Loving the Dead received the 2020 Blue Light Press Book Award and is Helga Kidder’s fourth collection of poems. Blue Light Press also published her 2013 collection, Luckier than the Stars and her 2016 collection, Blackberry Winter. Finishing Line Press published her 2012 collection, Wild Plums.
Of the 62 poems, two are sonnets, one is a villanelle, and the others are free verse. The poems appear in three sections, and each section has a different story to tell, Each section begins with a haiku.
Searching for Answers
in winter's darkest corner.
Light waits at the door.
In the first section, Searching for Answers, Kidder presents the small deaths of daily life. When we accommodate family needs, we sacrifice the self to a path that closes another.
In the poem Snow Moon, she speaks to these small deaths encompassed in the bigger picture. “How long will the sun and moon endure/ How long the heart that zig zags/through wild grass. Slides over ice/ pierces the flesh of love?” To be sure, these are rhetorical questions, questions we ponder without the hope of an answer.
Perhaps the power of nature, which seems enduring for now, provides solace in the land of no answers. Kidder is a gardener, and nature images abound in this book. Also, in the poem “Snow Moon,” she speaks of her adopted home in Tennessee, “…watch a red bibbed grosbeak/ stop for a snack// At evening the sky purples/ like a giraffes tongue quivers/ and flicks stars into place.”
Aging is among the small deaths of day-to-day life. It reminds us of an ultimate answer. In the poem “Seventy-fifth Birthday,” we read the words, “I’d like to think I’m still in summer/ yet fall reveals a tree’s true self/ the bare bones of being.”
In Spring’s revival
Rain recites the laws of loss.
Tomorrow hope reigns.
The use of a haiku to begin each section provides an interesting cultural parallel. Just as Kidder’s poems in English express a search for hope in the face of loss, the traditional Japanese haiku must include a sense of “sadness for things,” for the transience of nature, such as the cherry blossom, here today and beautiful, but gone tomorrow. This quality is expressed in the phrase Mono no aware, an obligatory component of the haiku.
Section two, Rain recites the laws of loss. is at once a lament for a sister lost and a celebration of life. “The Cardinal said, she lives/between the sun and the moon/within the light of stars.” From the title poem, “Loving the Dead,” these words reveal the depth of emotion and the breadth of the author's perception of the world of family and friendships.
The book’s cover speaks directly to this issue. It is beautiful and complex. A bird, perhaps the spirit flying from the earth at the end of life, or perhaps the dove of the Holy Spirit, flies over an intricate landscape of abstract figures.
In “Talking to the Dead,” she says, “I am waiting for their wings/humming a love song/I will know.” The dead are always with us, perhaps speaking in a language “we hear but cannot understand.” We reach for them but cannot touch them. “They raise arms/we can reach but not hold.”
The words of “Scattering Seeds” affirm the image of loss, “We stop in front of the stone/your carved name below mother’s/ who waited for thirty years.”
In an earlier poem, “Under the Blood Moon,” the author speaks of her homeland: “She thinks now of “German Railways/ gliding through the Black Forest/ the ticket she will have to buy/ visiting family and her sister’s/ fresh grave”
Visiting that family and grave means a trip home. With the absence of her beloved sister, home is forever changed. This middle section is the core of the book and records the events that prompted its creation.
November fog veils
the dance of forgotten souls.
Memory timeless.
The third Section follows the others with death writ large, the multitude of deaths of people in tragedies and wars. Soldiers die for their country, people are killed in fires, and the paper brings news of more tragedies each day.
She says that all the dead should be remembered for their deeds and receive our love. We should ask what meaning they give to our lives.
Having lived in Tennessee since 1965, she says that English is her first language, and German has become her second. She reads works in German to keep up with changes in the language, but her poems are all in English. She says that German speakers find an American accent in her language.
Kidder was not fluent in English when she arrived in the United States. She used the medium of television, from cartoons to the show, “Password,” to learn the language. She did not have the opportunity for a college education at home in Germany but pursued an undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga after her arrival here. Despite her lack of an early start in education, Kidder received an MFA degree from Vermont College and taught for a few years at Chattanooga State.
Helga Kidder is a co-founder of the Chattanooga Writers Guild and leads their poetry group. This critique group has helped many poets bring their poems from raw material to finished products. She is a native of Germany’s Black Forest region and lives in the Tennessee hills with her husband.
This fine book of poems stirs the soul and the emotions. Readers will want to read it again and again. Consult Blue Light Press, bluelightpress.com for availability.