Category: Memoir
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The Wetlands
My husband and I love to take country drives, especially to Eagle Bluffs, a local wetlands on the Missouri River. Along the way and throughout the wetlands, we have taken to counting the deer. We love sing the fawns and occasional buck. Last year we saw several bucks, even in…
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Interview up on ABAI.KZ!
Thank you, Alpamys Fayzolla, for this in-depth interview for ABAI.KZ, a Kazakh publication! https://abai.kz/post/196796 Here is the English version of the interview. First, what is poetry in your imagination? Poetry is the memoir of the soul. It stems from spiritual questions. The soul sings about our human story of suffering,…
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Maybe You’ve Seen These Poems Up on Masticadores Canada
Thank you, Ray Whitaker, for including two of my poems about my father on Masticadores Canada! Dad was always anxious and depressed. He missed the past, his idyllic childhood. He clung to his possessions and grieved his parents’ deaths. He was an only child raised in a house his father…
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A Review of Three-Penny Memories by Ken Tomaro
Thank you, Ken, for reviewing Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir on Amazon! I appreciate your keen insights! (His review follows my comments.) Grief work is a sacred process. When I saw my mother failing and begged her to choose a child to live closer to, she chose me. My uncle’s…
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Reviews by Lauren Scott
Life is generous. I thought I found these reviews Lauren Scott wrote for the first time this evening while exploring people’s blogs. Then I saw that I had already commented. I don’t think I reblogged this post. However, I appreciated her review of my first poetry collection, Three-Penny Memories: A…
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World Encephalitis Day: February 22, 2025
Encephalitis is a brain inflammation that can accompany viral infections, such as measles. There are different forms of encephalitis, but my experience was with measles encephalitis in 1958, when I was 6 going on 7. A few days after contracting measles, my legs gave out, and I lost my ability…
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My poem “My Memoir as a Doll” was translated into Chinese by the scholar Yongbo Ma!
“My Memoir as a Doll” is a poem in my book Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir. I wrote it to express how I felt as a child paralyzed by measles encephalitis in the summer of 1958. I was six going on seven when my legs gave out one day. I…
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A Busy Time!
I am so grateful for some recent publications. Lothlorien Poetry Journal published three poems, which happen to be from my book, Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir. Mother’s Light”, “Bearing the World,” and “Ode to the Embryo that My T-Shaped Uterus Miscarried”. Thank you, Editor Strider Marcus Jones! https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/search?q=Three+Poems+by+Barbara+Leonhard Chewers by…
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In the Midst of Hate….
Since the 2024 election results, I’ve been grieving about how divided our country is and how misled by fear we are. I’m sorting through my emotions, looking for hope. I cannot tolerate the Trump policies. I don’t want to summarize them here because I am certain you are informed. In…
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“Spooked” is up on Spillwords!
Thank you, Dagmara K, for publishing this memoir poem on Spillwords! This haunting happened to me in my maternal grandparents’ house when I was 15 years old. I was visiting them that summer. At that time, my grandfather, BT (which he preferred to be called), had remarried. His second wife’s…
Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver 