Reading Tough Enough, I think of Basho—“It is deep autumn/my neighbor/how does he live, I wonder.” I wonder, too, how one lives, survives and even thrives in “deep autumn.” The “how to,” might be found in the work of these four poets who have immersed themselves in poetry, art, music, dance, embracing life’s sorrow as well as its joy. In “Tulare Motel” Annie Menebroker speaks of Wilma who escapes hellish summer heat, “. . . But she blessed/ this strange room, played cards/ with her brother, and called her/ friends to spread the word of survival.” Spreading the word of survival—what act of poetry is more blessed than that—is exactly what the poets of Tough Enough do. That they refer to themselves as Tough Old Broads speaks to an unselfconscious resilience that is the backbone of this collection. There are questions here as well as answers. Kathryn Holwein’s villanelle, “My Acts,” begins “Are my acts like the ash I will become/since everything feels ghostly from this striving.” Victoria Dalkey’s “Elegy In The Old City Cemetery” questions the nature of the mind: “A new paradigm for the mind holds/it is like a cloud, vaporous, amorphous,/ a shape-shifting function of imagination.” Perhaps the ultimate answer to how one might live, given sufficient courage, is found in Viola Weinberg’s “Arthur’s Seat, The Easy Way,” the poem that closes this sterling collection: “I threw myself into the very muscle of desire.”

What a pleasure and delight to find four poets whose work I have loved and admired for many years gathered together here. Sly, witty, passionate, painterly, erudite voices calling out to us--to our hearts--from the heart of the mysterious quotidians. This book, these poems are a great gift.