Bio of Charlotte Digregorio

Charlotte Digregorio, a retired professor and author of Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All, Ripples of Air: Poems of Healing, and five other award-winning books, writes sixteen poetic forms, has won seventy-three poetry awards, and was nominated for four Pushcart Prizes. She was honored by Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner in 2018 for her decades of achievements in the literary arts. Her poems have been translated into eight languages; she translates poetry books from Italian into English; and her traveling illustrated poetry show has been featured at numerous U.S. libraries, including the Chicago Public Library, corporate buildings, hospitals, convention centers, restaurants, and museums/galleries. Her individual poems are featured on public transit, at botanic gardens, wooded parks, banks, apparel shops, supermarkets, and wine stores.

Digregorio gives non-fiction and poetry workshops at national writer's conferences, libraries, hospitals and bookstores; is a writer-in-residence at universities; teaches haiku in the public schools; judges national writing contests; speaks regularly at chain bookstores; and is a keynote speaker for non-profit and alumni associations. She hosted a radio poetry program on public broadcasting, and was Vice President of the Haiku Society of America and an Associate of The Haiku Foundation. She blogs about general writing for publication and poetry, and posts work by global poets at www.charlottedigregorio.wordpress.com. (You may contact her at c-books@hotmail.com.)

Digregorio spent much of her adult life on college/university faculties, teaching foreign languages and writing. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Chicago and Pomona College, respectively. In 2014, she authored Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All, that is widely recognized as the definitive book for haiku instruction. Her award-winning titles include: You Can Be A Columnist and Beginners’ Guide to Writing and Selling Quality Features, both Writer’s Digest Book Club Featured Selections; and Everything You Need to Know About Nursing Homes: The Family’s Comprehensive Guide to Either Working With The Institution or Finding Care Alternatives. These four titles have been widely adopted as supplemental texts at universities. She also authored Your Original Personal Ad: The Complete Guide to Expressing Your Unique Sentiments to Find Your Dream Person, a popular title in the 1990s. Her haiku and senryu collection, Shadows of Seasons: Selected Haiku and Senryu by Charlotte Digregorio, is now published in The Appendices of Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All.

Simply Winter

I don’t dread five months of winter.
I wake to a cardinal’s whistle,
morning moon sliding behind clouds,
and snow on cherry branches.

I bend my aging back to pick up the stiff newspaper.
While I brew coffee in my enamel percolator,
Nat King Cole croons “Unforgettable”
from the turntable.

Throughout the day, crows and juncos
flit from oak to beech, icicles dazzle
from the eave. Snowdrifts melt, dark green
soaking through creating calligraphy.

I think of spring, transforming the poplar stump
into a fairy garden with gnomes, and
painting the weathered red birdhouse
for the finches’ and sparrows’ return.

Interrupting my daydreams –
rumbles and lightning captivate.
I don’t dread artful winter.

At dusk, there is calm, neighbors’ shadows
on the sidewalk, and dimly-lit houses.

Waves of wind warm me at night, propelling
the allegro movement of the terrace chime.

My aging hound with yellow teeth yawns wide.
I sit in my velvet armchair, lights out,
gazing at a slice of moon.
I don’t dread easy winter.

Autumn Peace

I look out the window to a beam
of sun on the neighbor’s pine
laden with cones.

In my yard, I cup my arthritic hands
to catch a flurry of gold maple leaves.

Clouds brighten gray sky.
A child’s giggles ride the gentle wind,
followed by a blue jay’s call.

I inhale mist sprinkling yellow waves
of grass. My aging spaniel stretches
her skinny legs under the covered porch.

At sunset, oak tree’s silhouette
looms beneath lavender sky.

My tabby kitten on the window seat
of the cramped kitchen
crawls under the crochet blanket.

Watching a cold full moon,
I bead my silent words of gratitude
for another ordinary day.

Excursion

Roses needn’t be red, white or yellow.
I see purple in them, as in lilacs and orchids.

I take a few moments to sit in my room,
empty my mind of tiring tasks,
and taste the rose-scented rippling air
of my summers and winters.

In my twilight years, I discover the shades
of my decades, noticing deep colors.
Purple is in my moods, sorrowful or peaceful,

watching sunset’s amethyst clouds
darken the roses or the butterfly’s violet
wings skimming over regal petals.

I feel roses’ moist buds, see the sound
of falling blossoms in sun and rain
during this short stay.

Capturing the Moment (In Memory of Vivian Maier)

Tall, plain with cropped hair,
in and out of eyeshot, she cradles
a box camera, savoring
Chicago’s street theatre.

On a gritty sidewalk, sitting alone,
worn laborer with dusty hands
eats a sandwich from its torn wrapper.

A carefree boy rolls a car tire
without a wobble.

Plump woman, hair in curlers, walks
with poise among passing strangers.

Smug and nifty, another woman,
azure eyes, color of her necklace,
flaunts her orange hat, matching coat.

A man buries his face in his knees
with his arm over his cap,
cocooned from hunger
and perhaps, shame.

Ready for a fun outing,
six kids laugh, crammed into
a station wagon with Grandma.

On the bus, old husband and wife
in their orbit, doze to the wheels’ hum,
her head on his shoulder,
face hidden under his wide brim hat.

With a cast of the 1950s and 60s,
the artist tells strangers’ stories,
dawn until dusk, through her keen lens,
when not sustaining herself as a hurried nanny.

She captures ordinary ironies
idling by, lost to others in their daily blur.

The Pillar

About Fernando Botero’s sculpture, “Standing Woman.”

Woman about town, fashionably plump, she didn’t
work out at a gym nor play games at a power breakfast.
She was your matronly grandmother, a domestic specialist.
In her prime, God-fearing–faith, husband, children first.

Rotund, no-nonsense face, cropped hair, and
stocky legs firmly grounded in home life.
She didn’t have street smarts, but her kids couldn’t
fool her. She knew how to manage her life.
If she had baggage, no one realized it.

She always left the house with feathered hat
tipped to one side, gloves, and sensible shoes,
boundless hips rocking, generous arms swinging.

Wholesomely buxom, she bulged with pride
for family and community. Night out at
the VFW Post, she wore a ruffled dress,
accentuating her huggable build, and had a clutch purse.

She raised money for schools and orphans,
had four kids in six years, balanced a chubby baby
while vacuuming, cooked complete meals,
did piles of laundry, and ironed even the tiniest corners.

She didn’t dream of finding herself.
Sitting beside her hearth with
the knitting circle was her me-time.

When she died, her reputation was bronzed
in neighbors’ minds for living a solid life.
That recognition would have satisfied her.

Solitary Thoughts

A slow afternoon,
I walk past river pines
and bowing poplars,
crinkling leaves
on hard earth.

Sun touches cumulus clouds
glinting amber.
In and out of shadows,
I trail a schoolboy with
knapsack full of autumn.

My worn loafers veer off
the even path.
Buried in wildflowers,
I meditate in whirring wind,
invisible.

Muffled cries of crows
traveling eastward
become silent.
I settle in distant woods
laden with winter.

This poem was originally published in East on Central, 2018-2019.

My Routine

I wake to loose threads
dangling in my head.
From the bay window,

barely visible limbs of
a solitary poplar fan the air.
A train rumbles through the blur.

In my prairie town,
coffee percolates
black and white moments.

I walk out into the chill
stumbling through twigs
and crusty leaves.

Through the maze of day,
I touch shoulders with tall shadows,
hear invisible robins.

With the maple leaves,
street lights change from
green to yellow to red.

Home at night,
I destroy pesky cobwebs
with my feather duster,

settle into my armchair.
Beating time in waning lamplight
to folk songs playing

in my childhood,
I drift into another dawn.

Published in After Hours Journal, Winter 2017

At The Museum of Contemporary Art

Seeking quietude on a foggy day,
I visit the Museum to drift and dream,
with watercolors, collages, montages, and tapestries.
I happen upon worn scraps of metal, wire,
bits of broken glass, and splintered plastic.
Perhaps they are castaways culled from a hidden dumpster
in a deserted Chicago alley.

I visualize a sculptor in his cramped studio with a large window.
Under skies donning infinite grayness,
he watches languishing birds in autumn’s breath.
Brittle poplar branches wave in whispering wind.
His eye glimpses fluttering scarlet and gold.
Inspired hands bend, chip, and polish refuse into delicate,
shining pieces, with soothing shades.

With agile fingers, his drab finds, a reflection of our gritty lives,
become graceful art, as if by metamorphosis.
He realizes sculptures of oddly-shaped people
and animals, almost unidentifiable,
yet bearing equilibrium and harmony.
In solitude, he finds lyricism
in trifles surrounding him.

This poem was awarded First Place in Poets & Patrons 54th Annual Chicagoland Poetry Contest, 2010. Category: “The City of Chicago.”

Later, it was a Pushcart Prize Nominee.