Dorianne Laux was born in Augusta, Maine, in 1952. She worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, a maid, and a donut holer before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988. Laux is the author of Facts About the Moon (W. W. Norton 2005), which was the recipient of the Oregon Book Award, chosen by Ai, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other collections include Smoke (BOA Editions, 2000); What We Carry (1994), finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Awake (1990), which was nominated for the San Francisco Bay Area Book Critics Award for Poetry. Superman: The Chapbook was released by Red Dragonfly Press in January, 2008. With Kim Addonizio, she is the co-author of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997). Her poems have been translated into French, Italian, Korean, Romanian and Brazilian Portuguese. Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, an Editor’s Choice III Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Laux has taught at the University of Oregon’s Program in Creative Writing. She now lives, with her husband, poet Joseph Millar, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she serves among the faculty at North Carolina State University’s MFA Program.
Dorianne Laux [Photo by Tristem Laux]
MOON IN THE WINDOW
I wish I could say I was the kind of child
who watched the moon from her window,
would turn toward it and wonder.
I never wondered. I read. Dark signs
that crawled toward the edge of the page.
It took me years to grow a heart
from paper and glue. All I had
was a flashlight, bright as the moon,
a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.
© 2006 by Dorianne Laux
All rights reserved
Included in the Crisis Chronicles Library by permission of Dorianne Laux
We gratefully acknowledge W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
publishers of Facts about the Moon: Poems, where “Moon in the Window” appears
Here’s a biographical excerpt borrowed from the author’s Academy of American Poets page:
Please check out these fine volumes of poetry and prose by Dorianne Laux:
Moon in the Window (by Dorianne Laux)
10 Saturday Jan 2009
Posted in 2000s, American, Laux (Dorianne), Writing
Crisis Chronicles Cyber Litmag (2008-2015) 
LIke It!!!
My parents used to insist I go to bed early ao I also took a flashlight and read my Nancy Drew mystery novels under the covers. It’s no wonder I didn’t go blind. This poem brought back those memories of my childhood. This is a great poem. And by the way the full moon tonight is going to be the largest of 2009 since it is nearest the earth in orbit. I suppose though it will still be snowing so we won’t be able to see it.