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One is Kerr’s loneliest number
By Michael Worringer
Library Communications
Posted 12/1/2006
MADISON, Wis. – The loss of a twin brother leaves Diane Kerr exploring her feelings of being alone, left only with years of memories, in her poignant Parallel Press chapbook One.
Kerr’s thoughts and memories of her twin brother David, who lost his life to alcoholism, are turned into poem sequences in One. A poem sequence is a collection of poems linked by a unifying theme that is a maximum of 400 lines and no more than 10 pages. Kerr’s three sequences are called “Sistering,” “First” and “Little Thief.”
In “Sistering,” Kerr opens with a story of a contractor using a splint to repair a sagging house. Later portions of the sequence reveal Kerr to be using this as a metaphor to describe her imperfect relationship with her brother. Kerr writes the splint “connects each inadequate / sagging side to the other, spanning / the weakness in the middle, making / the heaviness bearable again.”
In “First,” Kerr agonizes over how she and David, despite being twins, were so different and how that kept her from understanding him better. Kerr writes, “It’s a mistake to believe / one twin always knows / what the other is doing.”
Finally, in “Little Thief,” Kerr recognizes that underneath all her feelings of loss and despair, she can recall some happier moments with her brother. In coping with her loss, Kerr begins to realize the need to appreciate even the smallest details of life, such as her dog frolicking in water.
Kerr holds a M.F.A. from The Warren Wilson program for Writers. She teaches creative writing in the Osher Institute at the University of Pittsburgh and has published in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Diagram, Calliope and Zone 3, among others.
The Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries. One is its 46th chapbook. Poetry chapbooks may be purchased in groups of six for $50, or $10 each. For more information, visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
A selection from the poem sequence “Little Thief:”
Once, a gladness.
Perhaps turning your head
your smile when you saw me,
perhaps you were hunting,
when you came home,
when you set down your gun.
I’ve looked everywhere,
as if mislaid, but mine,
as something lost in my house
is mine. Delight,
a place, a time, once,
perhaps we were fishing,
perhaps in a hushed voice
you told me where the trout lay,
or walking silently in the woods
you touched my arm,
pointed to where quail sleep
in the deepest bracken. Memory,
from the Greek mermera,
to care for, which is to mourn,
to look for, to go down
underneath, to dive
as the sunken treasure hunter,
inside the barnacled tangle
for a gleam. Or to dig,
by feel to dig down, to ferret
inside the dark warren (ferret:
furittus, Latin, little thief),
by sound, by scent, finding once
a quivering, a softness.
