The Origami Swan is a posthumous collection of mostly unpublished poetry by the prolific and beloved poet Dyane Fancey, collected, transcribed, and laboriously edited by the late poet's husband to preserve all their wit, erudition, sexuality, passionate sense of time and place, and consummate craft.Re-reading Dyane’s poetry since her death has brought a whole new appreciation of her achievement; these poems are wild, brilliantly crafted, and hot hot hot!
Originally from Washington, DC, back when, in Dyane’s words, it was still a sleepy Southern town, Dyane Fancey lived most of her life in Baltimore, MD, after a brief sojourn in San Francisco. She was a gifted student at the famed Maryland Institute College of Art and graduated with honors from Towson University, where she majored in English. She was loved and greatly admired by literally all the poets in the lively, often fractious Baltimore poetry scene, and equally loved by her fans and customers at a restaurant in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon area, called the Great American Melting Pot, Gampy’s for short. Perhaps some of the latter did not know she was a great poet, but all knew and knew well that she was a great wait-person! Thanks to her wide range of acquaintances, Dyane made a huge success of a poetry reading series that ran at the Angel Tavern in Fells Point every Sunday evening for three full years and ended only when the Angel Tavern was sold. Her marriage to classical radio personality and film scholar, Reed Hessler, was long and loving and hot, and it brought great joy to them both.. He has preserved her memory and her poetry magnificently and has celebrated Dyane’s life by bringing to light many previously unpublished poems. Dyane never stopped writing.
"There is great art in concealing the art. Dyane knew this. It as the light by which she wrote. Her plain-spoken elegance inspires admiration, and—dare I set this down?—envy. There are only two kinds of poems: the ones you wish you’d written, and the ones you are grateful that you did not. There are no small number of Dyane’s poems I wish I could lay claim to. What finer, truer thing can one poet say of another?"--Bruce Sager, author of THE PUMPING STATION and many other collections.
