Poets and Poems: Sarah Carey and "Bloodstream"

I’d read, a long time ago, that certain things become more important as you age. These included art, as in visiting museums, and family heritage, as in genealogy. I must have read it and dismissed it, so I can’t cite the source, but I later discovered it to be true.

 

An older cousin researching the family had led her to the old family Bible in my possession. The call became an extended conversation about old family stories, including one about the great-grandmother who allegedly killed a man and got away with it, and the great-grandfather who had reportedly walk home from Virginia at the end of the Civil War (I wrote a novel about that story). 

Poet Sarah Carey has taken a related but different approach. She’s written an arresting poetry collection, entitled Bloodstream, about family, heritage, and stories about odd relatives (if you’re from the South, as Carey and I both are, every family has odd relatives. In fact, in the South, odd and relatives may be redundant. She even writes about family pets. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Novel idea – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Elvis Costello Brought Poetry to Life – Peter Richmond at The Free Press.

 

“I Am a Little World Made Cunningly,” poem by John Donne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Tether – poem by Alison Luterman at Every Day Poems. 

Shirt Poems – Luci Shaw at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Sarah Carey and “The Grief Committee Minutes”

A year passed before I came face to face with the grief over the death of my father. There wasn’t time for me to grieve; I was the executor of his estate, and his estate was a mess. A huge mess. He’d kept my mother unaware of just what a mess it was, and she was as bewildered as the rest of the family. When we finally emerged from the financial fog, grief hit me like a freight train. 

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote. The man knew what he was talking about.

 

Poet and writer Sarah Carey knows about grief. Her new poetry collection, The Grief Committee Minutes, isn’t solely about grief, but much of it is. What I particularly like is how Carey identifies and explores the kinds of grief.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

T.S. Eliot Put His World Back Together Again – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

New Release! The Colour Out of Space Graphic Novel, Illustrated by Sara Barkat – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The Cure – poem by Gabrielle Myers at Every Day Poems.

 

How I Turned My Family History into a Novel – Joanne Howard at Writer’s Digest.

 

“Mr. Flood’s Party,” poem by Edward Arlington Robinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.