Payson People: Carrie Backe



Tom and Carrie Backe.

Today I want to introduce you to one of Payson's cultural treasures: our own award-winning poet, Ms. Carrie Backe. I love getting to play "Barbara Walters".  Hopefully, I'll get better at the questions as I go along!

Carrie is a lovely and cherished person. Here she is with her dear husband, Tom. I don't know what that is that they're having for dinner; it looks like maybe Chicken Piccata or something, but it looks yummy. (I can tell what that is in her hand, though.)


Her answers are fun and inspiring, even if my questions are a bit prosaic!

Q: If you could invite three poets to dinner, who would you ask?  A: If I could invite three poets to dinner they would be Ofelia Zepeda, a well-known Tucson poet, Emily Dickinson, and any one of the ancient Japanese haiku artists.  Their closeness to nature inspires me every day.  I imagine they would all get along, too!

Q: What is something you always wished you could do, but have never learned? A:
The one thing I have always wanted to be able to do, but don’t have the talent for, is play the piano.  My favorite jokes about that are “I can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” and “The only thing I can play is the radio.”

Q: When did you first discover that you enjoyed writing poems? A: When I was 10 or so I wrote a (very bad!) poem.  But, it rhymed, and I was proud of that.  As I grew up, I learned the beauty of poetry, especially in the economy of words.  That’s why I love haiku—such discipline, such structure.  A handful of syllables can tell a whole story, evoke a torrent of images and memories.  Nature is so changeable—in tiny ways each day, in catastrophic ways every so often.  That’s why we need to pay attention, and not take nature for granted—always.

Most of my inspiration for poems comes from nature or from death and dying.  We humans are part of nature.  We all have our life cycles, just like the trees.  It is good for us to understand that we’re all in the same situation.

Q: If someone wrote a biography of your life, would it be an adventure story? A love story? A comedy?  A thriller? Or something else? A: If someone wrote a biography of my life, it would be set up as a choose-your-own-adventure book.  Those books used to be popular with kids a number of years ago.  Every few pages of an adventure story the reader would decide the direction of the story—go left or right; pick up the sword, don’t pick up the sword.  We all live our lives like that.  If I’d made a tiny decision differently years ago, I might now be living in a penthouse in Paris, or on a ranch in Wyoming.  Who knows!

Q: Did you ever have an especially unusual inspiration for a poem? A: One of my favorite poems was inspired while driving through a particularly dry and desolated desert-like area of Wyoming.  We had just learned of the death of a man I never met, but who was the brother of a dear friend.  As my husband and I drove along, the scenery spoke to me of my friend’s grief.  I wrote a mourning poem for him.

Carrie kindly permitted us to reproduce one of her poems here:

Eulogy for a Dead Saguaro

Like the ancient ones of the tribe

Who walked off alone to die,

Not to be a burden,

Your naked ribs are left,

Bleached and exposed.

Without the privacy of a burial.

Pride and personality gone,

The meat has fallen off

Your drying bones.

I cringe to look upon

Your broken skeleton,

Sinking into a

Pauper’s sandy grave.

A pathetic end

For one who

Once was king.

(copyright) Carrie Backe

Thank you very much, Carrie and Tom, for allowing us to share your photo, for playing along today and for letting us post your poem in this space.



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