Prologue

A SUMMING UP

Prologue 2023

FIRST A ROSE FOR THE TABLE...

I created my website in 2003 when I was in my sixties.

Now at age 87 I continue to work on innovative creative projects, research poems, study words of interest, read… read… and review my life’s work.

I continue to follow my golden thread as it winds down.

I strive to live in a world of ‘yes’ while using my power to say ‘no.’

I think about how my light was/is spent.

—- collage by Michael Albert

“yes is a world
and in this world of yes live all worlds.”

—- eecummings

I learn from Judith Viorst’s book “Necessary Losses” as she explores love, loss, and letting go.

“Of Time and the River”

by Thomas Wolfe

The tribe of my true affection are the poets, writers, and creators who I have taught and who have taught me. I have trained approximately 30 poetry therapy students with my last trainee receiving her credential in 2020. I am fortunate to also have a high spirited family and lifelong friends.

I have a long history in the field of creative arts.

I was the first in the field to offer on-line courses and long distance training. Over the years I created unique and original group writing techniques and experiences and offered on-line courses and facilitated monthly poetry peer groups in my home. I have been blessed with a mind filled with flowing ideas that I enjoy pursuing. My waterfall seems never ending while my time and energy diminish.

A compliment I like is:

“YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE LIKE A POEM”

Poetry therapy is my second profession. I worked productively for over 24 years as a psychologist in a school district.

My life is filled with poetry. I am working on a memoir of my husband’s illness that spanned 20 years. On a plaque in Memorial Sloan Kettering honoring my husband are words I chose by Stanley Kunitz:

“…he loved the earth so much he wanted to stay forever.”

Lila wearing her grandmother’s pin, age 12

I am creating a Life Review Art Book entitled “BETWEEN THE CLOCK, AND THE BED.” It includes photographs, poetry, words, drawings and excerpts from journal entries written since I was a child.

My title is from the book “In Self Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed” — Edvard Münch.

“IF” is a poem by Rudyard Kipling my family used to recite. I took its message seriously and it set a high standard for me that I tried to reach. The line I have always carried with me is:

“Treat triumph and disaster just the same.”

As a young teen I chose the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She expressed private feelings that I struggled with and made me feel less alone. Her words gave me relief and solace.

“Have you got a brook in your little heart…”

(Oh Emily, my own little brook has never dried up.)

As a young mother, I received guidance from Khalil Gibran’s prose poem:

“Your children are not your children…”

I understood that I was not in control of the destiny of my children despite unconditionally, loving them.

My youngest child began to struggle in her teens and in her twenties was diagnosed as mentally ill. When she left the safety of home alone, I feared for her and turned to a poem by Maxine Kumin:

“Making the jam without you.”

“ …Let there be someone beside you…”

My professional life is well expressed by Marge Piercy’s poem: “To Be Of Use”

“To Be Of Use”

“ ….Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry …”

When I knew I needed to get divorced I turned to lines in Emily Dickinson’s Poem:

“…Have you got a brook in your little heart”

“… When the meadows parching lie,

Beware, lest this little book of life

Some burning noon go dry!”

When I met my soulmate I turned to Emily Dickinson once again with her poem:

“Wild Nights”

“To live is so Startling it leaves little time for anything else .“

and

The album “This is my beloved”

(lyrics by Walter Benton)

“YOU WERE MY PURPOSE AND MY WAY”

and

“To each his Dulcinea”

From

“Man of La Mancha”

“to Every Man His Dream”

and

lyrics of the song: “Somewhere across the room”

“ Some enchanted evening

You may see a stranger

Across a crowded room…

Tell me who can explain it?

Who can tell you why?…

Wise men never try…”

When the cancer crab grabbed my husband after 25 years of marriage I turned to the Rubiyat of Omar Kyham:

“The moving finger writes and having writ moves on… “

and

Jane Kenyon’s (or Donald Hall)

“Otherwise”

(Written after she received a diagnosis of leukemia)

“One day it will be otherwise.”

After 46 years of marriage my husband was in the final stage of his illness. I thought of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnet #43).

“How do I love thee, let me count the ways”

and

Shakespeare (Sonnet #116).

“…Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds…
Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark…”

and

from Robert Browning

“…chance cannot change, my love, nor time impair…”

and

at my 80th birthday celebration my husband and I danced to:

Leonard Cohen’s:

“Dance me to the end of love.”

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in….

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of

Dance me to the end of love.”

As I aged, I laughed with the poem by Jenny Joseph “Warning”:

“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple…

and make up for the sobriety of my youth …
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?…”

I did indeed start to wear purple. I never tried spitting, but there is still time.

As I was moving towards the end of my career as a school psychologist, I thought of Robert Frosts poem: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

“I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep…

And miles to go before I sleep…”

Now at the age of 87 after training many outstanding poetry therapists,

founding “International Academy for Poetry Therapy,” (iapoetry.org)

co-editing

“The Healing Fountain: poetry therapy for life‘s journey.”

and

self publishing

“The Art of Finding: A Memoir, Survivor’s Guide and Love Story”

motivated by Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” and the line:

“The art of losing is not hard to master. “

In my 70s I contemplated Robert Frost’s poem “After Apple – Picking”

I knew that I was not done with apple picking:

“Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple picking now

… I am drowsing off.”

Now I need to leave the apple picking to others.

I had promises to keep. I knew that regardless of my passions one day I would have to be done with apple picking.

On the horizon for me are all the changes and challenges that come with aging:

Although there are many many buckets of apples I would like to fill, I no longer have the stamina.

I think of Mary Oliver’s famous line from her poem “THE SUMMER DAY”

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

My response to Mary Oliver is: “A vital question I would ask is how will you build the tools you need to survive all that will happen in your life?

I think of Ray Carver’s poem “Gravy”:

“Gravy,

No other word will do.

For that’s what it was…

“Don’t weep for me,…

[I’m lucky…]

Pure gravy. And don’t forget it”

In Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy spoken by Hamlet

“To be or not to be”:

I try to adapt to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

…

[And know one day I will shuffle off this mortal coil… ]”

I strive to follow Stanley Kunitz’s advice in “Layers”:

“How to deal with the field of losses:…

Live in the layers not on the litter.”

My focus now needs to be on the additional layers in my life and not on the litter which is sure to accumulate.

I continue to have many ideas I want to pursue and explore. By writing this essay I am motivated to write more fully about my life passages and the poetry I turned to at each stage. I continue to contemplate the changes with age progression.