Painting the Cat’s Vision

The poems in Painting the Cat’s Vision, by Alice Elizabeth Rogoff, cover a lot of territory in time and space—from 1930’s San Francisco to present-day Hungary and Ireland. They also cover a wide range of contemporary and historical social and political issues—from the fight for autonomy in Northern Ireland to the working conditions of women in the garment industry, from the bombing of Hiroshima to the plight of current immigrants in the U.S.A. What makes these poems special is the search for fresh perspectives—‘I try for the spirals of the / Eye, the teetering, the / Search for balance’—and they give us new views of the world we share. Alice Elizabeth Rogoff ‘s poetry book Mural won a Blue Light Book Award in 2004. Another poetry book, Barge Wood, was published by CC.Marimbo in 2012.  She has been published in the anthologies River of Earth and Sky (Blue Light Press), It’s All Good and Your Golden Sun Still Shines (Manic D Press), Walking Through a River of Fire: One Hundred Years of Triangle Fire Factory Poems, and Poets 11. Her poetry has been published in many literary magazines including Borderlands and Gyst. She received a Cultural Equity grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission for a poetry project about San Francisco women labor organizers. Her short stories are on the online magazines Caveat Lector and So To Speak. In 2018, she was a finalist in the Dora and Alexander Raynes Poetry Competition by Jewish Currents. Originally from New York State, she has been living in San Francisco since 1971. She has a degree in Anthropology from Grinnell College, MAs in English: Concentration Creative Writing and Drama from San Francisco State University, and a Certificate in Labor Studies from City College, San Francisco. She is a Co-editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Alice reads her poetry at Bird and Beckett Bookstore, and in the San Francisco Public Library.