When Word and Image Run Away: The Selected Poems of Mary Blinn

As is our tradition, After Hours magazine held a contributors' reading in August of 2015, celebrating the release of Summer Issue #31. Quraysh Ali Lansana was the featured writer in that issue, and was also the featured reader at the event. This contributors' reading, however, was a little different, because it also celebrated the poetry of After Hours regular contributor, featured writer (Issue #17), and friend Mary Blinn. Mary's sudden death just two months before had greatly saddened the Chicago poetry community. That afternoon, several After Hours readers began their sets with one or two of Mary's poems. They brought to life Mary's voice, her poetic music, and her words. Quraysh (a poet, writer, teacher, editor, and one of After Hours' most distinguished featured writers) was immediately taken with Mary's poetry and made the strong suggestion that a collection of her poetry needed to exist, to make sure such a wonderful Chicago poetic voice would continue to be heard and read. Thus began the spark that drove the creation of the book you hold in your hands. Through the careful cataloging of Mary's files, her husband Robert Blinn made the bulk of her work available to the editors. The result, When Word and Image Run Away, is a selection of Mary Blinn's finest poems, many of which were published in the pages of After Hours. Some of the illustrations, also by Mary, had appeared previously in After Hours as well.