"Have the courage to spin magic from
the raw material of your grief"

In a previous post, I said that the reason it's taking me months to finish reading Pamela Gerrand's 86-page book of poetry, Wild Echo, is because I'll spend days re-reading the same poem, before moving on to the next.

This week, for example, I've been held hostage each morning by her poem "Art is the Heart Laid Bare" which opens with:

"We are makers. We are here to sift and sort, weep and wail. Have the courage to spin magic from the raw material of your grief. We are meant to make something of the dark night of the soul. Mine the gold. Paint it. Sing it. Dance it. Sculpt it. Write it. Surrender to the notes of the underworld song. Make our way out of the depths, with the wolf song leading us, note by raw note."

When the dark night of the scamdemic dawned, I picked up my pen (actually, it was a pencil) and started to write. Each day, I mined the dystopian nightmare unfolding around us for gold and (two years later) produced Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story (which surpassed all my expectations).

Likewise, when my daughter was born and died on the same day, I took to my keyboard and pounded out The Redemption of Talafi — a medieval fantasy novella about why children suffer and die (I'll be releasing this soon to members of my patron program). As Pam's poem advises, I sifted and sorted, wept and wailed a story out of the pain of holding my baby girl's dead body in my arms.

And soon I'll be releasing All the Humans Are Sleeping. Set in the near future, the story's protagonist is grieving the death of his wife, who was killed in World War III. Completing the novella, year-and-a-half after the death of my wife, I do feel, as Pam writes, that I've spun a little magic from the raw material of my grief.

"We are makers," says Pam.

At least, we should be.

The world may be self-destructing, people dying and darkness descending... but if we keep on creating then, somehow, our souls can overcome the darkness.

As her poem concludes, "We know we are makers and there is no time to waste."

I love everything about "Art is the Heart Laid Bare," other than the title (which I felt bordered on cliché). It's four times as long as what I quoted, and four times grander than I can describe. I highly recommend you read and re-read it at least forty-four times, along with her entire collection of poems.

If the above excerpt stirs you to also "make something of the dark night of the soul" then I highly recommend you head over to Pam Gerrand's site and buy a copy of Wild Echo for yourself and as gifts for family and friends: https://pamelajanegerrand.com/product/wild-echo-poetry-book/ 

—John C.A. Manley

PS For another except from Wild Echo (about this mean month of March), check out: https://blazingpinecone.com/news/2024/03/01/ 

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/