A beautiful montage at our Open House. Two poets, one young, one older, one who has been writing her poems for decades, one who has been writing poems for a few years. Mary Kellogg, on the left, is 86 now, and she is proud of it, Maria always knows where she is in life.
She is vital and powerful, she needs help standing for two long or getting in and out of chairs. She started writing poems when she was eleven, she was afraid to show them to anyone for fear she might look foolish or seem odd. A familiar story to many women.
Mary’s beloved husband Dick died a long while ago, she still lives alone on her 30 acre farm in a remote part of our country. Her phone is often dead, her electricity and water are often out. She wouldn’t think of moving to an easier place, she is loyal to her garden, she is ever smiling, gracious and beautiful.
Maria and I worked together with Mary to help her publish three books of her poetry. She is a wonderful poet, deep, wise and and poignant. Her last book of poetry is titled How To Dance.
Mary is a strong and brave person, she is comfortable with herself.
Jackie Thorne is younger, but not dissimilar. She has some of the same fears, but she stands up to them. She has also published her first volume of poetry, Gone To Ground, and is a poet of great feeling, emotion, sensitivity and honesty.
We are fortunate to count both of them as friends and kindred spirits. Mary has known Maria and I since we met, and is an inspiration and guide to both of us.
It was a powerful moment for me to see them both sitting next to one another at the Open House, one following the other, each at different ends of life, both gracious and quiet people of great depth. Seeing them both, I felt I was looking at life itself, its passages and inexorable change. Two faces marked by character, two pilgrims on their journey inward.
They were different, they were the same.
This journey inward is not a simple journey, nor is it an easy one. I have gone on the journey inward, and am on it still, and will be on it until I die. Anyone who travels this path lives on the edge of confusion and anxiety.
Those pilgrims and travelers, writes Joseph Campbell, have moved out of their protected lives, “and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t.
You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed.”
And the writers, the artists and the poets. Saturday, these two brave and remarkable women shared their inward journey with us, that is really what the Open House is about.