I have her book, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962. It was one of many things given to me by my grandmother — long before she passed. The copy she left me (a collectible) was not read but boxed away for when I finished college and lived a more solitary existence. I picked up an old paperback version of the book somewhere in New York when I lived there. I felt less guilty turning the pages of an old paperback. It is a great book of poetry. I’ve no idea where the paperback is now. The collectors hardback is on a shelf — unread and without an advocate. I recommend it to you now.

Death wistfully calls attention to its own inevitability while apologizing with the reminder of forgotten poetry.

An excerpt from North American Time by Adrienne Rich

I am thinking this in a country
where words are stolen out of mouths
as bread is stolen out of mouths
where poets don’t go to jail
for being poets, but for being
dark-skinned, female, poor.
I am writing this in a time
when anything we write
can be used against those we love
where the context is never given
though we try to explain, over and over
For the sake of poetry at least
I need to know these things

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For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

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