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

 

Jamali Kamali

“Jamali Kamali explores the name that dare not speak its love.”

      — Time Out Delhi

BEAR

“Karen Chase’s poems are buoyed by lightness and vitality,
a joy in physical pleasures, and an inimitable sense of humor.”

–Harvard Review

Kazimierz Square

“Lyric and eros armed with a tattered shield of humor –
Karen Chase is present in her life and our times.”

–Andrei Codrescu