A Tripod with Too Many Legs: My Work Life! (POEM included)

I meant, once upon a time, to have just two sides to my work: the professional copyediting that I do for several national and global publishers, and "writing." At some point, writing split into historical fiction plus poetry. Then I added reviewing, with special attention to crime fiction, to support our family business (a specialty book business, Kingdom Books, now "mostly" closed). 

But you can't write good historical fiction without delving into history, and that sometimes means writing up your research. Which becomes another specialty. Plus reviewing for the Historical Novels Review. 

And then I added a long-term commitment to features on Northeast Kingdom people, culture, and yes, history, mostly for the North Star Monthly.

If that's starting to sound like the wry definition of a committee -- an animal with four back legs -- instead of a neatly divided life or supportive tripod, you are so very right. As a result, one of my gradual processes in the past year has been to narrow things down. Or at least put less pressure on each of the directions for research and writing that I love so much.

Every now and then, they merge into a bit of fun, like the poem here, which is intended to be gentle humor about how we are all trimming down our collections of meaningful artifacts. If you happen to recognize yourself or your organization in here, it's totally coincidental (as novelists insist). Hope it brings you a smile.

 

Deaccessioning from a Historical Collection

 

Form to fill out? No, just come on in! This isn’t like

getting someone’s slightly used and not quite wanted baby,

or even the way the humane society cautions you about

that three-day waiting period before the kitten curls

into your empty arms. No training needed—we will not

require obedience school or a special harness. Here,

look around, ask us questions because we love to talk,

can hardly wait to fill you in on the mystery around this

pair of candlesticks (mansion or log cabin? settler or

late-life immigrant to our cozy comforts?) or over there,

see that chair? We think but were never able to prove

that Ethan Allen hung his hat on the attached hook. It’s all

in the way you look at lost treasure: not everything that

glitters is gold, but it sure has a lovely finish, doesn’t it?

Our volunteers know the best churns for butter, so

don’t forget to pick up our recipe for snickerdoodles

free with every adopted baking pan. Or set of dishes.

Yes, I’m sure we could give you one with that mug—

did I tell you who we think sipped from it once? No fear,

it’s been well scrubbed. Can’t you tell how very much

it wants to go home with you today? You’ll love it!

 

 BK

The Generosity and Grace of a Nearby Poet

Poet Carlene M. Gadapee is a familiar figure to high school students in Lisbon, N.H., where she teaches both English language arts and creative writing. Students rarely know her as a poet, though -- because her poems probe topics that are mature and sometimes painful, as well as deeply personal. And while she courageously shares her writing outside the classroom, as well as leading summer poetry readings at Robert Frost's one-time home nearby (The Frost Place), she's aware that teens need to see her for her classroom presence. Not for her personal growth.

Her poetry collection Relearning the Body (2026) is published by Finishing Line Press, the same press that is bringing out my own second collection, Portrait Studio on the Ridge, this winter. So she was the first person I asked for a fellow-writer's comment for the back of my own book.

I knew it would be good -- that's how Carlene writes -- but I had no notion of how much generosity she'd pour into this. Here's her commentary:

Beth Kanell’s collection Portrait Studio on the Ridge confronts aging, death, acceptance, and ultimately, renewal. The land she speaks so lovingly about and the seasons, with all of their changes and challenges, become a form of grace in these poems. Beth is a careful, compassionate, honest, and insightful poet. As the speaker in her first poem says, “In the wilderness, you carry your own shovel; you sing out/ your loneliness,” but we are not alone when we are reading these poems; instead, we are gently led to understand that some things just require time, and that there are no easy answers, and “[e]ven God cannot reach forty without knowing/ the torn heart.”

--Carlene M. Gadapee, author of Relearning the Body

I hope that motivates you to add a copy of Carlene's book to your holiday shopping, and to pre-order one or two copies of my own, Portrait Studio on the Ridge. The publisher will release mine at the end of February (2027), which feels a long way off right now. But time will fly, especially when the Big Holidays of the Year have us in their grip. My poems may assist in finding joy and confidence in deep winter.

Here's the pre-order link. The discount is good through New Year's Day. I'm counting on you, because I want to be able to share my poems with you, the way I have with Carlene. We humans are fortunate to be here for each other, right? 

 

"The Young Elderly": No Way, No Way!

My "day job" is still editing journals -- that is, sets of articles written by researchers in various fields, from engineering to ocean law to classroom technology. I love it! It makes sense of my own academic background (chemistry degree from Michigan State, where I only went to one football game). And it keeps me learning every day.

Some recent work on articles about housing for "the elderly" took me to learning about urban China, where the ages that Americans label "past retirement age," that is, after age 65, are actually divided up into more groups. I did the work a few weeks ago, when I noted that my own age fits into the "young elderly" in China. That was something of a relief (being young), but also set me up for arguing: Although 50 years ago, I would have said the 70s are "old," now I know they are not. Definitely not "elderly"!!!

 

Except yes, I've lived for almost three-quarters of a century. I recall years that to my grandsons are part of American history. For me, "the war" is still the one in Vietnam. I do adapt quickly to people talking about either World War II or Iraq as their war, but ... mine was the one when a draft-board notice arrived around the time I'd been married for a year to another college student. And before that, the early part of that war when I saw several black students at my high school heading to the recruiting offices, while most white ones watched from the sidelines. (We all learn the force of racism in different ways, don't we?)

Now my poetry is based in an aging body and an overflowing mind, and often the poems begin with recognition of that, in some form. Today I found myself writing about how my feet are changing. If you know, you know. It's all good.

But it does seem to make autumn more symbolic than ever. I am planning for a good winter. So now is the time to prepare, prepare. And to hold these mountain colors in my spirit. 

 

School Days, School Days -- in Poetry School

Although I've lived in the Green Mountain State for almost half a century (!), I didn't grow up in Vermont. 

My father, an industrial engineer, carried my New England mother off as his bride, and the work for engineers back then took them to New Jersey (north Jersey, I add quickly). But each summer, Mom brought us all back to where we belonged -- the mountains of Vermont, the farms of New Hampshire (one still in the family), the rocky coast of northern Maine. As soon as I could "get back here," I did, with a four-month-old baby and a husband who was determined to write serious sociology and willing to learn to split wood. I grew vegetables, made and canned applesauce, earned a living from home with my chemistry degree, and found that the Vermont house we'd moved into had been built for and by one of my mother's relatives back in the 1840s.

In the past 20 years there hasn't been much, other than brothers and their grown children's weddings, to draw me back to New Jersey, a far more industrial place than the interrupted farmland I'd known as a kid. Today, I learned that my "middle school" had a name change in 2015 to honor the town's astronaut, Buzz Aldrin. What a surprise!

Buzz Aldrin Middle School. Wow!

Still, it's September, so I'm back in school again: poetry school.

I spent much of my Labor Day weekend online in a three-day set of workshops led by strong poets with something worth saying. And I'm eager for the six-week class I'll attend that starts next week, with one of the best teachers I've learned from. (Proof: My poems reached publication FAR more often after each of her courses. I'm growing stronger and maybe even smarter in how and why and when I write them.)

Maybe you'd like to see a bit of how a poetry class operates? One session last weekend, taught by Alvy Carragher, focused on adding detail to poems. She showed us how -- but also pushed us to discover more through what these classes call a "prompt," a short assignment for writing something. I won't tell you her prompt because that could be unfair to all the work she put into it. But here are five things I paid attention to and scribbled as a result: 

• The blue ordinariness of a sunny sky.
• Up and down goes the zip on the sweatshirt as the day changes.
• Garlic baked into the bread! Such wealth!!
• Aliens adjusted my friend into enlightenment.
• Apples to process, pushing at my priorities.
• What can I recall about when my sons were teenagers? -- thirty years is a long time. 

I bet you can already see how each of those could lead into a poem. So can I. I have pages-and-pages-and-pages of notes from my classes.

Now I've got to get serious about the homework. 

 

The Poetry of Transitions: What Is Poetic Language?

On Thursday July 16 at 6:30 pm in the Davies Memorial Library in Lower Waterford, Vt., I'll be chatting about my new book THRESHOLDS (from Kelsay Books) and what I call the poetry of transitions: how we talk about the significant changes in our lives. Many of those times are not simple, and some are not comfortable! 

Examples include welcoming your first baby (or grandchild); losing a parent to age or dementia; moving to a new house; taking a new job or a new position; adopting or saying farewell to a pet.

I'll share some of my poems that wrestle with these ... but I'll also open some doorways to poetic language for people who join me that evening. 

What is poetic language? The Australian Academy of the Humanities has an explanation that I like:

By drawing attention to itself, then, poetic language simultaneously talks about and revises the world that we experience, feel, and think.

Here are some sets of cards of poetic language I've made, that you'll have a chance to play with -- and see what sort of poetry comes from your own arrangement. 

Come have fun with me!

 

A Basic Toolkit for Vermont Immigrant Research: BECOMING NEIGHBORS

I spent many happy hours this past winter as part of a team project with the Old Stone House Museum & Historic Village in Brownington -- two staff members and I and four more volunteers chose people from the 1920 Census who had immigrated to Orleans County, Vermont, and looked for their family histories in both directions: going back in our research to the nations where their parents had been born (Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, even Russia; we could also have chosen Finland, Norway, Scotland, England, and of course French Canada). 

We used the 1920 Census because it's astonishing. Pogroms chased people out of Eastern Europe, the Great War relocated others, and of course, Irish people still had reason to leave British domination. Soon we found there were many other reasons for migrating to America, including national poverty and freedom of religion. 

Step 1: Choose someone from the Census page for your town-of-interest whose background or family structure intrigues you.

Step 2: Begin to ask questions, based on what you see on your Census page and what you already know about Vermont, America, or world history. 

Step 3:  Use resources like Ancestry, Newspapers.com, friends and neighbors, social media, geographic chat groups, and more, to trace this person's ancestors, movement around the country, and more.

Step 4: If you haven't already in Step 3, find resources that bring you toward the present -- with a goal of finding a living descendant who can tell you more about this family and how and when it began to feel like Vermonters, or Americans, or other ways of belonging.

Here's the worksheet we used to keep ourselves asking questions. You can read what we discovered, when you visit the website (stories still being added): https://oldstonehousemuseum.org/collections-research/becomingneighbors. You'll also see regional publications telling the stories we found, for the rest of 2026.

Narrative Worksheet: Fill in the gaps, to have a great first draft ready for the story of the immigrant(s) you’ve looked into. Feel free to write more on another page!

 

________________________________ shows up on the 1920 US Census as a resident of the

town (or village) of ___________________________. Following the lines across the page shows that he/she came from __________________________ . Other neighbors listed in that survey came from ____________________ and __________________ and _______________.

I wondered when I saw this: [what did you wonder about your person?]

 

 

Searching for family stories from a hundred years ago isn’t simple. But I figured I could start with these resources:

 

When I discovered this about “my person’s” family, the next things I wondered were:

 

To look for answers, I tried these investigations:

 

So today, I am pretty confident that important members of this person’s family were:

 

 

I tried looking farther back, and I discovered:

 

 

It looks like this person’s arrival in my town was usual/unusual, considering that:

 

 

I found evidence that this family stayed in XX County OR left XX County (when?), and this is how the family made a living:

 

 

There is still some evidence of where this person lived. My best guess at the location in town or for nearby descendants is:

 

 

I have copies of some documents or photographs that connect to this story. Here’s a list, with how they connect:

 

 

 

The most surprising thing I discovered in this search was:

 

 

We are eager to hear what you discover!

 

Click on this Census page to see some amazing information.

  

This project is supported in part by the Vermont Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, www.vermonthumanities.org.

A Poem for Mother's Day, 2026

Here's a photo that speaks to my New England roots, for sure!

I wrote this for one of my amazing "daughters-in-law" this morning. My family seems to put both work and love at the top of the list. I'm grateful!

 

This Pause

In another time, another country, we might know the calendar

with its weekly sabbath day within our very bones and breath:

the sweet halt of work, the pause to contemplate, to renew

acquaintance with old stories of grace and courage, accompanied

by music braided golden with emotion.

 

But we are grown children of immigrants, people who hold work

as salvation, strength, the sure thing to save us from the world’s

forceful fist. Our lists summon attention, effort, tasks and goals,

so the shimmer of sunlight at the window, rain’s rhythmic call,

reliable thump of the heart evades

 

our notice so often. Then, sister, let us reclaim this day: Let us

taste love with our coffee, savor peace with our pastry. Mothers

we are—noticing the time, the laundry, meals to plan, prepare,

all attached to the same clock that will call us back to work

when Monday circles toward us—

 

but this is the moment we choose for ourselves. We hold it

tenderly; we laugh at how absurd it is to “take time off” when

so much is waiting for our capable hands, our clever minds.

We hear the others waking up, know the only way to hold

joy and rest is with both hands.

 

Here is the Mother’s Day we didn’t plan, didn’t expect,

inner admission of how much we give … outer recognition in

a phone call, a kiss, a smile, someone’s thanks expressed.

Vital intention: We choose our lives. We sweeten our own

celebration. We sing.

 

BK

 

On the Final Day of National Poetry Month -- Here's a Poem (Out Loud!) from THRESHOLDS

It's #pocketpoem day -- so I'm glad to share a reading of "Everything Is All Right" from THRESHOLDS, my new book of poems exploring some of the transitions we experience. What are the Big Ones in your life? Wishing you strength and courage for the next one.

 

Two Books of Poetry for Your "Ready to Buy These" List

The cover photo is from the 1960s ... the author's family.

 

It's a tough time economically in America. That's not new. Sure, a lot of people owning houses and raising children in the 1950s and 1960s felt like their American Dream had come true, and they even had retirement packages for later.

But the 1930s involved plenty of crushing poverty and despair, and the 1940s saw Americans sacrificing for global warfare. The 1970s? After the Vietnam War ended, it seemed things would get easier. Buying a house with a young family felt normal then.

Things have changed. 

For a lot of us (outside the billionaires group), spending money can be kind of scary, because it's so hard to know whether we'll "have enough" to see us through the years ahead. 

Do you keep a list -- on paper, in your phone, or in your thoughts -- of the treats you're going to indulge in?  I have a very basic wish list that includes upgrading my mattress and, when I can't push the lawnmower as well, maybe opting for a riding version. 

Fortunately, as a writer, books aren't on the optional list. They are necessities. I recharge the word fountains by savoring the really good stuff that other people put on paper.

If you get discouraged, have days when "the blues" settle in, are still recovering from some challenges of childhood or adult "big losses," books might be on your necessities list, too.  Or, of course, among the "let's have a treat today!" options.

Recently I bought new mysteries by Jane Harper (superb Australian writer) and Tana French (Irish, and because I reread her books once a year or so, they are really worth spending for), as well as Charles Todd. I did buy this year's Louise Penny Three Pines novel. And I have some things to say later this weekend about Sujata Massey's fifth mystery that features young woman lawyer Perveen Mistry (this one's 1922).

And sure, I recommend those authors, and often review crime fiction at KingdomBks.blogspot.com, one of my other blogs.

But I'm slow to purchase poetry, because I want it to always be the kind I'll be re-reading. (Did we mention economic tough times?) I want to savor it, maybe learn from it, feel grateful that the poet can pull together thoughts and feelings in ways that confirm my own, even lift me up.

Which brings me at last to the point: Get yourself a copy of AMERIGUN by Anne Marie Macari.

Never heard of her? Well, how many of those crime fiction novelists I listed have you heard of? One or two? That's not because the others aren't terrific ... it's because advertising budgets get slanted to the books that the publishers figure will make a Big Profit. Which might not be the case for this slim 67-page collection. Since it's amazing, beautiful, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking, I guess we'll have to share word of AMERIGUN with each other!

Writing forty years after her brother Edward's death by self-inflicted gunshot -- which he explains, maybe through a "medium," was an accident -- Macari faces the role of firearms among us. Yes, of course, the clever machine called a handgun (my second husband, R, a gunsmith, adored their mechanisms) can't fire its deadly round without a person's hand involved. 

But Macari allows the American gun -- AMERIGUN -- itself to take on personality. One of the poems reads:

Sometimes I see the gun entering
the room   it is smiling and has come

from a different world made
of materials I don't

understand.    When it calls you
with its steely music how

can you resist its metal grip grazing
your skin like another

hand warming yours —

Macari goes on to the sexuality of the gun (the way cigarettes have been; remember those Marlboro ads, the ranch hand leaning back provocatively against a horse, cigarette in his fingers, held low by his hips and holster or close to his lips). She touches discreetly, feather-light, on the firearm as American symbol. Spills some sorrowing statistics of children's gun deaths, lets anger flicker among her fireworks of phrases. Weaves in the losses of people who've shaped her life since her brother's death -- including other poets you may recognize. 

And at last, because she is one of our poets who values and can sing the words of life's enormous beauty, she brushes her fingers against forgiveness, that sweetener of painful memory.

Go ahead, treat yourself. The book costs less than dinner out, and will satisfy much longer. 

* * 

Oh, that second book to carry on your list and get around to buying soon? It's mine -- THRESHOLDS -- where you and I get to share and reflect the transitions of our lives. Let me know if you'd like a signed bookplate mailed to you, wherever you are, or visit northeastern Vermont and maybe we will cross paths. No firearms involved in this collection, but I promise to salute my "ex" by allowing them into a later group of poems, already gathering. 

 

"This Is the Real Thing": THRESHOLDS, an Exploration of Transitions

My new book of poems. Available in bookshops and online.

My buddy B and I shared a long lunch at a community restaurant today, and wrapped it up with identical slices of coconut cream pie. It was very satisfying, as we talked about wide-ranging topics that matter to us.

Running through much of the hour and a half was a repeated theme: If we're not looking into mirrors, we forget that we've become "old." Of course, it depends on how you define that -- but we're over 70, and when we were young adults, 70 was the edge of Old Age, something that seemed foreign and even spooky. What if you fall down and break a hip? What if your mind starts to slide? What if your relatives and friends think you are boring?

None of those have happened to either of us (*yet*).  But we walk in a landscape that can be mysterious, baffling, and hard to predict. And yes, we watch our footing literally. I climbed a steep ridge before lunch, and on my way back down, I held my arms out to both sides, for better balance.

Aging as a transition is not as drastic as leaving home for college, or falling in love, or experiencing pregnancy or (gulp) loss of a child at any age. It happens that B and I have both experienced loss of a much-loved spouse, to a fatal illness. Time has passed since those losses began, and we mention our husbands' names with affection, more often than with sorrow or pain.

Transition. With it comes the magic of the "liminal," the borderland where things aren't quite confirmed. In poems I often pull up imagery like mists, rivers, boundaries. This is what it is to walk forward into change. To walk up to, and then across, a threshold.

What have you learned from facing and walking into transitional times in your life? This is open for your comments (although they get screened, so you won't see them post right away). Conversation.

Thanks, B, for today's shared and sweet adventure. 

* *

A bit of the poem "Wilderness" from the book:

 There could be worse

wilderness to walk, you know; others have had it hard too, and
they didn't have such good boots to wear. The little things.
Let's count them now, together. 

April Is National Poetry Month -- and I'm All In on This One!

Today you can read "Hometown" in RockPaperPoem literary magazine -- I wrote it when translator Tony Hao, a resident artist here with Catamount Arts, suggested ways to write about our home towns, and I realized I didn't have one. Where I grew up is so different from where I live now, and my roots are confused. See what you think: https://rockpaperpoem.com/current-issue/

I'll be at the St. Johnsbury PoemTown reading at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum on Saturday April 11, at 4 pm -- my two poems displayed downtown for this year's Poem Town are "Voices in the Night" (at Momentum Business Solutions at the intersection of Eastern Avenue and Railroad Street), and "Revolution" at Caledonia Plant Shop (nearby at 18 Eastern Ave). I'll post photos of them soon, but you can stroll the town and read these, along with many other wonderful insights.

I'll be at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier on Sunday April 26, 4:30 pm, along with other Northeast Kingdom writers including Judith Janoo and S.J. (Steve) Cahill, as well as my old friend Garret Keizer and long-ago Kingdom Books ally Chard deNiord, and others. 

Last but not least, on April 27 there will be four of us reading online with the Vermont Jewish Poets -- if that's meaningful to you, do look into it.

Watch for a BIG announcement about my poetry collection THRESHOLDS later this week. 

So ... am I working hard enough? 

After all that, you've earned a bit of a poem, right? This is from "Voices in the Night":

   

                            Here, the language of trauma (reddened, sore)

and the language of regret (tender apology for a path not seen) mingle,

soft balm to burned fingers. We always wanted to hear each other,

didn’t we? But accent and origin, animal nature, our canine, feline,

equine coughs of distress fell like rough echoes. What you say at night

your voice uncovering, discovering, slicing, even scarring: I hear you

with an organ centered just below my beating heart. 

BK