides reviews, she has published fiction in such journals as Ascent and Fiction International. Her heart-genre, poetry, has appeared in over 100 journals such as North American Review, Mississippi Review, Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly, and College English.  She is the author of two poetry collections: The Autopsy and Belief Blues. Her third collection, Soul Tooth is looking for a publisher. She has taught in Innsbruck, Austria, Montpellier, France, San Miguel, Mexico, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Cork, Ireland. "My Mother Calls Me" and "Undiagnosed Villanelle" appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly. "On El Día de Los Muertos Neruda Speaks to Me" appeared in Poetic Voices Without Borders. The Neruda line "Hurl yourself into your grief like a dove, like snow on the dead is the last line in a section of his "From: The Woes and The Furies" inspired by Quevedo's line In my heart are the woes and the furies, which Neruda uses as an epigraph.