written
by Jean Nordhaus
Nan
Fry, a much-loved Washington area poet and teacher, died suddenly on Friday
evening, September 23rd. A longtime member of the academic faculty at the
Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, Nan also taught poetry workshops for
many years at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. In addition to short
stories appearing in various venues, Nan, who grew up in Connecticut and earned
a PhD in Medieval Studies at Yale, published a collection of poetry, Relearning the Dark with Washington
Writers Publishing House in 1981 and, in 1988 with Sibyl-Child Press, a
delightful chapbook of riddle poems, Say
What I Am Called: Selected Riddles from the Exeter Book, translated from Anglo-Saxon. Her poem
“Riddle” (see below) appeared as a transit system poster in Baltimore,
Washington, and Ft. Collins as part of the Poetry Society of America’s “Poetry
in Motion” program. A memorial for her will be planned for
later in the year.
To
read more about Nan’s career, publications, and teaching philosophy, please
click on the links below:
Pear
by
Nan Fry
Pear,
you hang from your tree
like a teardrop grown solid,
like snow with a freckled skin.
When the handless maiden
came to you in moonlight, hungry,
she stretched up and took you
into her mouth.
Her father had sold her
to the devil and lopped off her hands,
but you bent to her, Pear,
and offered yourself, breast
and milk both, the earth
grown pendulous and sweet.
by
Nan Fry
After being so long without windows,
you find that everything opens.
The leaf opens to water,
making itself a room.
When a bird comes,
it carries the sun in
its beak.
Over and over, sun is
flowing
into the leaf, into the
hills
of water. Below, roots
tear
water from rock, hurl
it upward.
Without wondering if it
is right
the worm makes a path
through the leaf, the
watery lace.
Under his silent teeth
you hear the sea
tolling, and you know
it is not a bell but a
doorway.
Riddle
by Nan Fry
We are animal
cries,
groans the body makes,
the shrill keening of grief,
pain and rage howled out,
grunts of satisfaction,
someone crooning to her young.
We're animal cries becoming
human, five daughters
of your mother tongue.
[Answer: Vowels]
groans the body makes,
the shrill keening of grief,
pain and rage howled out,
grunts of satisfaction,
someone crooning to her young.
We're animal cries becoming
human, five daughters
of your mother tongue.
[Answer: Vowels]
