This Sad and Tender Time: Memorial Poems

A former English professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, Sharon Whitehill retired to Florida with Jim Meloy, her beloved husband of 30 years and staunch supporter of her every endeavor. Her previous publications* include two scholarly biographies and two memoirs, but in retirement she was finally able to indulge her long-deferred wish to focus on her own writing rather than on papers from her English classes. Most recently, poetry has become her favored mode of self-expression, resulting in two chapbooks and a full collection.

Jim Meloy, to whom this volume is dedicated, was that rare creature, a man who could (and did) willingly talk about his and others’ emotions. Though he was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome just a few years after the couple met, and eventually had to give up on his beekeeping business, he never lost his quirky and ebullient manner. Generous, intelligent, funny, and kind, he remained grateful always for what he called “the gift of consciousness.”

The poems in This Sad and Tender Time were written during the year following Jim’s sudden death at age 73, in August of 2021. Whitehill remains (and continues to write) in their house in Port Charlotte, Florida—alone but not lonely, as her daily companions are two big dogs and two cats.

*The Life and Work of Mary O’Hara, Author of My Friend Flicka (biography); Frances Gillmor, Aztec and Navajo Folklorist (biography); On the Trail of Flicka’s Friend: The Biography of a Biography (memoir); Sweet Bitter Sweet (memoir); The Lizard Wizard (for children); The Umbilical Universe (poems); Inside Out to the World (poems); A Dream of Wide Water (poems).

Paperback: 50 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (December 5, 2023)