• Home
  • Posts
  • On my watch – Greenwich authors speak to the moment

On my watch – Greenwich authors speak to the moment

img_9627

By Anne W. Semmes

Two books authored by Greenwich women have special value in our present moment. One found on my shelf unread for too long is “Rescuing Memories – An Offering to Our Families,” co-authored by Arlene Mark, Bebbie Chickering, and Judy Crystal. The other – hot off the Little, Brown press is, “Coming To Age, Growing Older with Poetry,” co-authored by Mary Ann Hoberman, U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate, National Book Awardee, and Carolyn Hopley, founder of Third Wave Television (impressive films on women’s history seeable on YouTube).

“Rescuing Memories” tells the life stories of three Greenwich authors, Bebbie Chickering, Judy Crystal and Arlene Mark. Contributed photo.

Arlene, Bebbie, and Judy, who all grew up in different parts of the country, had gathered years ago around a kitchen table, determining to write about the challenges, and the choices they made, the times that made them “laugh or cry,” and the people who made the difference in their lives. They had asked, “Oh, I wish I knew how my mother felt when…” or “I wonder why my father…We kept wishing we had asked them. We wondered what our children, in turn, might someday want to know about us…So, we simply asked them.” The resulting, “Rescuing Memories,” has their individual stories with similar constructs: “Early On,” “A Little Later On,” “Leaving Home,” “Along the Way,” “Standing Back.”

What a rich opportunity this quarantine offers for families with homebound teenaged and college age students there to ask questions like those of the “Rescuing Memories” authors. To that end, Arlene Mark shared her recent letter to The New York Times, responding to its editorial, “It’s Time to Talk About Death.” “It’s also time to talk about life,” she countered, “Time for children to ask how their parents lived their lives…how they got through tough situations, what their hopes and dreams were as young people.”

So, when I cracked open Mary Ann Hoberman’s and Carolyn Hopley’s “Coming To Age” poetry anthology, featuring poets from “Nobel Laureates to the recently published,” my eye fell upon: “Since the poet is concerned with the particular – this time, this place – a poem by example might encourage us to look at the wonder of our situation as the gift it is. We might call it, as Ursula K. Le Guin does, the present as a present.”

Indeed, a time to enjoy the magic in the comments Mary Ann and Carolyn have woven through their intriguing sections of poetry, much of that poetry surely read aloud in Mary Ann’s poetry group ongoing for over a decade. But they had a special audience in mind, “a pioneering age group, the “old old” that is now, they note, “the fastest growing segment of the over-sixty-five population.”

“Our experience is one unknown to most of humanity, over time,” the authors quote Penelope Lively, the 80-year-old novelist in their introduction. “And if we are pioneers,” noted Lively, “We owe it to those who follow to make somethings worthwhile of our good fortune.”

The book’s title of “Coming To Age,” came to Mary Ann as a play on those words, “coming of age” that address departure, a “leaving youth for maturity,” while “Coming to Age” addresses arrival.

The newly published “Coming To Age” anthology of poetry is co-authored by Greenwich’s Mary Ann Hoberman and Carolyn Hopley. Contributed photo.

But all ages can learn a heap in the authors’ brief bios of the poets, and in their great definition of a poem. A poem, “conveys one individual’s particular experience in language. It is as much an object as a painting or a piece of music…And like other art objects, it can become a precious talisman.”

Take that first verse, for now, of Billy Collins’ poem, “Consolation:” “How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,/wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns./How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets, fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard/and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.”

We are treated to three of Mary Ann’s poems in the book, with two addressing the loss of loved ones, and one, “Reconsideration” on growing old. Its ending – “I once was young. That tale’s been told./But only lucky folk grow old.” This August, Mary Ann – author of over 40 books, will turn 90.

“Coming To Age” is available at Diane’s Books of Greenwich, and also at Bookshop.org, “Supporting Local Bookstores.” “Rescuing Memories,” published in 2008 by iUniverse is available at iUniverse.com. (Fervent wish of authors is to have their book available on Amazon)

Related Posts
Loading...