Polio Boulevard
In the early ’50s, during the polio epidemic, I worked
as a physical therapist. I saw firsthand the crushing
suffering children and their families endured.
I also saw their bravery and love for each other.
Karen’s memoir is a truly remarkable piece of history.
— Olympia Dukakis
Polio and poetry would seem to be near-opposites.
Yet in Karen Chase’s compelling memoir of a terrifying disease she and so many others contracted in childhood,
we watch polio’s unwelcome transformations to be matched and outdone by the twists and turns of a poet’s mind.
Bravely and with surprising humor, Chase has turned the unlikely, the unlucky, even the tragic into beauty.
— Mary Jo Salter
BEAR
“Karen Chase’s poems are buoyed by lightness and vitality,
a joy in physical pleasures, and an inimitable sense of humor.”
–Harvard Review
Land of Stone
“A poignantly eloquent narrative”
— Harold Bloom
Kazimierz Square
“Lyric and eros armed with a tattered shield of humor –
Karen Chase is present in her life and our times.”
–Andrei Codrescu