Still Life, Broken and Repaired: Poems

by Tracy Rittmueller, Christine Klocek-Lim (Introduction)

Overview

Written between 2007 and 2022, this collection of lyrical poems explores the the impact of a spouse's dementia on a loving relationship. These are poems in search of a good life, which, the author believes, must be available to us even in the midst of profound suffering.

In her introduction, Christine Klocek-Lim, editor of Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY writes, "most of the poems that appear in my inbox every day deal with grief and love, yet few manage to walk the border of both with such grace and lightness as does this book of poetry.... the splintered pieces of poems are glued together with lush imagery and difficult realizations, until at the end, 'the art / of golden repair is the art of refusing / to hide the beautiful strength of our damage.' The speaker has learned to gild pain with beauty. The reader has learned that beauty in loss is indeed possible."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780965592277
Publisher:	Lyricality
Publication date:	01/23/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	67
File size:	283 KB

About the Author

Tracy Rittmueller is a crafter of poems, essays and stories, and the founding director of Lyricality, a Central Minnesota grass roots organization fostering the art of empathy through poetry and story. As a producer of cultural events and a teaching artist, she facilitates trauma-sensitive awareness in order to be deliberately inclusive, respectful of individual personhood, and increasingly aware of the ways language and authority are used within human relationships to give and take power.
Christine Klocek-Lim is a prize-winning Pennsylvania poet and novelist who received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. Her poetry book, Dark Matter, uses astronomy as a theme for human relationships. She has several chapbooks and has been nominated as a finalist for numerous prizes. Her poems and essays have appeared in Nautilus-Cosmos, 3 Quarks Daily, Diode, and elsewhere. She is the founder and editor of Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY (est. 2006), an international online magazine of daily poems that receives, on average, 20k visitors (50k views) per year with over 2000 subscribers.

Table of Contents

Still Life, Broken and Repaired: Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

i.

Sonnet to Negotiate Peace With Your Dementia . . . . 19

This Ambiguous Grief's Stunning Questions . . . . . . . . 20

Pain By Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Backlit Encounter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

Hunting For A Way Through. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

For Rest And For Raging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

When She Stitched The Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

ii. 

Nightfall, With Perfumed Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

So Now We Lose All Track Of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

That Saturday Late Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

But Would I Still Desire To Plant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

Fidelity After Dementia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

Regarding An April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

Healing Is A Never Ending Departure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

What Is There About Us Always (i) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

iii. 

Incantation To Conjur Courage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

In A Cove In The Yorks, Maine, I Dare To Hope Again 46

Easter Sunrise: Halibut Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Resolution At The Height Of Breath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Dragonflies Wed In The Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

As Though Your Chest Were Filling With Light . . . . . . 55

After Survival Our Souls Remember . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56

When The World Forgets To Listen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59

Learning Kintsugi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

What Is There About Us Always (ii) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65