Alumnae Poets
Sarah Collins Honenberger '74
Sarah Collins Honenberger ’74, an award-winning novelist, finds inspiration in ordinary people who overcome extraordinary challenges. Her third novel, CATCHER, CAUGHT is a Pen Faulkner Foundation selection for its Writers in Schools program, a 21st century re-telling of JD Salinger’s THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. Poetry and short stories are her reward for long days of creating and editing the novels.
Select Poems
(inspired by the oil painting ‘Repose’ by Dominic Avant)
Let her go if she wants.
The sun, the shadows are her continent.
Unbroken skin and black as uncut jade,
she waits, but will not beg
for what was hers once and will again
be hers alone. You must not bind those hands,
fine-boned, unbloodied, and so regal.
Nefertiti called her out and yet
she did not bend, only let the moon drift on
without her. Unspoken dreams and
time like the lost pharaohs
braid up the fairest and bury them deep.
You cannot cure that destruction, only
raise the cry, sound the horn,
order your cities to bow down and
she will again
be queen.