GLIMPSES

A Memoir in Poetry

Carol Grever

Outskirts Press
Denver

PREFACE

This is a history of sorts, glimpses into a long life informed by reading and writing. After more than seven decades on this earth, my vitality hasn’t waned, but the ending of this story is inevitable. It is time for a reckoning, an examination of ultimate meaning. With deepest gratitude for this precious human life, it is time to mine the past to learn what it has taught. This collection of poetry may suggest those fine distinctions.

One might say that I have always been writing this book. The earliest poems were written in young adulthood, the rest through the following fifty years, often in response to evocative events or significant transitions. They reflect nuances of an ordinary life’s pain, growth, discoveries, bliss, and essential lessons. They reveal secrets, focus values, and expose flashes of wisdom. All were reappraised, many revised for this book, bolstered by new pieces written expressly for the collection.

Gathering my body of poetry was a joyous experience. It was archaeology of the soul, mining earlier insights in the light of present understanding. The process identified distinct personal stages, each with different significance. Individual poems depict spots of time that illuminate vivid moments or mundane experience to afford insight through distilled meaning. Particular interests and longings appeared and changed. Mistakes chastened. Crises struck, love healed. Forgiveness brought recovery, and meditation brought serenity. Together, the poems offer brief glimpses of a life edging toward an end with acceptance and peace.

It was intriguing to take a step back to follow the flow of this single life through identifiable phases, demonstrated by poems written in all its seasons. It is my fervent wish that their themes may seem familiar to readers, evoking shared thoughts and experience.

 -- Carol Grever

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