Thresholds - Cook, Glenna

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Résumé :
Readers of the book Thresholds will experience what Glenna Cook calls 'the good purpose,' the intention of poems meaningfully conflicted between fierce moments and tender moments that compose a life. In all her wisdom and experience, she still struggles to answer questions about love, devotion, loneliness and 'this grandeur of the universe.' These carefully constructed poems share childhood pains and shames. Like any poet, Cook plays subordinate to language: 'I'm sorry/about my words./I try to keep them in/behind their white picket fence,/but they get out when I least expect it.' -Allen Braden, author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood: Poems Glenna Cook's debut poetry collection explores the family photo album as a threshold of narratives, memories, secrets, wishes, silences-and absences. From a 1940s childhood and a mother pregnant with the knowledge of her child's Downs Syndrome; to an adulthood elegy for a brother who died before she was born; to a poignant sequence entitled Wake to December (in part, exploring her son's death from cancer), Cook is unafraid of life's refrain of pain and sorrow. Yet, despite the exploration of death and loss-the collection's abiding refrain is faith: faith in the redemptive power of love, joy, and above all-hope. These poems are love poems of endurance and survival, which seek to answer the question: how do we find a language for what leaves us wordless? -Rommi Smith, poet and playwright

Biographie:
This is Glenna Cook's second full-length collection ofpoems. The first, Thresholds, was published by MoonPathPress in 2017, and was a finalist for the Washington StateBook Award for Poetry in 2018.Cook grew up in Olympia, Washington, where, atage 18, she married her husband, Kenneth. They had 3children (their oldest, a son, died of cancer in 2016 at age 60),and have 9 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. Aftera 25-year career with the telephone company, she retiredfrom U.S. West Communications in 1990, then immediatelyenrolled in college. She graduated from the University ofPuget Sound Magna cum Laude in 1994 at age 58 with a BAin English Literature. While at university, she won the HearstEssay Prize for the Humanities and the Nixeon Civille HandyPrize in poetry. She is a Hedgebrook alumna and a memberof Phi Kappa Phi.She has read her poetry many places in the Puget Soundregion, and published dozens of poems in journals andanthologies, such as Raven Chronicles, Spindrift, crosscurrentreview, Trillium, and Kind of a Hurricane Anthologies.104Her husband died in 2018, after 63 years of marriage.Cook has Parkinson's disease, which she keeps at baywith medicine, diet, and a rigorous exercise program.She serves as an advocate for others with Parkinson'sdisease. She loves reading, watching Masterpiece Theaterand Netflix on TV, taking walks, and interacting withpeople. Two of her favorite sayings are: We make our ownweather, and (from Rumi) What you seek is seeking you.