My first published poem, "October," came out in YANKEE magazine -- which meant a lot to me (and still does), because more than any other, this magazine captured what my mother loved and valued. In the enormous gap that her premature death left (she was only 53), I could at least feel that she saw my poem this way.
For a long time, the only other place my poems appeared (under the surname Dugger, which I'd kept from a college marriage) was the Green Mountain Trading Post. In its wide and welcoming pages, I wasn't afraid to write about my Northeast Kingdom world as I saw and treasured it. To be read by my neighbors seemed the best reward ever. And it shaped me "forever," because when I went (twice) to the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers Conference and met poets whose work often seemed very complicated, very hard to understand, and made them famous, I made a decision:
I want to write what my friends and neighbors might want to read.
And that's still my goal today, although I write differently than I did back then.
This morning, out to a relaxed diner breakfast with a buddy, I learned she'd connected with one of my poems that Ginosko Literary Magazine published this week. (I'm still stunned that the magazine editor chose ALL TEN of the poems I'd sent to him. And very much honored.) My friend's reaction to the poem reassured me that I'm not just writing to "be creative" or to "vent" -- I'm writing poems about parts of my life that might mean something to someone else. It feels right to me.
"My" Dave, the man I happily married in 2003 after we'd met in a bookstore, chose poets for who they were in his life. That meant Galway Kinnell, deeply connected to the Northeast Kingdom and a neighbor to Dave's beloved Lyndon State College, was the most essential poet in Dave's life. But you know how it is -- married people start to notice each other's interests more, and soon Dave was insisting that we go to poetry readings all around the Kingdom, and even to The Frost Place in Franconia, NH, as well as to a reading in San Francisco when we went there for our honeymoon.
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| Bobbie Bristol and Donald Hall at The Frost Place (Dave took the photo). |
Even though he wasn't a poetry reader by preference, he had a great ear for strong work, and his highest compliment was "He (or she) is the real thing!" That's how he felt about Maxine Kumin, too, and Ruth Stone, who was nearly blind by the time we met her -- she responded to his warmth, flung an arm over his wide shoulder, and inscribed a book to him, "To My Darling David." He treasured signed poetry -- here's a poem Galway inscribed to him.
There are a lot more of my poems coming out this year, including a book of them, THRESHOLDS, around the end of May or early June. I did have a small collection in print way back before I met Dave, thanks to a friend who thought they should be "out there" for others to read ... most of those included in the pretty chapbook "Mud Season at the Castle" came to life first in the Green Mountain Trading Post.
But this will be my first poetry collection with a national/global publisher, Kelsay Books, and as Dave would say, I'm "more than thrilled."
To add to today's joy, a rather distant cousin of my mother's got in touch this morning because of the poems in Ginosko ... and gave me a long email about my mother's New England family roots in various locations. I had no idea getting the poetry out there would mean this kind of reconnection. Dave would have loved every minute.
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Consumer
Grocery shopping was my late husband’s delight:
his quick scan of what’s on sale, his seasonal urges insisting,
cherries, melon, organic farmed turkey—he prowled the grocery aisles.
heaping the cart, sending me back to aisle number two for olives, sardines.
In widow world I miss his pulled-pork mandates, his fragrant coffee grinds,
the newspaper stains on his thumbs from sorting coupons. Yes, I kissed
those fingers anyway. Ate his enthusiasm, spread thick on toasted
sourdough bread. Savored kisses redolent of sautéed onions, of fresh garlic,
smiled at belches, farts, and his well-fed contented groans.
BK
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