Book of the Week

 The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit 2023)

By Sharon Waller Knutson

 

 

 Review by Mary McCarthy


Sharon Waller Knutson’s new book: “The Leading Ladies of My Life,” is both a celebration and a memoir. In these poems Knutson presents a cast of remarkable characters, so real they leap off the page and connect with the reader’s own memories and experience. For me, one such connection was with “Daddy’s Three Girls:”

                in our identical
                mother daughter
                dresses mama orders
                from the J.C. Penney
                catalogue with the money
                she earns taking in washing.

This brought vividly back to me how proud and beautiful my two sisters and I felt in our Mother Daughter dresses one day long ago, going out to lunch together one summer afternoon. These few lines also bring back those days of catalogs to dream over,  Penneys, Sears and Montgomery Ward, that dad ordered our coats and school clothes from, and as well describes a mother’s small economies, doing extra to give us something special.

Knutson’s own economy is everywhere in these poems. In a few deft strokes she highlights details that illuminate her characters, their lives and personalities, like the “bluebird” on her grandmother’s hat, (Getting the Royal Treatment) or reminding us how grandmothers will save new gifts “for nice” and keep wearing their old clothes. (Pendleton Jacket.)

 In “Smoking Cigarettes With Copaline” her aunt changes her brand of cigarettes with every big change in her life–and that list of brands alone tells a story, from Lucky Strikes through Virginia Slims to Marlboros. Copaline seems a tough fighter, whose bad habit breaks her with emphysema and kills her. While we acknowledge what the doctor writes on the death certificate, we are ready to agree that really:
                she died of a broken heart.

The path these poems take is layered and ever expanding. Beginning with the poet’s own sense of herself a “McIntosh:”
 a survivor
                with a tough skin and tender
                flesh,

part of a chain of ancestors, a long family of survivors and protectors, she feels like a pine cone

                keeping my seeds safe
                from the cold and predators
                releasing them in a sizzling summer
                to procreate and protect.

Knutson’s poems move out in widening circles: grandmothers, mother, sister, mothers in law,
aunts, cousins, and “soul sisters,” an ever enlarging family, connected by blood and shared history, generation after generation, both the family you are born into and the families you find. Folks that are hardy and long lived, with their own quirks and surprises, demanding attention, insisting on being their own selves, unique and original, ,but always ready to support each other with love and care

Moving through about a century, from the 1940”s to the present, the scenes and images in Knutson’s poems are familiar to us, grounded in shared memories of times and place, popular culture like TV shows (Howdy Doody) movie stars, those Cigarette brands, mail order catalogues, Zoom poetry meetings and those wonderful Queen Anne Chocolates the young sisters can’t help consuming, one by one, until there’s only one left for dad’s Christmas present.

Persistent themes are endurance and survival–many of these characters live well into their 90’s, and caring–when someone is lonely, sick, or just pretending, like grandma in “Sick Bed,” you
don’t hesitate or question. You simply go–to give them whatever they need: care, company, entertainment, assurance they are loved.

We find we may, like Knutson, not want to be like our mothers or grandmothers, but come to reflect them as well as understand them. When there is loneliness, no matter if it’s framed as being sick or on one’s death bed, you respond in person, and that malaise can become a celebration at the movies, (Sick Bed) or a home cooked feast .(Fast Forward to the Future) Loneliness is resolved in joy.

With all of her sensitivity and vivid reportage, Knutson is also very funny, and a wonderful storyteller. She lets her themes and characters reveal themselves in their stories, their habits, and their words. They become delightfully familiar, like our own families; original,, human, funny and dear, irresistible as those delicious “Christmas Chocolate Cherries.”

Some of my favorite poems are:

Howdy Doody Stranger

My six-year-old great grandson
climbs in the car of a stranger
who takes him to school
and then he tells his teacher,

Stranger didn’t steal me. Proof
that all the warnings: Don’t
speak to or go with a stranger
drilled in his head as often

as the flashing lights
in the school crosswalk
are blocked out like a blast
from a boom box.

In the forties, when I am six
I accept rides with strangers
who pull to the side of the street
because refusing would be rude

and foolish since the walk
to school is long and cold
and windy and my family
applaud me for being smart

and social and safe on streets
where strangers never snatch
children with Buffalo Bob
and Howdy Doody in charge.


Getting the Royal Treatment

My grandmother is named
Anna after Anne Boleyn
and Tolstoy’s Anna Karina
which may explain why
she expects royal treatment.

When I ride the Greyhound
from Montana to Idaho to visit
my grandmother, the first thing
I see when the bus pulls
into the station is the blue bird
perched on my grandmother’s hat.

She squints in the sun, wearing
a colorful dress to match
her hat and sensible shoes.
We walk down the sidewalk
to the shoe store where she plops
down in a chair and summons
the clerk with a flick of her wrist
to bring her box after box of shoes
which she rejects as too big,
too small or unattractive.

The clean-shaven young clerk
obeys her command but behind
her back points to the bird on her hat
and covers his mouth to suppress
snickers, which she never hears,
but I do. I with ears sharp
enough to hear birds chirping outside
despite the canned pop music blasting
inside the air-conditioned store.

Even though he makes fun
of my grandmother, I buy
a pair of tennis shoes
because I know Anna
is not in the store to buy shoes.
Her closet is too crowded.
She is there to be waited on
and treated like the Queen
she believes herself to be.

Pendleton Jacket

When I am sixteen, my grandmother
receives a Pendleton jacket for Christmas
from my aunt, the police chief’s wife,
and says she’ll save it for nice.

The checkerboard red and black
beauty was on my Christmas list.
But it was a luxury my father could not afford
on his teacher’s salary. I turn green as grass

as she hangs the jacket in the closet
never to be worn, like the blouses and slacks
she gets for Christmas every year. Nice
never comes since my grandfather died.

Every morning when I stop by before school,
I sneak into the closet and feel the tartan wool
warm on my skin as I slip the jacket off the hanger
and onto my shoulders where it fits perfectly,

feeling prettier, smarter and more popular
as I inhale the new factory fragrance.
One morning I see her reflection in the mirror.
You look nice. You’ll be late. Scoot, she says.

I wear the Pendleton to school every day, returning
It to her closet in the afternoons, in case my aunt
visits. Then my father announces we are moving
at the end of the summer to another state.

In August, when I say goodbye to my grandmother,
the jacket is gone.  I put it away for nice, she says.
When I unpack my suitcase, I find the Pendleton
nice and comfortable with my sweaters and skirts.

Even though I am her age now and she has been gone
for decades, I still hear her whispering in my ear,
Save it for Nice and I obey as I hang up my new jeans
and wear the faded ones with the tear in the knee.

To read a review of “The Leading Ladies of My Life” by Alarie Tennille:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5663446791

To read more about Sharon:

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2023/03/meet-editor-sharon-waller-knutson.html

To read more about Mary:

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2023/04/

To buy the book, contact Sharon on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550834171025