Showing 21 - 30 of 30 annotations contributed by Dittrich, Lisa

Now Where

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Jan-22-1997
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The poem is a description of the experience of severe depression. The speaker describes how she goes about her day while "it"--the depression, unnamed in the poem--is with her always, keeping her from experiencing any pleasure in life.

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The Vigil: A Poem in Four Voices

Gibson, Margaret

Last Updated: Dec-17-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Collection (Poems)

Summary:

The "four voices" of this collection are Lila, her grown daughters Jennie and Sarah, and Jennie's daughter, Kate, whom Sarah has raised as her own. Sarah is a potter, and she gathers the women of the family together each year for the "vigil" of the wood-kiln firing of the pots she and her assistants have made during the year.

What the voices reveal is the story of, in Gibson's words, "three generations in a family shaped by alcoholism"--that is, the alcoholism of Jennie and Sarah's father, who is now dying in a hospice. Each woman holds secrets, and they reveal the secrets to the reader and, slowly, to each other as the story unfolds--secrets about the death of Jennie and Sarah's brother, about Jennie and Sarah's relationship to Kate, and about Kate's pregnancy.

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The Blue Bowl

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Dec-15-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker describes burying a pet cat, and evokes the feelings she and her companion experience at the time, and the following day. They bury the cat with its bowl--hence the title.

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Bedrock

Proulx, E. Annie

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A widower, Perley, marries Maureen, a woman four years younger than his daughter. Not long after they are married, Maureen, in cahoots with her brother, begins to emotionally and physically abuse her husband, taking over his land and farm. Perley feels he "deserved what was happening" and cannot fight back. Finally, he does strike out at Maureen’s brother, leaves him unconscious in the kitchen and goes to spend the night in the hayloft. There, he thinks back to his first encounters with Maureen and her brother when they were children, reflecting on the abuse and poverty that dominated their lives and that led, ultimately, to the present crisis.

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Sun and Moon

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker describes being hospitalized for depression, and then, in the end, her return home.

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The Sandy Hole

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A four-line poem describing the burial of an infant and the reaction of other mourners to the grief-stricken father.

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In the Nursing Home

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A very short poem, describing the increasingly circumscribed life of a dying woman in a nursing home, a woman who "is like a horse grazing / a hill pasture that someone makes / smaller by coming every night / to pull the fences in and in." The final lines are a moving plea for God to bring the woman to a gentle death.

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Eating the Cookies

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker describes cleaning out the house of a friend/relative who has recently died. She rewards each small accomplishment in her sorting through of the dead woman's possessions by eating one cookie from a tin of homemade cookies that was sent by the woman's cousin before she died. As she reaches the end of her cleaning, the speaker takes the last cookie from the tin: "I took it up / and sniffed it, and before eating it, / pressed it against my forehead, because / it seemed like the next thing to do."

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What Came to Me

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A very short poem, in which the speaker, sorting through old china, finds a dead friend/relative's gravy boat "with a hard, brown / drop of gravy still / on the porcelain lip." This discovery leads the speaker to truly grieve the loss of this person in a way she hadn't before.

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Geezers

LeGuin, Ursula

Last Updated: Feb-20-1996
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A middle-aged businessman goes to a small coastal town to have a relaxing weekend. That weekend, the "Sightseeing Seniors of Cedarwood, A Christian Community" are also visiting, and the protagonist is quite disconcerted by being constantly mistaken (by waitresses, the seniors themselves, etc.) for a member of this group.

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