Katherine Fishburn writes: "In one way or another I have always been a poet-in the way I see the world and in the way I write about it. From both my parents I learned early the habit of words. I learned to look up their meaning, follow the path of their usage, revel in their sound and construction. The unabridged dictionary has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. One might even say it elevated my thoughts. For, not only did my family consult it regularly, we also used it as a booster chair to help young children reach their dinner.

From both my parents, but most particularly my father, I learned the art of seeing nature-comets in their orbits, spiders at their webs, beetles in their astounding numbers (weighing in at a quarter million species), birds in residence and in migration. Nothing was too small or insignificant to examine for hours on end. Everything must be accounted for, identified, researched, and understood. Only then could I say that I had truly seen an assassin bug, a garter snake, a snapping turtle.

From my mother, herself an English teacher, I learned to hear the poets sing and note their patterns. Be they from Chaucer, Shakespeare or Tennyson, the poets' words thundered and echoed throughout my childhood and in conjunction with my father's scientific training helped to shape my relationship with the world-be it the relationship I have had with canines, amphibians, arthropods, or humans.

The Dead Are So Disappointing is my first collection of poetry. "

"The Dead Are So Disappointing is a daughter's unflinching meditation on the days immediately preceding and following her father's death-and an interrogation into the lasting impact his life has had on her own. This collection stands revealed as an integral part of a long-delayed mourning process as the daughter struggles to reconcile the competing emotions of anger and grief, betrayal and loyalty, that surfaced after her father's death. ... Katherine Fishburn's first collection of poems is truly moving. As she probes 'the grief of time,' she rehearses the complexities of life in families, with families and without them, easily taking us with her into the private tangles of contemporary relationships." - Linda Wagner- Martin Hanes Professor of English UNC, Chapel Hill

For more information on Katherine Fishburn, please go to:
http://www.cal.msu.edu/english/courses-faculty/