We are known as the women who walk with lattes. Every Tuesday and Thursday for the past six years--since we retired from our jobs as professor (Robin) and radio producer (Judith)--we have started the morning with an hour-long walk that begins at one of our houses and takes us, first, to the closest coffee shop.

We've walked with umbrellas in rainstorms, savored the early cool of beastly summer days, and bundled up in long johns and face masks when the temperature stayed below zero. But, though the weather shifts with the seasons, our conversations circle the same themes. We talk about poetry, which is how we first came to know each other. We commiserate about rejection slips, celebrate acceptances, and discuss ideas for Robin's poems about the science of chaos and for student workshops that Judith leads. And we share news of our grown sons (we each have two), all them living elsewhere; depending on the day, we fret or brag--as only two mothers can. But mostly we've helped each other step over the threshold of retirement into the uncertainty of changing identities, the challenges of illness and new relationships, and the joys of creating new lives for ourselves.

This collection grew out of these walks that began with our retirements. Both of us were born during World War II, just ahead of the baby boom. Judith retired at age fifty-five; Robin at fifty-seven. Statisticians say we can expect to live another twenty to thirty years; at least another whole quarter of our lives. And we are far from unique. Nearly eighty million Americans will reach retirement age in the next ten years, and will face--as we have--the unnerving question, What next? One morning as we walked, cardboard cups in our mittened hands, it occurred to us: some of those people are poets! They must be writing about this! And many more are lovers of poetry. What if we collected poems about retirement--and beyond? What if we edited an anthology? Would it help us all discover how to live the rest of our lives?

Because we started out as relatively young retirees, we rejoice in the "up" side of the fourth quarter: time to do what we really want to do, whether it be traveling the world, learning to play the cello, or falling in love again. But as we read through hundreds of poems --and as we ourselves grew older, and one of us coped with a potentially fatal illness--we came to understand that in our retirement years, we all face losses as well as joys. As Doug Anderson notes in the first poem in this volume, "Death's a street away" walking parallel and at my pace. He gets a nod." But only a nod. We still have our lives to live!

People's experience of retirement follows a developmental arc that is reflected in the poems in this volume. First comes anticipation, as one imagines oneself older, joining the woman a decade ahead, as Lucille Clifton anticipates in her poem "climbing"; the "old guys" that haunt Wesley McNair; the midday shoppers in the hardware store of Robert Pinsky’s poem.

Then as the actual day of retirement approaches, transition looms. The soon-to-be-retired worker reviews years on the job, often in the same office or classroom, as Jeri McCormick's "Bureaucrat" does; then says goodbye, like the "man overbored" klipschutz imagines, to the people and routines that have structured one's life.

In the days and months that follow, every retiree embarks on the delights and challenges of making a new life, deciding what to do with what their envious colleagues (and poet Roger Pfingston) call "all that time." Molly Peacock takes up drawing, Bill Brown turns his attention to the kingfisher in October, Meg Barden contemplates travel at age eighty. Gerald Stern celebrates a night at home in the company of music and Alvaros de Campos’s poetry in "This Was a Wonderful Night." Like all of these poets—like us—Thomas Centolella welcomes "Some Little Happiness."

Three concerns loom large in the new life—and in these poems: aging and its inevitable effects on the body; generational connections to parents, children, and grandchildren; and the continuing satisfactions, losses, and renewals of love. With Susan Elbe, we discover that the "flesh that once loosened" our young selves, now "limits" us. Chana Bloch laments the losss of words in "The Sixth Age." Self-assured and famous parents like Carolyn Kizer and Alicia Ostriker become the responsibilities of their "enormous children." Ronald Pies’s neurology professor claims as his offspring "a thousand children/ armed with reflex hammers/ and soldier’s heart." Rebecca Parfitt welconmes her granddaughter, seen in an ultrasound image. Donna Wahlert takes heart from the visit of her three-year-old grandson. We hear the "tidal laughter" of the couple in Philip Booth’s poem "Pairs" and—with poets Charles Cantrell, R. Virgil Ellils, and Alberto Rios—reflect on enduring marriages. But we know, too, that relationships change: retired husbands, like the one in Marcia Denius's poem, suddenly take over the cooking and interior design. And Edith Nash notes that "only 52 years later" her husband finally likes the rye toast and poached eggs she serves for breakfast.

The poets gathered in this volume range in age from their fifties through their eighties. They include men and women from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds; residents of several continents, country acres, small towns, and big city apartments. We tried to gather a diverse group, but as we read and collected poems for this volume, we realized that many of our poets were teachers. Like us, the writers who appear in these pages are privileged: they've been able to set aside money for their later years; to leave their jobs and turn to something new. These poems don’t speak for those who can’t retire; or for the many retirees who—out of either financial need or curiosity—take up a new job rather than stop working. Nor do the poems speak for the adventurers and volunteers too busy to write as they explore new worlds.

Among our own friends, a chemical engineer has moved on to the Peace Corps, a clinical instructor in speech pathology now become a co-op supermarket clerk, a computer systems analyst has turned to tutoring first-grade readers. Too few of our poems note the wide range of unpaid jobs that retirees are taking up: volunteering for Red Cross disaster teams and homeless shelters, delivering Meals on Wheels, ushering for concerts and plays. Finally, we ask ourselves, what does "retirement" mean to writers who continue to turn out poems and stories until the day they die? As John Brandi suggests, some people love their work so much they don't think of it as a job. Does that mean they can't retire?

Perhaps the most difficult part of editing this volume has been finding a balance between the pleasures of retirement, the indignities of aging, and death itself. However much we savor our new lives, retirement also represents loss: loss of our old identity, of our daily interaction with colleagues, of youth. We have been both surprised and consoled by the plain-spoken and often humorous approach many poets take to these losses. Hayden Carruth chastised us when we asked permission to reprint a poem that captured the delights of retirement, "Where the hell have you been living, my dears, that you don't know old age is the greatest bummer and pisser of all times and places, without comparison or exception? Ask anyone over eighty."

We are still far from eighty. But we have taken heart from the words of Hayden Carruth and the other poets in this volume. No one poem can map the future. Still, taken together, these poems explore the rocky but beautiful territory of retirement, and beyond. They've helped us on our journeys through the transition from "working stiffs" to "retired seniors": we've become accepting enough of our new status to sign up for an Elderhostel (Judith) and a Golden Age Passport for the National Parks (Robin). We're confident that the poems will help you, too. So order up a latte, brew yourself a cup of tea, or pour yourself a glass of wine or water, and enjoy!

On Retirement: 75 Poems was published by University of Iowa Press in March 2007. It is available from your favorite bookseller, or directly from University of Iowa Press

For additional information, please e-mail Judith Strasser