About Tripping the Light Ekphrastic and Other Inspirations

Poet Ronnie Hess is also an accomplished ballroom dancer, art connoisseur, journalist, and cook, so it makes sense that her chapbook springing from the visual arts in our lives should be titled Tripping the Light Ekphrastic and Other Inspirations. Emerging from these poems crafted in a variety of forms is a trenchant commentary on our culture and history. Expect to meet a knowledgeable mind, warm heart, inventive imagination, and an expressive twist!

-Robin Chapman, author of The Only Home We Know and Panic Season

Ronnie Hess is a poet, essayist, editor, award-winning journalist, and the author of five poetry chapbooks and two culinary travel guides (on France and Portugal, Ginkgo Press). Born and raised in New York City, she now lives in Madison, WI. She has served on the Boards of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and The Friends of Lorine Niedecker. For more information, visit www.ronniehess.com.

Outside the Frame, a new and selected collection of Marilyn Taylor's accomplished, witty, and poignant poems, offers readers a wild ride through life in Aunt Eudora's Harlequin romances, crickets' chorales, Shostakovich's 5th Symphony, the demands of aging, and even a notice from the Sweet Chariot Funeral Parlor. Her voice is so upbeat that we almost forget she's talking about how short our time is here, and her verbal high jinks are so much fun we nearly fail to notice the formidable formal skill at play in her villanelles, sestinas, rondeaus, and signature crowns of sonnets. Read it twice—once for her company through life, once just to marvel at her maker's skill!

—Robin Chapman, author of The Only Home We Know

Marilyn Taylor is the former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin (2009-2010) and the city of Milwaukee (2004-2005).

Marilyn was raised in Whitefish Bay, went to West High School in Madison, but lived for 40 years in Milwaukee, where she taught poetry for the English Department and the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Following the death of her husband Allen in 2012, she moved to Madison,  where she continue to write, teach, and spend time hobnobbing with some of the extraordinary poets who also call Wisconsin home.  She lives with her poet-husband Dave Scheler, and is also fortunate enough to have a brilliant son (Reed), an equally brilliant daughter-in-law (Jessica), and two splendid grandsons: Max, age 7, and Finn, 4.

Livestream: Ronnie Hess in Conversation with Marilyn L Taylor