Jo Pitkin earned a BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Kirkland College and an MFA in Poetry from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She is the author of The Measure (Finishing Line Press), Cradle of the American Circus: Poems from Somers, New York (The History Press), and Commonplace Invasions (Salmon Poetry) and editor of Lost Orchard: Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community (State University of New York Press). Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including The New York Review of Books, Little Star, Quarterly West, Salamander, Southern Humanities Review, Terrain, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod International Journal, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry, and Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace. After working as an editor at Houghton Mifflin Company, Jo pursued a career as a freelance writer for educational publishers throughout the United States. She lives and works in New York's Hudson River Valley at the river's narrowest and deepest point.

Books by Jo Pitkin:

Other poems on the web by Jo Pitkin:
Two poems

About Rendering:

"Jo Pitkin's Rendering is the story of a love affair, told through poems that are in love with language. Compulsively readable, Pitkin explores a relationship— and a self—born of 'want, water, grit, salt, luck.' In these poems the exterior and interior landscape is equally lush, equally wild and crafted, such that the title poem's depiction of a painter at work describes this entire collection: 'Spark. Flame. The drum of avid concentration.' "
—Suzanne Cleary

"Of course, a poet leans first toward the most heart-rending, rawly skinning connotation of 'rendering': a delivery, a surrender. Something important is yielded, even to the melting point. Sometimes the 'destination,' as in the title poem, comes as a complete shock. A self has shifted when we weren't looking. Unsheltered and unnumbed. The path through passion, for instance, can be marked by 'a chipped, mismatched cup'; once you're there, 'Hot, dark grief comes down the throat.' In each of Jo Pitkin's poems, what isn't seen at first insists on coming through with willing clarity."
—Sandra McPherson