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A Yellowed Notebook
When my father died, I found a spiral notebook written
in the last months of his ten-year battle with chronic
heart disease. "A Yellowed Notebook" is a collaborative/
hybrid integrating his notebook entries with my poems.
The collection is structured as a “rondo;” his notebook
providing the central theme, branching out and returning
via three movements or Family, Work, Retirement/
Diminishment, each introduced by a relevant obituary
from Garment & Fur Industry periodicals. One of my readers
noted that the manuscript reminded her of Natalie Cole’s
“duet-mix,” “Unforgettable,” alongside Nat King Cole’s songs.
in the last months of his ten-year battle with chronic
heart disease. "A Yellowed Notebook" is a collaborative/
hybrid integrating his notebook entries with my poems.
The collection is structured as a “rondo;” his notebook
providing the central theme, branching out and returning
via three movements or Family, Work, Retirement/
Diminishment, each introduced by a relevant obituary
from Garment & Fur Industry periodicals. One of my readers
noted that the manuscript reminded her of Natalie Cole’s
“duet-mix,” “Unforgettable,” alongside Nat King Cole’s songs.
96 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 14, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 10, 2025
A Review of A Yellowed Notebook by Beth SKMorris
Many of us preserve a litany of memories of our fathers. A very select few can put that litany into an array of intense poems paying homage to whom we consider a great man. This collection of poetry by Beth SKMorris is a brilliant mesh of her own works combined with illustrations of her father’s life in snippets of his poetry, snapshots of his baseball cards, war memorabilia and other scraps collected which show her father actually was in life and who he was in her perspective.
She writes, “My father was a whistler---/ pop songs, operatic arias, all four movements of Beethoven’s Fifth.” In this poem, she also shares, “listening to Nat King Cole on our portable./ lathered in baby oil, faces tilted to the sun, / my sister smoking her purloined Pall Malls.” These lines are most interesting given they present the combined voices of a father and daughter, much like the duets put together by Natalie Cole to display what would have been had she and her father gotten to sing duets.
I related to the sister smoking Pall Malls. The unfiltered cigarettes much like the unfiltered life her father led. And I remember how I “purloined my father’s Salems to sneak a puff her and there in secret.
In “ How to Get Attention From a Father Who Works Three Jobs:” we are reminded of how it was back when fathers garnered the label of “Absentee Father” because they were so busy providing for us, they had little time to nurture us. One of this poets ploys to get attention states:
“hide his favorite Fanny Farmer
Chocolates before he gets home: under
Towels in the linen closet, inside mother’s
hat boxes, the laundry hamper---
laugh at his frustration, fruitless search
for the box, the midnight treasure
hunt you send him on
again and again---”
(I used to find places to hide my dad’s wrench in his tool closet---drove him crazy.)
On one page, Beth includes this blurb about her father:
David G. Kaplan
(December 26, 1977)
“Besides being a practicing furrier,
he was for many years Chairman
of the Fur Department at the High
School of Fashion Industries…”
Fur Age Weekly
SKMorris further shares her admiration for this man. She departs from the emotional attachment to be objective, showing us his greatness as a businessman.
In “At the Factory,” Beth writes of her father’s “Surgeon-like precision, searched/ for imperfections: uneven stitching.” He not only restitched imperfections of her life but also his own imperfections.
“repaired his own body
With wedges that would
Sustain him into old age.”
Again, as a reader I am relating to her words. My dad stitched together a strong life, even with imperfections---he restitched mine as well as his own and lived to be almost 98.
In “Because” she writes:
“The code blue alarm sounded,
I stepped out into the hallway,
the nurses ran
to his bedside,
the Doctor wept---
my father was gone----”
Many wept when my father died in the dementia unit. Those who only knew him there not as I had throughout his and my life.
But what Beth gives us in this “Yellowed Notebook” are pages of a beautiful kinship in which a daughter shows great respect and admiration, and of course, Love, for a father who did as most fathers do, the best they can.
It is hard to read this poetry book without finding ourselves immersed in memory and love for our own fathers.
(jacob erin-cilberto, author of A Journeyman’s Poems)
Many of us preserve a litany of memories of our fathers. A very select few can put that litany into an array of intense poems paying homage to whom we consider a great man. This collection of poetry by Beth SKMorris is a brilliant mesh of her own works combined with illustrations of her father’s life in snippets of his poetry, snapshots of his baseball cards, war memorabilia and other scraps collected which show her father actually was in life and who he was in her perspective.
She writes, “My father was a whistler---/ pop songs, operatic arias, all four movements of Beethoven’s Fifth.” In this poem, she also shares, “listening to Nat King Cole on our portable./ lathered in baby oil, faces tilted to the sun, / my sister smoking her purloined Pall Malls.” These lines are most interesting given they present the combined voices of a father and daughter, much like the duets put together by Natalie Cole to display what would have been had she and her father gotten to sing duets.
I related to the sister smoking Pall Malls. The unfiltered cigarettes much like the unfiltered life her father led. And I remember how I “purloined my father’s Salems to sneak a puff her and there in secret.
In “ How to Get Attention From a Father Who Works Three Jobs:” we are reminded of how it was back when fathers garnered the label of “Absentee Father” because they were so busy providing for us, they had little time to nurture us. One of this poets ploys to get attention states:
“hide his favorite Fanny Farmer
Chocolates before he gets home: under
Towels in the linen closet, inside mother’s
hat boxes, the laundry hamper---
laugh at his frustration, fruitless search
for the box, the midnight treasure
hunt you send him on
again and again---”
(I used to find places to hide my dad’s wrench in his tool closet---drove him crazy.)
On one page, Beth includes this blurb about her father:
David G. Kaplan
(December 26, 1977)
“Besides being a practicing furrier,
he was for many years Chairman
of the Fur Department at the High
School of Fashion Industries…”
Fur Age Weekly
SKMorris further shares her admiration for this man. She departs from the emotional attachment to be objective, showing us his greatness as a businessman.
In “At the Factory,” Beth writes of her father’s “Surgeon-like precision, searched/ for imperfections: uneven stitching.” He not only restitched imperfections of her life but also his own imperfections.
“repaired his own body
With wedges that would
Sustain him into old age.”
Again, as a reader I am relating to her words. My dad stitched together a strong life, even with imperfections---he restitched mine as well as his own and lived to be almost 98.
In “Because” she writes:
“The code blue alarm sounded,
I stepped out into the hallway,
the nurses ran
to his bedside,
the Doctor wept---
my father was gone----”
Many wept when my father died in the dementia unit. Those who only knew him there not as I had throughout his and my life.
But what Beth gives us in this “Yellowed Notebook” are pages of a beautiful kinship in which a daughter shows great respect and admiration, and of course, Love, for a father who did as most fathers do, the best they can.
It is hard to read this poetry book without finding ourselves immersed in memory and love for our own fathers.
(jacob erin-cilberto, author of A Journeyman’s Poems)
Displaying 1 of 1 review