What do you think?
Rate this book
The Bride's Gate and Other Assorted Writings
The Bride's Gate and Other Assorted Writings: A Modern Eclectic Reader for Modern Eclectic Readers is a potpourri of poetry, fiction, and memoir. The poetry is accessible to people who normally don't care for poetry, the short stories range from shape-shifters to ghost talkers, and the memoir are more funny than not. The book is meant to be picked up and opened at random. The author invites you to go through gate on the cover, and find a new and different path each time.
247 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2021
1 person is currently reading
About the author
Lenora Rain-Lee Good
16 books27 followersLenora Rain-Lee Good was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and lives with her rescue dog, Sammy Brave Dog. Part Native American (Catawba) she is fascinated with different cultures and different ways of life, and loves to build and at least in her imagination, spend time on different worlds.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 12, 2021
I found something to suit my every mood in this compilation of poetry, short fiction, and essays. “Love in the Dungeon,” had me smiling a lot and occasionally laughing out loud. The poem “On the Banks of the Rio Grande,” fed my sadness at the changing landscape of our world and in the title story, I was blown away by the images and emotions portrayed. I’ll be dipping into this anthology again and again for years to come.
December 9, 2022
Where have I been? Lenora Rain-Lee Good’s The Bride’s Gate and Other Assorted Writings was published and released by Cyberwit in 2021. https://www.cyberwit.net/publications... In her book Lenora offers a diversified medley of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, sprinkled with her beautiful commentary. She delightfully breaks the fourth wall of her work. In this way she magnifies the intimacy of the work itself, making her writing even more personal. Lenora Rain-Lee Good understands that we must touch each other, which may have something to do with her Catawba American Indian roots. When I first began the book, I read it as if I were selecting flowers in a teeming field of color. Do yourself a favor and read The Bride’s Gate and Other Assorted Writings from cover to cover. You will still love the effect, but in a more organized way.
In the poem Saving Against Alzheimer’s, Ms Good writes:
Knot that scarf over your heart; hold it tight. Keep the
good nouns close, the happy verbs a part of your life.
Hold onto the scarves, the knots, as you sail off the bridge.
Your nouns and verbs will survive.
I am happy to say the intimacy of Lenora’s work is unquestioned and a comfort to those familiar with Alzheimer’s. She provides much more than stories through the fiction and non-fiction offered in her book. Lenora, much like a storyteller around a sacred camp fire, tells you the story behind that particular story. The care and love of that process both shatters and delights the reader.
Read Things I Miss-Accents, and Lenora will take you on a journey of dear memory that will finally prompt you to extract your memory. That is the thing with her. She prompts you to think. To engage in your world. I have so many favorites, but if I am coerced to pick, I might suggest May You Live in Interesting Times, or Google Really Is Your Friend. Honest. Trust Me. You will delight in Lenora Good’s interest in the history of China and Asian tradition and culture. Lenora Rain-Lee Good should have worked for the missionaries, but fortunately her writing has the benefit of a more reasonable and human approach. She converts everyone to her muse, whatever that happens to be in her collection of concepts, shining brilliantly in her sky.
In the poem Saving Against Alzheimer’s, Ms Good writes:
Knot that scarf over your heart; hold it tight. Keep the
good nouns close, the happy verbs a part of your life.
Hold onto the scarves, the knots, as you sail off the bridge.
Your nouns and verbs will survive.
I am happy to say the intimacy of Lenora’s work is unquestioned and a comfort to those familiar with Alzheimer’s. She provides much more than stories through the fiction and non-fiction offered in her book. Lenora, much like a storyteller around a sacred camp fire, tells you the story behind that particular story. The care and love of that process both shatters and delights the reader.
Read Things I Miss-Accents, and Lenora will take you on a journey of dear memory that will finally prompt you to extract your memory. That is the thing with her. She prompts you to think. To engage in your world. I have so many favorites, but if I am coerced to pick, I might suggest May You Live in Interesting Times, or Google Really Is Your Friend. Honest. Trust Me. You will delight in Lenora Good’s interest in the history of China and Asian tradition and culture. Lenora Rain-Lee Good should have worked for the missionaries, but fortunately her writing has the benefit of a more reasonable and human approach. She converts everyone to her muse, whatever that happens to be in her collection of concepts, shining brilliantly in her sky.
December 19, 2023
Don’t look for any certain kind of book in this volume, because it’s delightfully unclassifiable. Subtitled A Modern Eclectic Reader for Modern Eclectic Readers, Lenora ranges from poetry to short (and very short) stories to essays to memoir vignettes, from short speculative fiction (think Ursula Le Guin or Betsy James or Tolkien) to fiction with Native American characters and an indigenous point of view to stories of hitmen and a hitwoman named Granny Hitt, with a Hitchcockian light touch. It’s a book that’s fun to read. She shows a delicious irreverence when warranted and a reverence where it’s deserved.
Be prepared for a lot of surprises and a mischievous sense of humor, already well-developed as a high school senior in a reminiscence of the time she sabotaged her mother’s and stepfather’s efforts to impress his boss and wife at dinner by inventing a gruesome tall tale in response to her mother’s asking what she learned in school that day, to the uproarious amusement of the boss. There’s also a “non-fiction fiction” story about convincing her husband salmon had feet. The stories show a fertile imagination that goes in unexpected directions.
But she can go deep with hard truth as in “Antiseptic Wars”, a response to Desert Storm:
How antiseptic
the wars of television . . .
choreographed dying
special effects
dramatic music . . .
No mud, no slime
no wounded, dying soldiers . . .
crying out to “Mom”
for the magic,
healing kiss
she is not there
to give.
Another poem, called “Lonely Cemeteries”, says
Only men can know Death.
A woman does not know Death.
A woman does not stand at the bar.
A woman does not drink whiskey.
A woman does not salute Death.
A woman understands Life.
Birthing and bathing.
A woman cooks. She plants. She
reaps. She mends. She cleans.
She preserves. A woman is too
busy for Death.
There are cemeteries that are lonely.
The women there are grateful.
A short story titled “Fly Away Woman” tells the story of Wild Woman, who finds a near-dead woman with a baby on her cabin doorstep in winter. The woman dies and Wild Woman raises the male child, eventually to be taught the skills of the forest by Swift Swimmer, living with her every winter until he marries. In the end Wild Woman finds her own release after being the agent of the child’s survival and growth. It feels very true to an indigenous people’s view of the world, in my limited knowledge of that. It's a poignant story with a gentleness in the characters that makes it sound like a old story handed down orally for generations.
Finally, there’s a beautiful elegy titled “Old Man at the Inipi” about a grandfather who tends the hot rocks for a sweat lodge:
I see the pain you accept . . .
in order to carry the Grandfather Stone,
to not drop the Grandfather Stone.
I see you, old man,
standing straight as a ramrod,
in respectful pause as you tend
the sacred fire heating
the Grandfather Stones.
Brett Nelson
Be prepared for a lot of surprises and a mischievous sense of humor, already well-developed as a high school senior in a reminiscence of the time she sabotaged her mother’s and stepfather’s efforts to impress his boss and wife at dinner by inventing a gruesome tall tale in response to her mother’s asking what she learned in school that day, to the uproarious amusement of the boss. There’s also a “non-fiction fiction” story about convincing her husband salmon had feet. The stories show a fertile imagination that goes in unexpected directions.
But she can go deep with hard truth as in “Antiseptic Wars”, a response to Desert Storm:
How antiseptic
the wars of television . . .
choreographed dying
special effects
dramatic music . . .
No mud, no slime
no wounded, dying soldiers . . .
crying out to “Mom”
for the magic,
healing kiss
she is not there
to give.
Another poem, called “Lonely Cemeteries”, says
Only men can know Death.
A woman does not know Death.
A woman does not stand at the bar.
A woman does not drink whiskey.
A woman does not salute Death.
A woman understands Life.
Birthing and bathing.
A woman cooks. She plants. She
reaps. She mends. She cleans.
She preserves. A woman is too
busy for Death.
There are cemeteries that are lonely.
The women there are grateful.
A short story titled “Fly Away Woman” tells the story of Wild Woman, who finds a near-dead woman with a baby on her cabin doorstep in winter. The woman dies and Wild Woman raises the male child, eventually to be taught the skills of the forest by Swift Swimmer, living with her every winter until he marries. In the end Wild Woman finds her own release after being the agent of the child’s survival and growth. It feels very true to an indigenous people’s view of the world, in my limited knowledge of that. It's a poignant story with a gentleness in the characters that makes it sound like a old story handed down orally for generations.
Finally, there’s a beautiful elegy titled “Old Man at the Inipi” about a grandfather who tends the hot rocks for a sweat lodge:
I see the pain you accept . . .
in order to carry the Grandfather Stone,
to not drop the Grandfather Stone.
I see you, old man,
standing straight as a ramrod,
in respectful pause as you tend
the sacred fire heating
the Grandfather Stones.
Brett Nelson
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews