Never Say Quit

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Appropos to my frequent musing on the biological and social affects, and the influences of experience on aging minds, an article caught my eye in today’s Washington Post: “At age 101, this woman released her first collection of poems”. From this story, one who enjoys scribbling, ahem, me in this case, finds delight and inspiration.

First of all, the elderly author, Sarah Yerkes, is a woman with a creative, productive history and a trigger-sharp mind. We’re not meeting someone who awakened to talent in old age, suddenly and unexpectedly–like maybe Grandma Moses did before starting to wield a paintbrush.

Yerkes graduated from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and for years was a landscape architect using brick and stone, and later a sculpture creating abstract works in papier-mache. When her aging made physical work too challenging, she followed a fellow resident of her senior home into a poetry writing class that met monthly.

Last month, at age 101, she published her first book of poems–the latest output from a creative mind that for many years worked with form and style. Writing forced her to deal with a “WASPy past” that encouraged her while growing up to repress many feelings. She also learned the habit of diligence, until finally now, it forced her to continue to work at creating her poetry.

Samples of her poems highlight memorable private episodes in her life, and her perspectives past and current. She’s spot-on in describing memorable moments, her thoughts and feelings then, and later explorations about meaningfulness, or what-might-have-been.

Her story is an inspiration!

Dear Friends: Let me add, that her book already is on its way to me! Diana