After I read Kristin Henry’s poem “Release,” I was drawn to reread it many times over the days I was reading contest entries. I admired its embedded rhymes (“back away./ Her airy body; delirium-like, but true. I’ve/heard them, too) and its rhythms, the way its italicized dialog tells a rich, full story, and the way it uses its occasion (the poet being with her mother during her last week alive) to conjure the past in new light and release it.

The opening lines about slippers falling off but never on and the wheel chair wanting to back away establish the emotional as well as physical landscape. The poet’s report “For once I let it go” following the mother’s lines “You’re so patient. I never knew” launch the moment of recognition the poem achieves about love and acceptance and understanding. The poem seems to me to do its work with an exquisite blend of detail and commentary.

Release
By Kristin Henry

Her slippers slip off but never on.
Her wheelchair wants to back away.
Her airy body. Unpredictable.
Those damn slippers.

Let me help you. Yes. Almost!
Let’s try again. There’s lots of time.
Her puzzled eyes: You’re so patient.
I never knew. For once I let it go.

 And so my mother reveals herself
for the first time, love coming
in secrets: her drunken second husband’s long
abuse, my father’s…. Suicide.

Her mother; stories from long ago
relayed delirium-like, but true. I’ve
heard them, too: Company’s coming. Use
the embroidered linen. The best one
on the left. Iron it again. No wrinkles.
We have our reputation.

My love coming from speaking
defiance to authority she never questioned,
frustrating the aides:
She’s very tired. She doesn’t want to eat.

The doctor says she’s better off without. Please!
Let her be… and finally I can let her be,
our years of arguing, You’re just like me. I’m not!
Myself alive inside her mirror and hating it, lets go,
and I cling to what is left —
how this short week must end —

until, my hand beneath her head, I whisper
she can go, the words clogging my throat like
knives. For absolution, I say what I believe:
Dad wants to take you dancing,
and she flies.

****

After she’d been notified of winning, Kristen sent me a narrative about herself and poetry:

After many moves during my childhood, I graduated from high school in Ellensberg, WA. Under the tutelage of an amazing teacher, Marion Klobucher, I learned about poetry — what it meant, how to read it and best of all, how to write it. My senior year (and without my knowledge), she sent one of my poems to The Atlantic Monthly which ran (and still runs) a nationwide contest for high school poets. Although I didn’t place, I won an honorable mention; the award placed me among the top 20 high-school poets in the country. The magazine printed my name and sent me an award, which teacher made sure I received at graduation.

After high school, I attended Whitman College in Walla Walla. Although creative writing classes weren’t offered at there at the time, I did publish some pieces in the college literary magazine.

With my BA clutched in my hand, I decided to work in a publishing house, but with my vast experience, my position was that of a secretary at Allyn-Bacon Publishers. Oh Dear me how boring that was — despite it being in San Francisco. However, I got to read a LOT of mail from teachers, and I could not believe how rudely they spoke of their students! I figured I could do a better job, so it was back to Washington, living at home again as I enrolled in a teacher training program at Central Washington College (now University.) The next year I began teaching high school in East Wenatchee, and I loved everything about it. That summer, I enrolled at in a class at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu because it was in — Hawaii. The week before I was scheduled to come home, I met an amazing man. Two years later we were married, and a couple of years later our first son arrived, to be followed 20 months later by our second. It was a busy time, and by then, poetry was no longer my passion. I stayed home and raised the boys. We moved from California to Bellevue when the youngest was about to enter Kindergarten. When he reached sixth grade, I went back to working in schools, though not as a teacher. My certificate had expired by then, but I did sneak back to the high school as secretary to the assistant principal. I hated it, but it brought in some income and helped us buy a boat and finance the kids’ college expenses. Poetry was but a distant dream.

Many years later, I retired and decided to pick up my lost dreams. They worked me back into shape as a poet. I will graduate from the Rainier Writing Workshop next month with an MFA in writing. It’s taken a long time to rediscover how to write poetry, and a long road from high school success to today. But it’s here now, and I can call myself a poet. Can believe I am a poet.

Note: Ordinarily, I’m fairly gutsy, and I’ll try most anything that won’t impact my self-esteem or my health. But sending things out? Not so much. Everyone else’s poetry is always so much better than mine. (And yes, I know most artists feel insecure about their work, no matter how good it is.)

I entered your contest after having made a bet with myself that I could take one positive step toward (perhaps) overcoming my skittishness about sending work out. So winning in the Writing It Real contest means I’m a winner on two fronts, news that’s almost as good as the second place honor.”

****

Poetry is an intimate art and we are fragile when we offer what we’ve mined from our hearts. It is hard to believe that what springs from one’s deepest feelings is “good enough” to matter to others. When the beauty of craft and technique are skillfully orchestrated in the presence of yearning and the courage to capture the moments that matter to us, art is born. Thank you Kristen Henry!