There are so many reasons to love Mary Gilliland’s latest book Ember Days, which will be published on March 1 by Codhill Press. Her title describes the light during both the summer and winter solstice, and her poems reverberate with that same golden brightness. Gilliland is a poet of witness and spirituality, grappling with climate devastation while also interrogating world policies and politics. But maybe the number one reason to love Ember Days is the savvy poem “Up with People” which brought me back to that 1970’s singing group of traveling teens funded by corporate America.
UP WITH PEOPLE
I remember the opening salute, the hours
of taping and reshoot, our show’s chief sponsor
Bab-O. I’d had to apply. It floors me now:
the ticked questionnaire on American
history, the patriotic essay I composed so
eagerly, a stalk among the standing waves of grain.
During commercial breaks for cleanser, I tended
my tender self-regard, inked in every anacrostic
in the book, won all spelling bees. Deadlines colder
than zero Kelvin in the outer regions before sleep
carried dust I could not fathom. Three. Two. One.
and camera rolled, the rest of the cast singing out.
They could not work me into their permanent
Youth Corps. Some they did, gathered at
the 30-year reunion, unbroken on the moving
belt of hearty cereal, furtive sex, and overtime.
I would have failed at reminiscing between
dances, blank on what I’d looked like, what I’d said.
For those of you too young to remember, you can hear the group’s signature song here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skK1CKKlc0M
Congratulations, Mary!
Go to Source
Author: Denise Duhamel
