CYNTHIA MACDONALD

It´s so hard to believe Cynthia has been gone for 10 years. I knew her for 40 years and she had a great impact on my life. She was absolutely brilliant and such a force of nature. I miss her and send love to Timmie and Scott.

Cynthia, a long life, and an even longer time since
we met as fellow writing students at Sarah Lawrence College. You were a graduate student and I a mere undergraduate. It seems like so many writers /teachers in our senior writing seminar are gone: Jane Cooper, Grace Paley, and E.L. Doctorow.
In so many little ways you took me under your wing, and the span of that wing was a long one. The teacher and the lover of language was with you before you took on that role formally. A decade...

In reading the obituary in the NYTimes yesterday, I was amazed by Cynthia's multiple accomplishments and the number of careers at which she excelled. I had the fortune of meeting Cynthia many years ago through her daughter Jennifer whom I shared a house with for a wonderful summer in Santa Fe when Jennifer worked as a scene painter at the Santa Fe Opera & I interned at the Museum of International Folk Art. Cynthia visited Jennifer during that time & though I never saw Cynthia again, I was...

Cynthia was among the fiercest, most loving, most intelligent people I've known, and she was a remarkable teacher. She taught me perhaps the most important lesson I ever learned about poetry: that when you find a poem's roughness or weakness, rather than smooth it over or cut it out (as a workshop will often encourage you do to), GO THERE. Where a poem falters is as often as not the site of something important, perhaps its core. I will miss her wisdom and her presence in the world.

I met Cynthia in 1972 when our then husbands worked together at Shell in Houston. We both felt out of our element as New York transplants, but her extraordinary personality lighted the room. She soon published her first book of poetry, and her husband hosted a party at a local hotel, where the marquee congratulated Cynthia on her "Amputations." We frequently laughed about that later. Thank you, Cynthia, for bringing your creative genius and fascinating self to Houston. You are missed.

Cynthia was a great teacher: well-balanced between generous and honest in her assessments of a writer's work. She wrote poetry that bears re-reading: complex in form and theme, but human and committed.

I met Cynthia at the College of Wooster nearly 30 years ago, when she was giving a reading, Charged with picking her up at the airport, I felt nervous, but her feisty charm put me at ease. Her style was down to earth: gray pony tail, backpack. My condolences to her family and friends.

Cynthia was an amazing teacher and mentor. I will never forget everything that she did for me and all that she gave me. I loved her and will always love her.

Cynthia was my dissertation adviser and teacher, but reading the other messages here another memory suddenly came back to me: we went out to watch the fireworks one 4th of July together. It was such fun! Cynthia had many childlike qualities that made her fun -- as well as that fierceness & her rich intelligence.