Tremolo

Alice Derry was born in Oregon and raised in Washington and Montana. Her M.F.A. is from Goddard College (now Warren Wilson College). Her third collection of poetry, Strangers to Their Courage (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), was a finalist for the 2002 Washington Book Award. Stages of Twilight (Breitenbush, 1986), Derry's first collection, won the King County Publication Award, chosen by Raymond Carver; Clearwater was published by Blue Begonia Press in 1997. Derry also has three chapbooks: Getting Used tothe Body (Sagittarius Press, 1989), Not As You Once Imagined (Trask House, 1993), and translations from the German poet Rainer Rilke (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2002). Derry has won a number of prizes, and her poems have been widely published in anthologies. She teaches English and German at Peninsula College in Port Angeles on Washington's Olympic Peninsula where she has co-directed the Foothills Writers' Series since 1980. Tremolo is her fourth collection.

Tremolo can be contained in the line from Theodore Roethke's villanelle, "The Waking" "This shaking keeps me steady. I should know." In music, tremolo describes notes which are repeated in time, as opposed to trill, notes which stand outside the composition's basic beat. In the same way, our lives often cannot "claim their own space," but are forced to fit circumstance. The effect is tremulous: we are full of trembling, easily shaken. The book journeys through terrain where the speaker must accept what she's given: a mother's death, a daughter's leaving home, a father's dementia, a life compromised by war, prejudice, and violence, the myriad fearful situations of each day. The poems search for safety, ultimately understanding that the steadiness the speaker knows comes from taking the path in front of her, fully embracing her trembling. The wisdom of these poems is garnered from journeys the speaker fears, but must undertake. As Roethke writes, "I learn by going where I have to go."