[Thespiritexpress] Kathryn Hohlwein Poem Read in Tuesday Class, November 26, 2024

[Ed Balldinger]

This is the poem I read before class today.  Kathryn is a beloved friend of
ours who passed away last Monday, November 18.  She was a Professor Emerita
of Literature at California State University, Sacramento who founded The
International Readers of Homer in 1998.  Although Lyn & I came to know her
over the past 25 years or more, she became a dearly cherished friend -
extended family.  She was funny, inquisitive, curious and extremely
articulate.   We miss her, but will hold her in our hearts always.

I'm also including a few links - one to a YouTube video of her reading her
poetry in her backyard for her 90th birthday, and one to The International
Readers of Homer.  Another link is to her book, "The Little Chapel in
Donegal."

Thank you for the opportunity to share this poem with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx1YJJecdsI

https://www.internationalreadersofhomer.org/copy-of-history

https://www.randomlanepress.com/product/little-chapel-in-donegal/

Blessings,

~ Ed



*Worse Than Your Burial *



This is almost worse than your burial –

a paralysis setting into

a nomenclature, not yours –

barely suggesting.



I didn’t think I’d cry

if I began this anger

and yet I am going there –

syllable, breathy pause.



I think I have never known anyone,

anyone more alive, more subtly

gaining wisdom, more desperately

losing it.



I will have to let you go

into your absence all alone.

I am unable to follow.



Each time I retrieve a memory

I am grateful at first – then not so

as it solidifies into Not You.



I want your quickness,

not a rerun motion picture

beginning its weird death rattle.



I hate memory and its fraudulence,

its disgusting clever pretense

as much as I hate your death.



I don’t want this phony fixity.

I want your iridescence.





~ Kathryn Hohlwein

from *“The Little Chapel in Donegal”*
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