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New Issue of Moss Piglet Has My Poem “On Using My Mother’s College Textbook”

My poem “On Using My Mother’s College Textbook” appears in the current issue of Moss Piglet on the theme of Junk (August 2025) on page 31. The editor is John Bloner, Jr., and this journal is based in Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The literary journal Anima first published this poem in volume 7, issue 1 (Fall 1980) on page 18. Subsequently, “On Using My Mother’s College Textbook” was reprinted in my poetry book Folk Concert: Changing Times (Cochran GA: Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) on page 23.

Both my mother and I were English majors, and I used her old textbooks to study for my preliminary examinations at the University of Chicago.

#poetry #family #lyricpoetry

Janet Ruth Heller reading her poetry at the Kalamazoo Public Library; photo by Hedy Habra

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Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).