My Personal Favorite with Marjorie Maddox
A Poetry Blog
This blog only asks the poet to answer one two-part question:
At this moment in time, which of your poems is your personal favorite, and why?
Marjorie’s Answer:
Seeing Things is perhaps the most difficult book I’ve written, due mostly to its subject matter: a mother’s early stages of dementia, a daughter’s struggle with depression, a woman’s survival of abuse, and society’s blurred lines between truth and lie. And yet, what kept me writing—and what is woven throughout the book—is a series of odes: odes to my husband and children, “Ode to ‘Normal’,” “Ode to Almost-Silence,” “Ode to Exhaustion,” an ode to post-menopause, and various odes to memory. The collection’s final poem, “Ode to Everything,” acknowledges the rough journey, yet still chooses joy, something I believe we need now more than ever.
First published in Plough and also in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Nomad, and in Seeing Things (Wildhouse, February 28, 2025). Find out more here: https://wildhousepublishing.com/seeing-things/
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