Local Books: A gentle way to address sadness and loss

Crafting a book of poetry is different than writing a novel. Both have a story to tell, yet with poems, each conveys its own story, its own message, with emotions slipping out through the rhythm of each stanza, like tears staining the page.

This is particularly true in “Indelible Shadow,” award-winning poet Sandra Berris’ newest release of poetry. These poems don’t rhyme. Each within this slim book is crafted in couplets, a pairing carrying its own message, almost a story in two lines. By the end, we feel the weight of the tale.

If Only

If only you had been on the train

You would have felt its rocking

The hypnotic sway and swooshing

Sounds soothing your dread

Silencing dark thoughts

Bringing instead new dreams

Possibilities in an elusive future

But the train was fast

Challenging you in real time

When the mind

Snapped like a horse’s leg

And the boy now broken

Stepped onto the tracks

Every poem in “Indelible Shadow” quietly inks out the story of a boy who put himself in the path of a train. Not hers, but still, someone close. Berris’ carefully chosen words counterbalance the screaming in her heart like the whistle of the train, a softening made possible through perspective and poetry.

Our interpretation of the poems doesn’t have to be literal. How many of us have found or put ourselves “in the path of the train,” if only metaphorically? Just underneath the rhythms of her words, we can find ways to relate and, perhaps, heal.

Poetry is how Berris expresses her emotions, works through her feelings and, through this book, shares them with others, who might feel a kinship, if not to the story, to how it feels when we lose something.

“With poetry, I write from both feeling and knowing,” Berris said. “I think about people who have experienced loss to suicide or any cause of death, and how so many of us carry it inside, like a weighted stone in the heart. But we can ease the pain, soften its sharp edges when we find the words to write or talk about it.”

Berris recognizes that the poetry in “Indelible Shadow” (Finishing Line Press 2024) is a melancholy series. She wrote it, first, as a personal healing exercise yet realized as her poems took shape on the page, they might reach others as well.

On the cover of the book is a small, yellow-tinged bird, whose shadow extends a little farther across a line in the road, than he does. The cover art was created by April Pacheco, an artist who had taken a deep interest in Berris’ poetry and the story behind it. The cover art inspired the title.

“Indelible Shadow” is award-winning poet Sandra Berris’ newest release of poetry. (Courtesy photo)Becoming a poet

Although born in Chicago, where some 35 cousins reside, Berris grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska and went on to achieve her undergraduate degree at University of Nebraska. Her poetry emerged at the University, under Poet Laureate Karl J. Shapiro, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945, after writing and publishing “V-Letter and Other Poems” throughout his service in the “Pacific Theater” during WWII.

“My very first poem,” she said, “was called ‘Blue Ford.’ As Shapiro was reading the poem to the class, as an example of what not to do, I was shrinking down in my chair, trying to disappear. Then he explained that I was going to rewrite my poem for the following week. I ended up becoming the editor of his class magazine and learned so much from him. He wrote my recommendation letter to Stanford.”

Berris went on to write a poem in Shapiro’s honor, called “Life,” she had been cautioned by the poet that we can’t write about “Life” unless we are describing the iconic cereal or magazine. Or a life lived well.

“He taught us not to generalize, that we can’t take on all of nature or define the breadth of love,” she said. “We need to be specific, writing from our own experience and the feelings that emerge, so our writing will resonate with our readers.”

Berris satisfied her “student teaching” requirement by teaching English at “University High School,” attended primarily by professors’ kids. After achieving her Master’s degree in Education and English at Stanford, she accepted her first teaching position at a junior high in Alamo, where she taught English and social studies.

Berris’ next assignment took her back to her roots, to teach “gifted” high school students in Chicago, who were interested in creative writing. The work pouring out of her students caught the attention of the English department chair, who asked her to launch a literary magazine based on student interviews with senior citizens, from which they would craft poetry or short stories. The outcome was “WHETSTONE” literary magazine.

“Once we started receiving submissions from teachers and others throughout the state,” said Berris, “I added two friends to my staff and, over the next 18 years, went on a real adventure with this magazine, winning 11 National Endowment for the Arts awards. We loved it while it happened.”

Ultimately, Berris and her husband retired to the community where they had begun their marriage, having honeymooned at the Highlands Inn in Carmel. Although they have owned and visited their Murphy-built Carmel cottage for 18 years, they took up permanent residence six years ago.

“One day, as the snow came down in February, I was on my treadmill, watching the AT&T Golf Tournament,” said Berris, “when they showed Carmel Beach. I raced upstairs and told my husband I was never going to live through a season of snow again. We put our house on the market and moved to Carmel, full time.”

Berris’ previous book of poetry, “Ash on Wind” (Muse Ink Press 2017) is a collection of her poems, published by various literary magazines and university presses, and inspired by her consideration of “the intimacy of matter,” a double entendre that explores what we are made of and the various ways we interpret what is important to us.

Both “Indelible Shadow” and “Ash on Wind” are available at Bookworks in Pacific Grove and via Amazon.