About Jonathan: Jonathan Johnson has published three books of poetry and two memoirs. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry and been read on NPR. He teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program at Eastern Washington University.
Why I chose this poem: I’m reading “Tropos” from Kerry's collection In Search of Groovy because it represents Kerry’s embrace of mortality in the human journey. This is how poetry can help us live—and die—-with grace.
About Kerry: Kerry Rutherford (1948–2024) was a third-generation Washingtonian. A self-proclaimed “wandering hippie chick” in her youth, she went on to work in a wide range of jobs, from cannery worker to elementary school teacher to grant writer, and lived in a variety of places—Alaska, Indiana, Ohio, Seattle, and, finally, Spokane, the place where she felt she’d found her true home.
She earned three master’s degrees in her 70s—nonfiction, poetry, and history—and had a startling knowledge of astrology. Her ability to make and keep friends across all of the usual boundaries of age, gender, class and religion brought countless strangers together in community. She had one child. She is the author of In Search of Groovy, available at Auntie’s Bookstore.