OUR LIVES IN VERSE

Wirtz offers a collection of poetry about life, family, and faith.

The poet begins with a journey through the calendar year and its meteorological pleasures. She delights in a long-awaited January snowfall and, in “February’s Warmth,” celebrates the way “The hearth’s merry blaze, / With its mesmerizing dance, / Livens our February days.” In “March Colors,” the flowers create a symphony of color, while in “April Lace,” the poet shares the Easter legend of the dogwood blossom. “Peonies in May” attract ants, who “dine happily on / The secretion of the peony’s sweet nectar.” “June in the Middle” provides a break between patriotic holidays. “July in My Heart” celebrates Independence Day decorations. Summer ends in “August Transition,” and autumn, the author’s favorite time of year, heralds changing leaves and apple picking in “September and October, a Patchwork Tapestry.” As winter returns, the poet excitedly prepares presents in “Christmas Tomorrow.” In a subsequent section of poems focusing on family, Wirtz describes her salesman father and homemaking mother and details the delight of having a granddaughter. In “And Then I Thought,” the poet muses about the ways her life did not turn out as planned. She conveys the satisfactions of scrapbooking and tidying up, analyzes King George VI’s 1937 Christmas radio address, and laughs at her own forgetfulness as she ages. The author pays scrupulous attention to detail in the natural world around her, describing the way a “black-eyed Susan wildflower / Winks joyfully in the summer breeze,” the “rolling buzz and click of the cicada’s tymbals” (“August Transition”), and the “fellowship with cozy fleece / And steaming mug,” on a frigid day (“February Warmth”). The poems are lovingly crafted and accessible to poetry readers of all levels. There is nothing here that will shock or offend—but there is also little here that will surprise or challenge readers. The poet’s determinedly optimistic tone renders mentions of a husband’s death from cancer or the onset of a mother’s postpartum anxiety as anomalies in a narrative of otherwise copious happiness.

A cheerful book of poems celebrating the cycles of life.