Looking for Marie Howe

About a decade ago,  I read a book of poetry about this woman dealing with the loss of her brother.

Knew that the brother had cancer.

Knew that there was a poem about the brother getting a needle stuck in his eye to prevent losing his sight and I remembered a line in one of the poems that read -- He had washed his last dish.

But I didn't know enough to find the book and I thought that I'd never see it again.

↔Fast Forward ↔

I really wanted to read a book about grief but I didn't necessarily want to read an Elizabeth Kubler Ross book or Kerry Egan's On Living. After searching on the internet, I spotted Kevin Young's anthology, The Art of Losing; it has been a great book to slowly read my way through and I didn't have to wait too long (page 69) before I came across a familiar poem, How Some of It Happened, by Marie Howe, the poet that I'd been looking for.

I immediately ordered her book from the library and when I got it, I remembered the maroon cover and everything.

I can't say enough about the Art of Losing. Poems that really hit me in the solar plexus, included:

Sharon Olds' The Race

Ruth Stone's Loss

Elizabeth Alexander's Autumn Passage

Coleman Barks' Luke and the Duct Tape

James Weldon Johnson's  Listen Lord: A Prayer

William Matthews' My Father's Body

Edward Hirsch's Cold Calls

Ted Kooser's Mourners

Ruth L. Schwartz's Letter from God

Jane Kenyon's Otherwise

Mary Oliver's When Death Comes

This book also made me remember other poems about death that really moved me -- like Lucille Clifton's poems about her father and husband; Gloria Wade-Gayles' poem about her mother and Cornelius Eady's book about his father's death.

I am a bit late to the Mary Oliver a game but when I first read her poem Wild Geese, it blew my mind and, I think, more than anything else -- the first line moves me unbelievably and I, occasionally, use it to really center myself.

A Cue

Feeling in a bit of a daze but I'm sure that a lot of that has to do with the weather. 

Over the last six weeks, I feel like I've had to get my act together in a hurry because of the holidays falling on the weekend or bad weather. I think that I've done a pretty good job of figuring out what to cook but I'm running out of ideas. Made Cheesy Chicken Fajitas and used the remainder to make a salad yesterday.

All of this cooking is wearing me out but also makes me think of this poet whose book centered around her brother's death. She wrote: He had washed his last dish.

I'm still here so I guess there are more dishes to wash etc...

Went to 11:00 a.m. yoga and saw one of the women who went on the yoga retreat. It was such a moment of delight because she's a nice person and because it brought up such nice memories...

The teacher at the helm of today's class is new and I totally liked it when she (Tracy) said No one needs anything from you for the next hour. You don't need permission to relax but it's nice to have a cue. 

Also liked it when she had us do bee breath (minus the fingers in the ear)...

Wish that I could remember the name of the woman who wrote the poems about her brother's death. Recently someone announced, indirectly, a death in the family on social media and I wanted to leaving a comforting remark. Later on I pulled out You Don't Miss Your Water, a book of poetry by Cornelius Eady. Most of Eady's poems in You Don't... deal with the death of his father. 

Fetchin' Bones

My father's a sealed tin of dust, riding in the trunk of

my rental car.

My sister and niece are in the back seat, and I 

choose not to inform them of this.

Later, I will meet with my cousin at the church

where the memorial service was held.

I will set the box on the curb while we talk.

I am carting around the rubble of the man who

loved to call me stupid, who made my sister feel like

nothing, who drove my mother nuts.

I have done this in order to shave a few dollars off

the funeral costs, I tell myself, as a small part of me

gives in, fans the smoldering pleasure.