I just received Dana’s new poetry book, One
Light, published by Texas Review Press, a memoir in poetry. It seems that she
and I have walked the same path in life. She was burned terribly as a fourteen
year old and writes about the anguish of almost losing her hand, and describes
the pain. She sings and has a poem on page 30 titled Hymns.
I watched my husband’s face and listened to him sing hymns while nurses pulled
off the layers of dead skin from his cancer-ridden leg. I felt his pain as she
described the painful scraping of dead skin from her burned arms and hands.
Read the title poem below.
A single
light can lead you home. One light
is all
you need to break the back of night
when darkness
seems to weigh more than it has
on all
the nights before, and nothing’s as
it was.
Bit by bit, the lighter shades
of night
you used to trust have faded as
you stopped
believing in relief. The dark
goes on
forever, and begins right where you are.
But when
your eyes can’t guide your steps, you learn
to trust
your heart instead. You rise and turn
toward where
you need to go, and in the dark
you think
you see a glimmer like a star
that wasn’t
there until you headed home
through darkness,
trusting that a light would come.
In the poem, Hospital Days, Dana
writes about a few good memories she had from those weeks in the hospital; hot dogs from the deli, her
friends who came to see her and to sing with her. Her mother took care of her through
this time knowing her daughter could lose her hands. She was Dana’s rock,
always. You can’t read Dana’s work without knowing her Mama. Sadly the time came when Dana became the
care-giver when her mother’s mind began to fade. Her Mama died from an aneurysm.
Balancing
on the precarious rock trying not to do or say too much, but needing to say and
do so much. The poems about her mother at ninety broke my heart, and filled me
with memories as I thought about my mother who lost her short term memory after
an aneurysm damaged a part of her brain.
As
Fred Chappell said, “Here are some of the strongest poems I have ever read. I
am grateful for this truest of books.” I am grateful, too.
Dana will be teaching “What’s in Your Writing Folder?” Sunday, September 8 – Saturday September 14.
Dana has been a Folk School instructor since 2004. Her environmental memoir, "Back to Abnormal: Surviving with an Old Farm in the New South," was finalist for Georgia Author of the Year. She is also the author of five collections of poetry, including "Christmas in Bethlehem." Her newest collection of poems, "One Light," is a memoir in poetry. Dana has served as artist-in-residence for Grand Canyon National Park and Everglades National Park; as writer-in-residence for the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska; and she is a fellow of the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. She teaches English Literacy through Lanier Technical College.
Visit Dana's website
