Published by The Puddin’head Press
Stapled Chapbook, 31 pages
8.5 x 5.5 inches, 2008
ISBN# 978-0-9724339-8-3
$6.00
A book of fine poems by Marydale Stewart. These poems explore home and personal identity and what the value of place is. She investigates what it is that makes someone call a place “home”.
Praise for Inheritance
Marydale Stewart’s Inheritance is worth anyone’s keen attention.
She writes in the very moving title poem:
And so in my heart I retrace
the way we came,
how we sought the shadow of this
land’s spine and moved beyond—
we the daughters—
to that bronzed, fragrant light where the sun
goes down on the New World and
where a child swings in the morning of her life.
How fully that sets the tone of the book, throughout
which there are remarkable moments such as:
Then in a step
we topped a rise, and there, between
my horse’s ears, lay the endless West!
And in the poem “Hope”, this:
The world could use more poets, child,
so tend your words
husband them
and find the ones
that fill our eyes with tears
and keep us near
the elemental beginning
of everything.
A fine moving book,
And one to give pleasure to many.
-Lucien Stryk, Poet, translator, and teacher
About Marydale Stewart
Marydale Stewart currently lives in Spring Valley, Illinois. However she has wandered in her lifetime across the United States. She was born in Illinois, moved to Colorado, lived for a while in Kansas. She has now returned to Illinois. She is a licensed pilot and lover of horses.
Stewart holds a Ph.D. in English and a Master’s degree in Library Science from Northern Illinois University. She has been very active worker in and advocate of the library system in Illinois. She is a former librarian, teacher, and editor. She is very dedicated to animal shelters and is an Arabian horse enthusiast.
Contents
Inheritance
Spring For All
Reality
Colorado Dreams
Chance
The Groves
The Dialog
Colorado Evenings
States
Daphne: A Romance
Benediction: On Kansas Land
Windmill
In This Place
Hope
January Thaw
Mary Todd Lincoln Speaks
The Things I Did Not Do
Small Town In Illinois
October Wind
Writing Poetry
The Boating Party
In The End
Equine By Starlight
Mending
Home
Excerpt
Inheritance
I am the daughter of a daughter
whose roots clenched land as far east
as this country goes–and
she of a woman who grew old
where the prairie began,
leasing her life span to
a series of banked fires and cold stoves
while we moved across the continent.
We moved in degrees of our lives, enchaining
the land in our own ways. We began where
the oldest tree-dark quiet paths lay
unclaimed, where our grandmothers
stepped in wonder and terror
off the ships from other lands.
Now a daughter of my daughter is a swaying
sunlit blur on the children’s swing:
the California coast nurtures her in light.
And I, a daughter in between,
carry in my inner being
visions of shaded pines and
spongy golden duff
beneath my feet.
And so in my heart I retrace
the way we came,
how we sought the shadow of this
land’s spine and moved beyond-
we the daughters-
to that bronzed, fragrant light where the sun
goes down on the New World and
where a child swings in the morning of her life.
In This Place
In her blanketed and pillowed plastic chair,
she leans crookedly toward me, blue eyes fixed
on her inner intent, to tell the truth. Her hands
are still graceful, long-fingered, even as her tremor
makes parody of gesture.
There are no mirrors in this place, she says.
Silently I say to her: But you are safe here.
They have good food.
You just had your hair done. And of course
there are mirrors. There’s one right here.
But I do not say these things aloud. I wait.
In a moment, she explains: If they had mirrors
in this place, we would look in them and scream
in such pain that we would shatter and splinter
like the glass in the mirror and fall to the floor
because we are so shriveled and people would come along
and cut themselves on us there would be blood
everywhere and pieces of us all broken and ruined
scattered so far they would never find us again
they would be glad to be rid of us they are mean.
Would you want to be in a place like this?
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