LOAD-BEARING WALLS by Linda B. Myers

With lovely assonance, amid grumbles and blessings—sometimes bitter, often melancholy—the poems in Load-Bearing Walls, are “caught between expectation exasperation exaltation.” With a touch of anger (“I still ignite like a bonfire”), but not lacking in joy, Linda B. Myers describes a fully-lived life, now edging towards a close in a “sanctuary for old women.”
–Poet Risa Denenberg

The poems in Load-Bearing Walls speak plainly, without performance. Some walk through a town the poet knows well. Others feel like letters she never sent. A few carry a kind of music, while others hold a meditative ease that sometimes reminds me of Billy Collins, only with sharper edges and less need to smooth things over. A few leave you with no way to unsee what they’ve shown. The truth sits there and won’t move. Hers is a lived voice, one that moves through anger, memory, and the quiet wreckage of everyday life. It carries traces of the women she came up with, the ones who endured more than they were promised and kept going anyway. There’s humor here too, and a kind tenderness that doesn’t need to name itself. Linda B. Myers writes from an often overlooked perspective, one we need more of, and her poems carry on the work those women began. They bear weight, make room, and hold each other up.
–Poet John Victor Anderson

What a privilege to be present and watch a successful change of genre for Linda. This chapbook sample of poems makes you crave more of her relatable character studies, relationships hopeful or gone tired, reminiscences of growing up and old in places familiar and true. Count on Linda to examine and reveal.
–Poet Dianne Lynn Knox

Linda B. Myer’s poems in Load-Bearing Walls are a testimony to aging: her deteriorating body, friends suffering from dementia and cancer, and the ache of mourning those lost to her. With irony, wit, and an open heart, she invites us to accompany her on this rocky journey. In the title poem, Myers admits: “So here I sit shunted to the side of the road,” but acknowledges how we widows are “load-bearing walls for each other.” The two old farmers who drive school bus to enhance their income make a difference in children’s lives. After a wildfire, she listens “for hearts, sprouts, spoors, fireweed,” acknowledging the balance hope brings to our lives. When I offered a community workshop a few years ago, Linda’s poems and her serious ambition stood out. These poems confirm my faith in them.
–Poet Alice Derry