Connie summons a deer

Inspired by a poem of Todd’s in Poetry Magazine, “The Hush of the Very Good” in 2007, Connie became Todd’s very first private commission. The project ended with an unforgettable encounter in the snow-filled forests of northern Wisconsin. In this special holiday episode of TAPIT, Todd reaches back out to Connie after all these years, to revisit the magic they made together. 

Chapters in this episode:

1. How Todd came to take commissions
2. A blossoming friendship
3. Modeling a relationship & making a family
4. Rosamond's resilience
5. A poet's breakthrough
6. The poem: A Deer

Transcript

Todd  0:00  
I'd like to let you in on a little secret. The premise of this podcast may be new to you--a poet helping strangers discover the poetry in their most intimate stories--but it's not new to me. The fact is, I did this kind of work privately for 15 years before it became a podcast. 15 years ago, I was a young father living in a craftsman style house in St. Paul. And my first book, Yellowrocket, had just been published by WW Norton & Company. When I built my first website, I included, on a whim, a page, offering my services on commission, and before long, I started hearing from strangers willing to pay my rates. The very first such stranger was Connie. 

Connie  0:45
I'm Connie Holmes, or Constance Holmes to you, which makes me sound like a Supreme Court justice. And I'm speaking to you from Watertown, Massachusetts. 

Todd  0:56
Connie wanted a poem to celebrate her lifelong friend and mentor, who was then dying of Parkinson's disease. Our process ended with an unforgettable moment in the snow filled forests of northern Wisconsin. In this special holiday episode, you'll join me as I reach back out to Connie after all these years to revisit the magic we made together. 

Connie  01:20
What happened was that I realized that I had been trying to arrive at a suitable gift for Rosamond Rosenmeyer, who was about to turn 80 on July 4, 2008, and was in increasingly poor health and had been an extraordinarily important person in my life. And what I say to people now is that Rosamond Rosenmeyer was the most influential person in my life. 

Todd  01:48
There's a poem in that. I'm Todd Boss.

Todd  01:51
Before we continue with Connie, I want to tell you about an exciting new feature here at TAPIT. If you've listened to prior episodes, you know that the poems I help strangers discover in their stories aren't always written by me. Sometimes I tap other poets to write them instead. One by one, my guest poets are joining forces to offer their services for a fee on our website, poeminthat.com, where you can hire them to write a poem for you. They set their fees; I facilitate. The whole process can be private, or if you so choose, recorded for a future show. Don't worry, I'll still be writing poems and taking callers free of charge on the podcast. No matter who you want to write for you, you can still leave a voicemail on our listener line at 808-300-0449. Check it all out at poeminthat.com. Now, back to Connie.

Connie  02:50
Yeah, it's recording. Yeah, I can see the bar. Uh, well, that's exciting.

Todd  02:54
Let's go back in time, and tell me more about how you know and met Rosamond and how she came to mean to you what she came to mean. 

Connie 03:04
Okay. So I came from this Jewish refugee family. So I only knew Jews and Catholics because my mother had been baptized and had me baptized. And we only had Catholics in the house, which, you know, caused a lot of tension in my mother's marriage. My parents' marriage, which was very strained. And then Jews, you know, everybody, all the family were Jewish, right? Every single last one of them. So I had a very complicated kind of history, right? You know, Jewish refugees from Vienna, where there was an invasion very similar to what's happening in Ukraine, you know, an invasion. Right. But anyway, there was that, and my mother's grandfather refused to leave Vienna, absolutely refused to leave. He had fought in the First World War and he had a business there, and he was just not going to lead. And so they arrested him. He was 86. And they arrested him in the middle of the night and took him to Theresienstadt concentration camp in Hungary where he died. So there was all that, and you know, that is no easy matter. Right. And then I left the church when I was in college. Right about the time that I met Rosamond.

Todd  04:30
Rosamond Rosenmeyer was Professor Rosamond Field then, and Connie met her at Tufts University in Boston. Connie was pre-med, but she enrolled in a 20th Century Poetry class, taught by Professor Field.

Connie  04:40
She had long hair in a bun. And she was very proper looking; she looked like some incarnation of Emily Dickinson. (Todd laughs) She did, she did, and um...

Todd 04:53
And how old was she at this time? And how old were you?

Connie 04:55
Well, I was 18 going on 19, and she was 17 years older, right? So (yeah) and mother three. Three kids under 12, two boys and a girl. And I'd been having a lot of trouble at Tufts because my parents were getting very acrimoniously divorced. And I wasn't doing too well. I kind of spent most of my time eating Frosted Flakes and reading the New Yorker. And, you know, my grades suffered, you know, I was kind of a wreck. So I was a little bit regressed, you could say.

Todd 05:37
Connie flunked out of botany class, and she wasn't doing well in world history either. But something about Professor Fields class spoke to Connie. One day the students were assigned to write about a Wallace Stevens poem. Professor Field was a Wallace Stevens scholar, so when young Connie got her essay back with an A plus on it, she was blown away.

Connie 05:57
And it was the only A plus I'd ever gotten. And then I went to talk to her in her office...

Todd  06:02
Connie confided in her professor about how much trouble she was having at college and about her parents divorce.


Connie 06:08
She said to me, you know, you have a lot of talent, but you need to have some psychotherapy because you're kind of messed up on account of your family and your parents. My parents, when they got divorced, they had me go with each of them to their lawyers to talk about the other one. It was horrible. Anyway, she said, you, you'd better get yourself some psychotherapy because you're a mess. You know, you spend a lot of time in your dorm room in a flannel mumu, eating Frosted Flakes and reading old New Yorkers. You are a mess.

Todd  06:45
Rosamond told Connie she would help her find a therapist. And then Rosamund went a step further and confided something about her own personal life. She was getting a divorce from her husband, working full time with three small children.

Connie  06:59
(Speaking as Rosamund) But I have three small children under 11, and I need a babysitter to come out and live with me so that I can finish my PhD at Harvard in English-American Studies and so that I can divorce this husband and marry this man I'm in love with. 

Todd  07:15
That man Rosamond had fallen in love with was a professor, too, named Yesper Rosenmeyer. Connie agreed to babysit her kids while Rosamond navigated the divorce and finished her degree. Summer came, and Connie moved into Rosamund's house to become Rosamund's babysitter. In the evenings, after the children went to bed and the chores were done, Connie and Rosamond would sit in the living room and talk. Rosamund would read Connie, the poems she was working on.

Connie  07:43
We would put Bob Dylan on the Victrola, which is what, where we were at in the late 60s: Victrolas and vinyl. And we would listen to "Bringing it All Back Home" by Bob Dylan, drink bourbon on the rocks, she would smoke Parliaments and we would talk about our families and childhoods. And we talked a lot about religion. She was very interested in religion, and so was I. So we talked about that. And, but she wrote quite a few poems during those summer that I was there that I just thought were beautiful poems, and she would be working on them and scribbling and come and read them to me and asked me what I thought about this word. And if it's sly...

Todd 08:28
Connie sends me a collection of Rosamund's poems. I open the book randomly to a poem called "Griefwork for My Mother," which begins: "You seem to me to be again, as if..."

Connie  8:38  
You seem to me to be again as if alive and near, in the room just beyond the stairs,

Todd  8:46  
You seem to me to be again, as if alive and near, in the room just beyond the stairs, where traces of the...

Connie 08:54
This is all how it started, you see.


Todd 08:57

Their friendship deepened and grew. Connie continued on as a nanny. She made the kids mac and cheese and played them Motown Records. She talked poetry with Rosamund, got to know her new husband.

Connie 09:07
I don't know that I had a model for a really successful marriage, where people actually talked about what they were feeling and worked things out and where they were disclosing of themselves and where they tackled difficult conflicts together. And I was very afraid of getting divorced, when my parents got divorced when I was 17. And I remember telling myself then and for years thereafter that it was okay if I never got married, it was okay. But I was never, never going to get divorced. Never. So I haven't been divorced. I've been widowed now 23 years. And there, nobody else has come along who was, you know, a partner for me--not at all. But when they got married, and she was 40, and he was six years younger, he was 34. And both of them had been married before, but he didn't have other children. But she had three children. They invited me over; I got to see them interact with her kids, and Yesper interact with, with her kids. And there was a lot of screaming and yelling and conflict, and they had to go to shrinks and everything. But they did, they went to shrinks, sat down. And Yesper got involved with her oldest son, who hated his guts, and took him canoeing and camping and hiking and everything else, you know. And he formed a relationship with these three kids, bit by bit, you know, step by step. But I saw them work all these things out, and I saw them workout her parents looking down their nose at him because he was Danish--that was so stupid. Well, they were just very, very conservative and uptight individuals, that I saw them work it out, and their finances and they would fight about that. And then I went, it must have been at least eight times, and maybe nine, to their summer place on Prince Edward Island and stayed with them in their cottage there and went swimming and worked in their garden and cooked with her and, and we sat and talked and meditated, and we played Scrabble and we laughed and cried together. You know, we had like, really close friendship, like really, and I was sort of the student. I was sort of a much older child for a long time. But then at a certain point, I wasn't a child anymore. And you know, it changed and we became more equals.

Todd 11:42
They talked a lot about their faith traditions. After leaving the Catholic Church and moving to Boston, Connie had tried to go to the Harvard Hillel, but a rabbi there told her she wasn't welcome, unless she cut ties with her mother, since her mom was a Jewish convert to Catholicism. Connie tried out a Unitarian church next, but that didn't feel like the right fit either. So she decided to follow Rosamond into the Episcopalian tradition.

Connie  12:07
Rosamond was a seeker. She was very involved in Hebrew scripture; she loved this to Tanakh Bible that she had, which was very close in language to the, to the Talmud, and the Torah. And she, she was a seeker and so as I, so that even though we have 17 years between us, it was one of the relationships in my life where I felt like you see, age is not the major factor with people. When people really connect in a, in a deep way, then age, the age difference exists and of course, it can't be denied. But it's not, it's not the critical factor, you know.

Todd  12:50
The 17 year age gap mattered even less the older they got. Connie had attended Rosamond's wedding, and years later, Rosamond was the matron of honor at Connie's. Connie kind of became a member of the Rosenmeyer family.

Connie 13:00
I think that this association with these people in this family is, you know, the greatest gift of my life. And it made, and it made great happiness possible for me that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. It has been, it has been the catalyst for happiness for me. And so it was out of this tremendous gratitude to Rosamond that I reached out to you to commission a poem for her birthday.

Todd  13:35
In one of our conversations, Connie describes Rosamond as an aristocrat. That word catches my ear, so I write it down. I ask her what she means by using that word.

Connie  13:47
In Rosamond's case, I think that she was, she was raised in a kind of upper crust home, so she had aristocratic taste. What I mean by that is, you know, she cooked from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And her taste in music was very sophisticated. And her taste in painting was very sophisticated. Her tastes in theater and, for sure, her taste in poetry. She had very sophisticated tastes that had been cultivated by her upper crust family: her German stockbroker father and her pianist mother who drank too much. And then she went to Mount Holyoke, which was, you know, one of the seven sister schools, and is that, you know, hoity toity, but sort of rural hoity toity. But it was very interesting, though, because Rosamond hated hoity toity. She wouldn't go to churches that were hoity toity, hoity toity Episcopal churches. She went to the Church of the Good Shepherd, in a town where I just was this morning, is the antithesis of hoity toity. It's like down home friendly, small, personal, very accepting, but it's the opposite of you know smells and bells and incense and hoity toity, very high worship. And she wore very un hoity toity clothes. She wore, you know, LL Bean on sale. We both wore the same perfume, which I always thought was very important. And it was a really sophisticated French perfume called Cabochard from the designer House of Gray. It was quite expensive, and a wonderful, wonderful perfume, and when I miss her, which I often do, I, what I do is I wear Cabochard, and that kind of helps me. Sometimes I really miss her.

For somebody who was brought up in a very patriarchal and culturally, Tony family, with plenty of money, she really was, became a woman of the people. She was chair of the English department at UMass Boston, which is a working class commuter college, a big one in Boston. She was chair of the department, and she taught a lot of writing classes. And she was very involved in Good Shepherd, both liturgically but also in all the various kinds of social action programs. She stepped out of--hat's what I'm trying to say--she stepped out of sort of the structure and values and whatnot of her social class and of her background into a totally different world. And it was very admirable. She was born in 1928. It wasn't that common for women of her generation, her social class, to leave a marriage with three children, Todd; she filed for this divorce.

Todd  17:15
After spending so much time with Connie, writing a poem for Rosamond's 80th birthday felt like a monumental task. I had taken pages of notes; I studied them over and over for clues. I looked at the photos and videos Connie had sent me, speeches and emails and other notes Connie forwarded, but a month turned to two months, and I still hadn't written anything. I wasn't sure where to begin, how to capture an entire lifetime in a poem. That was my challenge. Or was it? Did I simply need to focus on a single memory or a particular moment in the timeline or a certain image in order to illuminate the whole life's journey? But which detail to choose--the Parliaments and Jim Beam? The weddings, the Parkinson's disease? Did the key to the poem reside in a religious story that blended Judeo Christian identities? Did Connie want me to write a poem of celebration or a poem of farewell to her lifelong friend and mentor? Should a male writer even be attempting to write a poem about a bond as deeply female as this one about marriages, motherhood, sisterhood? I started to doubt my ability to complete this commission at all. Remember, Connie was my first ever client. I had never done this kind of work before. Three months turn to four and four to five. Summer came; still no poem. I went north to the cabin one weekend to try and sort it out. The cabin I had access to at that time was humble in a stand of birch trees on the shore of Lake Namakagon in northern Wisconsin. I drove three hours to get there, thinking about the poem Connie had paid me to write. I opened all the cabin windows to the sounds of the shore water lapping the reeds just a few feet away. I watched the sunset. After a late snack, I turned out all the lights and sat at the kitchen table deep into the night with my laptop open in front of me, but my mind was a blank. Finally, I went to bed. I had made a decision. I could not write the poem Connie had paid me to write. I would call Connie the next day and explain. I would apologize and offer to refund the commission fee she paid. The risk we'd both taken had simply not panned out. Rosie's 80th birthday on the Fourth of July was a month away. There was still plenty of time for Connie to think of a different gift to give her. The next morning, just as the sun was rising, I decided to drive into town and get some groceries. I needed eggs, butter, some basics. On the way, I passed along the lake shore and then through a misty wetland. And finally along a lengthy stretch of national forest a mix of birches, oaks, maples and pines. Everything was blanketed under a thick fog, touched golden by the early morning light, and suddenly, just a few dozen feet ahead onto the gleaming black roadway, stepped an albino deer. I'd never seen one before. I slowed the car and stopped. The only car on that lonely stretch of road. Apparently I hadn't startled the deer as much as she'd startled me. She seemed completely unhurried as she very elegantly stepped out of the dewy roadside weeds onto the pavement. We looked at one another for a long time. It felt like she was some sort of messenger, like she was trying to convey something to me. I knew instantly that I would write a poem about it. And all at once it occurred to me, this was Connie's poem. This was Connie's deer. I could give this moment to Connie. Connie could give this moment to Rosie. So here it is. The poem about that deer that I wrote for Connie, which she gave to Rosie in time for Rosie's 80th birthday. I call it simply "A Deer." 

Todd  21:11
Maybe we should just dive right into the poem itself. 

Connie  21:16
Okay. Do you have the poem there?

Todd  21:17
So I can grab it.

Connie 21:20
I have the poem; it's right on my wall. 

Todd  21:23
I love that. You had it letterpress printed. 

Connie  21:25
Yeah.


Todd  21:28
A Deer. It seems to me to be again...

Connie  21:31
A Deer, for Rosamond Rosenmeyer, from Connie Holmes, Fourth of July, 2008. It seems to me to be again as if our 40 years were no more than a dream. This morning driving in the steam of dawn in an autumn wood...

Todd  21:52
It seems to me to be again as if/ our forty years were no more than a dream --/ This morning, driving in the steam of dawn/ in an autumn woods, I happened upon/ a yearling deer that was, unlike her tawny/ sisters, a brilliant white. All white and white/ and white she was, a great astonishment/ of white--/her body a flag, a flame of snow/ I the bower, she was a glow, a ghost/ in the mist around her. And oh, my dear, how/ I wished you there!/ She trembled so/ to see me slow to the gravel and halt. I had to/ wait her out, so filled with praise was I, my/ heart. What grace, what art, what eloquence/ she bore! Though no less and no more a deer/ than any deer in the forest, still it seemed these/ trees were holier for her being there, in the/ recitative of a leafing breeze./ I wanted/ eternity with her, but I was not her owner,/ and soon--with a jolt--like a joyful spirit she/ bolted over joining the plainer flock that/ waited invisibly on the other side--like a bride--/and with her into the ether danced my pride/ in having even briefly known her.

Connie  23:41
It's just, it's a magnificent poem, Todd. You did a magnificent, unbelievably beautiful job.

Todd  23:46
Connie was able to read my poem to Rosamond, but Rosamond had already lost the ability to speak or walk, and dementia had taken hold. She died the winter after she turned 83. Connie was there at the hospital.

Connie  24:02
So I was the last person to sit with her body after she died at Mass General Hospital; I think it was December 27, 2011.

Todd  24:12
"A Deer" was read at Rosamond's funeral. You can read and hear "A Deer" again and find bonus content, including a guide to the poem's symbolism, on our website, poeminthat.com.

Connie  24:25
And I sat with her, her body for 20 minutes or something, and then I took all of them, all the kids and their spouses and the children and Yesper, all of them to lunch across the street.

Todd  24:41
Rosamond Rosenmeyer's poem "Griefwork for My Mother" is from her collection Lines Out published by Alice James Books. The opening line of "A Deer," 'it seems to me to be again as if..' is borrowed from that poem. 

So interesting. So you're...while your family was falling apart, and while you were finding yourself a fish out of water in a whole new world, this new family arrangement was forming. 


Connie  25:10
She didn't have siblings, and they have no relatives here, you know? So I'm kind of the, you know, honorary whatever I am, you know, grandmother.

Todd  25:23
There's a Poem in That is written and produced by me, Todd Boss, co-producer Bronwyn Clark, and associate producer Hila Plitmann, with support from Story Editor Abby Fentress Swanson, audio support from Ben O'Brien, original music by Esh Whitacre.

Connie  25:40
Every July 4, which is Rosamond's birthday, Peter and I go to the cemetery, where Rosamond and Yes were both buried--who died eight years ago today. And we go to the cemetery, and we bring folding chairs. And we sit and read poems aloud at the grave.

Todd  25:56
If you liked this podcast, share it with others or support us with a donation at poeminthat.com.

Connie  26:03
She was very proud and private, aristocratic woman, and she didn't accept gifts that easily, do you know?

Todd  26:14
And if you think there's a poem in your story, tell us why by leaving a message on our Haiku, Hawaii listener line: 808-300-0449.

Connie  26:26
We had to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk to get here. (Yeah.) We were complete and utter strangers, and I had to send you her poetry, and then we had to be back and forth. But it was a big interpersonal emotional effort between us to get close enough so that you could really feel what it is that I wanted to convey.

Todd  26:49
I'm Todd Boss, reminding you that there's a poem in everything, if you're paying attention.

Connie  26:54
And you got close enough so that you have conveyed exactly what I wanted to convey in this poem. Absolutely.