Irene Martin
Irene Martin is a scholar, historian, archivist, gillnetter, Anglican priest, and an author of several books about the Lower Columbia fishery. She lives upriver from us in Skamokawa, and I’ve been acquainted with her for many years – ever since she did a book signing for us at the Bookvendor back in 1997 when her history of Wahkiakum County, Beach of Heaven, was published. I very much admire her. In fact, I feel somewhat intimidated by the breadth of her accomplishments.
When I learned that Irene has just written a book of poetry called The Family that Never Threw Anything Away I lost no time in ordering it. For starters, the title seemed hand-fashioned for my family. I deal every day with the positives and negatives of such a family. But overriding that intriguing hint at familiar subject matter was my amazement that it was a book of poetry.
I am definitely a late bloomer when it comes to appreciating poetry. I think I must have been traumatized early on by a teacher (or teachers) who dwelt on the mechanics of poetry writing and the (to me) zen-like aspects of interpreting a poem. I have always felt overwhelmed by the categories – couplets, sonnets, ballads, elegies, odes, quatrains, refrains – and on and on. Then there are meter and rhythm and rhyme and free verse and who knows what else to be considered. Not only have I never attempted to write poetry, for years I was reluctant to read it. My loss!
By Irene Martin
It’s only as I’ve become personally acquainted with people who write poetry – some call themselves “poets” and some don’t – that I’ve become braver and broadened my appreciation. For instance, years ago, when the rest of us in the community seemed paralyzed by MaryAnne Staudenraus’s sudden death. I was astounded that my friend David Campiche could write such a stunning and poignant tribute to her. In poetry.
And when my friend Pat Thomas began to share her sometimes humorous, sometimes introspective, poems about the everyday aspects of her life, I began to feel less intimidated by that “filling in the blanks” part that poetry so often requires of the reader. Then there is Jim Bertolino, a resident poet when the Willard R. Espy Literary Foundation was still operational and most recently a member of the pilot group at Willapa Bay AiR. Jim can write four or five poems in an afternoon and each of them of the knock-your-socks-off variety. Again, I found that I could actually relate to what he wrote.
As I’ve come to associate the beauty and economy of words with flesh and blood people that I know, rather than the garret-living tubercular, soul-searching ghosts of those classics I read in school, I am becoming an appreciator. I ordered Irene’s book immediately, read it as soon as the wrapper was off, and have re-read it several times since. I love it and am, again, full of envy at this woman’s extraordinary talent.
And, imagine my surprise and pleasure at her note to me on the inside cover which said in part You have influenced me more than you know.
Irene’s book can be purchased from the author, P.O. Box 83, Skamokawa, WA 98647. Retail price is $8.95, plus $.68 tax and $2.75 shipping and handling.
At first I was astonished that anyone as accomplished as you, Sydney, could be intimidated by someone else, but then I was charmed at your humility. I, too, am intimidated by poetry and admire anyone capable of accomplishing a beautiful poem, although the nature of poetry is that it is very subjective and not everything appeals to everyone and some poems only understood by their authors. It is nice to be reminded that talent lays not just in the big cities, but in the little out-of-the-way places such as Skamokawa and Oysterville!