Writing a book of poetry is different from writing a novel. Both have a story to tell, but with poems, each tells its own story, its own message, with emotions emerging through the rhythm of each verse, like tears staining the page.
This is especially true of “Indelible Shadow,” the latest poetry publication from award-winning poet Sandra Berris. These poems don’t rhyme. Each in this slim book is written in verse, a pair with its own message, almost a story in two lines. By the end, we feel the weight of the story.
If only
If only you had been on the train
You would have felt it rocking
The hypnotic swaying and rushing
Sounds calming to your fear
Silencing dark thoughts
Instead, bring new dreams
Opportunities in an elusive future
But the train was fast
Challenge in real time
When the spirit
Broken like a horse’s leg
And the boy is now broken
Stepped on the tracks
Each poem in Indelible Shadow quietly tells the story of a boy who stood in the path of a train. Not hers, but someone close to her nonetheless. Berris’ carefully chosen words balance the screaming in her heart that sounds like the train whistle, a softening made possible by perspective and poetry.
Our interpretation of the poems need not be literal. How many of us have been “on the path of the train,” even if only metaphorically? Just beneath the rhythm of her words, we can find ways to identify with her and perhaps heal.
Berris expresses her emotions through poetry and processes her feelings, and through this book she shares them with others who may feel a connection, if not to the story, then at least to the feeling of losing something.
“When I write poetry, I draw on feelings and knowledge,” Berris said. “I think about people who have suffered loss through suicide or other causes of death, and how many of us carry that inside us, like a heavy stone in our hearts. But we can ease the pain, soften its sharp edges, if we can find the words to write or talk about it.”
Berris recognizes that the poems in Indelible Shadow (Finishing Line Press 2024) are a melancholy series. She initially wrote them as a personal healing exercise, but realized that as her poems took shape on paper, they could reach others as well.
The book’s cover features a small, yellow-colored bird whose shadow extends slightly further than itself across a line in the road. The cover was designed by April Pacheco, an artist who was very interested in Berris’ poems and the story behind them. The cover inspired the title.
Becoming a poet
Although she was born in Chicago, where about 35 cousins live, Berris grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, and earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska. Her poetry was written at the university under poet laureate Karl J. Shapiro, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1945 after writing and publishing “V-Letter and Other Poems” while serving in the “Pacific Theater” of World War II.
“My very first poem,” she said, “was called ‘Blue Ford.’ When Shapiro read the poem to the class to show them what not to do, I slumped in my chair and tried to disappear. Then he told me I would be rewriting my poem for the next week. I eventually became editor of his class magazine and learned so much from him. He wrote my letter of recommendation for Stanford.”
Berris later wrote a poem in Shapiro’s honor called “Life.” The poet had warned her that we cannot write about “life” unless we describe the iconic cereal or magazine. Or a life well lived.
“He taught us not to generalize, that we cannot understand all of nature or define the scope of love,” she said. “We have to be specific and write from our own experience and the feelings that come with it so that our writing resonates with our readers.”
Berris fulfilled her “teaching duty” by teaching English at University High School, which was attended primarily by the professors’ children. After earning her master’s degree in education and English from Stanford, she took her first teaching job at a middle school in Alamo, where she taught English and social studies.
Berris’ next assignment took her back to her roots: teaching “gifted” high school students in Chicago who were interested in creative writing. Her students’ work caught the attention of the head of the English department, who asked her to launch a literary magazine based on students’ interviews with seniors, from which they were to create poems or short stories. The result was the literary magazine WHETSTONE.
“When we started getting submissions from teachers and others across the state,” Berris said, “I put two friends on my team and had a real adventure with this magazine over the next 18 years, winning 11 awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. We were excited as long as it was happening.”
Eventually, Berris and her husband retired to the community where they began their marriage after honeymooning at the Highlands Inn in Carmel. Although they have owned and visited their Murphy-built Carmel cottage for 18 years, they moved there permanently six years ago.
“One day when it was snowing in February, I was sitting on my treadmill watching the AT&T golf tournament,” Berris said, “when they showed Carmel Beach. I ran up the stairs and told my husband I would never see another snow season. We put our house up for sale and moved to Carmel permanently.”
Berris’ previous book of poetry, Ash on Wind (Muse Ink Press 2017), is a collection of her poems published by various literary journals and university presses and is inspired by her contemplation of the “intimacy of matter,” an ambiguity that examines what we are made of and the different ways we interpret what is important to us.
Both Indelible Shadow and Ash on Wind are available at Bookworks in Pacific Grove and through Amazon.
Originally published:
