One of the strongest memories I have of my paternal grandmother is her writing the notes for the ladies Sunday School lesson she’d be teaching on the coming Sunday. She’d sit in the easy chair in her large bedroom, intently writing in her small, black-leather ringed notebook, completely focused on the task at hand. I’d sit quietly nearby, reding my book and occasionally looking up to watch her. I knew not to disturb her while she prepared her lesson. As she wrote, she’d occasionally mention names of the ladies in the class, as if anticipating their questions.
I was reminded of this while reading Memory’s Abacus, the new (and first) poetry collection by Anna Lewis. In the title poem, she recounts a memory of her grandmother, tapping her fingers on the Christmas tablecloth, speaking the name of each of 10 cousins with each tap. “Dispersed now or dead, her childhood kin / reunite as a line of names / along her swollen knuckles.” Associating the tapping and reciting of family names with an abacus is an image almost crystallized in memory – and as a memory.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
Lost Time – poem by Paul Wittenberger at Paul’s Substack.
Who Should Write Poetry? – Glenn Arbery at The Imaginative Conservative.
Sonnet 19: On His Blindness by John Milton – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Press – poem by Richard Maxson at Everyday Poems.
Wallace Stevens, ‘The Reader’ (1935) – Adam Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.
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