Stonemaker
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Authors
Kressin, Marie
Issue Date
2025-05-07
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
School of Letters , School of Letters Thesis 2025 , University of the South, woman, Arkansas, nature
Alternative Title
Abstract
This is a book of poems I did not want to write. Some of these poems came to me in dreams, others on morning runs, others in the shower, others while I scrambled eggs. I want to say they banged down the door, but—more often than not—they slipped in quietly and waited to be found, clearly leaving the choice up to me (whether or not to find them, that is).
My favorite poems came from sudden images, visions almost: My brother at the top of a pirate’s mast during a storm, a giant pink hand emerging from the ocean, a lightbulb in my mouth, hot chocolate dripping down my stomach. Some of these pieces are responses to the words and lines of others: if Eve was Earth, walk into the time that is coming. Some came from the myths and stories of my childhood—Genesis, Jonah, Noah, Medusa, Ceto, Pegasus—while others are myths and stories of my own making. Still others come from a moment that haunts me, a memory that flashes into my mind like the worst part of a movie rewound over and over: Another Telling, Another Telling, Another Telling.
Nearly every poem comes from a deep love of the more-than-human world and a deep love of the human world. What is the time we are walking into? How will we treat women? Will there be clean water? Cocoa beans or gulf streams? What will happen to the oceans? Will they rise into ten-foot walls of water outside the hospital? Who will be alive?
The book I wanted to write was one that would move readers to love the world enough to save it, to save each other. Yes, I wanted to write a book that would save the world. I sat down ready to force that book out of me. But try as I did to pummel these pages into submission, they would not budge. They waited patiently, and, instead, I found a book that did not need any forcing, already finished and ready, waiting deep inside me. To be clear: I do not believe this manuscript is, as yet, a finished book. I think the book inside me is already finished. This manuscript is as much of that book as I was able to access within a year. I sense, though, that there are still pages locked away in my chest that need a little more time before they’ll be ready to reveal themselves. (I suspect these future pages may greatly affect the order of the collection, which, I sense, remains unsettled.) The book I will eventually (god willing) finish writing may not necessarily be the book the world needs (which, by the way, what does that even mean?), but it is the book I need.
So, no, this is not what I wanted to write—but here it is anyway: a book for my daughter who does not yet exist. Here is everything I want to tell her about where she comes from and everything I think she might need to survive wherever it is we are going. This is a book that helped me let go so that, should I ever find her before me, I need not ask her to help bear what I’ve been asked to carry. May, instead, she fly—with the wings on her very own back—wild and unfettered.
Description
Citation
Publisher
University of the South