01/13/2026
Judith Arcana, 1943-2025
I’ve been wanting to post something about Judith’s passing for a couple of weeks, but with our worst horrors being realized with each passing day, sometimes good words are hard to come by. But for those who haven’t heard, Portland lost beloved poet Judith Arcana when she crossed the horizon of life in December. She was, as she often said of others, “one of the good ones.”
I don’t post a lot of personal photos, but Nikki Martin took these photos of Judith and I when we were working on the second edition of her autobiography of renowned short story author Grace Paley, titled “Grace Paley’s Life Stories”.
Most people who knew Judith also know that she was a JANE. Prior to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, JANE was an underground abortion service in Chicago that coordinated an estimated 11,000 safe abortions for women who contacted them. The black and white photo is Judith’s mug shot from the Chicago police raid of the abortion service in May 1972.
There’s also a photo of Judith wearing her “Shameless H***y” shirt — Judith was once published by Shameless H***y, the first feminist press in the US. A number of presses and journals published her poetry over the years, including Eberhardt Press.
I had the enormous privilege of working with Judith on several titles, including “Keesha and Joanie and JANE,” which (in 2017) was set in a fictional future in which Roe v. Wade had been overturned, and women were struggling to respond to the elimination of abortion access. Because of the “playbill” cover satire, it’s better known as the JANEBILL. We published two editions, one of which is still available.
Between projects, we’d get together every once in a while to have long conversations about everything from publishing to politics to health issues — she was such an easy person to talk with, and we always had plenty to talk about. She’d bring all these little scraps of paper where she’d written down notes and things she wanted to mention or ask about. I always felt that to be in her presence was to be in her circle of light. Some folks probably know what I mean by that.
Judith and I spoke quite often about death during our conversations — we seemed to share an ability to speak of dark subjects lightly. She was not afraid of death, and when the matter arose, she said she didn’t judge people who chose to end their own lives. Friends said she passed peacefully, easing into the deep, long sleep in which one day we shall all join her.
Judith will always be an inspiration. I’ll remember her sharp wit and her bright, lively eyes, which somehow did not bear the weight of her many days on planet Earth. Even in her last years, she was brilliant, and she never stopped writing. Her last work, which she referred to a few times, was titled “1976”. I didn’t read any of it, but it sounded like something of a magnum opus. I’m not sure how much of it she was able to write, though.
The words of Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records come to mind from a lecture he gave a number of years ago: “Take your stories seriously.” In other words, don’t act as if they don’t matter. Those are good words of advice for everyone. Take your story seriously. It’s the only one you’re ever going to write. Make it a good one. Like Judith did.
