Prologue: I’m continuing my interview with my sister, Beth Copeland. Beth is a poet and has recently published the book, I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart. The image on the cover of her book (the image heading this post) is a painting by her daughter Sarah.

Becky: Changing topics a bit, I’m curious about the way you arranged the poems in your book. The book offers a strong sense of movement and growth as we read from cover to cover.

I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart is a book of poems, but it also reads like an adventure, a travel memoir, a novel. I see it telling the story of a woman who has left behind the grievances and inconveniences of the past, a woman who has learned to live alone, a woman who has discovered a love she long sought but never found, but who mostly has discovered—in the mountains—herself.
I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart is a love story but to me, the one the woman comes to love is her own self. And that makes this collection particularly powerful and restorative.

Was that your objective in curating the poems the way you did?

Beth: I’m happy to hear that the book has movement because I try to create a narrative arc with my poetry collections.

I Ask The Mountain to Heal My Heart is divided into five sections. Each section has 13 pages. Why? Because the first section had 13, and I wanted all the sections to match.

I’m obsessive about such things!

The first section introduces the mountain and the woman (who obviously is me) by showing her in the context of failed relationships. She’s blinded by fog but trusts that she isn’t lost and will find her way.

Section Two focuses on our Appalachian roots and family, our grandfather who crawled from a coal mine shaft to marry our grandmother, and our missionary father who “talked to God in a chapel of trees” as a boy. You are the sister mentioned in “Lost Cove Wildfire.” You were building a fire in your fireplace on Christmas Eve.

Section Three’s focus is on mysticism—meditation, enlightenment, yoga, and prayer. You’re mentioned again in “Namaste.” Many of the poems in I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart were written during the Covid lockdown. For many months, you were the only person I had physical contact with. We were in a bubble together.

Phoenix appears in Section Four when I was finally learning to live happily without having a relationship with a significant other. That’s when I started having conversations with the mountain, a metamorphic Romeo who lovingly refers to me as “my darling hillock, my hummock, my mini-hump.”

Finally, in Section Five my beloved follows “maps of memory” to find me. I wrote “Beloved” before I knew Paul. It was an epistolary poem to an imaginary partner, a “face in the clouds.”

After Paul came into my life, I dedicated the poem to him. He has fulfilled every expectation suggested in the poem and much more.

Other poems in Section Five chronicle the challenges and joys of falling in love at age 70-plus.

The last poem is one I wrote for Paul as a valentine. When I wrote it, I didn’t know if it would fit with the other poems in the book, but once I chose the title for the manuscript, I realized that the heart-shaped poem is a not-so-subtle symbol of the healed heart. It was only after I learned to love myself that I was able to be in a healthy relationship.

Becky: I’ve often heard that once you stop actively seeking love, love will find you. I think you prove the point.

Of all your collections of poetry, I find this one carries a tone of gentle quiet. The woman has stopped her unhappy chase and has turned to see herself—perhaps for the first time. Maybe in that sense, Covid was a benefit. We were forced to sit with ourselves, and to realize that we were enough.

The following poem is just one of many that captures some of the wisdom and quietness that I find permeates the collection.

Late November

Watching a dry leaf twirl
in the wind, its stem still

tethered to the tree, I think
of how stubborn I’ve been,

refusing to let go of what was
never intended for me,

not knowing something better
was waiting if I’d let myself lift

Into the gale, that the courage
to fail is life’s greatest gift.

Beth: By the time I wrote “Late November,” I had finally learned that my disappointments and failures were for the best.

My failed marriage gave me an opportunity to find a home of my own. My failure to buy the little brick church led me to a more suitable home with a beautiful mountain view. My disappointments in dating led me to stop looking for a partner and learn to be happy as a single woman. Then and only then did the love of my life appear!

I still had healing to do—I still do!—but Paul is patient with me.

Becky: That reminds me of a Chinese proverb about a farmer whose horse runs away. Just as the farmer is bemoaning his loss, the horse returns with an entire herd! The farmer’s son breaks his leg trying to ride one of the horses, only to then be exempted from the draft. And so the proverb goes. We never know what fortune will come of misfortune.

There’s gentle humor, too, in your book! My favorite poem (well, one of the MANY favorites) is Namaste, because (of course) it celebrates an experience that we shared together with my sweet German Shepherd, Durham.

Beth: That was an easy poem to write, one that was intact in the first draft. It was spontaneous! Durham wrote that poem for me!

Becky: You have been so productive! Isn’t this your FIFTH book of poetry? And it follows very quickly on the heels of Selfie with Cherry.

Beth: This is my fourth full-length book, but I’ve also published three chapbooks [short, tightly-focused collections], most recently Selfie with Cherry, published by Glass Lyre Press in 2022. That was the divorce and dating book—a precursor to this one.

Becky: So what is next?

Beth: Currently, I’m about halfway through a collection of centos about mountains, rivers, trees, and sky.

Becky: Help me out here. What’s a cento?

Beth: According to the Poetry Foundation the cento is “a literary work collaged entirely from other authors’ verses or passages.” The form dates back to the16th century and was often composed as a tribute.

The word “cento” is derived from the Latin word for “patchwork garment”—it’s like a quilt sewn from other poets’ lines or a collage pasted from headlines.

Of course, it’s necessary to document sources meticulously to give the authors credit and avoid plagiarism. Also, finding lines from multiple sources that work together as a cohesive whole requires research and time.

Becky: What a fascinating form. Can you share an example?

Beth: Sure. Here’s one of my mountain centos, the fourth in a series of ten. The mountain series was previously published in MacQueen’s Quinterly in January 2023:

Four

At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards.
We are made of clouds and etched with holy meridians.
Here, we live on the edge of nothing, in the heart
of everything,
giving ourselves up to the time of the light, turning
and turning to clouds.
We are a flash of fire—a brain, a heart, a spirit.
We saw a raven very high above us. It called out,
and the dome of the sky seemed to echo the sound.
We made no noise. No more noise than smoke.
We found your footprints in the snow.
We brushed them all away.

Glossary
Line 1: Hunter S. Thompson. Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in
the Final Days of the American Century, 2003
Line 2: Lisa Creech Bledsoe. “The Storm and Home of Us,” Appalachian Ground, 2019
Line 3: Martina Reisz Newberry. “Queries,” Blues for French Roast with Chicory, Deerbrook
Editions, 2020
Line 4: Imogene L. Bolls. “Our Common Memory,” Advice for the Climb, 1999
Line 5: Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward, Angel, 1929, Chapter 35
Lines 6 and 7: Dorothy Wordsworth. Grasmere Journals 1800-1803 (entry dated July 27,
1800)
Line 8: W.S. Merwin. “Animals from Mountains,” Poetry, May 1972
Lines 9 and 10: Kate Bush. “Wild Man,” 50 Words for Snow

Becky: Beautiful. I can’t wait to read more.

Beth: Thanks. I’m currently having chemo for terminal gallbladder cancer and don’t know if I will live long enough to finish it. I don’t have much creative energy left, to be honest, because I’m living in survival mode.

I completed the mountain and river sections before I got sick, and I’m four poems into the tree section, so I’m a little more than halfway done.

I believe in the manuscript I have so far. It’s like a quilt sewn from other poets’ lines or a collage pasted from headlines.

Of course, I have to document sources meticulously to give the poets credit and avoid plagiarism, so it’s a painstaking process. Also, finding lines from multiple sources that work together as a cohesive whole is difficult.

But it’s a challenge I accepted and would like to complete. I love that I’m channeling voices from all over the world, some from poets who are no longer living and others from contemporary poets.

Becky: You have already given us so many powerful poems. With or without the completed centos, your voice now blends with other poetic voices past, present, and future.

Find I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart here:

https://redhawkpublications.com/I-Ask-the-Mountain-to-Heal-My-Heart-p760864942

Stay tuned for a recording of Beth’s August 17, 2025 book launch.

The post Channeling Voices and Healing Hearts: An Interview with poet, Beth Copeland, Part II appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.