Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue

There "are stories to be concocted..." Zelke Windau tells us. And the stories, concocted from memories and echoes, unfold here as sweetly as a scoop of Neapolitan ice cream. With glints of humor and all the perspective the decades deliver, the poet captures a Chicago childhood that feels almost archetypal, complete with Studebakers, hollyhocks and a rainbow-layered gelatin salad, studded with fruit.

Sarah Sadie, author of We Are Traveling Through Dark at Tremendous Speeds (LitFest Press 2016)

Revisit Marilyn Zelke Windau's 1950's childhood memories, growing up in the Chicago, through the delightful and poignant poems in Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue. Travel back to the Chicago Public Library, nut cups, piano lessons, Magic 8 Balls, alleys, hollyhock dolls and the air raid drills at Mayfair School. You'll enjoy the trip.

Bruce Dethlefsen (Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2011-2012)

Any Midwesterner who grew up in the mid-20th century will find themselves in the lines of Marilyn Zelke Windau's poems in Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue. From summer camp to hordes of neighborhood kids playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, her images-the sights, sounds, smells, even the scritch-scratchy textures of her Wilson Avenue neighborhood-evoke a feeling of nostalgia so truthful that I found my own life revealed.

Dawn Hogue, author of A Hollow Bone