Ways in the labyrinth

Ways in the labyrinth - How Light Gets In by Nancy Buell

Ways in the labyrinth : How Light Gets In
Poems on Grief, Aging and the Pandemic

$5.99

A labyrinth may be a place to meet the minotaur, or oneself, or to simply walk and find something in the path. "Ways" may be directions, morality, behavior, or a deep understanding of the pattern in which the labyrinth is constructed, and how to proceed, in the manner of "wayfinding" from one end to the other.

This poetry emerged during the Pandemic, which coincided with family illness and death. In 18 months, we lost 11 longtime friends and family members, virtually all of our generation. We were trapped by illness and wildfires for two of those years, and in the third year, found we could not comfortably venture out any longer. Therefore, the "labyrinth" metaphor is apt.

Thinking about the stage of life and rereading my own poetry has been comforting, as strange as that may seem. I am lightened by completing even the most difficult poem topic. I have always been this way. Perhaps it is a disability, that when I put what I am feeling into writing, the necessity to explain myself to myself and others dissipates and I am able to go on with ordinary tasks. Hopefully, some readers may find the same solace or self understanding.

PURCHASE

CATEGORY: Prose and Poetry
DATE: December, 2023
TAGS: Biography, Prose and Poetry
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Prose and Poetry

TIME SHARE

A Remembered Past, An Imagined Future

Walt Disney must have had a seriously conflicted childhood. The mothers in his movies are dead or absent, the fathers cannot protect their children from the world's bogeypersons, and the stepmothers are uniformly evil. Since the first song I remember is "Someday My Prince Will Come," and the first movie I remember is Cinderella, what hope did I have....

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TIME SHARE: ADDENDUM

An Archive of Memories

The young man in the bed seemed to have aged before his wife's eyes, his skin insubstantial and puffy, his hair flattened to his head from fever, the dehydration he was experiencing taking the firmness of the flesh of his arms and legs. He was too weak to rise for any reason, and she began to understand he might not leave this bed....

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How Light Gets In

All thought is metaphor
We see from the inside of our memory
Out into the unfolding world
And the words are poor
but the pictures are vivid
We seek metaphor to teach our memories
nudging them to adapt to the new, the strange
the dangerous the hopeful
We use pictures where words fail
to make more words to guide others to seek
their own metaphor of completion
while we contemplate our own...

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Nancy Buell - Central Oregon Author and Poet

ABOUT NANCY BUELL

Nancy Atherton Buell was born in Oregon, but spent over half of her life in Alaska with her husband of 50 years and a succession of springer spaniels. She lived in Barrow, Anchorage, Juneau and Kenai, and is now retired to Oregon. Having found her creative voice and the time to use it, she writes every day in her studio.

Nancy has been an educator at every level, from public school to university.
After she retired, she made and sold jewelry, and processed large quantities of fish. Occasionally wrote an educational product. And then, one day, found the bankers box containing all of her youthful poetry and prose. Since then, in her new writing and jewelry studio, she writes, edits, and waits for the next poem to visit.

Key to all of Nancy’s work, and no less in the poetry, is a profound sense of “place,” and how that influences human life. All of her prose vividly describes not only Alaska, but the other places in the nation and in Mexico and Canada to which the characters travel.

WORKS

NOVELS
2024 - The Radish Hole
2023 - AWOL
2022 - Distant Early Warning
2021 - Just Politics

OTHER WORKS
2021 - Time Share Addendum
2020 - Time Share

POETRY
2024 - Ways in the Labyrinth