On Her Own Terms - by Carolyn Gammon (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Internationally acclaimed author Carolyn Gammon conjures a kind and unflinching portrait of her mother's memory loss--ultimately revealing the love, joy and life which remain even as memory fades.

Learning to speak in maybes--perhaps I told you? Were you there?--and to let a mother direct memory as memory vanishes, Gammon threads a path through time, bringing us into the heart and heat of a mother-daughter relationship that is changing as each day passes. That one day, may not offer "the pleasure of a daughter's company, but only that of a warm hand."

Each poem reveals the intimacy of this mother-daughter relationship, thrusting the reader into their dialogue and communication. At the end of each poem is a quote from Gammon's mother, often eerily insightful, reflecting her own youthful ambition to write: "I am still clinging to the vine" and "I find forgetting easy."

Kind, often funny, and always honest, this collection is for anyone who has loved someone who is beginning to forget; has forgotten; but will not be forgotten.

These words offer an archive; a testament to the memory that lives in books--and a reminder that memory loss is not an insurmountable barrier to living a good life.

Review Quotes

"With her mother's declining health and rewiring circuitry of memories, Gammon draws us in. Her poignant narrative poems evoke their lives together over the decades in nonlinear fashion accompanied by her mother's pithy, unpredictable one-liners at the bottom of each page. This is poetic narrative undone, rediscovered, and re-imagined." -Betsy Warland, author of Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss

"Carolyn Gammon's sensitive poetry tells the story of her mother's life, with the emphasis on her last years with failing memory. Frances Firth Gammon was a remarkable woman, and the relationship between her and her daughter shows that personality remains when memory fails and deserves to be recognized."-Eleanor Belyea Wees, ninety-eight years old, long-time friend of Frances Firth Gammon, and co-founder of The Fiddlehead