Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

I never know where a conversation will go with my mother Irene. She can talk music. She can talk politics. She can talk literature. She can talk spirituality. She can talk travel. And, of course, history.

Today, we hit a little bit on all those topics, but my favorite conversation came when I asked her to name a famous poet that she didn’t know a whole lot about. I figured we could go browsing on the Internet and find some poems to discover together. She thought about this for a few minutes, and then she looked over at me and said, “Christina Rosetti.”

To me this was one of those Casablanca “Of all the gin joints” moments. What are the chances my 99-year-old mother would name a somewhat obscure 19th-century British poet whose “Goblin Market,” is one of the most rythmically sensual poems ever? I’ve loved this poem since hearing it as a dramatic reading at an experimental theater in Anchorage in the early ’90s. It has a line that I periodically use to describe how I feel at the beginning of something exciting: “Like a vessel at the launch when the last restraint is gone.” So we read it together. I was glad to be reminded that at its core it’s about the redemptive love of sisters.

We also visited a website that is among my favorites for poetry, The Poetry Foundation,” and found a good bio of Rossetti, including the fact that she wrote the lyrics to a Christmas song we both find haunting and beautiful, “In the Bleak Midwinter.“

So that’s why I drive two days in January to southern Alberta. Who knows where a conversation with Irene will go? It’s always worth the trip to find out.