Rehearsal: Poems by Irene Willis

Praise for Rehearsal by Irene Willis:

In her poignant new collection, Rehearsal, poet Irene Willis gifts us with a  remarkable discovery—that to embrace the truths of dying is to celebrate life. In clear precise language, Willis enables us to share the couple’s deep love shining through details of their days, to know that no matter one’s age, the moment of death surprises. The book’s second section deals with the after time, as in the remarkable poem titled “Hers” when “she started to own her own life”—that the loneliness of widowhood brings with it the strengths of independence. Blended in are poems of vivid childhood experience, her mother’s aging time, exhanges with other poets. To read these poems by Irene Willis is to have one’s own life enriched by her clarity of vision, her voice of wisdom and courage.

—Charlotte Mandel, author of To Be The Daylight

Each passing year of life, each new wrinkle of the skin, each hesitation of limbs and, above all, each loss of a loved one, is a preparation for what awaits us at the end of our lives’ journeys.  Nonetheless, the sojourn brings us glimpse of great joy, pride, musing, thrill, the pleasure of efficacy, lust, and yes, also sadness, defeat, shame, regret and remorse.  Irene Willis offers us lexical snapshots taken along this bittersweet highway and does so with great eloquence and dignity.

Salman Akhtar
Author of Freshness of the Child (2018)

And this review of a previous book by Irene:

A Review of Reminder Poems by Irene Willis

The emotional center of Irene Willlis’s first-rate book is a love story about her husband who died and her courageous recovery of herself. Many of the other fine poems are flashbacks to a nurturing but impoverished childhood. The short poems are in free verse with striking images. My favorite is the title poem “Reminder”:

REMINDER

When I say guess what happened–
my usual way of starting a story–
I see a look of alarm in his eyes
replacing the sweet smile with which
he starts the iambic of our days —
our remaining days, which of course
everyone has — all that remains
is all we have — but when I say this
and know he still loves, it’s as good
as the afternoon I came home earlier
than expected and said to this man
who can no longer walk with ease
and who spends his days in a chair
with his feet uplifted, when I said
as a joke, I half-expected to find you
jumping and dancing, he said,
not smiling, that’s exactly how
I see myself in dreams.

Frederick Feirstein
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