This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox.
This year, the winter solstice, the official beginning of winter, occurs on December 21. Not surprisingly, winter solstice traditions and superstitions abound. While some individuals “honor the light,” others believe that dark spirits walk the earth on this longest night of the year. Vancouver, British Columbia hosts the Winter Solstice Lantern Festival. Antarctica celebrates with gifts and icy swims. Iran marks the “victory of light over darkness” with Shab-e Yalda, an ancient Persian festival that includes candles, feasting, and—yes—poetry readings.
What about the winter solstice inspires you? According to today’s poet, Sandra Fees, “Wonderwork” “was inspired by a walk along the Tulpehocken Creek in Berks County, PA, where [she lives] around the time of the winter solstice. [She] looked up and noticed three extraordinary sycamore trees, which to [her] resembled three goddesses.”
Sandra Fees’ first full-length collection, Wonderwork, was published in 2024 by BlazeVOX Books. Her poems have won awards from Iron Horse Literary Review and Sunspot Lit, received finalist status from The Letter Review Prize, The Bicoastal Prize, and The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and appeared in Crab Creek Review, Nimrod Journal and elsewhere. A former Berks County Poet Laureate, she was born in central Pennsylvania and now lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.
What power does the winter solstice hold? What, during frigid times, have you discovered in the silhouettes of trees? What benevolent or sinister figures conjure themselves in bark or trunk? Have you, like today’s poet, been stopped in your tracks and made to wonder what else you might have been?
Here’s Sandra Fees' poem, “Wonderwork”:
Wonderwork
The uncloaked goddesses of the deepwood
lean into the skeletal air, their serpent branches
twisted into impossible lattices. Maybe I am wrong,
after all, to think they required no maker. Maybe
the solstice sun had to be taught to silver against the ample
trunks, and the serene bark to blotch, and the muted
sky to be sky. Maybe we must be humbled,
stopped in our tracks, breathless pillars of winter,
made to wonder what else we might have been,
whether we are good for more than our bareboned selves.
First published in Cutleaf Journal
Title poem in the collection Wonderwork, BlazeVOX Books, 2024
That was “Wonderwork” by Sandra Fees. Thanks for listening.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
