A few days ago I wrote about a Catherine Owen book of poems that I found in a second hand store and the poems’ sense of promise. This was one of her first books of poetry, and I’d said that one of her latest, the book Seeing Lessons was one that I wanted to read for comparison. I ordered it and it came in. So here I wanted to give you a taste of it, and say a few things about my experience of reading it.

First you should know that it is a book of poetry, but it is also a history, an exploration of Mattie Gunterman, an evocation of feminine frailty and strength and power. What it is to be a woman, an artist, someone who decides to live. So there are poems in Seeing Lessons, and there are excerpts from Gunterman’s journal. It’s a wonderful mix that works a bit like Seamus Heaney’s use of mythology. Mattie is the myth; women speaking through time, lives , domestic and real, order experience, create meaning, provide elements of purpose and empower desire.

From the collection at Vancouver Public Library

March 13, 1913

My Will. It feels like forever since we've been a family. All this working
in far flung parts of the province wears a person down at times. Alone here
again as Henry's left Sheep Creek - sure was nice to have him as flunky
for a while but he's young - wants to be on the move.

Can almost taste the beans that must be up in our lovely Beaton gardens! Has
it been too wet for the strawberries though? Could be best to spend Easter
in Seattle. May be back April or I don't know yet.

Reading these journal entries against Owen’s poetry creates a sense of a time bridge. Much like Heaney’s poetry does, but Owen’s bridge is made of willow, where Heaney’s is stone.

An eye, assessing

Digitalized to the millions, snapshots, today
synonymous with parenting, Baby Jane
frame upon frame until all life is an eye assessing the photogenic.

Then, Henry had but one, at least until he became
interesting, evincing a mind to spark the shutter, his mother
eschewing her Bull's Eye for the daily array of dishes, no
moony shots of Will even, as he sat at the head of the mess hall,
or the town's wealth of drifters, in the years the slump busted
businesses and left Seattle to sour.

One box the past packed away, its masks and apertures clouding
as Mattie inhabited survival, uncapturable as her lungs
hacked up childhood.

Really such a lovely thing, this relationship between women over time. Mutable, flexible, a soothing analgesic for the pain that living brings, but a pain killer that doesn’t cloud the eye or muffle the skin, just let’s the breath come more easily.