Book Spotlight: Gathering The Pieces Of Days

As an English teacher, I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t read poetry. Not unless a friend writes it or gifts me a poetry book. I blame high school. When I was a freshman, I nearly failed English the first marking period. I passed by one point. For some of you, it may be difficult to comprehend the extent to which I detested reading. The only thing I hated more than reading was writing. My younger self would definitely be confused—and perhaps frightened—by my obsession with both as an adult. Anyway, to say I struggled with English would be a severe understatement. I had no comprehension skills due to my inability to focus. I’d start reading a paragraph, and by the time I reached the end of the same paragraph, I had either forgotten what I read at the beginning, or my brain had taken a detour and was no longer anchored in the text. Considering my lack of focus, one might think bite-sized poems might have been easier to digest, easier to follow from start to finish, and if it was just a matter of length, that might have been true. However, poetry requires a degree of analysis to understand, and my analytical skills were evidently worse than my ability to focus. Initially, in that freshman English class that caused me so much anxiety, I did try to participate in class discussions about poetry, but eventually I was shamed into keeping quiet. One too many times, my teacher told me that it was obvious I missed the point of a poem, or I didn’t understand what the author was saying. Not only did she discourage me, she completely stunted my literary growth in the genre. 

Poetry represents my struggles in literature. It’s a reminder of where I came from and the part of my brain that never fully matured from a literary standpoint. Even my son—a better writer than I in many ways—gets poetry better than I do, and the two sonnets he wrote in his creative writing class are a testament to that. I still avoid poetry because my freshman English teacher continues to haunt me with whispers of “That’s not what the poem means.” My failures, from nearly forty years ago, color my choices when it comes to reading, and though I read mostly for pleasure now, how can I read poetry for pleasure when I’m constantly questioning whether I got  out of it what the author intended.

This year, however, something changed. My own book is getting published by a small independent press. As a result, I want to support other authors who are also being published by Unsolicited Press, and since it’s the Year of the Womxn, I especially want to support, and help promote other women writers. Unfortunately, I read slowly—a hold over from my freshman struggles, or rather the manifestation of learning disabilities I didn’t even know I had until I was nearly finished with college—so I can’t read every book published this year. Recently, I finished Gathering the Pieces of Days, by Leeann Pickrell. While it’s embarrassing enough to admit that I don’t generally read poetry, it’s even more embarrassing to state that I bought the book predominantly because of the cute cat on the cover. Yes, I did absolutely just admit that I judged the book by the cover. It’s part of my conversion to not only being a cat person, but to absolutely adoring cats to the point that I can’t imagine ever being happy again without a cat—or multiple cats—in my life. Therefore, if a cat is on the cover, it must be in the reading, and who wouldn’t want to read about a cat, or cats?

That said, the cat was a good guide. It helped me choose wisely, and while I won’t pretend to be sophisticated enough to write a review of a book of poetry, I can at least give my honest opinion and say that I enjoyed the poetry. In her introduction, Pickrell explains how her book came to be, “On the first day of 2018 I set myself the task of writing a page each morning about the day previous. At the end of the week…I would take those seven days and create a page or so of what struck me about that week. In 2019 I took those fifty-two weeks and wrote a poem for each week.” As someone drawn to journaling—my own memoir is, in essence, a diary—I found this activity intriguing, so much so that I’m filing it away and might someday steal and modify it to use with a future class. Even though I’ve never met Pickrell, I feel that in reading poetry born of this method, I’ve gotten a glimpse of her life. I have a sense of who she is as a person and I very much enjoyed getting to know her. 

As if the concept of devising poetry from a journal didn’t appeal to me enough, in her introduction, Pickrell goes on to state, “If I learned anything else from the pandemic, it’s this—how precious the pieces of each day are and how easily and unexpectedly they can be scattered and lost.” If you know me, and many of you do, you know how deeply these words touched me. My memoir is about COVID and the way in which it transformed my life and my son’s life when it stole my father. We need to appreciate the little things in our lives, the things we might miss if we aren’t paying attention, because someday, it’s those little things that we will look back on with a smile. They are the foundation of our memories.

Pickrell’s poetry pays homage to the ordinary, the daily events that so many of us ignore. She takes the time to appreciate the small things and her devotion to the Oakland A’s reminded me of my dad’s devotion to the New York Mets. Though I often struggle with poetry, I was able to understand and engage with Pickrell’s poems. If you like poetry, or if you, like me, are the type of person who likes to connect with others through literature, I highly recommend Pickrell’s Gathering the Pieces of Days.

You can purchase Pickrell's book here.