A few months ago, Lana Hechtman Ayers, managing editor of Tillamook-based MoonPath Press, hosted one of her regular poetry showcases via Zoom.

“At a time when so much weighs in balance, poetry is the voice of everyday people testifying what matters in our lives, how we make meaning, our hopes, our triumphs, our griefs and possibilities,” she said. “Poetry shows us how we connect to one another, and bridges our differences with compassion.”

Then she introduced the listeners who had gathered to meet poet Glenna Cook, a bespectacled octogenarian who earned her college degree with honors at the age of 58, and in the years since has had to contend with the death of her husband and eldest son, as well as her own diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. 

Along the way, Cook also has been building a career as a poet from her retirement community in Puyallup, Washington. “Like Joy” is her third published collection of poetry.

The first baker’s dozen of poems in this volume addresses her chronic disease. Cook may be a senior citizen, but she’s no pushover.

In a poem called “Affliction,” she puts Parkinson’s on notice, “I’ll wrestle with you for my right to be / uncontained within defining terms.”

In a longer, three-part poem titled “Mr. Parkinson,” Cook considers first her family’s history with the disease, then her own fight to keep moving and stay physically fit, and finally her mental determination to counter what she calls Parkinson’s strongest weapon — apathy:

Here’s where I go to the mat with you. 

Here’s where I bring out my strongest weapon —

my mind’s ability to choose.  

The title poem, “Like Joy,” is located in the book’s first section, too. The poet realizes that her definition of joy may have changed — it no longer encompasses the “gut-quivering excitement / I used to know.” But that doesn’t mean that joy has abandoned her, just that it now feels more like “an exquisite, inexplicable / lightness of being.”

A few of these poems seem to rely too heavily on predictable phrasing: “First blush of dawn” — we’ve heard that before — and “the caress of April’s breeze” is a pleasant nod to springtime, but not a particularly compelling observation.

But forgive Cook these few lapses. Much of her work is fresh, wry, or reflective — and succinctly captures different conditions over a lifetime.

Some poems delve into top-of-mind topics like fraught political divides and climate change. It’s hard to stop thinking about the line in the brilliantly titled poem, “The First Worst Year of Forest Fires” which describes inhaling “the particulate / corpses of trees that fall like snow.”

Other poems hopscotch over decades of technological achievement. In one of them, the writer recalls witnessing the televised event of the first man to walk on the moon. Another more recent piece celebrates ordering up a Christmas gift online — without needing assistance from anyone else!

Pivoting from limitations and loss to elation, “Like Joy” tackles a broad spectrum of emotions.

The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.

 

This week’s book

“Like Joy” by Glenna Cook

MoonPath Press — 126 pp — $17.99