Catherine Chandler was born in New York City in 1950, the eldest of seven children. She also resided in Poughkeepsie, NY, but spent most of her childhood in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Her primary education was at a Catholic parochial school, where she was also trained on the piano and organ. She obtained her B.A. from Wilkes University in French Literature with a minor in Spanish. She has a Master of Arts in Education from McGill University, Montreal. In 1971 she married Uruguayan Hugo Oliveira. They have lived in Montreal, Canada since that time. They have two children and three grand-daughters. Catherine teaches Spanish at McGill University’s Department of Translation Studies and also retains an administrative position at that university. She has been writing formal poetry most of her adult life, and her main poetic influences are Yeats, Frost, and Millay. She has poems published or forthcoming in The Lyric, Iambs & Trochees, Raintown Review, Blue Unicorn, Möbius, Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, Modern Haiku and Texas Poetry Journal. One of her poems was judged the best poem in the Summer 2004 issue of The Lyric, and she also won a prize from the Illinois State Poetry Society.
Tommy
I've come to Washington to look you up.
To make sure.
There it is. I've found your name in the directory
fifty-eight thousand names long.
It took some time.
There were fifteen Thomas Smiths.
I remember the summer of my crush on you,
and later, how long it took you to get back
to Wilkes-Barre from Gia Dinh;
how inane, insipid, inadequate words failed
to condone, to console, to concede.
I remember the green and white spring
shattering in twenty-one blasts of non-hostile fire,
the soothing notes of the lights-out dirge trying in vain to ease
our pain, as one who would soon follow you, gladly,
clutched to his heart a triangle of stars.
Tommy, I should be convinced, as I trace your wounds
on the dark, indubitable granite.
But no. It is August 1964 again.
The sun is shining. The birds are singing. The hydrangeas are in bloom.
We sit on the front porch swing and you chide me, laughing,
It's BE-A-TLES, silly!
Quittance
I owe him everything, but I have spent
it like a prodigal. It's almost gone,
and I have not put by a single cent
for rainy days. Accounts are overdrawn.
No stock portfolio, no pension plan,
no nest-egg. I am always in the red.
A liability, an also-ran,
my only asset -- I am worth more dead.
I might have been more careful, honored debts
of gratitude. Perhaps I should have built
a credit rating, written off regrets;
instead, my house is mortgaged to the hilt.
Not even moons can boast as great a pull
as he who stamped my statement, PAID IN FULL.
O
The moon is full again. A latticed frost
clings to my window, while the crystal crust
of Lac St-Louis glows as if embossed
with pearls this February night. It must
be twenty-five below. I search for words
of warmth the Guaraní alone must know
to trace their land of butterflies and birds
I made my own a mere four weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the customary moon goes on,
through human inconsistency and pride,
to reverence the rising sun each dawn
and keep her promise to the ocean tide.
My question, this indifferent night, is how
I'll muddle through to spring, one month from now.
New Hampshire Interval
Upon first visiting The Frost Place, Franconia, New Hampshire
He'd just returned from England, heartened, heady;
he thought he'd make a go of it -- he'd farm
and write. This little house was full of charm:
his Morris Chair stood by the woodstove, ready.
But woods and mountains intervened; they pined
to cultivate the farmer's friendship, and
he asked them in. For, though he turned the land,
he turned to them when harrowed, undefined,
as often was the case. He did not stay
for very long -- the winters were too rough,
and by the second year, he'd had enough:
a summer place it would remain. Today,
nine decades later, I can sense him still,
tapping the frosted trees near Sugar Hill.
Billy Wrote Gruff
Response to Billy Collins's "Sonnet"
No, Billy, you're mistaken. I don't need
to limit to fourteen my sonnet's girdle
(it isn't like a Laureate to mislead) --
I'm sure you've read a Hopkins curtailed curtal,
and heard of Milton's grand caudated form.
Another thing. Those bongo drums. You must
know even Shakespeare disobeyed the norm
from time to time (I bet you would you have cussed
him for a dactyl). With your launching you
would have us think a sonnet has to speak
of love (what hadst thou Donne?). And though it's true
the sonnet aims for clinchers, your critique
is ghastly. Lastly, Laura's horny plea --
why did you have to say such things and spoil it?
Had Petrarch written his great verses free,
she would have flushed them down her ersatz toilet.
And Spenser's had a horrible reaction --
he's turning in his grave. Write a retraction!
The End
Oblivious, the holy man of God's
Voice unctuously tries to put at ease
Each desultory listener. He lauds
Redemption at my somber obsequies.
Mark how he speaks of hard-earned paradise,
Yammering in his sober self-restraint:
Deliverance from evil, sacrifice,
Effusions both of angel and of saint,
As if this Earth were not the world to me!
Despite it all, it's all I've ever known;
Be slow to throw away my ecstasy
Of fire, air and water, blood and bone.
Death may have come to hurl me heavenward,
Yet love shall live and lie unsepulchered.
Ribbons
I was a girl with thick, unruly hair,
and errant locks were banned by tidy nuns.
And so each morning, in my mother's care,
before her hectic workday had begun,
she'd tame my curls into compliance, tie
a fresh-pressed ribbon as a final touch,
and thus would do her best to beautify
a daughter plain and clumsy, overmuch.
Though I would fidget, kindly words would lift
the spirits of my small, uncertain heart.
I did not comprehend her tender gift --
that perfect bow. Now time and distance part
us, and I miss the precious one-on-one
when every day began so neat and tight;
before my blissful life became undone --
our brief alliance in the pantry's light.
Writ
"Foole," said my Muse to me, "Looke in thy heart and write."
--Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella
And so I searched, but all that I could see
to write about was this: a vacant room
whose occupants once held a tenancy
of woodstream orchids, where an old perfume
clings in its quiet corners, knows my key
will turn, a frequent caller to a tomb
already ransacked, sifting through debris
only a fool like me would dare exhume.
I've served my warrant, Sir, and I am pleased
to tell you that, at last, I've found the clues,
the evidence you knew was there. I've seized
them, tagged and bagged them. Licensed by the Muse,
I have excised them from a body part --
iambics salvaged from a sundered heart.