Rita Quillen
Rita Quillen has a new book of poetry, “Some Notes You Hold,” published by Madville Press. The poems are about surviving what life throws at us as we age. The so-called “golden years” are so named because of the high admission price–the tremendous losses, disappointments, illnesses and failures we all experience if we live long enough.
The first part of the book, called “Letting Go,” focuses on surviving deep grief. The middle section is a musical interlude, exploring the tremendous power of music to heal us mentally, physically and spiritually and to reorder our thinking and our emotions. The last section, “Holding On,” explores the roads leading to survival: prayer and meditation, communion with the natural world and writing. The price paid for those “golden years” leads to the prize: insight, joy, and a kind of peace we were incapable of when we were young.
Quillen has become one of western Virginia’s leading writers over the last two decades. Her poetry collections include “October Dusk” and “Counting The Sums,” as well as the recent “The Mad Farmer’s Wife,” which was a finalist for the Weatherford Award. She was a semi-finalist for the 2012-14 Poet Laureate of Virginia. Quillen also has published two novels set in her native Scott County, Virginia: “Hiding Ezra,” and last year’s “Wayland.”
She is also a musician and plays the guitar, mandolin, piano, dulcimer, autoharp, bass and bodhran. She has performed at many venues in the region as part of various groups or as a singer/songwriter.
The book may be purchased from Amazon or from Madville Publishers.
Why I Sing
Here on the farm
You are surrounded by music.
The tree frogs rival the Sunday morning church.
Whippoorwills have finally returned to silky evening air.
Coyotes howl their threats
In perfect pentatonic harmony!
Gobblers operatic answers bounce
from ridge to rock,
black crows bark and shriek,
katydids sing the doxology
as we head inside for sleep.
Why we are gifted this is a mystery.
So, who am I to stand mute and dead?
Singing is lifting, light as flour, to the quiet.
When you sing, no one can tell the difference
whether you’re laughing, crying, raging, grieving,
loving, lusting, or running for your life.
I close my eyes and pull in the silent note
then free it.
It always packs up pain
for the road and off they go
out onto the great flow
the rest of the mad choir’s offering.
(Reprinted from “Some Notes Your Hold” with permission)
