Marion Deutsche Cohen is the author of 26 collections of poetry or memoir, including two memoirs about spousal chronic illness, and including “Crossing the Equal Sign”, about the experience of mathematics. She teaches math and writing at Arcadia University in Glenside PA (USA), where she has developed the course, Mathematics in Literature. A chapbook of poetry, “Truth and Beauty”, about the interaction in that course among students and teacher, was released in December 2016 from WordTech Editions. She is currently working on a poetry collection about her experience with extreme back pain, diagnosis (nerve/disc thing), and treatment (steroid injection plus P.T.). Other interests are classical piano, singing, Scrabble, thrift-shopping, four grown children, and five grands. And Kitty in this book was my co-coordinator of Center City Home-schoolers, and a good friend.
THE ANTI-ANTI-COLORING BOOK
For a long time Devin preferred coloring books to The Anti-Coloring Book. Adults are used to coloring books so they’re not creative to adults. But to a kid who’s never seen a coloring book… well, the very idea of them. Like my x’s and y’s in algebra. Like Kitty’s clashing prints coming together in a seam of one of her quilts. Or like oaktag paper, their very special type of pastel-ness, independent of what gets done with it. So the impression, the surreal impression, of a scene without color, only outlines, yes, we could go one step lower than just-plain coloring in a coloring book, we could merely look at the coloring book and not color at all.