Island Aubade

It’s always nice to be able to learn a new word or two in the course of reading a book or magazine article. Chico poet Marilyn Ringer’s new poetry chapbook, Island Aubade, offers that opportunity—the word “aubade” in the title, for instance, means “1) a song or poem greeting dawn; 2) a morning love song; or 3) a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn,” as Ringer points out on the book’s accompanying bookmark. The word “cagoule”—a type of hooded raincoat—appears in Ringer’s lovely poem, “Passage, the Elizabeth Ann”: “A stiff breeze tugs at our cagoules./ Watching the sea, my vision blurred by salt and age, I see as a painter might/ multitudes of colors shaped then swirled into marine blue.” The poem is representative of the 36 other poems in Ringer’s book in its contemplative attention to the joys of quiet hours spent amid the fresh, salty air and coastal colors of Maine’s Monhegan Island, where Ringer spends her summers. Ringer’s words, those of an older woman coming to terms with what is truly meaningful—and with her mortality—ring particularly poignant in the book’s final poem, “Blown Down”: “Where the trunk rests against the forest floor, its embedded roots still/ reach, still seek,/ still hold their ground.”

Ringer will appear at Lyon Books Tuesday, Aug. 21, at 7 p.m.