Alinea

In Latin, 'alinea' means to begin anew - a paragraph, a line, a thought. In this body of poems, a woman must begin anew after much loss. She sits. She remembers. She ruminates on words and names. In all things, she sings, and her Alinea is an intimate melody. Betsy Mars is a poet and educator who was born in Connecticut and moved several times before settling in the LA area. She spent two formative years in Brazil where she attended kindergarten, retaining the Portuguese words for cat, dog, and come here. Her father was a professor and her mother was a social worker, and together they gave her an early appreciation for language and social justice, as well as an overly developed tendency toward introspection. She has a bachelor's and master's degree from USC which she puts to no obvious use. A mother, avid traveler, and animal lover, her work has recently appeared in The Rise Up Review, Writing in A Woman's Voice, and The Ekphrastic Review, as well as in a number of anthologies, and the California Quarterly.