She exercises on the treadmill every day. She writes about it in verse that has nabbed her an award as an “emerging poet.”
Oh, and she’s 90 years old.
That life force was on exemplary display Wednesday afternoon in the poetry and persona of Shulamith Chernoff.
She read before a rapt crowd of 20 people at the Mitchell Branch Library in Westville.
It was the fourth in a series of literary events organized by Susan Feinberg, one of the coordinators, along with Cecilia Berner, for the Westville chapter of HomeHaven. HomeHaven is the Greater New Haven not-for-profit that provides transportation, handymen, and cultural connections to help seniors remain living in their own homes. (Click here for an article on a Home Haven presentation by Feinberg, a longtime teacher at the Hopkins School, on Hamlet earlier this year.
Wednesday was devoted to poetry on aging. Click on the video at the top of the story for Chernoff’s poetic take on how the thoughts of a person in her ninth decade differ from those of a younger person as she trudges along on the same device, the treadmill.
Chernoff introduced the poem, written in free verse (as is all her material) and highly rhythmic, by reminding her listeners that “the treadmill used to be an instrument of torture.”
After that Chernoff read “Jealousy,” a daring poem on her reaction to attending the wedding of her son. Based the evidence of the poem, the event evoked something not just the joy and expected kvelling, but also envy that her child was being taken away by another woman.
“Young people were surprised I could express this,” she said by way of preamble.
After reading her own material from her book The Stones Bear Witness (Hanover Press 2006), she recited selections from among her favorite poets on the subject of getting older. They included former national poet laureates Stanley Kunitz, Ted Kooser, and Philip Levine.
Allan Appel Photo
In a book-signing and question-and-answer session after the reading, Chernoff, who has been writing seriously only for the last 20 years, said genre’s intensity attracts her.
“What attracts me is the compressed way to express emotion and experience,” she said.
She contrasted her approach with that of contemporary writers who feel they need to confess, say, and expose every possible subject. “Poetry doesn’t tell you everything, but leaves something unsaid,” she said.
Chernoff considers herself still evolving as a writer. Her next step: “to be more experimental” in the forms she chooses to work in.
Shulmith had a remarkable teaching career at the university level. She has truly reinvented and not retired. She is a paradigm for those with trepidation about self exploration and lifelong learning.
Thanks for sharing part of her amazing story.