Lucille Lang Day’s early life might have destined her to lifelong poverty and frustration. Wild One that she was: the circumstances of her early life are described with relentless candor in her 2000 book of that name. Married in Reno and pregnant at age 14, she dropped out of school, worked crap jobs, divorced and remarried then divorced again. She was the “phone girl” at Chicken Delight on MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland, where she took orders and stapled lids to paper plates for take-out meals, not trusted with anything as responsible as handling the food or making change. She went on welfare and returned to school with her mother’s help in rearing her two daughters. Any of these events might have triggered a lifetime of dependency and depression.
I danced on the slanted cellar roof
to make it rattle, and when Uncle Dick
yelled, “Stop!” I climbed the fence and ran
toward the creek, cutting through backyards
and hiding between houses. “Geronimo!”
he called, following with long strides,
“Come back!” I slid down the bank, grabbing
at twigs and horsetails, and crossed quickly,
balancing on stones. One foot on the trunk
of my favorite oak, I pulled myself up
into scaly branches, as Uncle Dick,
hands on hips, approached the creek.
“That child’s a wild one,” he said,
shaking his head. . . .
Yet , something stirred within: Day knew she was a writer. Not that she would one day be a writer, but that she was one. “I had no notion of going to school to become a writer.” Such inner knowing at a young age is often evidence of burning passion and is all too frequently absent in young writers accepted into creative writing programs before they have had the chance to expand their life experiences.
Resolve, resilience, and passion are qualities of “survivors,“ which Day surely is, although this is not how she presents herself. 
In a vague way, she reminds me of one of Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Depression-era women, migrant farmworkers whose fragile appearance belies an underlying strength. In Day, the strength has been nurtured by an inner stream of self-confidence about what her life might hold. Slender yet not quite tall enough to be willowy, she gives off the quality of a deeply rooted tree.
For 17 years, Day has directed a notable health and science education museum. In 1999, she founded Scarlet Tanager Books. She has had several books of poetry published, as well as essays and short stories. A veritable model of success, she is both artist and scientist, as well as a mother, grandmother, and wife.
I first heard Day perform about 10 years ago; she seemed to be one of a new breed of performance-oriented poets who “enacted” or danced to memorized lines. When female poets do it, the surplus of yin energy often emphasizes sensuality and rhythm: it’s not my cup of tea. However, Day did it well and I respected the talent that went into her work. Not until I recently sat down with three of her eight books (five full-length books and three chapbooks) did my deeper appreciation grow for the range and sophistication of her work.
Infinities, published in 2002, introduces you to the science-lover she is. Day holds a Ph.D. in science and mathematics education from U.C. Berkeley, as well as an M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University. She had to drop out of junior high school and didn’t complete her high school diploma until she was past 17. A biography of Madame Curie inspired her to study the sciences, and to this day, she is the Director of the Hall of Health Museum in downtown Berkeley where children and adults can handle models of the human brain and find out where the thigh bone connects to the hip socket.
With scholarships and grants--and with her mother’s help in caring for her daughters--Day earned her doctorate, though never losing sight of herself as a poet. Infinities as well as her most recent book, The Curvature of Blue, are explosions of a poet’s delight in the languages of physics, cosmogony, astronomy, and natural history.
Set theory says there is
an infinite number
of infinities of different sizes,
but as each leaf curls
and one by one
the petals let go,
I wonder if omega might equal one
and the stars might slow
and dim like fireflies.
No! Let the universe
shrink to a pinhead,
then explode in flames
where possibilities bloom
endlessly again
among blue-striped roses
in new time and space.
In The Curvature of Blue, Day continues to explore the segues between science and art, expanding on interests in social justice, history, nature, and spirituality. She describes using a collage technique in this book in order to incorporate “found” language from science journals, newspapers, the Bible and other literature, then mixed with imagery from nature and day-to-day life. “I wanted to explore the arc of personal moments more intuitively than logically,” she says.
The moment must be held like an emerald
because the fabric of space is woven in four dimensions
because a huntsman shoots an arrow into Krishna's heel
because a planet travels the straightest path
through the mountains and canyons of space-time
the way the mind circles an idea
because the heart traverses the curvature of blue
When Day launched Scarlet Tanager, she hoped to fill the need for small presses that publish poetry; to date, she has published 12 books, 10 of them poetry. She has been a one-woman-band, finding authors, working with them to edit their books, coordinating with typographers and printers, and handling the promotion and distribution of the books she has selected.
She is now taking a respite from her production schedule, no longer taking manuscripts, in order to turn her attention to her own work and to spending time with her daughters and grandchildren. At one point, she considered turning Scarlet Tanager into a self-supporting non-profit, but even with that status, the work of keeping a small publication company going is exhausting. She feels somewhat guilty that she hasn’t been able to put as much energy into the last books she has published. “I believe strongly in the work: Luck by Marc Hofstadter, and The Number Before Infinity by Zack Rogow.” It is impossible to begrudge Day a break from wearing her publisher's hat; as prolifiic and all-encompassing as she is, she will likely be back, either with another book of her own, a new and interesting project, or something she hasn't even imagined yet.
Books by Lucille Lang Day
The Curvature of Blue (2009)
Infinities (2002)
Wild One (2000)
Fire in the Garden (1997)
Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope (1982), winner of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for poetry as selected by Robert Pinsky, David Littlejohn, and Michael Rubin
Chain Letter (a children’s book, published in 2005)
Chapbooks
God of the Jellyfish (2007)
The Book of Answers (2006)
Lucille Lang Day: Greatest Hits , 1975-2000 (2001)
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