I Knew I Was a Girl

I've written a couple of posts on this blog about Lee Quarnstrom, a friend dating back to first grade.  Lee, now retired, was a journalist and editor for many years in San Jose, and before that was a member of Ken Kesey's "Merry Pranksters."  He's written a well-received memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter!  

But Lee's wife of 21 or so years is also a writer, or rather a poet.  Chris grew up on the North Shore of Chicago, came out to California to attend U.S.C., and taught middle school in California for many years.  She has just published a collection of poems.  I have written a short, appreciative review of her poems for the Amazon website.  I decided, while so doing, that I, whose poetry credentials end with college freshman English, would be hard pressed to say much more about her poems beyond the fact that I loved reading them.  As I said on Amazon, these poems have been written over much of her lifetime, and discuss many subjects, many aspects of her life.

Therefore, I'll simply offer you a copy of the same review you would find on Amazon, should you care to look further into her writing.

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I Knew I Was a Girl is a collection of 101 short poems by an older woman, an older woman with a young woman's heart and voice. Christine Quarnstrom has subtitled her collection "A Memoir in Poetry," and the subtitle is exact and accurate. Her poems capture the joys and sorrows of a lifetime, from childhood, through adolescence, marriage, childbirth, divorce, and second marriage.

The tears shed by the 13-year-old who has been betrayed by her best friend.  The death of, and irrational sense of abandonment by, her father when she was 15.   Her first lovers.   Her long marriage with her first husband.  Her sense of wonder during childbirth and throughout the early lives of her five children.  The divorce, and her sense --  one shared by all parents -- of loss as her kids spread their wings and went off on their own.  The unexpected deaths of friends and former lovers as the years passed.    And, finally, and most striking, the joy and mutual devotion offered by her second (and present) marriage, to a man himself a writer.

Quarnstrom's love also extends fully to cats and dogs, furry beings whose lives are all too short -- and some of her most heartbreaking poems tell of the final illness and death of her pets.

Death and loss in many forms is a constant theme.  I was moved by the poem that described a visit by younger relatives to a lonely, dying great aunt, a poem that ended with these lines:

"We turn to leave
toss one last morsel
we'll be back on Friday,
we who are too busy living
can she remember?
If meals-on-wheels doesn't need us,
if our homework is done."

This is a woman's poetry, poetry that will resonate most strongly with other women of all ages.  I thought of my own sister, growing up in the shadow of two older brothers, and the hidden (and not so hidden) anger and frustration she must often have felt.  But the emotions are human emotions that will be understood and appreciated by men as well.

The collection also contains a section of poems devoted to current events, events as current as the title, "Shopping in the Year of Corona":  

"... the frantic 
crowd swoops down like a swarm of 
locusts, buzz-sawing through whole crops:
corn, wheat flour, fruit, and eggs; anything
greed can grab; ..."

Poetry well worth reading, and re-reading.