Switchgrass

Marie Kane

Description

Marie Kane’s fourth book of poetry, Switchgrass, is certainly about her and her husband’s physical disabilities, but it is much more. It’s about their shared journey powered by courage and hope. While carefully observing the life cycle of wild, year-round switchgrass, Kane allows us to witness this couple’s vulnerabilities, pain, and challenges. These she expertly weaves together with their love for each other and their strong marriage into something as enduring as switchgrass, whose “Deep roots subdue flood, / control washout / survive the inevitable.” Kane suffuses her book’s engaging narrative with the enchanting and vital role elements of nature, especially water, play in their lives, often proffering them a lifeline. Adding luscious color (her husband is an artist) and with a steady buoyancy, Kane elegantly claims her life story, their love story as the seasons of switchgrass unfold—and as she and her husband come to appreciate that “the season’s shortened / dusk enables more time for moonlight / and stars to share the sky.”
—Wendy Fulton Steginsky, author of Let This Be Enough

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 23 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781728377667
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Switchgrass



Poems
about marriage, illness, and the healing power
of love and nature








MARIE KANE





© 2023 Marie Kane. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.



ISBN: 978-1-7283-7767-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7766-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901216



Published by AuthorHouse 04/21/2023














When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)



Dedication
Switchgrass is dedicated to the late Christopher Bursk, extraordinary poet, teacher of poetry, mentor and friend, whose encouragement of and enthusiasm for this collection helped bring it to fruition

&

to all of the Kitchen Table poets, especially Wendy Steginsky, Monica Flint, Alan Toltzis, Lynda Gene Rymond, and Lavinia Kumar whose close revision of many of this book’s poems helped tremendously,
thanks to Alan Chazaro of Black Lawrence Press for his editing expertise, many thanks to Steve Nolan for his intelligent and careful editing, to Cheryl Baldi, whose book, The Shapelessness of Water showed me the way, to the staff at AuthorHouse for their close attention to this manuscript

&

to our children and grandchildren whose love reminds us what matters and is possible

&

above all, to my wonderful husband, Stephen Millner, whose loving care enables me to live and write.

&

as always, to my dear mom, Jean, and talented brother, Marty—
forever the cheerleaders.



S tatement by Wendy Fulton Steginsky
I have known Marie Kane for almost twenty years. Our paths have crossed and continue to at area poetry venues and workshops: at poetry salons and events held at the Writers Room in Doylestown, PA where I worked until its closure in 2005; at Dr. Christopher Bursk’s Master Class at Bucks County Community College where I attended for seventeen years until he died in 2021; at Marie’s Kitchen Table poetry workshop which she has run every other week since 2009.
Marie and I co-edited an anthology of poetry, Carry Us to the Next Well (Kelsay Books, 2021) to honor the tenth anniversary of Kitchen Table poetry and a dear poet friend who was an original member of that group and died tragically in 2018.
Again, in 2022, Marie and I and another poet, Lavinia Kumar, co-edited and published a poetry anthology, A Certain Kind of Swagger to honor the life and teachings of our mentor, Dr. Christopher Bursk.
I have had three books of my own poetry published by Kelsay Books: The Tide of Bermuda’s Light in 2014, Let This Be Enough , 2016, and Where River’s Mouth Mee ts Ocean , 2019. Marie and I are both very familiar with each other’s work and I have a great respect and love for all her books, particularly her latest, Switchgrass .



Acknowledgements:
I am grateful for the following journals for publishing these poems,
some in a different form or title.
Delaware Valley Poetry
“To Die Just That Much”
Anthology

The River
“What Rises?”

River Heron Review
“They Need to Dream Here”

Schuylkill Valley Journal
“Watercolor of the Winter Sea”
“Mooncake Festival”
“Learning the Roads of the Sea”
“In Every Life, Both”

Wordgathering
“I Can Say Now That Things Are Not
What They Seem”

U.S. 1 Worksheets
“On a Spring-fed New Hampshire Lake ”
“She’s Radiant”


Kane, Marie , Beauty,
“For Love to Be Had”
You Drive a Hard
Bargain. Utah: Kelsay
Books, 2017. p. 96.



Contents
Summertime Embraces Our Ten-Year-Old Selves
Switchgrass Near the Delaware River
His Hand Finds Hers
Still
Lesions, Erosion, and Snakes
Why Are They Not Yet Desperate?
Shaman
On a Spring-fed New Hampshire Lake
Before Summer Sun Owns the Lake
In Every Life, Both
Lucknow
They Dream the Same Fragmented Dream
Each Late Afternoon
River Walk
Mooncake Festival
Learning the Roads of the Sea
I Can Say Now That Things Are Not What They Seem
This Outside Peril
Their New Year
Watercolor of the Winter Shore
Listen to the Wood Burn
What He Needs to Hear
The Bird-Loud Day