Search This Blog

August 20, 2012

This Piece

  Ann Ritter's haunting, beautiful poem calls to mind a poem by Slovenian poet Tomaz Salamun, published many years ago, about "Things," how they outlive us and take on a life of their own. Actually, I don't know if they have a life of their own, as much as they serve to speak to us in a special way... if we listen, and paradoxically, if we don't adopt a materialistic view of our world. 
_____________________________________________________________



Keen
by Ann Ritter

New York World’s Fair, summer 1965,
was our last family vacation.

Among the bright-tinged memories

of Greek lemon-rice soup in deep bowls,

and sharp blue light seen through Danish

cut-crystal vases, from the Italians

we brought home an eight-inch

version of Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Mary and Jesus would center the flat top

of my piano bought new that fall.

The next spring, after Daddy died,
I dusted the piano’s smooth surface,
lifted the cast Pietà with care,
felt the hollow place
in the back where Mary’s knees curved
to make a lap for her dead son.
 ______________________

 Poem, copyright Ann Ritter, all rights reserved.  Image, Gutenberg.org
 
A native of the South Carolina Lowcountry, Ann Ritter has made her home in the Atlanta, Georgia, area for the past 33 years. She is a writer, performer and business woman, who also teaches yoga and yoga therapy. By day she makes a living from corporate writing, project management, and teaching in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. By night she pursues her passions—storytelling, poetry, live theatre and dance. Ms. Ritter’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Charleston magazine; Confrontation, GSU Review (recently revamped as New South); Earth’s Daughters; THEMA: Your Reality or Mine; Georgia Journal; The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V,  and online in Poets Contest Corner, among other publications.

August 14, 2012

Catching Up

Summer has found me short of time for writing and blogging. The drought makes its mark on our daily lives. An extra 1 to 2 hours a day spent hand watering leaves little extra time for posting on this blog, but please stay tuned.  I'll be posting some wonderful poetry soon by Mary Langer Thompson, Liz Davies, Rosie Garland, Eileen Hector, Lynn Ifshin, Katherine Walker, and Ann Ritter. Also more to come from Donal Mahoney, and a really good essay by Annette Greene. For an overview of the summer's struggle and its grace notes, which so many of us are sharing, click here.