I want to start by sharing a favorite poem of the past five years:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published  Through the Keyhole      After Breakfast, by Elin Danielson-Gambogi    The woman’s cigarette turns to ash,  the frail balloon of her thoughts rising  with the smoke. If I could slip    through the keyhole, I would sit  in the chair abandoned by her  breakfast friend, sip from the glass    of cold coffee, put out the burning  cigarette on the tablecloth’s edge.  Remnants of companionship.    It’s Saturday morning, days  after my husband’s death, and I gaze  with the woman down the long hours ahead.    Grateful for the company and a day  that may be as empty as the shells  of her soft-boiled eggs or an egg cup    I could fill to the brim. Widowhood  has surprised me, arrived unannounced.  I’m drawn to her youth, all that lies ahead—    Italy, the Italian artist-husband,  a painting life. And remind myself  of the richness of my own past. Still, I envy    the rebellion born in her bones,  the different melody painted on  this canvas. She’s a woman at home    in her skin, as the French love to say. Like her,  I could make myself into a perfect song.      Sandi Stromberg    Frogs Don’t Sing Red

As a publisher and editor, I’ve known this poet for twenty years. We became friends in the course of a long conversation one afternoon in 2017, sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Alpine, Texas. In August of 2020, when I decided to make use of pandemic time by teaching a poetry writing class, Sandi was among the first to sign up. A year—and several Zoom seminars later—Sandi wrote “Through the Keyhole.” During our final session, two or three days later, each of the participants read aloud a piece written during the class. Sandi summoned the strength to read this remarkable poem.

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A note before I continue. “Through the Keyhole” was Sandi’s contribution to a challenge at The Ekphrastic Review—poems responding to After Breakfast, an 1890 painting by Finnish artist Elin Danielson-Gambogi. If you have a few minutes, take a look at the painting and the poems written to it ⇒

Sandi begins by sketching details of Gambogi’s painting—a woman smoking, an empty chair, a lit cigarette at the edge of the table. The surprise of an effective ekphrastic poem is that the writer enters the scene, as here, when Sandi imagines “the frail balloon of her thoughts rising / with the smoke,” suggests that dark liquid in a glass on the table is “cold coffee,” and intuits that the lit cigarette at table’s edge and the empty chair “abandoned by her breakfast friend” are “Remnants of companionship.”

And then: “It’s Saturday morning, days / after my husband’s death, and I gaze / with the woman down the long hours ahead.” Each time I reach this short stanza, I am stunned—by the fearless directness with which this poet pairs her own loss with “the long hours ahead” evoked in Gambogi’s painting. Line by line, then, the poem returns to details of the painting, drawing parallels between the life Sandi sees in the painting and the older woman looking on—including “a day / that may be as empty as the shells / of her soft-boiled eggs or an egg cup // I could fill to the brim.” And the lovely, heartbreaking, hopeful line with which the poet as widow concludes. “Like her, / I could make myself into a perfect song.”

A final point, if you will. Poetry is not therapy. But like “Through the Keyhole,” a poem can hold the writer’s grief, if only briefly—can serve as a record of moments such as the one Sandi Stromberg brings to life here.

About the Author

Sandi Stromberg is the author of Frogs Don’t Sing Red (Kelsay Books 2023). This collection is highly recommended; it includes “Through the Keyhole.” Moonlight, Shaken (Kelsay Books, forthcoming, 2026) is Sandi’s second poetry collection.

Support Kelsay Books. Frogs Don’t Sing Red is available here ⇒

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