Writer's Center Tribute to Elisavietta Ritchie

 

In Memoriam: Elisavietta Ritchie (June 29, 1932-January 13, 2025)

Elisavietta Artamonoff Ritchie Farnsworth, well-known and loved, prolific American writer, poet, teacher, editor, essayist, and translator passed away on January 13th, 2025 in Solomons, Maryland. You can read more of her obituary at Legacy on the Internet.

Lisa Ritchie was the collaborating poet who gave the name A Splendid Wake to Myra Sklarew's archival project that operated with a wiki supported by The George Washington University.

On June 7, 2025, A Splendid Wake will be celebrated for Lisa at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD.

 On June 28, 2025, a life celebration will be held for Lisa at her former farmhouse.

In this photograph taken in 1999, Karren Alenier (left) stands with Lisa Ritchie (right) on the occasion of Karren's book launch party (Looking for Divine Transportation) which Lisa hosted at her DC house on Macomb Street. Lisa's hospitality and generosity were well known in the Washington, DC area.

SORTING LAUNDRY

   by Elisavietta Ritchie

 

Folding clothes,
I think of folding you
into my life.

Our king sized sheets
like table cloths
for the banquets of giants,

pillow cases, despite so many
washings seams still
holding our dreams.

Towels patterned orange and green,
flowered pink and lavender,
gaudy, bought on sale,

reserved, we said, for the beach,
refusing, even after years,
to bleach into respectability.

So many shirts and skirts and pants
recycling week after week, head over heels
recapitulating themselves.

All those wrinkles
to be smoothed, or else
ignored, they're in style.

Myriad uncoupled socks
which went paired into the foam
like those creatures in the ark.

And what's shrunk
is tough to discard
even for Goodwill.

In pockets, surprises:
forgotten matches,
lost screws clinking on enamel;

paper clips, whatever they held
between shiny jaws, now
dissolved or clogging the drain;

well washed dollars, legal tender
for all debts public and private,
intact despite agitation;

and, gleaming in the maelstrom,
one bright dime,
broken necklace of good gold

you brought from Kuwait,
the strangely tailored shirt
left by a former lover...

If you were to leave me,
if I were to fold
only my own clothes,

the convexes and concaves
of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
turned upon themselves,

a mountain of unsorted wash
could not fill
the empty side of the bed.

 

 

Summer Solstice Splendid Wake Poetry Pop-Up

Additional Advice for a Young Poet

by Elisavietta Ritchie                   

      “A writer has nothing to teach and everything to learn, at all times.” --Albert Camus

1.

Only one paper napkin

for those six empty minutes?

Cover it with a poem.

Wipe your face

on the other side.

Between the splotches: write.

2.

Lose your pen?

Try a pencil. When this

breaks, wears out,

charcoal till you're black

as the burnt stick

worn to smudge.

Write with ash

on the sea.

Write on grass,

red ink on flames,

blue on the sky,

white on snow.

When all implements

disappear,

use your blood.

This poem previously appeared: Confrontation 2006; Real Toads, Black Buzzard Press, © 2008 Elisavietta Ritchie; Cormorant Beyond the Compost, Cherry Grove Collections, WordTech Communications, © 2011 Elisavietta Ritchie; The Broadkill Review, Vol. 7, no.1; , The Second Genesis: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, compiled and edited by Anuraag Sharma.

Elisavietta Ritchie is president emeritus for both poetry and fiction divisions, Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she is the author of over a dozen books, most recently Harbingers! Learn more at www.elisaviettaritchie.com

;