by Elizabeth Bourque Johnson and Ted Bowman
editors of The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks: Poems of Loss and Renewal by Minnesota Poets

Smile.
Love what you love.
Take a deep breath.
Walk in the other’s shoes—poems, that is. ~Elizabeth Bourque Johnson

At a conference of the National Association for Poetry Therapy some years ago, we (Ted and Elizabeth) just happened to sit next to each other at lunch, and in the course of the conversation—where are you from? what do you do?—we learned that we were both from the Twin Cities, wrote poetry, and shared an experience with writing and grief. Before the luncheon was over, Ted said, “I’m going to find a project for us to do together.”

A few years later, he called, proposing that we put together a small collection of poems on grief and renewal modeled on one he had seen in Scotland by Scottish poets. “Think of all the wonderful poets in Minnesota! Minnesota should have a collection like this.” He had found our project.

We didn’t know each other very well when we started, having met only a few times, but we shared a conviction that the book we envisioned needed to be created and that we could do it.

Each of us knew something about grief and something about poetry. Ted conducts family education and grief workshops in Minnesota and internationally. Elizabeth, a former nurse who now teaches literature and writing at the University of Minnesota, began writing seriously after her daughter died in a car accident. Then, she says, “My journal saved my life.” Because our perspectives would be different, we thought we’d be an ideal pair for the task. And we were.

Our book, The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks: Poems of Loss and Renewal by Minnesota Poets, begins with poems of shock, as grief often does, and lets the poetry of Minnesota voices express the wide, wide range of events and emotions that rise and fall, heat and cool, hurt and heal. The book closes with poems sometimes hopeful, sometimes resigned. No rainbows, no sunsets.

How did we do it? We met periodically over three years, each time bringing stacks of poems we had researched. Ted drew from collections he knew that resonated with professionals and comforted people in his workshops. Elizabeth sat on the floor of the Loft library one summer and read through all the books of poems by Minnesotans, coming away with the strong feeling that poems from voices over several decades would add a richness to the volume greater than that of only poets writing today. For that reason we decided against issuing a broad call for poems and just kept on reading.

As we collected and shared poems, we gradually clarified the principles that would organize the collection. First, not just death but other losses would be represented—disease, disability, divorce and other broken relationships, violence, and cruelties as well as a recognition of societal losses such as 9/11. Second, all poems had to be accessible to a wide variety of readers. Third, diverse voices of ethnicity and gender and age would be included.

Most important, we agreed that for a poem to go into the collection, we both had to approve it.

Some mornings, sitting at a big table in Open Book, our session became debate and rebuttal, each making the case for a valued poem. We argued not only from our own preferences and experiences but also with the readers in mind that each of us envisioned. Some poems came up for discussion several times before being finally included or rejected, and each of us had to learn to bow graciously in defeat and not to crow in victory. Each of us had favorites; each thought some lacked the requisite frisson. Ted looked for poems of therapeutic value and comfort, Elizabeth for those that named the gritty realities.

Two examples show how our differences played out. For Ted, humor is an important aspect of moving through grief, and he often brought poems of gentle humor that Elizabeth didn’t get right away. We debated the poems of Barton Sutter, Greg Watson, and John Engman, for example, eventually deciding to include them as Elizabeth came to see the balance they would bring. In her turn, Elizabeth championed poems that name the hardest moments straight out, such as a painful one by Roseann Lloyd about child abuse and one by Nancy Frederiksen in which the first word out of the mouth of a man waking from a stroke is “Shit.”

In truth, our different perspectives were our strengths in fashioning a collection that addresses many ways to look at grief. Because we had committed ourselves to affirming our different ways of reading, each of us encountered poems we would never have known otherwise. And that is how the collection grew, from the 30 poems we first imagined to the 146 the volume now includes.

In the fourth year we started putting the poems in order, and again our perspectives differed. Elizabeth favored placing poems in an arc of the experience; Ted placed poems using his intuition and argued against prescriptive “stages.” Although research has shown that the process of grief and renewal follows a pattern, the stages vary significantly from person to person; in addition, they repeat themselves—often unpredictably. (Just when you think you are through being angry, for instance, something will trigger that hot, red feeling!) Finding the right order was our most difficult task. But in the end, with a good deal of give-and-take, we developed an order based on the imagery in the title—which comes from the images in the poems in the book—an order that is both intuitive and experiential.

Then there was the matter of listing the editors: Who goes first? Of course, we both would have liked to be first, but the project had been Ted’s idea, and so he got top billing. In truth, Elizabeth’s name takes up so much space on the line that she certainly can’t feel invisible.

The collection grew. And we grew. Single editorship may be easier if conflict avoidance and speed are goals. Editing a collection is one of the most demanding, frustrating, and challenging tasks one can assume. It is also one of the most rewarding, informing, and satisfying literary experiences ever. Both of us will tell you that our writing and teaching are richer for all the reading and thinking we did.

And each of us gained a new friend.

Elizabeth Bourque Johnson, PhD, encountered grief first as a nurse and nurse-educator. When personal grief confronted her at the death of her daughter, she began to write poetry. Classes at the Loft came next, followed by an MA in creative writing and a PhD in literature at the University of Minnesota, where she has taught both writing and literature. She developed a course called “Writing through Grief,” offered through the Loft and the University’s Compleat Scholar Program. She speaks to grief groups throughout the Twin Cities, including the Sudden Infant Death Foundation and Compassionate Friends. Elizabeth has also written and edited in the health field, including about medical ethics. Her poetry has won local and national awards and has appeared in the literary press in the United States and Canada.

Ted Bowman is an author and educator whose work includes a specialty in change and transition and the resulting grief and loss. He uses poetry, memoir, writing, and other literary tools to aid people in re-storying their lives. Ted has also taught family education courses at the University of Minnesota since 1981. He served on the board of the National Association for Poetry Therapy from 1999 to 2008. Ted is the author of over 80 articles and chapters appearing in a range of books, journals, newspapers, and magazines. His booklet, Loss of Dreams: A Special Kind of Grief, was released in 1994. Finding Hope When Dreams Have Shattered was published in 2001. Crossroads: Stories at the Intersections, a book of poems and essays, was released in 2008.