The Mercy of Stone, by Florence Chard Dacey
Poems from 50 years, 1970-2020
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Book Reviews
In The Mercy of Stone, a vast collection of poems spanning fifty years, I hear a voice as strong, sentient, and holy as stone. It is the fierce and tender voice of a woman who “thinks with her heart” and is intent on speaking for those who often do not or cannot speak for themselves: the children, the aged, the wounded, the disenfranchised, along with the trees, rivers, grass, wind, and stones who need our love, respect, and protection more than ever on this threatened planet. Speaking for the mothering heart of the universe, Florence Chard Dacey embraces with “justice and mercy” all that she sees and tells us we can live with both beauty and ruin, “thick light” and shadow, in both “the entire blameless world” and “trapped on a ledge/above the whole/blasted planet.” Even as she nears the end of her life, she asks herself, “Old woman, how much did you love?” and she finds herself still “stretched across/the planet like the veil of morning.”
—Freya Manfred, author of When I Was Young and Old
The words Florence wrote during our collaborations with In the Heart of the Beast Theatre have lived in my flesh for many years, yet reading them as part of this collection stunned me with their lasting relevance. Her naked warning “When We Forget the Water” has traveled with me since 1980, prodding me to continue to confront the atrocities and inspiring work nationally and internationally of many people for the Water. Sometimes the ache in these poems is so large, I did not want to read more. Yet I did, I must. The honest admissions, the recognition and naming of suffering, of absence and farewells, of birds no longer, “the whole planet a battlefield now.” Yet Florence is loving enough, brave enough to take it all in, inviting us to join, to wear threads of dismay, but also to bask in the stunning vitality and perfume of it all.
—Sandy Spieler, artist, lover of the Earth and Water
Article: Thinks With Her Heart
by Mike Hazard
The artist Sandy Spieler introduced the poet Florence Dacey with smiles of love.
“The words Florence, Crazy Flo, wrote have lived in my flesh for many years.”
Mic in confident hand, Florence read poems from fifty years of work newly published in The Mercy of Stone.
WHEN WE FORGET
When we forget the water
we forget the child who begins
in the water.
When we forget the child we forget ourselves
and then
we forget the world.
*
“Writing is one way I deal with anger and grief,” Florence said between poems. “I’d love to hear how you deal with anger and grief.”
“Your words have directed my life and thoughts, prodding me to recognize myself ever deeper into the interiors of my life,” said Sandy. This poem from the opera Lightning, performed by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, blessed her own wedding.
WEDDING BLESSING
May love keep you safe from strife
and the common violence of our age,
safe from the quiet of a heart
too afraid to feel.
Out of love may you fashion
a house of shell and bone,
of doors that never close.
May every human thing
come through and into you
trusting it will find a place.
*
The full house began to rumble with delight when Flo sampled poems from SHE, the section on women.
STARTING OVER
I don’t want to play in your yard.
I want castles, a magician’s eye,
French songs in my ear,
tree nymphs under my canopy.
I want to be remote and haughty
with naturally rude ideas,
my whole body a melon for my own mouth.
I want the language they didn’t teach me,
the yelp and mine and I hate you,
my arms like bushel baskets to fill
with the best stuff, the only stuff.
Claws first and the territory of mercy,
champagne for the daughters on star prairie
where our words are law.
Then I might come out
and take a look at your yard.
*
“I am not a practicing Catholic now, but I can see the Catholic influence in some of the poetry, in themes of guilt and suffering and my tendency to proselytize.”
“I’m going to be leaving earth soon.”
THE LAST GARDEN
Go forth with your basket of dark seeds.
Go in the light rain, your grey head uncovered.
Take your body, its blue veins determined
to break through to air from hands
that turned earth till it flowered.
Greet the worm and beetle, the snake and toad,
all you spoke to in the secret plot to survive.
Gather up those stars that swept you away,
each sun that burned into your day.
Bury yourself in the place that finds you
alone with the graves of the sweetness
of children, all the dying required.
Go soft and go steady, till you become
the last garden sowed, the harvested one.
*
Applause was hearty.
“I hear a voice as strong, sentient, and holy as stone,” writes Freya Manfred. “It is the fierce and tender voice of a woman who ‘thinks with her heart’ and is intent on speaking for those who often do not or cannot speak for themselves: the children, the aged, the wounded, the disenfranchised, along with the trees, rivers, grass, wind, and stones who need our love, respect, and protection more than ever on this threatened planet.”
The beautiful book is the latest publication from Midwest Villages & Voices. Cover art and interior art is by Elizabeth Erickson. Maria Mazzara designed. Smart Set printed. Gayla Ellis and Pat Kaluza edited.
Sandy and Florence hugged and mugged for the camera after the reading in Hosmer Library in Minneapolis.
Photo by Mike Hazard.
A filmmaker, photographer, and poet, Mike Hazard likes to say, “Everything I make is a love story.” To learn more, visit: https://www.mikehazard.org/
Sandy Spieler and Florence Dacey