Burning, Teresa Boyer’s first collection of poetry, startles with indelible images; the most powerful and central of these images is fire. By the end of the first poem we sense that we have entered a world of danger. By the end of the second poem, we know it, and soon we discover that the dangers are both real and imagined. In the end, Boyer wins her own victories and the substantial relief that comes from choosing healing.

While healing is frequently named as the welcome result of writing, for Boyer the writing came after the healing had already begun, then became an important part of her healing process. While Boyer’s fortitude is admirable, it is her skillful use of images in poems like "Ice" (below) that make her writing artful, memorable and powerful.

In Burning, we are privy not only to Boyer’s direct experiences, but also to some of her family’s lore.  Teresa explains that growing up, “We literally had a book called The House of the Boyers.  I can’t remember how old I was when we got it, maybe eleven or twelve.? Years later, Teresa re-read this book, the story of James and Ella, and wrote he own "House of the Boyers" (below).

Boyer holds a master’s degree in fine arts from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is also an avid knitter; in 2003 she published Nursery Rhyme Knits, a collection of knitwear designs that incorporate her passions for poetry and knitting.

Ice

Trees encased in ice,
Refracting light like the glare from ten thousand diamonds,

Or two small earrings, their tiny glitter
Once transformed me into an object of beauty.

The trees don’t know their beauty is dangerous,
How limbs can snap under the weight of ice.

Under the weight of silence my heart bows.
Beauty encased in memory.

The sun will melt the trees’ burden.
My silence is lifting.

I will be beautiful again.  



House of the Boyers

In the book that traces our family
to before the Civil War,

I follow the French, then German, then
American men—reclaiming the French

name Boyer—to where they settled
in Pennsylvania, then Missouri.

James and Ella look like heads of a lineage
on their wedding day.  The somber photo

taken in the house James built for her.
He seated, her standing by his side,

her hand on his shoulder.
Dressed in ordinary clothes

they are looking the same direction,
ahead and away from the camera.

What went wrong?  The book doesn’t say
why their 14 children moved away;

why James, at 72, burned down the house
and killed himself with strychnine in the barn;

why his wife of 47 years, died later that same year,
but was buried in a separate cemetery.

This is the house of the Boyers:
the stumble and scatter of each generation,

desperate acts of escape.
My name is printed there—Teresa,

daughter of Duane, son of Ledru,
son of Clayborn, son of James.

Outside my window, a fading pink
and blue sky blackens

the tree’s bare branches
until the light has gone completely,

sparing no one.
Fragile fissures reaching out

And up.