Tremblay Reading

Last evening more than 50 people dialed in to hear Cynthia Tremblay read from her chapbook Bread Crumbs, soon to be published by LynxHouse Press.   Interspersed with her poems, husband Bill Tremblay read from his work in what felt like a call and response, a lovely dance.

The reading called me to my bookshelf, and I was pleased to find that, although I had culled many, it still includes Morning News—Cynthia’s first book, published in 1976.  That invoked memories of a reading she did at CSU, oh so many years ago.  When we talked after, she commented that she felt that as a mother she had no choice but to be optimistic.  Do we ever need that medicine now! That optimism, that wonder with life, dominates Cynthia’s poems.

In one, she sees herself at 13 “looking to lipstick for definition” and ends up reflecting on her “own incredible eyes” in a poem that I think captures so well the dawning of the self (I remember that moment).  This should be presented to every tween as a pre-quinceañera prayer. 

One of Bill’s comments in the discussion at the end of the reading captured perfectly the conclusion I have come to about these partners in life and poetry: “Cynthia and I are experience-based poets.”  I see this in the title of Bill’s collection Walks Along the Ditch and particularly in Cynthia’s poem “What I Do” which arises from her grounded experience as a school crossing guard and lifts the reader skyward. 

So appropriately, Cynthia ended the reading, brought to us through the portal of our computers, with “No Computer Today,” reminding us that “a newly observed bird or sky can make all of the difference.” 

“I have been nourished by the words of countless others” Cynthia commented. 

Cynthia, you nourished us last night.