After her husband died, Molly Peacock decided solitude would be her next husband. Trudy and Lisa continue their conversation with Molly about her new book of poems, The Widow’s Crayon Box. They discuss the growth and freedom that can come with grief, finding pleasure in solitude and coming into one’s cronage.

The Widow’s Crayon Box is published by WW Norton and is available wherever you buy books.

Molly has received awards from the Danforth Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She is a president emerita of the Poetry Society of America and was one of the originators of Poetry in Motion, a popular program that places poems on placards in subways and buses.

Molly joins Cronecast from her home in Toronto, Ontario.

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• (00:33) - Intro
• (00:59) - Moved and Touched
• (04:55) - Reading of “Tinker Bell”
• (10:40) - Love Story
• (13:40) - Caregiving
• (16:53) - Joy of Solitude
• (23:47) - Entering Our Cronage
• (27:34) - Stages of a Widow’s Life
• (32:34) - Reading of “Honey Crisp”

--From This Episode--

-Poetry-

The Widow’s Crayon Box (W. W. Norton, 2024)

The Analyst (W. W. Norton, 2017)

The Second Blush: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2008)

Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2002)

Original Love (W. W. Norton, 1995)

Take Heart (Random House, 1989)

Raw Heaven (Random House, 1984)

And Live Apart (University of Missouri Press, 1980).

-Prose-

A Friend Sails in on a Poem: Essays on Friendship, Freedom and Poetic Form (Palimpsest Press, 2022)

Flower Diary: In Which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door (ECW Press, 2021)

Alphabetique, 26 Characteristic Fictions (McClelland & Stewart, 2014)

The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72 (Bloomsbury, 2011)

How to Read a Poem, and Start a Poetry Circle (Riverhead Books, 1999)

Paradise, Piece by Piece (Riverhead Books, 1998), a literary memoir

--Credits—

Hosted by Trudy Callaghan and Lisa Austin

Produced by Odvod Media

Audio Engineering by Steve Glen

Original music by Darrin Hagen