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

[Taylor Slevin]

Thank you so much for this Ed. So enjoy her poetry. What a gift! 
I just watched her video that you sent where she reads her poetry. 
What a down to earth and vibrant legacy she leaves behind. 
🙏 Blessings to you and Lynne. 💖
Taylor 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 26, 2024, at 4:06 PM, Ed Balldinger via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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”
> <Black & White Kathryn_Deborah Rhea.jpg>
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