If CME is Continuing Medical Education, and CLE is Continuing Legal Education, then CSE is…

…NOT Continuing Sex Education, as you may have extrapolated. CSE is Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow, possibly the heiress to the mantle of Dorothy Parker, but more likely first of her by-her-bootstraps kind. The poetry of hers that I have read is quasi-conversational, but you’ll catch your metaphorical toe on a phrase and find it sprawls you elsewhere…

An alternate title to this post might be “Well, She Asked For It…” The image/poem came to be when Cynthia challenged me on Facebook to triple-acrosticize her name. An early draft of this page was produced and Facebook-posted within an hour of my reading Cynthia’s challenge, which just goes to show what a liberating force severe limitations can be. Had she challenged me to “write a poem in less than an hour” I’m not at all sure I could have done it. (“It takes a fillip in the flanks for my mare to dance,” Rex Stout once had Nero Wolfe say…)

Anyway, I’m glad to know Cynthia, who is vivacious and witchily wise. She’s also won a boatload of awards for her poetry and has been published in more different poetry journals than I’ve ever read. She’s findable all over the Internet, and poetry lovers could do worse than to look for her…