A TRIBUTE TO MAUREEN SEATON F O R E WA R D BY N I C O L E TA L L M A N
“All along, I’ve meant to hold music in my hand and give it to you.” — Maureen Seaton Maureen Seaton, an award-winning poet, professor, and LGBTQ+ activist, passed away on August 26th. The author of more than two dozen solo and collaborative books, Maureen was as prolific as she was generous, supportive, and kind. Maureen was a dear friend, and I had the pleasure of collaborating with her on several poems as well as editing her final solo book, The Sky Is an Elephant (ELJ Editions, July 2023). As I mourn her passing, I find myself turning to her books for solace, and in re-reading her expansive body of work — spanning more than three decades — I am struck by the sheer volume of music present in her poems. In an interview for The Massachusetts Review published in February of this year, Edward Clifford asked Maureen if she could work in another art form, besides poetry, which form she would choose. Maureen replied that she would be a music composer. Maureen also told Lambda Literary in 2016, “I’d be dead without music. It’s how I write everything.” And she told Gregg Shapiro in a 2012 Wisconsin Gazette interview, “I would rather die of music than anything else, and when the time comes, I know that whatever comes next is made of music.” In the spirit of paying tribute to Maureen’s passion for music and her own musicality, I have assembled a collection of some of her most musical poems — whether thematically, sonically, or both. These poems are published here with the permission of Maureen’s lovely daughters, Emily Blank and Jennifer Steele, and we invite you to celebrate and enjoy the music of Maureen’s words along with us.
P OEMS PAGES 199-213
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