Morning Songs
by Mary Margaret Rode
9780916727796 || Cost: $15.00
Hand sewn chapbook , 40 pages
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Critical Praise for Morning Songs
- A thoughtful delicacy of thinking and seeing pervades Mary Margaret Rode's attentive poems—profound gratitude for the simple sustenance of the natural world and our finite, precious lives within it. Not only does a reader feel restored by this awareness, but also by Rode's potent sense of "holding on to one another" as well as to meaning and substance. Her voice is a gift.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, Poet, novelist, songwriter
- Mary Margaret Rode is a poet of nature, a gifted and lyrically observant singer of life, relationships and memories. Her gentle yet vibrant voice is an affirming and inspiring instrument of hope. Her wise and beautiful songs are essential for any time of the day or night.
— Cary Clack, columnist, San Antonio Express-News
Reviews
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80-year-old writer pens first book of poetry
San Antonio Express-NewsNov. 6, 2011
The poetic voice of San Antonio writer Mary Margaret Rode is lyrical, elegant and lean; her language pared to its rhythmic essence yet powerful in its insight and observations.It's also a voice that is beautiful and soothing one that's necessary whenever we decide to listen to it.
Morning Songs, which the 80-year-old Rode reads from this afternoon at the Twig Book Shop, is her first book of poems. Perhaps even more so for the reader than even Rode, it is a pleasurable collection, well worth the wait. Rode has a special eye and sensitivity for nature—for fireflies, milk moons, chanting doves, for "ghostly fog hiding streets and houses" and a road to Fredericksburg "that lures us like a lover."
As poet Naomi Shihab Nye puts it, "A thoughtful delicacy of thinking and seeing pervades Mary Margaret Rode's attentive poems—profound gratitude for the simple sustenance of the natural world and our finite, precious lives within it. Her voice is a gift."
Tributes to her husband, Paul, who was longtime principal of Cambridge Elementary School, son Ben and other loved ones are woven with golden threads of memory and joy.
But Rode is also a sharp social commentator of unsuspecting yet subtle power. In "A Virus Called Loss" she writes, "Even words once spoken richly/Reduced to texting messages/With shattered spelling that/Demolishes language."
A meditation on violence, titled, "Easter 2010," concludes with the plea: "Let Easter return to us/Released from the tomb/Free to love one another."
Dallas-born, Rode taught at St. Luke's Episcopal School for 21 years. In fact, the Mary Margaret Rode Award has been presented each year since 1987 to a 4th-grade student whose "joy in learning and love of school" is particularly remarkable.
Present in all of the poems in Morning Songs, regardless of the subject, is a message of hope. Rode's voice is a wonderful instrument to carry that message.
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Cary Clack, long a popular columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, is now Director of Communications for the Joaquin Castro campaign.
About This Author
Read more about Mary Margaret Rode HERE.
