It's long, and formatted, so I'm uploading it to the blog via Scribd.com. From the top bar, click the "yellow circle" button on the left to go to the document on Scribd. com; or, click on the center "iPaper" button for printing and emailing options; or, click the right "rectangle within a rectangle" button to expand the document within your browser (I'm just figuring this out myself).
5 comments:
John,
Thank you so much for sharing this. Aunt Linda wrote me tonight to say, "there are no words for this one." That's probably true, but I would like to venture a few.
As the anniversary approaches, I've wondered what to do. Send you an email that morning to let you know I'm thinking of you? Why do that on this day and not any other? Of course you'll know when the day comes, so is calling attention to it a good or bad thing?
I don't know.
But I do know that I am impressed and humbled by your ability to transform profound grief into art.
When you drive west this summer and stay in cities that Katie wasn't able to share with you, that will be very hard. This hit me in the gut, and so I have not the slightest notion what you must be going through.
But love will heal the rift for a while, and perhaps for longer whiles as time goes by. The sorrow will never fade completely, but those sharp and short pains may eventually transform into a begrudging acceptance. Peace with grief will come, I think, in good time.
I forget who said that poetry says what we cannot say. I see your poems doing that. Stunning. Raw yet shaped. Your work touches me.
It's intriguing to me that you say grief is not a season. Were you consciously referring to--and in essence refuting-- Rilke? ("We wasters of sorrows!
How we stare away into sad endurance beyond them
trying to force their end! Whereas they are nothing else
than our winter foliage, our sombre evergreen, one of the seasons of our
interior year—not only season—they’re also place, settlement camp,
soil, dwelling."
—from the Duino Elegies)
A serendipitious aside: Before coming to your blog this morning, I read your profile listing the music you like and saw Lucinda Williams listed and I swear, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" was singing through my mind as I read the poem...then I saw it mentioned in the poem...
what can i say? look what you have made, what you have given us. an idea that came out of this conference i'm attending: i'm so happy to live in a world where you write.
Thanks for helping us all to understand a little better; thanks for sharing. I thought this was wonderful, the use of geography, the sense of time passing and timeless emotion. Dad
Hello there. In a post at Kate Evans' Blog, "Being and Writing", she mentioned your "How To Like It" Blog. I was feeling sad tonight, reviewing in my mind the loss of my beloved dog who passed in January, and even feeling a bit guilty, grieving so deeply for my "Frisco", my companion of ten years(Because she was (many people might say)"only" a dog, and there is so much loss in this world. Such unimaginable loss). So I clicked on your blog, and began reading...I read several entries, entries about language and poetry, and travel, and.....began wondering who this Katie was. And then I clicked on the Memorial Foundation for her, and I lost my breath as I read of her incredibly beautiful life, and the love you two obviously discovered with each other, while sharing a profound mission to help others. And I read of her tragic death. And I cannot even begin to imagine what you must have gone through, are still going through. But I am certain that the tart-apple-loving, smiling girl named Katie, who would say "Not so much", rather than a simple "no" to something she disliked, is glowing anew with the outpouring of emotion you have given to both memorialize her, and more--to CELEBRATE HER INCREDIBLE LIFE!
Recently at my blog, I discussed how important empathy is. Thank you for being a person--a poet-- who embodies empathy. I am so sorry for your loss. You humble me with your eloquence, your whispered words of rememberance.
Peace.
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