July Poet of the Month Virginia Shreve

Biography:

Born in Nitro, West Virginia. Lived many places, including NJ, MN, TX, FL, and Budapest. Had 4 brothers. Still had to mow the lawn. Wrote my first poems to weasel out of a term paper. NIU. Took Javanese. Also took fencing, in case Pirate Queen ever opened up as a career path. So far, that hasn’t worked out. IU. Poets in the Schools, Academy of American Poets Prize. Newsletter editor, proofreader, copy writer. Once penned an entire catalogue devoted solely to corrugated office products. Have lived in a small river town in CT with husband and dogs for many years. Honored to be named NBPF CT Beat Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2022. Current P.L. of Canton, CT.

I am particularly interested in the themes of memory, time, perception, loss, and yearning, the engine behind all human endeavors: survival, accomplishment, and destruction. Life as I see it is terrible, grim, beautiful, and hilarious. I like the absurd, the incongruous, spaces around things, unexpected kindness. The gorgeousness of sense. Inspiration, healing, personality, and agency in the natural world. When dogs wander through poems.

Backstory:

I seldom think about writing a poem about something. Images, phrases, lines pop into my head and dance, writhe, crawl, shout, or nag from there until the rest of the poem joins in to complete it. This one came from a visit to our local farmers’ market at the end of a season, the dwindling bounty signaling soon an end to what we always hope somehow will be an endless summer…and an end to other things we once took for granted as forever.

The Season of Sweet

This is the season of sweet.
Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, cherries
the seduction of peaches engulfing mouth tongue fingers
chin with sticky lasciviousness to turn anyone
into unrepentant sybarite,
grapes, plums, nectarines, and oh
the drunkenness of tomatoes – the red blush and stagger
let me bathe in such sweetness of how the sun loves us
pretend it will never end and

that those first traitorous crimson yellow orange
showgirls of maple leaves signify nothing more than
gaudy self-importance

That was the season of sweet.
I say good-by to those last berries, peaches, lingering
nectarines,
Things that were sweet once are not sweet now

I say good-by to you.

Backstory:

I have known the deep sorrow and cruelty of dementia attacking those I have loved. And I think about language, how we name things, the power of words. But I didn’t want to write this poem about someone else, (it comes across so often as slightly superior and condescending); I wanted to put myself in that place.

The Names of Things

I.
They say
if you know the name of something, it gives you power over it.
I say
it didn’t keep your heart as mine, or halt death at the door

II.
We collect names like stamps like coins like grievances
like lists of lovers we wished we’d had
like butterflies pinned in shadow boxes
like talismans against the tumbling dark.

III.
Names dissolve on my tongue
like the lozenge of who I used to be
I try to bargain
I will give you sauerkraut and round-about and unrequited
if you leave me the names of all the dogs I’ve ever loved,
and three of the men
Maybe four

IV.
Words flee in fog and night like birds and light
I know the names of fewer things,
becoming more creature than scholar,
one of the vast nameless unowned things
My brain reverts to reptilian
perhaps I will flick out my tongue and hiss
wear the sun on my skin
Stretch slow and deliberate
like the drawn-out syllables
of a southern belle
too long at the ball
or the tortured prayer
of the unbeliever

speaking a name

Backstory:

I woke up with this poem almost totally complete (although I did have to edit a bit – for instance, I took out the part about Dr, Snow’s pump handle in the cholera outbreak of 1854 – I don’t know where that came from!). At first I wasn’t sure whether I was addressing myself or someone else. I am fascinated by how the brain works and tells you things…especially just out of sleep before it is regulated by consciousness.

I Want You to Blame Yourself

But only as much as you should.
Bars of moonlight stripe your face
like runnels of tears

I want suffering to know your address
But not to move in

I can be as cruel as salt
But not for long

I am tired of the tiny things
that leather the soul

The rituals of regret.
The rim of cup almost meeting the lips
the squint over steam

Do you wonder if it is enough? When
it will be enough?
I will tell you.

I can be as kind as breath
Until I cannot.

So much depends upon
what we choose to remember
what we vow to forget

the myths we tell ourselves

and how you finish this poem