Joan Peronto
Joan is a resident of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where she worked as a reference librarian for 34 years. Her poetry has appeared in Crossing Paths, an anthology of Western New England poets, The Rockford Review, The Berkshire Review and Hummingbird. Her children’s poems have appeared in Spider and Ladybug.
Joan grew up in central Illinois. She and her husband graduated from the University of Wisconsin and made their home in Massachusetts, where they raised seven children.
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We are not sure whether Joan Peronto even knows about this, as her son entered her poem in the contest, but she will soon, when an enormous basket (of which we’ll share pictures next week,) arrives at her doorstep in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
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Thank you, every single one of you, for sharing your poetry with us. We were honored and grateful for the occasion.
Now, without further ado, here is the winner of Portrait of a Bookstore’s Poetry Contest, 2010:
The widow in the Cape
Your poem touched and quieted us. Its sense of place and tone, its gentleness, its wisdom, the aching heart of it– thank you.
