Introduction

Introduction Denise Duhamel (bio) Introduction If you were lucky enough to know Maureen Seaton, you are one of the luckiest people on the planet. If you were lucky enough to know Maureen's poems, you are very lucky, too. As her friend and collaborator, I thought I knew her as well as anyone could. But since her passing on August 26, 2023, and attending the three different tributes that followed (one for family and friends, one hosted by the University of Miami, and one hosted by the Miami Book Fair), I find that Maureen and her spirit keep unfolding. During her treatment for cancer, some of which coincided with the pandemic, she lived in Colorado with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. Because she could no longer travel back to her beloved Miami, she became a devoted Zoomer. She and I often spoke on this platform, talking about her end-of-life plans, the books she was reading (she was obsessed with Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg), and dumb Netflix shows. I knew her energy was waning—how could it not be?—but she never grew world-weary. She loved this planet and its creatures right up until the end. But little did I know she was Zooming with so many others. This is just a sampling of what I heard at memorials from her friends and students. I was in a weekly book group with her…I was in a Jungian analysis group with her…We'd meet on Sundays and share poems…When my book came out by a no-name press and I reached out to her in a mass email, she was the first person to buy it…As a young mom, Maureen played guitar… What? I knew none of this information. Maureen was so many things to so many people. If you told her anything, she kept your secrets—as she kept mine! For her, friendship was sacred, as was poetry. She collaborated on writing projects with so many. A short list includes Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, Aaron Smith, Kristine Snodgrass, Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, and Holly Iglesias. My go-to joke at the memorials was that she and I had an "open poetry relationship." She was a friend who could be totally present when she was with you, so it felt like you were the only one she knew. Celebrities, I've heard, have this same tunnel of attention. But Maureen eschewed celebrity, even though she won two Lambda Literary Awards and was voted "Miami's Best Poet" in 2020 by The Miami New Times. She was humble and private. She saw the best in everyone and was one of the rare writers who didn't like, or engage in, poetry gossip. Pleiades published "Solstice," the last collaborative poem Maureen and I published before she passed. We celebrated our inclusion in the issue via Zoom, reading work by other poets in that Pleiades issue aloud. Maureen was a big fan of Pleiades, as am I, so when Jenny Molberg suggested this tribute, I couldn't have been happier or felt in safer editorial hands. Jenny has gathered a wonderful series of poems—three solo poems by Maureen, collaborative poems (with Nicole Talman and myself), essays, and elegies. In these new Maureen poems, you'll find her signature wit, whimsy, and devotion to craft. Maureen, a Libra, loved astrology and you'll see that on display in "Mango in Retrograde." She also loved word substitutions (Mercury/Mango), and that same play comes through in "Boulder Triptych (March 22, End Page 179 2021)" in which she references "birds (not bards)." She actually uses cornball jokes as her epigraph in "Three Jokes About Atoms." But that play is also serious play, as the subject matter of these poems will attest. Here, from "Boulder Triptych (March 22, 2021)": half the body isburied and half the bodyrising into sun.Who's to say who's truly gonewhen, look!, all around us: Spring. Maureen also loved to reference other poets—Lorine Niedecker, Tada Chimako, and Adam Zagajewski all appear as muses in that same poem. Maureen bought her signature energy and play to...