Tuesday 1 October 2019


i am reading
elizabeth bishop’s unpublished poems*

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.


pages and pages of her stillborns
among  her almosts and imperfect ones
yet    even these startle with their radiant words. . .    
how could she see everything
and
after her mind’s eye took it all in
she wrote it down
often scribbling in her tight-fisted script
dark and painful like her secrets. . .
in the process
the words often quarreled back like a jealous lover. . .
she wrote
then    in her rare and beautiful sometimes
her chiseled music found its voice


*Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box edited and annotated by Alice Quinn, 2006.


* * * * *

Sister Lou Ella is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53).

1 comment:

  1. Profound insight: "...the words often quarreled back like a jealous lover. . ."

    ReplyDelete