Google.comSandy Longhorn was the kind of friend that girls went to in college when they broke up with their boyfriends-not to cry on her shoulder, but to have her write mean poems about their exes.
Longhorn gave a reading in Reeves Theater Thursday, Nov. 16th. Dr. Donald Morrill welcomed everyone to the “intimate evening” and introduced Longhorn, telling the audience of 18 not to discount her book, Blood Almanac, merely because it is her first. He said, “‘First book’ usually has a negative connotation-[one that is] demeaning, erroneous, and frankly, vulgar.”
Blood Almanac came out in June 2005 and won the Anhinga Press Prize in October 2005. She said the book was written in three sections. The first was about the poet related to the land, the midsection about the poet and self and the last section about the poet related to others.
Longhorn’s chestnut-colored hair matches the frames of her glasses. She recited a poem she wrote in sixth grade about when she first got glasses and the joy of being able to see. She said, “The need to express myself on paper came to me very early.”
The first section, the poet related to land, refers specifically to the Midwest, where she grew up. She read “Notes From the Cabin on Shiloh Mountain,” a poem about picking up glacier rocks out of cornfields. She said, “Where we come from follows us and informs what we do.”
Longhorn grew up in the city of Waterloo, Iowa, but she spent many summers at her grandparents’ farm, which inspired the poem, “Labor Day on the Bramer Blacktop.” Her book contains many poems about the landscape of the Midwest. She said, “Landscape is really my thing-I always go back to the land.”
The middle section of her book contains 12 self-portraits, titled by the months.
She read several, including “May,” about her fear of drowning. In the poem, she writes, “When I was two I longed to live in water, / threw my body three times into the pool / and let it sink, my mouth open like a goldfish