We were contacted this morning by Charles Lock informing us that Anne Blonstein had died on April 19th. It was conveyed to us in the following manner, that Anne would be very pleased to know her chapbook that those lips had language was going to be in the Beinecke. He then told me that she had died of cancer. Here's a brief obit and her current Wikipedia page link. The page does not yet mention her death:
Anne Blonstein
Anne , poet, died (cancer) in the Ita Wegman Clinic, Arlesheim, Switzerland, on 19 April 2011. Born on 22 April 1958, she had lived since 1983 in Basel; she leaves a brother, Steven. A celebratory reading will be held in Basel later this year.
Anne Blonstein
I had the pleasure of reading the mss. "that those lips had language" during our 2004 poetry chapbook contest and while I didn't believe it would win, I decided to keep the copy aside and return to it later. Which I did the following year when it published it, our first European poet, with much "across the pond" issues and problems mostly centered around Anne's insistence at using as her cover image a piece of art by Aloise Corbaz. It was also our first chapbook to have 4 prices in 4 different currencies listed on the back.
Anne and I had kept in touch even as her publishing fortunes improved and Plan B continued to add new poets and titles. Until illness forced her focus on sheer survival and I, not the worse for my ignorance, kept including her in our email blasts about new books and readings.
She's left us with a body of work, which for a writer is what needs to be left. The work. A clean body of that when the physical one betrays us.
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