How The Earth Holds Us
The poetry of Mary Holman Tuteur
2/7/24
Readers:
This week’s blog is a very personal one. Recently, 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
GIRLS SPRINGING
by Mary Holman Tuteur
You had to stir me up at dawn. I kept spiraling
back into my pillow, into the opaque lull
of first light. But you sprang me, spurred
by your desire for sun against your skin.
Tracking and cornering obstinate cow ponies
we mounted up and sauntered out the old corral gate,
hips rocking, bareback and easy
in old jeans and pointy cowboy boots.
Picking our way along the rimrock trail
which opened into a half-moon circling
the foot of the farther hill.
Pale sun lit up the stubble of new spring grass,
the scatter of dawn-purple rocks,
our upstart chests. We tugged open the mother-of-pearl snaps on our cowgirl shirts,
tossed them high across a mossy boulder edging the trail.
We kicked our horses, side by side,
up into a lope, a sprint, a lather.
Pushing off into the sunstruck, naked air.
We were a wave, four round-breasted creatures breaking
in a rhythm which broke us as one
into the untold pieces of the day.
© John Tuteur, TrusteeEnjoy 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 over the next week 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 in three more installments.
Chris Andrews is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Napa Valley Life Magazine, Healdsburg Tribune, Flutist Quarterly, Charleston Style & Design, Atlanta 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. More at LinkedIn.