Marjorie Maddox
On Writing Seeing Things
Of all my books, the newest—Seeing Things (Wildhouse, February 2025)—proved the most difficult to write, but also one of the most important. The reason is because of you, dear reader. To better understand ourselves and others, poetry creates experiences. It helps us discover connections between strangers and uncover insight and understanding where we thought there were none. Through specific images and scenes, it says, this is my grief, joy, or hope. Is it yours as well?
The poems in Seeing Things record fear, vulnerability, and joy—both from the perspective of caregivers and from those receiving care. With parent or spouse alongside, the path of dementia,is painful for all. No doubt about that. Sometimes it is sprinkled with humor; often it is surrounded by competitive “truths” and memories. Other times, the difference between reality and fiction blur. There is also the mourning of what used to be and the letting go of shared memories and previously established roles. Throw in Covid, and there is a lot happening all at once.
As many of us know firsthand, dementia impacts entire families, where individuals also may be struggling with other challenges. For instance, in Seeing Things, I explore three generations of women and their overlapping roles, including the role of daughter whose mother is in the early stages of dementia, mother of a daughter struggling with depression, and woman juggling her own memories of abuse and survival. The book also addresses the increasingly blurry lines between truth and lie in today’s society. At the very least, each of these separately is challenging. Combine them and the results can be overwhelming.
A series of odes weaves through this not-so-cheery subject matter. Here’s why: I drafted most of these poems during a wonderfully productive 2018 writing residency, addressing and re-creating difficult experiences. I found myself writing poems that I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to publish or even share with others. They felt too vulnerable. Yet, they also felt urgent, necessary. So I wrote a great deal, drafting at least three poems a day.
After this forging ahead, I hit a wall—or rather, an ode. The “collision” turned into a moment of grace. One ode begat another and then another. The process of writing odes also made it easier for me to continue writing poems about abuse and depression, as well as about dementia/Alzheimer’s and about those in my life affected by the disease: a mother, step-father, and father-in-law.
I began writing the first evening I arrived. The poem “Tip” came out almost-whole, one line toppling into another. The poem’s subject, that sensation of having a word “on the tip of the tongue” yet unable to remember it, gave me a way to “see” inside my mother’s own frustration of forgetting names, ages, and places. I also recognized connections to the writing process, my trying to capture memories that seemed just beyond the boundaries of sound, sight, and comprehension. Through writing, I often re-discovered all three.
Affected by the events of 2018—2021, I revised Seeing Things many times. I took poems out. I added new ones. One addition recounts long-distance phone calls with my mother during Covid, where we discuss a rabbit in my backyard, one she names “Hope.” The newest poem in the collection, a pantoum, recounts a post-Covid accident where my mother falls out of the bathtub while an aide is washing her. What follows is a flurry of concern. And, yet, ten minutes later, my mother has forgotten the entire incident. “After the fall, she forgets.//She is alive again only in the moment. Is it enough?”
A few moments after a fall at her assisted living facility, my mother forgets
the tepid shower, how her body tipped
backwards off the stool, over the tub,
head smacking bathroom tile. The surprised aide
reaches too late the frail body, tries to rewind time:
the fallen body back in the tub, on the stool.
The second before, the aide is soaping the thin torso;
the second after, she is reaching too late the frail body
sprawled on the cold floor. The daughter comes running.
The second before, the aide soaps the thin torso,
turns to adjust the spray, then the clatter,
the naked woman sprawled on the cold floor. The daughter running
in from the other room, afraid. Whose face is screaming?
Turning to adjust the shower’s spray, the aide hears the clatter.
Her hands slippery, she cannot catch the woman
or, afraid, face the one from the other room. Every face is screaming.
Is there blood? Is she breathing? Lift and cradle her.
Her hands slippery, she cannot catch the woman
whose every bone protrudes. Will they break?
Is there blood? Is she breathing? Lift and cradle her.
She is as light as a corpse.
Her every bone protrudes. Did they break?
“Old woman, hold me tight, smile at your daughter.
You are as light as a corpse
but yourself, alive enough to forget
everything.” The old woman smiles at the daughter, holds tight the aide
who carries her to safety, dries her, puts her to bed.
Alive, she is enough herself
to forget everything. After the fall, she is
dried, carried safely to bed. The rest fades:
no head smacking the tile, no surprised aide.
She is herself, alive, a daughter beside her. It is enough.
No tepid shower (her body tipping),
no cold tile, no surprised aide.
Safe in bed, the rest fades.
Tepid memories tip. After the fall, she forgets.
She is alive again only in the moment. Is it enough?
That question—“Is it enough?”—is what I keep asking. What I discover through poetry—the memories and insights it reveals—may start to give me an answer.–Marjorie Maddox
Seeing Things by Marjorie Maddox
Release Date: February 28, 2025
ISBN (print): 978-1-961741-19-5
Note: An earlier version of this essay was published on the web page of AlzAuthors: https://alzauthors.com/dementia/moments-that-matter-poetry-and-presence-in-alzheimers-care-with-marjorie-maddox/ Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCBillW3fuY
Poetry Moment host for WPSU-FM, assistant editor of Presence, and Professor Emerita of English at Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 17 collections of poetry—including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? (Kelsay Books 2024), Seeing Things (Wildhouse 2025), as well as the ekphrastic collaborations Small Earthly Space (Shanti Arts 2025) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (Shanti Arts 2023) with her artist daughter, Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work). Maddox also has published a story collection, four children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (2005) and Keystone Poetry (co-editor w/Jerry Wemple, PSU Press 2025). Her poetry collection, Hover Here, and middle-grade biography, A Man Named Branch: The True Story of Baseball’s Great Experiment, are forthcoming. www.marjoriemaddox.com