Elaine Terranova

Elaine Terranova Poems

Elaine Terranova Biography

Elaine Terranova (b. 1939 Philadelphia) is an American poet. She grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of Nathan and Sadie Goldstein. She remained in her home town gaining her education at Temple University where she graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor's degree in English. She also married her first husband Philip Terranova that same year. Twelve years later in 1973, she worked as a manuscript editor for J. B. Lippincott & Co. While working there, she attended Vermont's Goddard College culminating in earning her Master’s degree in 1977. Her career shifted from editing to education and she began teaching English and creative writing at her Alma Mater Temple University until 1987, when she began teaching as a reading and writing specialist at the Community College of Philadelphia. She developed a passion for writing poetry and began publishing her works while continuing to teach. Her poems have appeared in various publications including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares. Elaine has led workshops at the 1991 Rutgers University Writers Conference, and the 1992 Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institution. In 1996, she was appointed the Margaret Banister writer-in-residence at Sweet Briar College. In 2001, “The Choice,” a selection from Damages (Copper Canyon Press, 1996), appeared throughout Philadelphia as a part of the Poetry Society’s Poetry in Motion (arts program). “The River Bathers,” from Damages, was featured on illustrated posters by the Public Poetry Project. On November 8, 2012, University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House inaugurated the Eva and Leo Sussman Poetry Program with poetry readings by featured guest writers and instructors, Elaine Terranova, Nathalie Anderson, and Joan Hutton Landis. Here, Elaine reads from her 2012 book, Dames Rocket. She lives in Philadelphia.)

The Best Poem Of Elaine Terranova

Rush Hour

Odd, the baby's scabbed face peeking over
the woman's shoulder. The little girl
at her side with her arm in a cast,
wearin a plain taffeta party dress.

The little girl has not once moved
to touch her or to be touched.
Even on the train, she never turns ans says,
'Mommy.' Sunlight bobs over her blond head
inclining toward the window. The baby
is excited now. 'Loo, loo, loo, loo,'
he calls, a wet cresendo. 'He's pulling
my hair,' the little girl at last cries out.

A kind man comes up the aisle to see
the baby. He stares at those rosettes of blood
and wants to know what's wrong with him.
The woman says a dog bit him. 'It must have been
a big dog, then.' 'Oh, no. A neighbor's little dog.'
The man say's, 'I hope they put that dog to sleep.'
The woman is nearly pleading. 'It was an accident. He didn't
mean to do it.' The conductor, taking tickets,

ask the little girl how she broke her arm.
But the child looks out to the big, shaded houses.
The woman says, 'She doesn't like to talk
about that.' No one has see what is behind
her own dark glasses. She pulls the children to her.
Maybe she is thinking of the arm raised over them,
Its motion would begin like a blessing.
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