Anna, washing

Ted Genoways

Like an exhibit of intriguing daguerreotypes, Anna, washing captures moments in the lives of Anna and Abe, Finnish immigrants to the Klondike in 1897. The tight brevity of the sonnet form contains and restrains each of Genoways’ poetic portraits, its very succinctness subtly emphasizing tones and shadows. Abe, once Anna’s adopted son and now her unlikely husband is consumed in the romance of gold dust. “Treasures/lurk in black sand. Abe once whispered those words/as if we were in church….” Anna, painfully attuned to the raw primitiveness of their circumstances, struggles to impose order through cleanliness. With Abe eventually sleeping in his diggings and Anna’s life subsumed in laundry, the thread between them thins to endless wash loads of Abe’s muddy clothes. Yet, like Abe, Anna cradles an elusive yearning: “I wait for/Abe to smile,, seeing some part of me glitter” (emphasis supplied). Genoways evokes the stark loneliness of obsession and hard-scrabble survival, relieved by enduring hope and resilience. Indeed, despite her inhospitable life, Anna discovers a vein of transcendence in her labor: “…you know the best way/toward healing is occupation. The soap/always needs making….”

Ted Genoways is the author of Bullroarer, selected by Marilyn Hacker for the 2001 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, and two previous chapbooks, The Dead Have a Way of Returning and The Cow Caught in the Ice. He is also the editor of The Selected Poems of Miguel Hernandez and Burning the Hymnal: The Uncollected Poems of William Kloeffkorn. He lives in Minneapolis.

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Excerpt

A Letter from Eagle, Alaska

     Sept-12, 1919

My dear Marie, how I’ve missed you these years
since Abe’s passing. Now to hear of your loss…

Come live with me.
                             By the time you were here,
it would be spring–I could cover the cost
of your ticket from Seattle (I’ve heard
they have a train from Skagway now). Whitehorse,
they say, is comfortable–and steamers
run the Yukon for small fares.
                                            Half my chores
would be enough to keep your mind busy
(and never let your hands rest). I do hope
you’ll consider it; you know the best way
toward healing is occupation. The soap
always needs making, my hands raise blisters
from mending.
                      I’ll send tickets,
                                             Your sister.