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What's Left Over
Winner of the 2022 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize.
We are enriched by all of life’s experiences be they joy or heartbreak, shadow or light. Bavetta’s vivid images and metaphors invite us into these poems of love and sorrow. Without restraint, she shares the heart of a long and fulfilling marriage. Divided into four sections, each introduced by a brief poetic phrase, we experience the beginning of loss, the memory of joy, the final hours, and the courage to regain a life that continues alone.
We are enriched by all of life’s experiences be they joy or heartbreak, shadow or light. Bavetta’s vivid images and metaphors invite us into these poems of love and sorrow. Without restraint, she shares the heart of a long and fulfilling marriage. Divided into four sections, each introduced by a brief poetic phrase, we experience the beginning of loss, the memory of joy, the final hours, and the courage to regain a life that continues alone.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published April 4, 2022
1 person is currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Ruth Bavetta
11 books594 followersRuth Bavetta was a visual artist for many years until she realized she also wanted images that could be painted with words. Her poetry has been published in Rattle, Nimrod, Tar River Review, North American Review, Spillway, Hanging Loose, Rhino, Poetry East, and Poetry New Zealand among others and is included in the anthologies Twelve Los Angeles Poets, Wait a Minute; I Have to Take off My Bra, Pirene's Fountain Beverage Anthology and Forgetting Home:Poems about Alzheimer's.
She has published four books, Fugitive Pigments (Futurecycle Press), and Embers on the Stairs (Moontide Press), Flour, Water, Salt (FutureCycle Press), No Longer at This Address (Aldrich Press).Her art has been shown nationwide.
She loves the light on November afternoons, the smell of the ocean, a warm back to curl against in bed. She hates pretense, fundamentalism, and sauerkraut.
She has published four books, Fugitive Pigments (Futurecycle Press), and Embers on the Stairs (Moontide Press), Flour, Water, Salt (FutureCycle Press), No Longer at This Address (Aldrich Press).Her art has been shown nationwide.
She loves the light on November afternoons, the smell of the ocean, a warm back to curl against in bed. She hates pretense, fundamentalism, and sauerkraut.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 22, 2022
Still Life with Tax Return
Paperwork from Social Security
and the Norwegian pension.
Yellow highlighter smudged with ink,
calculations on the backs of unfinished
poems, sphygmomanometer.
Thick pile of medical expenses--
doctors, prescriptions, cremation.
Records of donations—his shirts,
six pairs of pajamas, faded jeans,
his astronomy books, his favorite shoes.
Empty stapler, broken box of paperclips.
Cup of coffee grown bitter, no sugar.
Remember the ditty from The Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize??”
Do you realize
That happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die?
I can sing along to this, maybe feel a frisson in my soul on the final line of the chorus, but, inevitably, it’s all abstract and I move on with living and planning. Sure—I “realize” everyone I know will die someday. After reading Ruth Bavetta’s “What’s Left Over,” though, I cannot comfortably compartmentalize emotions and thoughts on the death of loved ones.
In a series of poetic vignettes, Bavetta establishes the love she shared with her husband and the emotional repercussions of losing him. Bavetta avoids reducing the death of a loved one to a series of maudlin scenes conveying nothing more than a pedestrian “And I am sad.” Rather, Bavetta anchors her emotions in rich imagery which immerses a reader into the reality of losing a loved one, the reality of accessing “what’s left over.”
While neither are exact reproductions, I recommend Julia Kane’s Jazz Funeral as well as Joan Colby’s Joyriding to Nightfall as complementary poetry collections. If you choose to read all three, I also recommend you save Ruth Bavetta’s “What’s Left Over” for last: Colby’s tangents to her overall theme would seem flighty and Kane eulogies would seem to lack depth if read after Bavetta.
Almost There
She worked her roster of duties,
stood watch instead of sleeping.
She made it past the days
she gave him sips of water from a spoon,
navigated the shoals of his failing
and regaining, weathered his sinking
through August into fall.
Now she’s unloaded the ballast
of shirts and shoes he left
behind, swum through the black
of nights without solace, of dawns
that brought no light.
Her ship is nearing port. Alone
is what she’s learning.
She’s almost there.
Paperwork from Social Security
and the Norwegian pension.
Yellow highlighter smudged with ink,
calculations on the backs of unfinished
poems, sphygmomanometer.
Thick pile of medical expenses--
doctors, prescriptions, cremation.
Records of donations—his shirts,
six pairs of pajamas, faded jeans,
his astronomy books, his favorite shoes.
Empty stapler, broken box of paperclips.
Cup of coffee grown bitter, no sugar.
Remember the ditty from The Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize??”
Do you realize
That happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die?
I can sing along to this, maybe feel a frisson in my soul on the final line of the chorus, but, inevitably, it’s all abstract and I move on with living and planning. Sure—I “realize” everyone I know will die someday. After reading Ruth Bavetta’s “What’s Left Over,” though, I cannot comfortably compartmentalize emotions and thoughts on the death of loved ones.
In a series of poetic vignettes, Bavetta establishes the love she shared with her husband and the emotional repercussions of losing him. Bavetta avoids reducing the death of a loved one to a series of maudlin scenes conveying nothing more than a pedestrian “And I am sad.” Rather, Bavetta anchors her emotions in rich imagery which immerses a reader into the reality of losing a loved one, the reality of accessing “what’s left over.”
While neither are exact reproductions, I recommend Julia Kane’s Jazz Funeral as well as Joan Colby’s Joyriding to Nightfall as complementary poetry collections. If you choose to read all three, I also recommend you save Ruth Bavetta’s “What’s Left Over” for last: Colby’s tangents to her overall theme would seem flighty and Kane eulogies would seem to lack depth if read after Bavetta.
Almost There
She worked her roster of duties,
stood watch instead of sleeping.
She made it past the days
she gave him sips of water from a spoon,
navigated the shoals of his failing
and regaining, weathered his sinking
through August into fall.
Now she’s unloaded the ballast
of shirts and shoes he left
behind, swum through the black
of nights without solace, of dawns
that brought no light.
Her ship is nearing port. Alone
is what she’s learning.
She’s almost there.
May 29, 2022
Ruth Bavetta is an artist who also paints with words. Her poems are so visual that we immediately step inside them. She knows that choosing the right details is as important as deciding what to leave out. This is the fourth time I’ve said something to this effect in a 5-star review for her, yet each of Bavetta’s books also has its own personality.
What’s Left Over is a little less visual in approach: shorter, sparer poems that are poignantly heart breaking as she loses her beloved husband first to dementia, then to death. It must take every writing super power she has to balance love and loss, regret and gratitude, to speak in such clear, brief poems and say all that needs to be said. The title brilliantly captures that balance between what is lost and what once felt is never fully lost.
In “Almost Overnight,” she describes the change of seasons, “wild mustard past its tawny fling.” She ends
“to days without a shadow,
to days of hard clear light.”
Read out of context, this would be a brief, lovely nature poem. She doesn’t have to tell us that it’s grief that makes days too full of hard clear light.
Amid the brief poems that capture a few seconds of pain, we find “The Dementia Pantoum.” Both grief and dementia are well suited to formal poetry like pantoums and villanelles that repeat or rephrase an idea. Day after day we hit the repeat button.
“His bed is by the window facing west.
Is this our house? he asks. Do I live here?”
By telling us more about who her husband was and what she treasures of him, Bavetta shifts the balance from regret to gratitude. This poetry is a reflection of what is real, true, and worth hanging onto.
What’s Left Over is a little less visual in approach: shorter, sparer poems that are poignantly heart breaking as she loses her beloved husband first to dementia, then to death. It must take every writing super power she has to balance love and loss, regret and gratitude, to speak in such clear, brief poems and say all that needs to be said. The title brilliantly captures that balance between what is lost and what once felt is never fully lost.
In “Almost Overnight,” she describes the change of seasons, “wild mustard past its tawny fling.” She ends
“to days without a shadow,
to days of hard clear light.”
Read out of context, this would be a brief, lovely nature poem. She doesn’t have to tell us that it’s grief that makes days too full of hard clear light.
Amid the brief poems that capture a few seconds of pain, we find “The Dementia Pantoum.” Both grief and dementia are well suited to formal poetry like pantoums and villanelles that repeat or rephrase an idea. Day after day we hit the repeat button.
“His bed is by the window facing west.
Is this our house? he asks. Do I live here?”
By telling us more about who her husband was and what she treasures of him, Bavetta shifts the balance from regret to gratitude. This poetry is a reflection of what is real, true, and worth hanging onto.
December 22, 2022
I’ve been reading this collection for a while, hoarding the experience of each poem like a golden nugget. I don’t think I’ve ever read the feelings of extreme grief and solitude expressed so beautifully.
January 5, 2023
An absolute masterpiece of grief and beauty. Rich in imagery, but not one wasted word. Every single poem is a stunner.
July 16, 2022
This is not a detailed review, but I need to say how marvelous this collection is. Ruth Bavetta shares her marriage and invites the reader on a journey of love, and widowhood. You feel her pain as her beloved husband slips further away, yet the word loss doesn't apply, because ultimately what's left over is love and joy of a life shared
April 5, 2022
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us.
Excerpts:
ENOUGH
Too many streets in this city, with their spines
drawn white, their paving black
as loss. As many as the branches
of winterbare sycamores
leading away from home. As many
as the veins that trace their course
through our bodies. Central Avenue,
broad and straight, leads directly
to the beating heart of downtown. Sunset
Drive takes you to the aging painted ladies
and their scrolls of gingerbread trim.
There’s the avenue of cancer, the boulevard
of diabetes, the irregular lane following
fibrillation of the heart, the wandering
way of dementia with its bridge broken
over the river of self.
THE NOMENCLATURE OF DESIRE
The name of the lily
is the name I had before
I was born. Before white,
before red, before the moon
carved itself into one thin hair.
The name of the sea
is salt and spray
and flat blue under pale.
My lover’s name is written
on my palm. The name
of the grass is always.
Excerpts:
ENOUGH
Too many streets in this city, with their spines
drawn white, their paving black
as loss. As many as the branches
of winterbare sycamores
leading away from home. As many
as the veins that trace their course
through our bodies. Central Avenue,
broad and straight, leads directly
to the beating heart of downtown. Sunset
Drive takes you to the aging painted ladies
and their scrolls of gingerbread trim.
There’s the avenue of cancer, the boulevard
of diabetes, the irregular lane following
fibrillation of the heart, the wandering
way of dementia with its bridge broken
over the river of self.
THE NOMENCLATURE OF DESIRE
The name of the lily
is the name I had before
I was born. Before white,
before red, before the moon
carved itself into one thin hair.
The name of the sea
is salt and spray
and flat blue under pale.
My lover’s name is written
on my palm. The name
of the grass is always.
June 19, 2022
Ruth Bavetta's latest collection of poems is dedicated to her late husband and shares - in beautifully crafted, heart-piercing poems - the experience of caring for a dying partner after a long and tender marriage and then moving forward, somehow, to what comes next. Even the words that separate each section of the collection have unforgettable beauty - e.g., "He cannot walk but he wants me to bring him his shoes" - "I love him as I love my shadow" - "One year after he died,/ his watch, still running." The poems are heartbreaking but also hopeful; reading them, I felt grateful to live in a world where deep love can mean deep loss, but where the love remains despite everything. This is a perfect gift for anyone who is grieving the death of a partner.. or anyone who savors the joy of an exquisitely chosen image or lyrical line of verse ... I loved it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews