Yvonne Lutter
Yvonne Lutter
@yvonnelutter - Author
Yvonne Lutter
@yvonnelutter - Author
Kate Carter received her MA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Ohio. She taught for New Mexico State University, and for Lake Erie Colleg... more
Yvonne Lutter commented on Yvonne Lutter's update over 2 years ago
over 2 years agoCovenant
by Kate Carter
Atmosphere Press, 79 pp.
paperback
In this book of fierce, earth-forged poems, the speaker is called to a journey of resurrection from a childhood haunted by a father who, “in the shape of the thirsty and the cold,” fashions from dead leaves “a daughter to care for him,/lays down on her, to sleep.” In each poem of the book’s first section, this daughter shakes herself from that sleep and rises to stand tall above thiscrushing. She keeps waking “to the heat of the moon, drenched in the flight of desire/to lose myself in waking, to sail far from home.”
And sail from home she does. Covenant arrives to us in three parts: Immram: The Journey, Covenants, and Mass for the Dead. We’re told at the beginning of Immram that in ancient Celtic tradition, “immram is the story of a journey in which a voyager sails West into the uncharted sea in search of some mortal reward or vengeance for wrongs suffered.” It is in Immram’s strange, dreamlike voyage—and the islands of transformation the speaker explores along the way—that I find the most clarity and redemption.
Immram’s stories of metamorphosis are borrowed from all that’s made possible by the earth. The speaker crafts resilience from stone and root and water. She transforms her pain into a “hollow flute” she can leave behind along with the “tattered cloak” of her shame and the “beating stone” of her pride. By the conclusion of her heroine’s journey, you can believe her—and hear her—when she claims, “the stillness underneath the ice has opened into song.”
Song, indeed. This volume is resonant with the wild, unbridled lyricism of earth, what the speaker calls in “Epiphany,” the book’s opening poem, “It the song of being.” In “Island of the Invisible Passage,” the speaker chants, “Speaking only vowels, I hear/nothing but the wind.” In “Island of Redemption,” she convinces us that “precious water... licks the salt from every dream.” And in “Island of the Shadow,” the earth sings through her in a tempo reminiscent of gospel music:
Since I was a child I’ve waited for my death
weighed every ecstasy against its consequence,
bartered coming rapture for sedation of my pain
begged I might be taken, prayed I would be changed
In Covenants, the middle section of the book, relationships build and shift like sand dunes. Agreements are struck, broken, cut loose and sent adrift. In “Devotion,” the speaker laments:
Our love was gone, floating far from what had moored us here
love like rot still clinging to the frayed ends of the line
And in “The Return,” she concludes it’s the exploration, “the rift between the daily and the deeply felt,” that sometimes scatters us:
It is the price of passage that we will wake unbound
to everything that held us
so firmly in its place
But connection is as present as separation in Covenants, tenderness “as easy as breath, thoughtless as the pulse/of clouds against the moon,” and homecoming the yin to the rift’s yang, as in “Kiss,” where the speaker refers to her lover’s tongue as a “soft hillside” that
spoke the tumbled language
of rock rising grass stretched
toward the sun . . .
all that I can say for sure
is that the breath between our lips
tasted like the day’s first stretch.
Maybe it’s because the speaker is so nourished and matured by the bonds forged in Covenants that she has the means to conjurecompassion for her abusive father and neglectful mother in Mass for the Dead. In “I,” she points out to her father, “You were the one/your father hurt, sparing your sisters/so in this life daughters would do/to extract payment.” In “III,” she reminds her mother how she (her mother) was given up by a mother who chose to keep the older sister, how she was raised by neighbors she could never truly belong to. At the end of the poem, she finds herself “crying the names of the daughters/our mothers left behind.” In “VII,” though she has sympathy for her father’s pain, she fiercely refuses to cede the resurrection she’s earned through her heroine’s journey:
We are the dead, father,
we are the dead.
And I rise
unafraid to meet you.
Of the many poems that enthrall me in Covenant, it is the ferocity, possibility, and earth music in “Psalm,” the final poem, that I will return to for sustenance. Here the speaker lays claim to the understanding that resurrection is not only possible, but also our birthright, as is the brokenness that sends us under. Redemption sings itself throughout the poem, but especially in the final stanza and refrain:
I am wheel that splits the sky to lift the wind to song
I am plow that splits the field to ask the depths to rise
I am forge the splits the heat to call the light to burn
I am cry that splits the life and opens up the soul
In that moment the spirit rests
in that moment
spirit rests
I close this book less alone than when I opened it, and more hungry to be split by all of it.
--Katie Daley, December 2022
shared an update on Covenantover 2 years ago
over 2 years agoYvonne Lutter – Covenant
by Kate Carter
Atmosphere Press, 79 pp.
paperback
In this book of fierce, earth-forged poems, the speaker is called to a journey of resurrection from a childhood haunted by a father who, “in the shape of the thirsty and the cold,” fashions from dead leaves “a daughter to care for him,/lays down on her, to sleep.” In each poem of the book’s first section, this daughter shakes herself from that sleep and rises to stand tall above thiscrushing. She keeps waking “to the heat of the moon, drenched in the flight of desire/to lose myself in waking, to sail far from home.”
And sail from home she does. Covenant arrives to us in three parts: Immram: The Journey, Covenants, and Mass for the Dead. We’re told at the beginning of Immram that in ancient Celtic tradition, “immram is the story of a journey in which a voyager sails West into the uncharted sea in search of some mortal reward or vengeance for wrongs suffered.” It is in Immram’s strange, dreamlike voyage—and the islands of transformation the speaker explores along the way—that I find the most clarity and redemption.
Immram’s stories of metamorphosis are borrowed from all that’s made possible by the earth. The speaker crafts resilience from stone and root and water. She transforms her pain into a “hollow flute” she can leave behind along with the “tattered cloak” of her shame and the “beating stone” of her pride. By the conclusion of her heroine’s journey, you can believe her—and hear her—when she claims, “the stillness underneath the ice has opened into song.”
Song, indeed. This volume is resonant with the wild, unbridled lyricism of earth, what the speaker calls in “Epiphany,” the book’s opening poem, “It the song of being.” In “Island of the Invisible Passage,” the speaker chants, “Speaking only vowels, I hear/nothing but the wind.” In “Island of Redemption,” she convinces us that “precious water... licks the salt from every dream.” And in “Island of the Shadow,” the earth sings through her in a tempo reminiscent of gospel music:
Since I was a child I’ve waited for my death
weighed every ecstasy against its consequence,
bartered coming rapture for sedation of my pain
begged I might be taken, prayed I would be changed
In Covenants, the middle section of the book, relationships build and shift like sand dunes. Agreements are struck, broken, cut loose and sent adrift. In “Devotion,” the speaker laments:
Our love was gone, floating far from what had moored us here
love like rot still clinging to the frayed ends of the line
And in “The Return,” she concludes it’s the exploration, “the rift between the daily and the deeply felt,” that sometimes scatters us:
It is the price of passage that we will wake unbound
to everything that held us
so firmly in its place
But connection is as present as separation in Covenants, tenderness “as easy as breath, thoughtless as the pulse/of clouds against the moon,” and homecoming the yin to the rift’s yang, as in “Kiss,” where the speaker refers to her lover’s tongue as a “soft hillside” that
spoke the tumbled language
of rock rising grass stretched
toward the sun . . .
all that I can say for sure
is that the breath between our lips
tasted like the day’s first stretch.
Maybe it’s because the speaker is so nourished and matured by the bonds forged in Covenants that she has the means to conjurecompassion for her abusive father and neglectful mother in Mass for the Dead. In “I,” she points out to her father, “You were the one/your father hurt, sparing your sisters/so in this life daughters would do/to extract payment.” In “III,” she reminds her mother how she (her mother) was given up by a mother who chose to keep the older sister, how she was raised by neighbors she could never truly belong to. At the end of the poem, she finds herself “crying the names of the daughters/our mothers left behind.” In “VII,” though she has sympathy for her father’s pain, she fiercely refuses to cede the resurrection she’s earned through her heroine’s journey:
We are the dead, father,
we are the dead.
And I rise
unafraid to meet you.
Of the many poems that enthrall me in Covenant, it is the ferocity, possibility, and earth music in “Psalm,” the final poem, that I will return to for sustenance. Here the speaker lays claim to the understanding that resurrection is not only possible, but also our birthright, as is the brokenness that sends us under. Redemption sings itself throughout the poem, but especially in the final stanza and refrain:
I am wheel that splits the sky to lift the wind to song
I am plow that splits the field to ask the depths to rise
I am forge the splits the heat to call the light to burn
I am cry that splits the life and opens up the soul
In that moment the spirit rests
in that moment
spirit rests
I close this book less alone than when I opened it, and more hungry to be split by all of it.
--Katie Daley, December 2022
left a comment on Covenantover 2 years ago
over 2 years agoI've been hesitant to identify as a writer in my own right, having been the backup band for Kate's work, but I came across this poem I wrote after attending a Zuni ceremony, Thought I'd share it here. (I worked once on the Zuni reservation in New Mexico.)
Night Dances
Sacred mesa, alight with gold,
Do:wa:ya’lonne! Shhh…listen:
Drumbeat calls the ceremony, where
spirits walk the earth. Its pull enchants,
Compels the far flung home. Belonging.
Tribal heartbeat of blessings, memory.
Above, excitement gathers
on plaza roofs. Below, clowns
tease, taunt, mock the skeptics,
the non-believers.
And candy falls like rain
Winter night, chill descends
Ancient village hums, alive.
Stars brighten in thin air.
Moon rise. Silent, women,
their mothers before them, hold children
wrapped in blankets. Young people wander
dirt paths worn by generations long gone.
And the smells of chile, stew mix with smoke of pinyon
A runner appears, light, bells on moccasin feet.
Kiva brothers, protectors, secret guardians, in tow.
They notice no one,
In pursuit, a timeless story
The night splits open with sound,
drum throbs below jingle, rattles, eerie
calls of bird and beast, as ancient ones
move through village night, terrifying, mysterious.
Watchers, silent, move aside. Fathers know to draw
Their children close. Mothers whisper reassurance.
Outcasts craving tribal relations drink their shame.
Mundane others, pagan familiars, discern only
separation. Undisturbed, the dancers move through
prescribed rituals, sacrosanct.
Across eons of time together, we huddle,
cold against the dark, awestruck.
left a comment on Covenantover 2 years ago
over 2 years agoThank you to those who have read the book, upvoted it, or purchased it through Amazon. I am working to set up a couple of readings - one in Ohio this spring and another couple in New Mexico. I'm also interested in doing a virtual reading if there are folks interested in such...
In the meantime, I wanted to post one of my most favorite poems from Covenant. I remember the walk in the woods, and I remember the teacher who pushed Kate to try a more narrative form. And voila! This is what she wrote:
WITH THOUGHTS OF HUNTERS WAITING
We walk our morning ritual,
you ahead today, three paces
keeps our hands from touching
but even strided as most mornings
today I'd choose to keep my hand
from yours, readied in defense
of thoughts, strayed also
from our ritual of rising and thanks.
The dogs run ahead following
deer paths, sniffing ground and trees,
the excited discovery of other
four-legged travelers in the dew.
They do not bark but run, circle,
jump bramble, brush themselves
against leaves, pine needles, open space
giving way, announcing, with the bird's
annoyance at their exuberant rush,
the freedom of the day.
Unusual, I'd wanted beach
this morning, its emptiness and relentless light,
so I, accustomed to the drip of pine,
the fragile twist of last year's leaf
in the winter wind, could lose myself
in concentration as to the firmest
path to navigate the tide sucked sand.
Here you would choose a walk alone,
your thoughts bound by cliff and clouds.
I defend a sullen right to distance
from you, to blame this earth
for misery that's handed down and
passed down and trickles down to me
then rises up like pride and gives
me the advantage to give it to you.
You offer your hand and my lip
turns against you. I walk by. Your eyes
brush my neck, the trees against the sky.
By the time we round the path
that juts out into meadow, you say
"today, this way, please", and turn up
a deer path calling the dogs.
They gallop past, mouths trailing tongues,
they tremble to be invited
on such an adventure. My dog stops
at the rise to question me, my will,
my eyes as human as her own.
Ahead of me you wait on what
was once a knoll, now a second
generation pine forest growing
from decay of the first.
You stand among deer tracks
at some intersection of passing
or a place they've danced in the night.
I suffocate the leap in my heart
with thoughts of hunters waiting.
Your smile which can make me melt
is not for me but more for me
than I can say as you look across
the kettle pond. I will not see--
I look down, for the dogs, the trail
descending, until the call ricochets through
the air, my thoughts, the broken ca-aa-aa-aa-aah.
"Red tail", you say and take my hand.
I lift myself
toward flight.
left a comment on Covenantover 2 years ago
over 2 years agoHurrah! It’s live, and thank you, Kristina, for the review. It’s an amazing feeling to have this book in the world, available for anyone interested to read. I don’t think I realized how much acknowledgement, recognition and feedback matters 🤦🏽♀️. I know, yeah. Duh. But maybe, it’s also a vicarious joy on Kate’s behalf, for all the rejections and struggles she went through before just burying her work in a drawer, and setting this talent aside as life on life’s terms took over. I am tickled pink (my mother would say) that her words speak and are seen and heard, that they matter today - three decades later.
launched Covenantover 2 years ago
over 2 years agoCovenant
A story of love and redemption, COVENANT by Kate Carter, is a never-before-published collection of...
commented on Yvonne Lutter's update over 2 years ago
over 2 years agoamazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/Covenant-Kate-Carter/dp/1639885005/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=covenant+by+kate+carter&qid=1663784684&sr=8-1
commented on Kristiana Reed's update over 2 years ago
over 2 years agoThanks, Kristiana, for your thoughtful and considered review of Covenant. Very much appreciated!
shared an update on Covenantover 2 years ago
over 2 years ago left a comment on Covenantover 2 years ago
over 2 years agoCORRECTION:
Kate Carter is the author of this book. I had it published after her death and wrote the prologue. - Yvonne Lutter
started following Felicia Bengtsson, Ariel Basomover 2 years ago
over 2 years ago liked Jean Hoefling's update over 2 years ago
over 2 years ago started following Kristiana Reed, Arthur Turfa, Rachel Deeming and 9 moreover 2 years ago
over 2 years agoAbout me
Kate Carter received her MA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Ohio. She taught for New Mexico State University, and for Lake Erie College in Mentor, Ohio. Kate died of Covid 19,at the age of 62. Yvonne Lutter, her partner of 25 years, published this collection on her behalf.
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