Bio
Behind the Poet
Doralee Brooks, professor emerita at the Community College of Allegheny County in Developmental Studies, is a Madwoman in the Attic instructor for Carlow University. She is a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project (95) and Cave Canem (97 and 99). She holds an MEd from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Carlow University. Her poems have appeared in Voices from the Attic, Paterson Literary Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and Dos Passos Review among others. Doralee’s chapbook, When I Hold You Up to the Light, won the 2019 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest published by Main Street Rag. She is City of Asylum’s Poet Laureate of Allegheny County 2022-2024.
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The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain: Pittsburgh Poems
The weather is always a safe topic for small talk in Pittsburgh because as the saying goes, if you don’t like it now, just wait a few minutes, it will change.
As a child, I remember watching the Gulf Tower beacon from our North Side yard as if it were a weather oracle, a kind of magic. We Pittsburghers enjoy making jokes and groaning about the few days of sunshine we get, and we’re proud, I think, of the way that we withstand the rather dark and overcast skies. Maybe it’s good for raising artists and poets. No one can deny the abundance of homegrown literary and musical talent the city has produced: Gertrude Stein, Jack Gilbert, Gerald Stern, Ed Roberson, Lucie Brock-Broido, Judith Volmer, Jan Beatty, Joseph Bathanti, and Samuel Hazo if we name only some of the Pittsburgh-born poets.
There must be something evocative about dark weather that nurtures the imagination. Think of all of the songs and poetry collections celebrating it. I often think of Patricia Spears Jones, The Weather That Kills, or Cornelius Eady’s Hardheaded Weather. In my youth, the fusion jazz group, Weather Report, was one of my favorites.
