Tess Gallagher


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Candle, Lamp and Firefly

Gallagher, Tess

Last Updated: Jul-05-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

What I remember most: you did not want / to go. The poet searches her memory for the scene--the dying man "like a cut rose / on the fifth day" turns into himself, drops, and deepens. She visualizes his weak arms embracing her, as she asks: "Is it good / where you are?" The word "daughter" echoes again and again, as she feels her father's body turn cold and pull away. In the end "I carry no proof that we met." Is the memory of this moment simply a dream? Or did this last embrace really happen? [42 lines]

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Woodcutting on Lost Mountain

Gallagher, Tess

Last Updated: Feb-07-2001
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

An adult sister and brother chop wood on a mountain in Nevada three months after their father succumbed to lung cancer. They reminisce about their childhood--the cabins they built, Spam sandwiches they ate, their tough father. When the poet-daughter thinks of the whippings they received, she says, "They'd have put him in jail today. I used to beg / and run circles. You got it worse because you / never cried."

The man's daughter, Leslie (named after her grandfather), helps them carry and stow the chopped logs. They run into a group of childhood friends, now mostly loggers. "What'll you do next, after the trees are gone?" the poet asks. As they drive home, Leslie falls asleep in the truck.

This poem takes place in the world of grief, a world in which the past and present are intermixed and ordinary day-to-day events groan under the weight of deep meaning. Indeed, the scenes depicted here have double significance; the poet steps out of them like a Greek chorus and comments, "Tomorrow a log pile will collapse / on him and he will just get out alive." The scene of grief over the father's death is well fixed in her memory because it is so closely attached to her brother's imminent almost-death. [169 lines]

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