A memoir that is sometimes learning, sometimes teaching, and always astonishing.
The Old Moon in Her Arms is a graceful gathering of the moments that shape a life, a memoir that is sometimes learning, sometimes teaching, and always astonishing.
The five sections (Origin Stories, Orbits, Grace House, If a Woman, and Waning Crescent) reflect different time periods in Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s life, but not in a linear progression from beginning through middle to end. There is instead a flow, with past and present interweaving, at times in extended narrative and others in flashes of impression. References to popular culture, music, books, magazine articles, fashion trends, and current events that shaped the time recreate each setting for the reader. But again, Lorri Neilsen Glenn moves back and forth, recreating as it was for her then, and as it exists for her now. We develop not only a sense for the era, but a strong sense of her place and feelings in it.
The prologue reveals a sense of the interconnectedness of all creation, an emerging feeling of being interwoven into the fabric of all experience and all life. The author speaks of the many people that we are, not as a linear progression from birth to training to job to retirement, but as a continual emergence of being. Her writing draws forth truths that we may have considered only vaguely, bathes them in light, articulates and acknowledges them. The title becomes especially significant, for the moon waxes and then wanes to wax again, and as it begins, the old moon is still present “in her arms,” not forgotten, not past, but always returning.
The author sees her younger selves as different individuals, and therefore she addresses her younger self using the second person and tells the stories of a younger self using the third person, while narrating in the present in the first person. This requires focus and consistency to accomplish, and the author does it so well. Noteworthy are the passages on her children, rendered in the first person, suggesting the immediacy of the moments in which we are present as a parent.
Throughout, the writing is exquisite. The section in which she describes her boyfriend’s death is told with almost unbearable poignancy. Told in fragments, from different angles, perspectives, and moments, with glimpses of past and present entwined with the moment of his death, it is a work of beauty. She revisits her younger self with tenderness, with no judgment or justification, simply recognizing the pain of her younger self and feeling for her. In writing about her student years, her marriage, and child-rearing years, the personal and social references are woven together, creating a tapestry of the times but a very personal one, with her own movement and flow and often bewilderment in the passing of time.
Her writings on her parents, in particular her relationship with her mother, are honest, at times painful. At the same time, they are healing. We see her mother in her moments of bitterness but also her moments of dignity; the value of her life is honoured. The author does, as she says, let the facts speak, “not embellishing or beautifying or vilifying but simply telling the story and the images and emotions created by it.”
Her reflections on writing stay with us — poetry as prayer, as a way of “singing myself into an understanding of the world.” She writes of the unique qualities of women writers, the candor and complexity that is so often historically dismissed. An aspiring writer can learn much by taking her words to heart. A writing teacher can learn much, as well.
She handles the delicate topic of cultural appropriation well, exploring but never exploiting her own Métis background. She is open and affirming, never manipulative.
As well, she faces the history of violence against women and girls in all cultures, and the special challenges when one is not part of the dominant culture. She writes with shocking but necessary candor about the horrific abuse perpetrated historically on women. It is blunt, it is brutal, it is necessary. It is triggering to some of us, but it needs to be told.
As the author turns her attention to aging and future, to the bewilderment at how fast events have slipped by, there is still a sense of purpose, of continuity in her writing and her life. In the end, there is this book, words given into the world. As Thomas King reminds us, once released into the world, a story can never be taken back.
And we can be very glad that this particular collection of words is now in the world, for all the seasons, always.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn‘s most recent book is Following the River: Traces of Red River Women (Wolsak and Wynn), an award-winning work about her Ininiwak and Métis grandmothers and their contemporaries. Lorri is the author and contributing editor of fourteen titles of nonfiction and poetry, Halifax’s first Métis Poet Laureate, and Professor Emerita at Mount Saint Vincent University. An award-winning teacher and researcher, Lorri has served on juries for the Canada Council, CBC literary awards and numerous provincial and national book prizes. Neilsen Glenn’s poetry has been adapted several times for libretti and her essays and poems appear in numerous anthologies and literary journals. She was a recipient of Halifax’s Women of Excellence award, has had appointments as Writer in Residence across Canada and served as President of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. Lorri has mentored writers across Canada and in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, and Chile. She divides her time between Halifax and Rose Bay, Nova Scotia.
Publisher: Nimbus (April 9, 2024)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 272 pages
ISBN: 9781774712696
- Anne Smith-Nochasakhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/annesn/
- Anne Smith-Nochasakhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/annesn/
- Anne Smith-Nochasakhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/annesn/
- Anne Smith-Nochasakhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/annesn/
- Anne Smith-Nochasakhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/annesn/
- Anne Smith-Nochasakhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/annesn/
