Penny Cagan

Penny Cagan was born in Trenton, New Jersey. She earned a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from New York University, and a Master of Library Science degree from Rutger's University. Her undergraduate education was completed at the University of Rochester, and she spent her junior year abroad at the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including What's Become of Eden: Poems of the Family (Slapering Hol Press, 1994), Calyx, Earth's Daughters, The California State Poetry Quarterly, and The Jewish Spectator. She is employed in New York City as a Research Analyst.

And Today I Am Happy (ISBN 0-9661452-2-4) is Penny Cagan's first full-length book, released by Chatoyant October 30, 2000. This book collects work which has been published in leading literary journals and anthologized. You may place orders for And Today I Am Happy on the Chatoyant website.

City Poems (ISBN 0-9661452-0-8), Penny Cagan's first book, was published by Chatoyant. Illustrated by collage artist Daniella Woolf and with industrial-strength binding designed by sculptor Steven Z. Alicandri, City Poems is a collectible book for poetry and art lovers alike. You can see a small image of the artwork below. To see the full artwork, please visit Chatoyant by pressing on the artwork. City Poems is regrettably out of print.

Maus

For Art Spiegalman

I return each day to the Museum of Modern Art
on my lunch hour and read the walls.
My fingers trace the maps of Auschwitz
and Birkenau, counting in units of one thousand
how many Jews were stuffed into barracks,
and hauled into ovens.
I bend my head before the black and white
cartoon frames that curve around the room,
and the walls become my Wailing Wall.
I pray for poor Mandelbaum
who must hold his oversized pants
with one hand, and a shoe
that is too small for his foot
and a spoon for his supper
in the other. I pray for dear Artie
as he leans on his drawing board,
with the bodies of crumpled Jewish
mice at his feet, and the shadows
of Nazi cats posed outside his window.
I pray for Vladek Spiegelman
with his face full and flush like my father's,
as he stares from his souvenir photo
in a clean camp uniform.
And I pray for his wife Anja
who gives her hard bread away
and starves herself smaller and smaller,
who drags colossal cans of soup
across the dust of Birkenau,
who kills herself years later
after she has survived the war.
Each day after visiting the walls
I walk back to my office.
I walk past the toy soldiers that rise
above the Avenue like Hasidic
men on guard with scraggly black
beards that are yanked by the wind,
and past the Salvation Army Santas
who stand all day in the cold city air
slapping bells across their bellies.

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