The Poetry of Mary Holman Tuteur
Time is a road with a mind of its own
1/26/24
Readers:
Today’s blog is a very personal one. In the last week, I became acquainted with the work of poet Mary Holman Tuteur. It was a transformative experience. Her voice touched me deeply, resonating with my own experiences and the unique and inescapable fears, regrets, grief, desires, and passion that are part of being a woman, including that great gift and burden of being the pro-creative force in the universe. My only regret is in not having discovered Tuteur’s poetry earlier in my life. Her words gave voice to so many emotions I have been unable to articulate, validating for me what it is to be a woman in its most unadulterated form, while capturing what is precious in this world from a feminine perspective.
There are only a scattering of poets, male or female, known to me who speak in such a direct, powerful, and fearless voice. Tuteur tells her story nakedly; nothing hidden behind allegory. Her poems embody the exquisite beauty of plain truth, in humans and in all of nature, with the joy and inevitable pain that accompanies that truth.
You, too, will cry at the poignancy of Tuteur’s poetry; carry her book to a deep woods where you can read it in solitude, surrounded by the caressing sounds of nature. Let the sweet tears of joy and grief co-mingle until you’ve had your fill. On your walk home, you will feel a deep connection to the earth and know your place in the order of things.
Chris Andrews
Women of a Certain Age For Suzanne By Mary Holman Tuteur We sense the change, an apparent turning, at the same time as we feel it — a knife slamming down on the chopping block, cleaving the known body from itself, We discern the shift in how the earth holds us, how we hold ourselves to the earth, as the fine attention of our passion revolves, all on its own, toward the roses. Our tongues relish the details of a rare bloom's growing habits, the way they used to curl themselves around the description of a lover's quirks. We laugh in gusts, recalling to each other our grandmothers, great-aunts, those old beloveds whom we used to imagine belonged to another species, down on their knees troweling, or bending warily, their bones evolving into glass, to harvest those clawed and petalled globes, those roses they offered up to us. Women of a certain age teach each other to circle within the strict confines of radiance of afternoon arching backwards into dusk. Turning, almost imperceptibly, we hold out to you a light that warms you less with its heat than with a layered generosity, reflecting back to you every angle it has moved through to get here. © John Tuteur, Trustee
Enjoy LIVE READINGS from “How the Earth Holds Us,” by Mary Holman Tuteur at the Napa Writers’ Salon. Special reciter for this salon is brother, John Tuteur.
In addition to Mary Holman Tuteur, other authors represented in the salon are Lenore Hirsch, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, and Paul Wagner.
5:00 p.m. Meet the authors 5:30 p.m. Readings 7:30 p.m. Book signings
$10 @ the door. Please RSVP @ (707) 257-2350. For those who cannot attend the reading, “How the Earth Holds Us” can be purchased directly at the links below.
How The Earth Holds Us
Written by Mary Holman Tuteur
Paperback
$19.99
Description
The poems in How the Earth Holds Us span more than five decades in the career of Mary Holman Tuteur, a remarkable poet known to many as Maggie. As a protégée of Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney in the 1960s, Tuteur demonstrated a keen eye for imagery, a sensitivity to rhythm, and an open-hearted honesty, qualities that she would hone as her life and her work grew deeper and more complex. Themes of intimacy and exile, grief and ecstasy, mortality, kinship, and the resilience of the creative impulse thread through the book's seven sections, accompanied by the poet's own dream-wrought and imaginative drawings. A foreword by Bruce Gibbs and an afterword and photographs by Louise Kleinsorge Williams offer context both for those familiar with Tuteur's poems and those discovering her work for the first time.
Product Details:
Paperback
6 x 9 inches
210 pages
ISBN: 978-1-941066-60-7
Purchase this Wordrunner Press book through IngramSpark.
Additional poetry by Mary Holman Tuteur will be forthcoming in the weeks prior to the reading at Jessel Gallery. Sign up for a free subscription to Men On Pause, and more of Mary Holman Tuteur’s poetry will be delivered to your inbox over 6 installments.
Chris Andrews is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Napa Valley Life Magazine, Healdsburg Tribune, Flutist Quarterly, Charleston Style & Design, Dallas Style & Design, and Signature Bride Magazine. She also writes satire and commentary on women’s issues through her blog, Men On Pause, and obituaries, eulogies, and memoirs through Obit Prose.