"Investigations:" Nancy Drew under Kathi Aguero's pen

If you visit my study, you will notice one shelf with some 25 books by the same author. They're not my original copies because, of course, in a fit of "every girl should read these," I gave mine away to a younger girl when I was seventeen. Who was so deserving of my Nancy Drew collection? The daughter of my first editor at the Pottstown Mercury, Bob Boyle, who teased me mercilessly about everything from the length of my skirt to my poor spelling...and who taught me how to write on deadline. Thanks, Bob. (Wish you were still here to read my blog.)

 

But I never forgot Nancy, nor has anyone else of my generation, including the supremely talented Kathleen Aguero (Kathi to the rest of us), whom I first heard read her poetry at Solstice Summer Writers Conference, where she is one of the founding faculty (and a faculty member at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Mass).

So it is a great moment in Nancy's history that Kathi has published Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth, a chapbook (literary-ese for a small collection of poetry) about Ms. Nancy. Lee Hope and Bill Betcher hosted an evening for Solstice and for Kathi's book launch on Thurs evening. I was happy to be there and to catch up with friends from the program, which I attended in its first year, 2005. And I'm even happier to report that I'll be teaching there this coming summer on, guess what, blogging! More to come on this. Meanwhile, congrats, Kathi!

And in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (click there and you give a free mammogram to someone in need), Kathi's poem from this collection, inspired by Nancy.

Mammogram

The clue, a small lump
she finds sleuthing
in her own breast. She takes
this evidence to her doctor
who orders the mammogram
designed to squeeze truth
from the densest tissue.

Dressed in a regulation blue gown
whose ties won't stay closed,
Nancy waits for the verdict
as she thumbs through
Good Housekeeping, a subject
not exactly in her line of work.

One woman after another,
each a potential crime scene,
is summoned by the radiologist,
let go for possessing
a cooperative breast
or called in for a closer look.

Nancy's in luck: just a cyst,
the doctors says. But keep checking.
Trouble can crop up at any moment.
Nancy knows it's so. Still, she's been trained
danger comes from strangers
she can always outsmart.
She's felt baffled before,
but what is this drop in her gut
like an elevator going down?

Her own pale breast
withholds its secrets.