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Finding Your Soul Speed: The Power of Poetry Memorization

May 8, 2025 by Carolyne Montgomery

What a chaotic six months—struggling through winter, health issues with loved ones and my injuries. These are things that require redefinition of self, priorities, and goals. I’ve been distressed by National and International politics. My confidence in the meaning and value of my writing is wavering. Rejection is the norm in this business. Any self-doubt is poison.

But now, the days are longer and the elections are over. And perhaps a knee brace may permit a return to racket sports. (Pickleball anyway) And although my motivation for writing is the lowest since I started this blog, I have been reading.

In the dark and wet of January, I forced myself to memorize a poem, a villanelle—Robert Frost, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”. It’s likely you memorized it in school. Whose woods these are, I think I know… Classic iambic tetrameter.

I printed a copy and folded it into my jacket pocket. As I went for evening walks, I tortured my brittle brain with recall. What rhymes with shake? Oh yes, mistake. See the woods? No! Watch the woods. The woods or his woods. Longest night or evening? I had to go slowly. I had to pay attention to every detail. My walks had more rhythm and more purpose. I was calmer, filled with the rhythm and sounds of this classic poem.

A while ago, I wrote about the Nobel Prize-winning author, Olga Tokarczuk. She wrote a lovely book, The Lost Soul (illustrated by Joanna Concejo and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones).

The premise is that a cause of unhappiness, dissatisfaction is when there is a mismatch between the pace of the brain and body and the pace of the soul. The soul moves slowly. I often insist that my brain and body move quickly. Was walking and memorizing poetry forcing me to slow dow?

Last month, along with many subscribers of The New York Times, we learned “Recuerdo” by Enda St. Vincent Millay. We were very tired, we were very merry, we had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

There were videos of writers including St. Vincent Millay, Lauren Groff and Ann Patchett reading the poem for further inspiration.

At the end of the five-day course, you could upload a video of your recitation. (which I didn’t, but performance of poetry could be a next step) And once again, studying and memorizing “Recuerdo”, made me calmer and happier—nourished by the rhythm and details of the stanzas.

Ah! Slow down. Pay attention to your soul. Think and move at a speed that suits your soul. It seems that my soul likes the speed of not only reading poetry but learning it. My brain likes the pace of learning every detail. My heart likes knowing I carry the piece everywhere I go

I’m understanding more about what my soul needs—what my soul speed is and how it fits in with the rest of me, my brain and my body. How’s your soul doing? What’s your soul speed?

If you are looking for more inspiration and guidance about poems to memorize and how to recapture the fading art of memorization, consider the Academy of American Poets, Committed to Memory, where there are some suggestions. You can revisit the ones you learned years ago and also subscribe to Poem-a-Day.

Thanks for reading.

How about giving a book this holiday?

December 7, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

Like many of you, I’m reluctant to buy books for myself. Here on Vancouver Island, the Regional Library service is excellent. I can find what I’m interested in reading but I enjoy receiving books as presents. (Are you listening Father Christmas?) Here are some suggestions for your friends. ( or to share with friends)

Tell Me Everything

Elizabeth Strout’s latest, Tell Me Everything, is set in the fictional Maine town of Brunswick. In her piercingly accurate, simple prose, told from multiple points of view, the reader inhabits the ordinary indignities, failures and temptations of her character’s lives. There is a murder story woven in too.

As Bob and Lucy visit the bench where Bob can sneak a cigarette without Margaret knowing, the reader wonders if they will choose a future together. Will Bob leave Margaret? They are surrounded by a rich cast of extended family and players with their problems, including a re-appearance of Olive Kitteridge.

What are the costs of cumulative betrayals by a loved one? Is reconciliation the same as forgiveness? And why bother? Are relationships the linchpins that hold us together? And how do we nurture our souls? How many of our damaging choices are made because we were poorly nurtured or abused in our childhood? There’s a lovely passage where a healthy soul is likened to a billowing, flashy, coloured spinnaker. (paraphrasing) This book would make a great present and book club choice.

Your Body Was Made For This

In the CanCon section, I enjoyed Debbie Bateman’s linked short story collection, Your Body Was Made For This. And yes, Debbie, parts of this book are screamingly funny. The ten stories address the realities of owning, operating and accepting a female body in the hostile environment of societal binaries. Bodies that leak milk, blood or pee—too much or too little at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Characters struggle with fertility–wanted and unwanted, body size and shape, and power struggles with partners and parents. The collection examines misogyny and competition from all genders. It questions the societal expectation of female caregiving at all life stages, at the expense of self.

Breasts—the character, Brianna, points out after her bilateral mastectomy. “The breasts are not a vital organ.” The middle-aged body is a “renovation project…off schedule and over budget,” but still the currency for acceptance. Join these characters making perogies with their mother’s recipe, surviving ectopic pregnancy, pumping iron in the gym, training for a marathon and struggling for power and acceptance in their lives. Sounds like another great present and book club choice.

All Fours

I have to say the title of Miranda July’s latest novel, All Fours, put me off. I imagined a collection of graphic passages of off-putting, violent sex, with little regard for the pleasure of the “bottom” person. When visiting a friend, I pulled the book off the bookshelf and settled in for a nearly non-stop read. It’s a quest story, a road trip but not a road trip. It’s funny.

You may remember her 2007 short fiction collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. My first encounter with her writing was reading her 2017 story, “Metal Bowl” in the New Yorker.

All Fours may fall into the scantly populated category of perimenopausal literature but it is so much more. It validates and honours female sexuality and desire in all its forms. (yes, many descriptions of female masturbation) But there is much more that the forty-five-year-old protagonist is struggling with. It’s funny and unabashed as it tackles the challenges and conflicts of being an aging woman in our society. I’m wondering how the Sally Rooney crowd finds it. A way to understand their mothers?

Notre Dame

If you are despairing of humanity with the impending holiday season and the state of the world, console yourself, with the triumph of the successful rebuilding and restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris over the last five years. Now there’s a story.

Happy Holidays to you all and thanks for reading my blog.

Adaptations and Memories

October 9, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

Harvest Gourds — Comox Valley Saturday Market

The rains are here, providing grey-toned contrasts to the sunny moments bright with the reds, oranges and yellows of autumn. It’s time to let go of the warm pleasures of summer—the outdoor adventures and late sunsets viewed from the porch. After so many years, the routine changes and adaptations are expected and welcomed.

Unexpected, unwanted changes are inevitable but harder to adapt to, especially those associated with aging. Perhaps, more about that in another posting.

But for now, it’s a back-to-school atmosphere and gratitude for the ordinary. I’ve stored the summer clothing and brought out the warmer woollens. I’ve harvested the marrows and pruned (some) of the plants for overwintering. There are indoor classes at the recreation centres—Yoga, Pickleball (turns out, it’s a ton of fun) and Swimming. The Instant Pot is dusted off, and the aromas of the soups and stews fill the house. The writing groups start up again and the dark mornings are better for sustaining my writing practice.

Outdoor Pool Memories

Centennial Pool after Labour Day Weekend

But the summer was lovely. It was the 75th Anniversary of the local open-air pool and the community offered complimentary access. It’s an old-school heated pool, thirty metres long. An awkward length and I’m not sure why. The changing rooms are pokey and well-worn.

A regular cohort of soon-familiar bathers showed up most Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. In the crisp morning air, golden fingers of dawn stretched up over the East wall. The water transformed—glistening and diamond-filled, as we splashed up and down the lanes. Magical, like being a kid again.

I’m reminded of an outdoor pool in Ontario in the ’60s; two years before the national celebration of EXPO 67. My siblings and I, all under ten, with a few neighbourhood kids, trekked to the pool. Sometimes, a kid rode his banana seat bike. Not a minor feat, considering the route.

My older brother was in charge of the quarters required for admission. There were no sun hats, no sunscreen, no snacks, and no water bottles. There were no parents. Wearing our bathing suits, K-Mart flip flops and carrying our beach towels, we’d hike through the subdivision and then north on a narrow trail through the woods beside the Oshawa Creek. How far? Maybe a mile. We were an Imperial country then. At the place, where the water was shallow, we forded the creek to the pool, Somerset Pool. It’s filled in now. Repurposed. We’d wade across the muddy creek or hop from slippery rock to rock. Stones were thrown and skipped. We’d scamper up the grassy bank to the pool—a blue rectangle of water, sparkling on a dry, hot summer’s day.

Diving, cannonballing, pushing, running, splashing. Lifeguards shouting. Whistles blowing. The pool was evacuated for unknown reasons on an unknown schedule. Then, it would start all over again—diving, cannonballing, pushing, running, splashing. Kids flopping, exhausted on the hot concrete to warm up and dry off.

No one had a watch. Was there even a time we were supposed to be back? Somehow the decision was made. We’d slurp down a couple of mouthfuls of water from the water fountain and troop home. Sliding down the bank and wading across the creek, hiking down the root-crossed path, taking the tricky shortcuts through the neighbours’ gardens to get back.

Home with peeling noses, tender shoulders, muddy shins and stubbed toes. Swimsuits damp, and beach towels, heavy and muddy. To slake our thirst, a plastic jug of purple Kool-Aid—carefully made, trying not to spill the sugar or there’d be trouble. And sometimes a fight, deciding how to share the two remaining homemade popsicles. We’d collapse on the old couch in the cool of the basement.

Canadian Short Story Collections I’ve been reading

In September, I read a few short fiction collections, by Canadian authors and publishers. All are available at the Vancouver Island Regional Library—a fabulous resource. But if you can, buy these books

Carolyne Adderson’s A Way To Be Happy is an eclectic collection of characters in unusual situations. A pick-pocketing unhoused person at a New Year’s Eve party, male fragility in the setting of colonoscopy, missing dogs, phone sex, TOEFL teachers, sperm donators, fork-lift drivers. And my favourite, is the female character whose “excessive novel reading” results in her incarceration in an asylum.

In Caroline Adderson’s contribution to Resonance, essays on the craft and life of writing, edited by Andrew Chesham and Laura Farina, she writes “the character element…which …creates plot, is motivation.” Indeed.

Alex Ohlin’s We Want What We Want examines painful abandonments, rejection and loss. Mistaken loyalties and subsequent betrayals. Who has power and who is a victim? I enjoyed the drunken, palliative care nurses decompressing at their dart’s night in the local pub.

The author, Jann Everard is new to me. Her collection, Blue Runaways, explores dramatic physical losses (deaths and mutilations) in diverse settings. The stories are vivid and provocative. “The Robe” is so much more than your typical mother-daughter drama.

While not short fiction, Bad Ideas by Missy Marston, is loaded with lovable misfits in the Canadian setting of the St Lawrence Seaway. Fascinating history and great use of multiple POVs. Will Jules succeed in navigating his rocket car across the St Lawrence?

And what about an interconnected short fiction collection? Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva’s explores the absurdity of surviving in the Ukraine, pre and post-1989. Zaya, warehoused in an orphanage, with her socially unacceptable deformity, escapes and finds allies to help her make her way. But where and what is home?

Happy fall and happy reading to you all.

Open Secrets

July 10, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

Many of us were shaken this week, Andrea Robin Skinner, (ARS), revealed in a first-person piece in the Toronto Star, that she had been sexually abused as a nine-year-old when visiting her mother and stepfather, Alice Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin in 1976. And worse, when ARS told her parents, she received no support.

I wondered what was up when Munro Books in Victoria (started by Jim Munro in 1963, but with independent owners since 2014) cancelled an Alice Munro celebration in support of ARS. You can read their statement here.

In 2005, when ARS was in her thirties, Gerald Fremlin was charged with indecent assault and received two years probation in a court ruling in Clinton, Ontario.

After decades of isolation from her family in her late forties, after her divorce, ARS began therapy with The Gatehouse, a therapeutic centre for victims of childhood sexual abuse, in Etobicoke. The Gatehouse’s vision is “a future where those impacted by childhood sexual abuse can heal and reclaim their voices. Her piece survivor’s story from Oct 22nd, Andrea: To heal is truth and peace can be found here. There is also a video, So Let’s Talk About This, by ARS, crediting her sister Jenny Munro with production and Rebecca Garrett, who runs a media company, for camera, editing and direction. Subsequently, The Toronto Star published her story on July 7th. This article and several others by Deborah Dundas, Betsy Powel, Heather Mallick, Stephan Marche of the Star and Marsha Lederman of The Globe and Mail are behind paywalls.

The Writing versus the Writer

Learning that AM did not act to protect her daughter is a bitter pill to swallow. Can and should one separate the writer’s morality from the greatness of their work?

While it would be a tragedy to erase her work from literary study, it is appropriate to examine what she wrote in light of this new knowledge—A mother who failed to protect her daughter and who remained married to the man who was abusing her youngest daughter. A mother, living with the knowledge that she failed to protect her daughter. A mother, whose actions led to her estrangement from her daughter.

But why was Andrea not protected?

We can only speculate as to why AM made these choices. Fear? Fear of damage to her reputation and career? Fear of Financial loss? Fear of rejection or abuse by her husband?

Blame? Her daughter’s behaviour and not her husband’s. Blame the victim.

Shame? And thus denial of the implications of the abuse?

Impotence? A sense that she was powerless to change the situation?

We don’t know AM’s story. Was she a victim of abuse? Is this an intergenerational story?

We can only speculate on the complicity of the CanLit world in protecting AM’s reputation. Who knew this secret but did nothing to help Andrea or AM?

Family matters—Fear, denial, diminishment, and impotence to justify doing nothing.

The literary community is re-examining her work, particularly the last story “Vandals”, published in her 1994 collection, Open Secrets. See Laura Miller’s piece, “The Writer and the Brute” in The Slate where she examines the story as possible atonement by AM.

Are there connections between the stories and the timeline of Andrea’s story? Are there clues as to why AM refused or could not help or protect her youngest daughter?

Our LIterary Heroines are not Saints

Sadly our literary heroines are not saints. We needily and blithely project our needs and wants onto them to be so. There is a crushing sense of loss, betrayal and disappointment when they are found out to be fallible, flawed and messy like the rest of us.

I have deep compassion for Andrea Robin Skinner and her recovery journey after the immoral and unambiguous denial of her needs and safety by her family and society. I wish her, her siblings and her family all the best in their recovery journey.

And many thanks to my friends who forwarded me the various articles over the last few days.

A Letter to My Daughters

In 2013 after AM was awarded the Nobel Prize, I wrote a short piece about unexpected moral frailty. I’m sharing it below. Of course, it would have been different, if I knew then what I know now!

A-Letter-to-My-Daughters-Google-Docs Download

Margaret Atwood comes to the Comox Valley

June 21, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

“As a woman of a certain age,

in my 60s’ with certain interests (reading and writing), a brush with greatness, Margaret Atwood (MA) was beyond my dreams. MA has been a part of my life since my twenties when I first read her second novel, Surfacing. I’d seen her speak before. I was pregnant with my first child when I went to her reading from The Handmaid’s Tale in (gulp) 1986 at UBC. And later, her Massey Lecture from Payback (Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth) at the Chan Centre in 2008.

Exciting News: Margaret Atwood Visits Denman Island!

But this time was going to be different.

Adjacent to Alice Munro’s passing, this encounter had an unspoken urgency. MA will be eighty-five in November. And while she hasn’t received a Noble prize she’s the recipient of two Booker Prizes, one in 2000 for the Blind Assasin and one in 2019 shared with Bernadine Everisto for the Testaments.

The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival (DIRWF) organizers arranged three events on Denman Island and then in coordination with The Comox Valley Writers Society, a fourth event in Courtenay. It seemed to me like a gruelling schedule for an eighty-year-old.

The Wednesday the week before, I lined up outside the Denman Activity Centre, like the star-struck acolyte I am. Eager fans chatted in the sunshine for two hours before the tickets went on sale. DIRWF volunteers tackled the payment logistics, organized the lineup (thank you again for all you do) and I lucked out.

I was one of seventy guests at a private home on Denman at a fabulously catered event with free access to this astonishing woman. She’s diminutive in stature but that is it. She wore the expected brightly coloured scarf. There was no handler and the guests were respectful and polite. You already know she’s a smart, witty and perceptive woman.

In our brief conversation, I gushed pathetically about her influence in all those stages of my life and we talked briefly about agents and publishing. She reminisced about the days when you didn’t need an agent. When I mentioned that there are a lot of writers on Denman and in the Comox Valley, her retort was (paraphrasing here) “Yes but what do they write!” Touché MA. And, in that measured laconic tone, perhaps there was a comment about the multi-year tenacity of one of the organizers in persuading her to come to Denman.

A personal moral disorder (having bought a hard copy of her latest, heartbreaking short story collection, Old Babes in the Wood from our local bookstore, Blue Heron Books) was the vague expectation that she might be signing. But how many MA signatures does one need? And thanks to the common sense of the organizers there was no book signing allowing for more mingling and conversation. At all events, pre-signed copies of After The Flood and Old Babes in the Wood were made available by Abraxas and Laughing Oyster Bookshop.

My second event

was the Sunday afternoon event in Courtenay shared with about four hundred other MA admirers. Stewart Goodings, the co-chair of the DIWRF and possibly the tenacious persuader, hosted the conversation.

MA treated us to a reading of her short story “Bad Teeth” from her latest collection. It is not one of the semi-autobiographical, heartbreaking Tig and Nell stories but also poignantly observes loss and aging in long-term female friendships. My favourite story in this collection is the title one, “Babes in the Woods”— a study of memory, ritual and loss in the setting of a family cottage.

The conversation flowed freely and included topics like her Substack, In the Writing Burrow and her graphic novel, Angel Catbird where a scientist mutates into a feline-avian superhero. MA is a devoted conservationist and bird watcher as was her husband, Graeme Gibson. And yes, migratory birds are the “Canary in the Coal Mine.” She’s passionately anti-outdoor cat (mea culpa). Funds were raised at the CVWS for the Point Pelee organization.

She talked about her cameo roles in the productions of Alias Grace and The Handmaid’s Tale and her serialized online novel which became The Heart Goes Last.

And what about The Future Library? MA was the first author to donate a manuscript to this one-hundred-year project that started in 2014 in Norway where a forest has been planted which will supply paper for an anthology of books.

Oh, and people seem to like making and giving MA effigies. At both events, a cleverly constructed doll was presented to her.

And in the afterglow of the weekend,

I learned where the quote appearing on the 2021 stamp came from—”A word after a word is power,” which is also the title of the 2019 CBC documentary on MA.

It’s a line from the poem, “Spelling” from her tenth book of poetry, True Stories published in 1981. This is a video of her reading it at the NY Public Library in 2020.

And if you aren’t already crying—try “Dearly” from her 2020 collection of poems, Dearly.

“It’s an old word, fading now: Dearly did I wish, Dearly did I long for: I loved him dearly.”

“It’s more like a house”

May 30, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

May is short story month. I was celebrating finishing my collection of twelve interlinked contemporary fiction stories—Working title, Watermarked. My main event was sending the query letters to the first round of Canadian agents. “Tick” as we overly task-oriented people might say.

The second most exciting thing, a long-kept secret, May is for Margaret! Margaret Atwood is coming to the Comox Valley. I managed to secure tickets to two events. Stay tuned for a post in June where I’ll share my experience with you.

my photo of poster in Abraxas, the bookstore on Denman Island.

But then Alice Munro died

These events were overshadowed by the passing of dear Alice Munro, one of my short fiction idols. It was time to pause and reflect. To re-read. To appreciate. With the publication of Dear Life in 2011, she warned us that this was her last collection of stories but one could still hope for an interview, some more wisdom or creative output.

The media was full of tributes, accolades, and lists of her favourite stories. I gathered all my books and flicked through them wondering which are my favourites.

The media was full of tributes, accolades, and lists of her favourite stories. I gathered all my books and flicked through them wondering which are my favourites.

my photo

“What is real”

Many times, in various creative writing courses, I’ve been offered her advice to think of the short story as a house, but I’d never seen the entire quote.

It originates in an interview titled “What is real?” from over forty years ago and was published in Making It New: Contemporary Canadian Stories by John Metcalf, originally published by Carswell Legal Publications. Methuen Publishing Ltd. 1982. The gist of the conversation is a response to the constant questioning about how much of her fiction is real (based on actual places, people and events) as opposed to created.

I haven’t read the original in the Metcalf but found it reproduced by this blog. The reference for the reproduction in the blog, Living in the Library World, is Gary Geddes (Editor) The art of Short Fiction. Harper Collins, 1993. And if you are keen, a used library copy of the Metcalf is available on Amazon.

In Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn, The Art of the Short Story. Pearson Longman, 2006 “What is Real” is partially reproduced as a craft essay, “How I write short stories.” It follows the 1974 story, “How I Met My Husband.” And further down the rabbit hole, this is attributed to the Metcalf source.

Many of you will recognize John Metcalf as the grandfather of the Canadian short story. His recent book Off the Record is a compilation of craft essays that includes several authors who have inspired my work—Caroline Adderson, Cynthia Flood, Shaena Lambert and Kathy Page.

my photo

“It’s more like a house” An excerpt from “What is real?”

“I will start by explaining how I read stories written by other people… It’s more like a house. Everybody knows what a house does, how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and presents what is outside in a new way. This is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story does for me, and what I want my stories to do for other people. … I’ve got to make, I’ve got to build up, a house, a story, to fit around the indescribable feeling that is the soul of the story…”

The soul of the story. There’s something to think about. And I think that’s why I return to her stories. To feel those indescribable feelings and to examine the craft. “How did she do that?”

A few of my favourite stories

In no particular order:

The Children Stay

Silence

Miles City, Montana

What is remembered

Red Dress – 1946