Travelling Light Along Life's Journey by Glenna Cook
Traveling Light is Glenna Cook’s fourth full-length collection of poems, all published by MoonPath Press. Previous books are Thresholds (2017), a finalist for the Washington State Book Award for Poetry in 2018, Shapes of Time (2022), and Like Joy (2024).
Cook grew up in Olympia, Washington, where, at age eighteen, she married her husband, Kenneth. They had three children (their oldest, a son, died of cancer in 2016 at age sixty), and she has nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. After a twenty-five-year career with the telephone company, she retired from US West Communications in 1990, then immediately enrolled in college. She graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Magna cum Laude in 1994 at age fifty-eight, with a BA in English Literature. While at university, she won the Hearst Essay Prize for the Humanities and the Nixeon Civille Handy Prize in poetry. She is a Hedgebrook alumna and a member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
She has read her poetry many places in the Puget Sound region, and published dozens of poems in journals and anthologies, the latest being This Light Called Darkness, a Raven Chronicles anthology (2023), and When a Woman Tells the Truth: Writings and Creative Work by Women Over 80 , edited by Dena Taylor and Wilma Marcus Chandler (2024) with guidance from Janet Fine.
Her husband died in 2018, after sixty-three years of marriage. Cook has Parkinson’s disease, which she keeps at bay with medicine, diet, and a rigorous exercise program. She serves as an advocate for others with Parkinson’s disease. She loves reading, watching PBS and Netflix, taking walks, and interacting with people. Two of her favorite sayings are: We make our own weather, and (from Rumi) What you seek is seeking you.
Ever since she read that a well-known poet claimed that one could not write poetry after eighty, she has set about trying to prove him wrong. Now, in her nineties, she knows that this may be her last book, but she plans to keep writing poetry, until she can’t.
Travelling Light Along Life's Journey: $19.99
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Poem from Travelling Light
One Incredible Day in October
The world at last opens its eyes
and sees the beauty of all the ordinary
trappings of life and decides them
worth preserving—
trees, animals, grassy fields
and wonderful memories that give us
delight—the day the whole family
drove to Tacoma’s ice rink to see
Sonja Henie, figure-skating Olympic
gold-medal winner. Suddenly
we see we don’t all need to be champions.
There is more to life than winning.
Cooperation brings us peace
with our neighbors, and when we
don’t all have to do a one-man dance
we see that life goes more smoothly.
Slick as a whistle. Jeepers.
That’ll be the day. Yes.
The day the whole wide world
opens its eyes and says,
Life is beautiful!
Glenna reading from Like Joy
also featuring Carey Taylor
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Poem from Like Joy
Predictions
In the new year I’m going to believe in positive predictions. Might as well. Last year, most of us believed in dire predictions. All news seemed bad news. We carried an umbrella wherever we went, always expecting rain. Why not believe that sunny days are right around the corner? Might as well, since hopes and dreams can go either way and we never know which side of the coin will land up until it is tossed. I’m going to feel good about this year and filter out all the depressing dross, until, come what may, I end up with days full of laughter and light. Might as well.
The Art of Being a Healing Presence: $5.99
The multi-part final poem from Like Joy now available in chapbook form.
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Excerpt from The Art of Being a Healing Presence
Part 9
Be near me when my light is low. —Alfred Lord Tennyson Plenty of people can tell those in need what they could do to feel better. Plenty of strong people, seeing weakness, can offer superior wisdom. They know just what will fix them. What those who feel lousy need is for someone who doesn’t know all the answers to sit by and listen to their story..
Glenna reading from Shapes of Time
also featuring Michael Magee
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Poem from Shapes of Time
I dreamed you bought a car
against my knowledge and wishes. A big, gas-guzzling, luxury monster. I made up my mind not to forgive you even though, in all our years of marriage, I always did. Yet how can I stay angry? It was only a dream and only a car, and you, my love, are gone.
Thresholds is a finalist for the 2018 Washington State Book Awards
Read a review of Thresholds by The Bookmonger (Barbara Lloyd McMichael) in Coast Weekend.
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Poem from Threholds
A man plans differently
than a woman for a journey. He sees where he is going, finds the shortest route to get there and return, takes two changes of clothes, a little bag of toiletries. Money. A woman looks at what is being left behind, cleans her house for coming home to, tells the people in her life where she’s going, when she’ll be back. Someone must be found to tend her plants and care for her cat. She packs three sets of clothes for every change of weather, bakes nut bread to eat along the way.
