Author photo Nathan Sayers  
Joan Hofmann’s first chapbook, Coming Back, looks loss squarely in the face but also depicts the restorative powers of the natural world in lush detail. At its heart is a hard-won joie de vivre. Early readers of the book have been delighted. Edwina Trentham writes, “Joan Hofmann is a poet of courage and insight, a poet who understands love, how it gives and takes away in the same breath, and she uses rich language and sounds, as well as startling images and metaphors from the natural world to express love’s complexities. Like a river’s 'gin-clear water' that 'stings to soothe,' these poems never flinch, never turn away from life’s grief and loss, and many are etched with the darkness of righteous fury. At the same time, the overarching message conveys the delight, the blessing, of being alive in this beautiful, difficult world.” And this from Steve Straight: “Whether she is examining stones, or a turtle, or the common yet uncommon cormorant, Joan Hofmann’s poetry insists on a deeper level of both thought and feeling. In both gorgeous elegies to her mother and searing examinations of the end of a marriage, she demonstrates beautifully how we all, all beings, are 'imperfect confections' that must travel through our lives 'stepping stone by stone,' reverently and hopefully."
   
Ciaran M. Berry adds, “Clear-eyed and carefully worded, Joan Hofmann’s Coming Back is a keen examination of interior and exterior landscapes. Offering us, on the one hand, apt descriptions of the Farmington River’s 'two faced surface' or a cormorant 'in between acts,' and, on the other, a quiet wisdom born of a deeply felt experience in which 'dying can take a long time' and 'what was isn’t and what once could be can’t,' these poems draw again from the stone and water of a life lived richly and well."

Joan Hofmann is Professor of Education at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the School of Education, with a special interest in creative writing and students with disabilities. She directed the Academy for Young Writers for over fifteen years. Joan received her masters degrees in English from the University of New Hampshire and Trinity College. Her work has been widely published in journals including Word Art, Freshwater, bottle rockets, Shapes and Caduceus; it has also been anthologized in Where Flowers Bloom (Grayson Press). She is in love with the natural world and can often be found sky-watching and river-walking along the Farmington River near her home in Collinsville, Connecticut.

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BOOK STATISTICS

ISBN 978-1-936482-62-7

Copyright © 2014 by Joan M. Hofmann

6" x 9" chapbook, 38 pages

 

SAMPLE POEMS
copyright © 2014 by Joan M. Hofmann

 

Blindsided

April is the cruelest month - T. S. Eliot


That April afternoon while Southern sunlight
streamed down into the backyard, it was just

weeks before she passed. Knowing she’d be leaving,
in that light my son and I hung prayer flags in
evergreens by stalks of iris and mounds of pale pansies.

We strung colored squares—red, emerald, canary, royal blue
—with hope. Promise even. Buddha, we called,
bless our family, and give Colette a peaceful passing.

We roped the prayer cloths aloft to catch the faint breeze,
to waft gentle blessed air toward her bed to sweetly
take her last breath away.

Barely smiling, thin-lipped and long-faced, we hugged
as mother and son to bargain a deal with Buddha,
confident our call would be heard and heeded.

Dying can take a long time. Though her passing neared,
she weakened into May, waiting as the bright flags
waved on. We wondered: Where was Buddha’s hand?

We asked: Why a deaf ear to us? To her?—a woman who
pleaded, Why is this taking so long? I was a good girl.

Below the Surface

The side unseen is the show. Common enough,
the black cormorant draws little attention on the waterfront.
If we notice, it’s its preening or strange stance
with wonky wings awry drying symmetrically
that catch the eye. Without the waterproofing oil of other seabirds,
it stands long times drying its wings in air and sun, in between acts.
Or it displays its talent of dipping into water in one place
and emerging seconds later at a distance unsuspected.

An oddity as much as anything,
a cormorant spends its time in the water
or around it, whether fresh or salt.
I remember, sitting together, my mother said
I was beautiful on the inside and the outside. It’s funny

what you think of and hold onto. Her words stay
in my pocket where I finger them for warmth.
It’s what’s under that matters: underwater, a cormorant
bursts a display of oily bubbles rushing into a rainbow,
its buoyant self seen by the looking few—something some
can only imagine, lacking the sight of a heron who, like
my mother, sees at the waterline, above and below the surface.

 

Spectral

Standing in the Bonaventure River is no mean feat
if you have no shoes on: this gin-clear water
stings to soothe. Cold laps toes to claw-clench,
joints strain to marbles unfeeling as I peer down
transfixed, look beside and between ten numbed nubs
into steady eyes of smooth oracle-pebbles where
silenced truth rests near salmon pools dark and mysterious.
I recall yesterday’s cast brought one to surface.
A lip-hook from a former fisher hung like a sneer:
a mark of near-miss, like the skin mass by my right ear.


Bird Talk


In bed I hear day’s early light
through bird song.

Wind-sung promise translates
to my half-pillowed ear:

Would, would, would ya?
Would, would would ya?

Treat, treat, treat me
To a, to a, to a

Hey, sweet sweet sweet,
Hey, sweetie, sweetie, hey


Remember again


how special you felt in pale perfection
eyelet white over pink blinking through
your one-piece bathing suit lifting up
your budding breasts the summer
of their blossom, your twelfth, as you
walked long thin legs to the pool out front

your week at the oceanfront hotel spanning sands,
dunes, boardwalk, with its elegant high ceilings,
porches a block long with rockers where
hats and shoes held proper even in heat of day
where folks were announced entering
the dining room, waiters awaited eye calls.

There, in the back staircase in the shadow
of the porch connector you smiled back
at the unexpected man who trafficked
the quiet innards of the behemoth hotel
thought to be your playground for skipping,
jumping free from the protocol of formality—

there he paused, asked my name in one breath
said he’d watched me lapping the pool,
cupped my right peach for a jiggle-bounce:
You’ll model well, sweetheart!
then walked casually on, leaving me bruised
and his hand imprinted in eyelet white.


Over and Gone

Having already taken the beloved Jacobean desk,
antique Colonial lowboy from the top of the stairs,
your grandfather’s plane, ginger jar lamp, and green
Inuit soapstone fish carving, treasures yours always,
next to go was the Chinese chest with the hundred-
year-old handmade pottery basket and strawberry jar.

When you asked for return of the sterling I winced.
On a good day I took it from its maple burl chest,
sorted it into a soft satchel, gently placing each piece,
stroking the fork shafts and fondling the spoons,
hollowing their cupped bowls with my thumbs,
wishing to hold back just one for tea, but not.

Then you said the fine Wedgewood was yours—
what you brought to the marriage—so it too
would be packed into a tower of dinner plates
white on blue stacked next to a white-on-white
set of four, holding back replacement pieces—
gifts from my parents to complete the set proper.

And too, you maintain the Pennell and Whistler prints,
your parents’ gifts for our wedding and first anniversary,
are yours alone to own. And no, I can’t have the walnut
tables made in your 20’s tendered instead of an engagement
ring, nor the burl walnut map cabinet given in lieu of
a honeymoon, unmovable on those you say via your lawyer.


Memory

The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before
I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea. –
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Having followed the recipe to get the ingredients measured just right
so the scalloped sweets looked like the cookbook’s photograph,

we checked and re-checked every step sometimes twice, memory being
what it is in the stir of it and the space of steps between table and oven,

then waited for the heat to bake the elegant sweets, to gently puff creams
of Genoise batter to lofted buttery tongues ambered to golden confections.

It being four o’clock, we set up tea, cucumber slices on wheat wedges,
creamed cheese on nut bread squares with bowled cherries in cut glass

next to an heirloom china tea set with dainty silver spoons to complete
the setting with the precious warm shells plated in the center.

You poured, wondering if I wanted brewed black tea into the cream or
cream into tea following British tradition, as we toasted with bone china

cups, warming into conversation about the summer’s comings and goings
and the celebrations and ills of loved ones before coming around

to your volunteering, my work with hospice patients, and the challenge
of end of life when stories came to life so that with each cup of tea

and the loosening that accompanies the taste of petite sponge madeleines,
we volleyed memories of loss, senility and faith, recalled how caretaking

months to days to hours before a passing tenders more than mortality—
a memory waning then clarion, allowing word-floods to surface

or the quiet of a final thought to simply pass on, leaving us
life force and hushed humility and sometimes a recipe.


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