In your decades-long trek, you finally finished supporting him to success–you did everything day and night with bright smiles and affirmations and went to all the promotion parties, smiling with frozen face. And you took him to doctors and nursed him, finally, supervising the day and night nurses, and at last put him to rest.

At the same time, you also supervised the children’s development: diapers. discipline, school meetings, homework; worry over adolescent sex protection, cars, drugs, unsavory friends; graduations, weddings, baby showers, birthdays, massive holiday gatherings, endless grandmotherly duties. Now you wave—another Sunday dinner vanquished—as they, laden with leftovers, pull out of your driveway. You turn away and sigh with relief, eager for the quiet.

For years you were also an informal caregiver and pseudo-parent to your own parents and other elders. You visited; brought groceries, DVDs, Depends; murmured false reassurances, even while aghast at how the elders looked paler and paler. You finally saw them settled in private rooms at institutions where meals and daily care were provided by others and they could play cards with fellow inmates— their forced smiles disguising the wish that their longtime friends would visit. You went every Saturday, straightened their sheets, shared morsels about the grandchildren, smiled, and never stayed for more than an hour.

You finally made peace with your house: rug worn, curtains frayed, outlets dead, cupboard doors askew . . . . You have a good bed, a comfortable sofa, a reliable TV, and kitchen appliances that work. What else is needed?

And most importantly—hardly believable—you have time. Time for exploring your thoughts, feelings, and metaphors long buried by the demands of doing for others. You discover a new, almost unbelievable spark, a blossom, flower, lightning flash—power undeniable, as if a younger poet were writing (mirror be damned).

You take the time—relish, bask, embrace and savor it, like the sublime apple cobbler you used to make or a blessed fragrant spring breeze after rain, still hardly believing.

You have time for keyboard and notebook writing; even, grabbed by sudden inspiration, scribbling on random scraps while eating, thinking about next lines between bites. You have time to read articles on better craft, to Zoom with other women poets, share work and travails and publishing leads (and, when your older women poet friends publish, congratulate them grudgingly).

Swallowing hard, you start submitting your work and—at last—publish! Then what you never dared dream: an award for best older woman poet, another for a new poet voice, another and another and, crowning it all, publication of your collected poems.

What’s age in the unquenchable, irrepressible drive to create? What’s age in the blessings of words, swelling cascading bubbling up like a long-dry spring coming to life? What’s age in the intoxication of creating—phrases at odd hours, titles in the shower, rhymes stirring stew, perfect whole lines appearing like goddesses?

Older women poets, I praise admire salute you and, as a fellow older poet, draw heart from you to continue our glorious creativity.

 

 

Nine Lives

by Claire Kahane

. “An engaging memoir of life lived to its fullest...” — Kirkus Reviews, The Magazine, October 1, 2025 In this riveting memoir, Claire Kahane unveils her intimate self-transformations over the course of nine decades. Born in the Great Depression to Jewish immigrants and determined to prove herself a free spirit in a male dominated world, Kahane went on the road, hitchhiking her way into and out of risky adventures and romantic affairs. But what starts out as a "road book" takes a different turn in midlife. In scenes dramatically illustrating the growing influence of psychoanalysis and feminism, she becomes a feminist professor, mother and wife, living out the contradictions she is teaching in the classroom. In later life her story changes tracks again when a visit to Auschwitz compels her to confront her own family history of Holocaust loss and renewal. The memoir ends with a surprising new twist that opens to a hopeful future. “Claire Kahane has written a memoir for our times: an account of a life spent in pursuit of lived experience long before it was permissible for women like Kahane to do just that. Rich and lively, vivid and bold, Nine Lives is bound to reach a wide and responsive readership.” —Vivian Gornick, essayist, critic, and author of numerous memoirs, including Fierce Attachments, The Odd Woman and the City, and Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and your local independent bookstore. A limited number of signed copies are available from Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA.

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