Ordinary Time - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

“Ordinary Time” in the Catholic religion consists of those numbered (ordinalis) weeks between high holy days. As indeed the days of the “you” in these poems—the poet’s 100+ year-old mother—are numbered in the time of her physical diminishment toward death. Eileen Trauth’s debut collection shows us the extraordinary within the inevitable, as the grace of a daughter’s attention through poetry “retrieves surprising blossoms /from another season,” until at last within this complicated relationship between daughter and mother—between the living and the dying—there is “no more to do/just be.”

—Pauletta Hansel, author of Palindrome, Weatherford Award in Poetry, 2017, Cincinnati Poet Laureate Emeritus (2016–2018)

The poems in Ordinary Time took me a bit by surprise. I had previously mourned my own dear mother’s passing many years ago, but entering the world of Eileen Trauth’s elegiac poems stirred a deeper and nourishing gratitude in me. These are poems of unflinching presence by a daughter who has paid keen attention within her family of many sisters. Trauth’s poems serve as an elegant record-keeping of ordinary but devotional “holy ritual” of daily life where you will likely recognize yourself and be moved. Watch as the poet’s mother quietly kneads dough for bread and doughnuts “over and over and over.” She is kneading love actually—“even difficult love”—up to the remarkable end of her very long life.

—Susan F. Glassmeyer, author of Invisible Fish, Ohio Poet of the Year, 2018

The Catholic Church calls “Ordinary Time” the periods between Christmas, Easter, Advent, and Lent. However, these are not unimportant spiritual moments but the time for learning after and before the Epiphany. In the same vein, Eileen Trauth’s Ordinary Time allows the readers to appreciate her contemplations on love, family, life, caregiving, and death. By letting us know her story, that of her mother (who speaks in the poems), and other family members, this heart-warming collection of poetry is a memoir of love, a declaration of the extraordinary that happens, or stops happening, every day.

—Manuel Iris, author of The Parting Present/Lo que se irá, Cincinnati Poet Laureate Emeritus (2018–2020)

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