“My Love” by Johanna Hardesty

 
 

the story behind the poem, told by the poet’s husband . . .

I think all poems have a story of some sort behind them, some more poignant than others. One of my late wife’s poems, The Weathered Pine, was inspired by a weather-beaten old whitebark pine standing by itself in Preston Park, a lovely alpine park deep in the mountains of Glacier National Park. She showed it to me one day when we were hiking through the area. There it was, a Grand Old Man of a tree, weather-beaten, but standing proud. No wonder she wrote a poem about it! This poem was previously published as a No Reply Press broadside in 2022 as a memorial to the poet who had recently passed away.

The story of My Love is a bit different. In 1976, when she was twenty years of age, Johanna was cogitating one day upon what the future might hold for her in terms of a life-time partner. She concluded that somewhere out there, there was one man whom God meant just for her, someone who would add to her life and not detract from it.

Upon further reflection, she imagined what that man might be like and how she would feel about him. She conjured up an image in her mind, let her feelings take over, and put her thoughts to paper.

About fifteen years later, after we had been married for about two years, we were going through some of her old papers and she came across the notebook wherein she had written the few poems she’d written in those days of yore. She handed the notebook to me with the poem, My Love, exposed and asked me to read it. I read it as requested, but silently.

I was deeply moved.

She said, “I wrote this for you, although I didn’t know it then, but it says exactly how I feel about you.”

It still does.

She was my life. She is my love.

I miss her.

EDITION NOTES

  • The edition is limited to 75, privately distributed.

  • Printed letterpress using a Vandercook Universal I on Johannot mouldmade paper.

  • Typeset in Joanna, cut by Eric Gill.

  • Set alongside a halftone reproduction of the poet’s last drawing, a sketched rose given to the publisher.