Spirits In Peace Blog

Beginning in the 1840’s, there was an outbreak of leprosy (now known as Hansen’s disease) in the Tracadie region of New Brunswick, Canada. Many of the ill were rounded up and shipped off to l’Ile-aux-Bec-Scies (Shedrake Island) where they were treated with no regard for any form of human dignity. Some fled or escaped, and remained hidden by families for entire lifetimes. A lazaretto opened in Tracadie, and the stigma destroyed the economy of the region for a time. It closed in 1974.

Sadly, Hansen’s disease has yet to be eradicated in the world, and that includes the Americas, where there are roughly 32000 cases (2006 statistics), with hundreds of thousands of new cases diagnosed each year worldwide.

Thank you to forensic anthropologist Dr. Kathy Reichs for penning the novel Bones To Ashes  and therein providing much of the factual content which assisted with the evolution of this poem.

And above all, thank you to Richard Doiron for introducing me to the heart and soul of Acadie…

 At The Heart Of Acadie

Old as crumble-clod of coastal clay she was,
that Tracadie-crone, nose gnawed and gnarled
 to crooked concave curve, upper lip lump-lengthy,
complexion porridge-paste.  Destroyed digits,
Hansen’s-honed to useless humps, remained,
 remnants of former fingers that erewhile fleetly flew
across parlour piano in front-gabled stone-hewn house
with Miscou view and outlook on Lamèque. 

But, terror-tracked as teen, she’d fled for fear
of bar and banishment to blasted Bec Scies Isle,
removed from fellowship of family and friends,
her bones to be in time interred in unmarked grave.
Hence hovel-hidden, without hope of help or healing,
she spent spinster yearning-years in silent solitude,
mystery of music her solace, mate, and muse.

I gazed at malformed face, once fair, and discerned
circle-sunken eyes filled not with melancholy misery,
but with love and liveliness and lustrous lucid light.
And all at once I saw not simply Sheldrake-sickness,
but strength of soul and spirit at the heart of Acadie.

   ©Carol Knepper

The music of the Acadian culture shows the richness, warmth and pride of a people whose very survival has been threatened in this province. The remarkable poet, novellist, and biographer Richard Doiron, with whom I have the honour of sharing this website, penned the lyrics to the well-known Acadian anthem “Mon Acadie”:

 Mon Acadie

1
Les champs de foin, dans tous les coins,
Ont la mémoire.
Ils chantent à tous, je vous l’avoue,
Il faut le croire.
La pensée d’hier c’était misères
En grandes couleurs.
L’histoire du jour est une d’amour,
Qui vient du coeur.

(Refrain)
Mon Acadie, toi si jolie, tu es si belle.
Je pense à toi, et chaque fois je me rappelle
D’un vieil ancien, qui m’entretient à grande gloire.
Mon Acadie, t’es mon pays, t’es mon histoire.

 (Refrain)
Mon Acadie, toi si jolie, tu es si belle.
Je pense à toi, et chaque fois je me rappelle
D’un vieil ancien qui m’entretient à grande gloire.
Mon Acadie, t’es mon pays, t’es mon histoire.

Late last evening, I, and many others in the literary community, learned of the passing of poet and publisher Sondra Ball. This is a great loss, and one need only type her name into a web search to gain an inkling of this woman’s remarkable accomplishments.

In a world too often replete with pretension and elitism, Sondra was one of the genuine ones who cared for literature and poets as opposed to mere person gain and advancement.

Sondra lived in New Jersey with her husband, Mario Cavallini, and she and I often exchanged notes about the weather - especially signs of spring and the beauty of autumn, relative  to the nature poetry we both so loved.  Since its inception in 1997, her e-zine, “Autumn Leaves” was an excellent forum wherein aspiring poets could be published. It was published twice monthly and apparently received 300,000 hits monthly, which shows both the magnitude and the quality of this remarkable woman’s undertaking. One might wish to peruse the following link:One final edition of Autumn Leaves will be posted at that site.

http://www.sondra.net/al/

One final edition of Autumn Leaves will be posted at that site.

Recently, Sondra’s breast cancer, which had been in remission for many years, returned, and notes from Sondra became less frequent. Unfortunately, the cancer was found to have metastisized. In the early morning hours of in the first hours of Tuesday, March 16th, Sondra passed away after a difficult illness.

I have written the following piece in memory of Sondra:

Like almost everyone else, I spent much of the past couple of weeks glued to coverage of the Olympic Games. And like everyone else, I found myself entranced by tales of personal triumphs and tragedies, the stories behind the stories. And like every other Canadian, I was delighted to see Crosby’s gold-medal winning goal  in overtime in the Canada-U.S. hockey game.

But when I think of the monies involved in such an undertaking, I cannot help but think not only of Vancouver’s homeless population, but of those who live in poverty and misery, hunger and disenfranchisement, around the world. That thought inspired the following poem:

Ever The Medallist: A Reverse Double Etherée

Reflecting on the hoopla surrounding
the Olympics and endless tales of
triumphs and defeats, personal
bests and tragedies, I still
cannot help noting the
numbers living in
squalor, sadly
common in
cities,
and
yet
oddly,
I feel some
national pride
despite advocating
full justice and equal
occasion for advancement
for each and every person. So
I pause to sift through priorities,
humankind ever the gold medallist.

© Carol Knepper

 Shimmering Spirit of Thérèse

She filled sad-stormy eyes, tear-trickled cheeks
awash with shock-sick flood of sudden pass.
She lit perfect turns of landing-luminous lutz
and flared and flashed in flight of triple flip.
She sit-spin sparkled, spiral-sequence shone,
in footwork fantasy-effulgent, warm golden gleam
of mother-glow in edge-work dazzle evident.
And as with every jump Joannie grew in craft
and confidence, all could openly observe at work
within her sweet shimmering Spirit of Thérèse.

For Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette, whose mother passed away unexpectedly during the Olympic Games.

As much as I am not a fan of winter, sometimes I must confess that the scenery is downright breath-taking. There is nothing quite like snow on fully-skirted spruces, fresh deer track, or ice crystals on finely-twigged alders to give rise to verse. The name I have coined for this is “snowetry.”

I am a person who tends to get shack-wacky when I am stuck at home, but sometimes being snowbound is not so bad at all. It can provide one with a much-needed change of pace, an excuse to kick back and do whatever one loves best. In my case, that of course is writing. During a recent blizzard, the following piece emerged:

Sometimes Snowbound

Sometimes snowbound satisfies and eases
Sunday soul, with extra hours to stanza-scribe,
spans to laze and loll. Sometimes snowbound
fascinates, filling fancy’s feathered plume
with sonnet and sestina, sijo and senryu.
Sometimes snowbound sparkles with crystalline
clarity, solstice stars more scintillating
than on any August eve. Sometimes snowbound
wins and warms winter-weary heavy heart,
as hearth-fire’s engaging crackle creates
captivating spell. Sometimes snowbound
motivates meditative mind and mood,
musings swiftly scribbled in introspective inks.

©Carol Knepper

photograph courtesty of BigFoto

Almost anyone who loves literature is familiar with the famous lines by William Wordsworth:

“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration…; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity…” *

The past couple of evenings have been just like that here, an unusual occurrence in this maritime climate. Usually the fog rolls in, the wind picks up, or it just plain becomes too chilly to sit outside and enjoy the later part of the evening. But of late, the days have been uncomfortably hot, while dusk has been pure perfection.

After almost a month of seemingly incessant rains, we are finally getting a bit of summer, bitter-sweet, of course, as it will all end soon and there will be a nip in the night air. It is wonderful to be outside and see, hear, and even smell the exuberant enjoyment others are taking in this late start to a very abbreviated summer. The sound of laughter on nearby decks, the whiff of a barbeque, and the shrieking and splashing of children in a swimming pool are sheer delight.

Photography Courtesy Of BigFoto

The sunsets have been spectacular, the stars, well, stellar, and my poetic imagination took flight as last evening’s sky became streaked with ever-changing pinkish clouds. This is the result:

August Mandolin

Where have you gone, mid-summer mandolin?
Have you slid smoothly into saxophone or falter-fainted
into flute? Have you vanished just to reappear
as vapour-violin, strings puce-plucked in evening sky,
frets a faded rose? Have you trickled into piccolo,
your tune of paltry pitch, transformed into tuba,
or swelled to sousaphone? Or is your symphony
such sound as stirs my sun-starved heart,
your August grandeur so august as to mystify my soul?

Carol Knepper ©2009

* from the Petrarchan sonnet “It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free” by William Wordsworth

When it’s a prose poem, of course!

Not all poetry arrives in neat, tidy stanzas. Sometimes a poem arrives almost as prose, but is distinguished from that by still retaining poetic characteristics and language usage. Kahlil Gibran wrote prose poems, for example, as in the famed “The Prophet.”

Recently, as piece arrived in that format, basically requiring almost no editing other than the usual correcting of typos. When that happens, a poet knows the piece is in some way special - a gift from the universe, and the writing is often spiritual in theme or somehow related to spirituality.

Nature is always a great source of inspiration for me, and my muse is often most generous on a balmy day. After this summer’s incessant rains, the past couple of days have been sunny yet with a haze in the distance due to my proximity to rivers and the bay. Just the sort of weather when the Muse often visits quite spontaneously.

Here, then, is the prose poem that chose me as its author just yesterday.

The Hazy Day of Great Abundance

On certain summer days, when the southerly breezes off the bay brought a torrid heat accompanied by gentle mists in the distance, her imagination took flight as it rarely did in any other season. She hardly experienced epiphanies in winter, for example, her soul being too congested with the back-breaking labour of ice and snow for the whisperings of the universe to enter. But on this particularly hot day, with its incipient fog, she began to note stirrings along the lines of abundance and its relationship to addiction.

Let it be said that over the course of her three-score and some-odd years, she had come in touch with the usual assortment of addicts. When she was young, she encountered some who seemed unable to exist without a drug-induced high, and eventually the inevitable alcoholic or two made an appearance. Many of her female friends seemed obsessed with weight and food; some were overly concerned with relationships. And more recently, as face-to-face conversations were replaced with electronic chat rooms and dating sites, she came to the conclusion that many were hooked on these forums as well.

And thus, on this hot and hazy day, came to her a rather obvious realization: that which we feel we are lacking, we crave. The person lacking in human warmth and communication becomes addicted to chats; those lacking the high of euphoria become hooked on drugs, alcohol, and occasionally exercise. Persons who believe themselves unloved become love addicts, and those who perceive themselves as unseen and unheard crave attention. The second fiddle craves the praise normally awarded first violin. A dieter, believing herself to be lacking food, craves more of it, quite a self-defeating pattern, and one which she herself had often endured.

Realizing the perception of abundance to be the root of all contentment, as the mists rolled in off the surrounding rivers and bay, she said to herself in an unabashed manner, “I have enough.”

And this had been the gift brought in by the heat and humidity, of which there was most assuredly an abundance on this particular day…

Photo Courtesy Of BigFoto

My usual style is free verse with ventures into form poetry such as haiku, tanka, and the etheree. I don’t normally write rhyme, although I have done rhyming etherees. But this piece presented itself more or less in non-metrical couplets, and all I had to do was arrange them in sequence. The Muse was most generous in sending me the lines in their entirety.

When I lived in Montreal, I saw so many lost teenage girls. Behind the heavy make-up of the prostitute was the face of a child of no more than perhaps at most fifteen. Something I recently read in a novel reminded me of that scene. How sad that our society lets this happen to its children - I used to wonder what kind of horror they were escaping at home if this life was perceived as better…

Montrealers commonly refer to rue St-Laurent, a long street which divides east from west, as “the Main.” By day, it is captivating and fascinating, and one can buy groceries or a lunch of any ethnic persuasion and do the usual shopping, etc. After 10 p.m., it turns into a nightmare…

I did not really intend this piece to be strictly metrical but rather rhythmical, and wanted to try some rhyme.

St-Laurent Strut

Little girl lost on rue St.-Laurent
top tugged down her breasts to flaunt,
black vinyl skirt and knee high boots -
she’s all alone, no talk of her roots.

Striding with sharp stiletto’d strut
she spends her nights in hovel and hut.
Arms gray-veined from needle and knife,
on fear and addiction she bases her life.

Prom preempted by pusher-pimp
who walks with a syphilitic limp,
she’s owned, dishonoured, and poorly kept.
How many tears has her mother wept?

On the street where daughter-dreams
are daily dashed amidst the screams
sirens are shrieking once again -
girl-child murdered on Montreal’s Main.

Picture Courtesy Of BigFoto

Not long ago, I encountered a website displaying a few rhyming etherees and providing some possible rhyme schemes. I didn’t tackle one right away, but more or less let the notion simmer on my mind’s back burner for a couple of months while I dealt with the horrific winter nature offered us.

Then, just this past weekend, I suddenly found myself working on one. I had not set out to do this so much as one wanted to be written, as often happens with poetry of all types. Over the past few days, I have played around with rhymes schemes, working to incorporate the additional pattern into the already highly structured etheree format. In my first attempt I used couplets(a-a-b-b- etc.), which are fairly straightforward. I then worked with alternating lines in the a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d pattern.

My most recent effort was with a rhyme scheme beginning with a-b-c-b, and I found this more intricate pattern interesting to work with, trickier than the simple couplets but perhaps less difficult than the alternating form. Nature, as usual, provided me with a metaphor for this somewhat spiritual piece.

A Heavenward Glide: A Rhyming Double Etherée

Let
me not
shed a tear,
so overwrought
about matters which
are well past my control
that I make myself daft, my
thinking on an unpleasant roll.
For I need to realize what dwells
within my power to alter or change,
conducting my affairs in a calm style
in such manner as I might arrange.
I must let worries and concerns
which simply add up to pride
float on the western wind
and heavenward glide
past clouds to safe
realms above
in God’s
Love.

© Carol Knepper