Editor's Note: One of the perks of writing for a locally-owned newspaper in a community like Macomb is the honor and privilege to meet – and write about – the many wonderful, interesting people who call Macomb home. And some you have a deep personal connection, a click if you will, from the moment you begin talking.
It was such a delight to meet Roxy and to chat about writing, poetry, growing older and more. During the interview, she would pause periodically to jot down notes in one of her many notebooks. When she was writing and I continued to ask a question, I was 'shushed' (good-naturedly) so she could concentrate on a word or a phrase she wanted to remember. I asked if was I was going to make it into a poem. With an ornery grin and a gleam in her eye, she said, 'Maybe.'
She is a gem.
A lady living in Macomb, who often has her ear to the 'phone,' Wrote a fun little book, not letting anyone off the hook, But writes poetry when in the zone.
While 85-year-old Roxy Fess doesn't write limericks, the beat in this longtime musician's head lends her creative writing to rhyming poems, which have recently been self-published in her first book, 'Tales from the Home, or Children's Poems for (Very) Old People.'
What started as a project during the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020 – and what was originally going to be just a Mother's Day present from her six adult children – ended up being a published book through Barnes & Noble that highlights the Macomb woman's daily experiences through poetry living first in Wesley Village and now Grand Prairie, and all the things that go along with aging. Even a recent stroke hasn't slowed down her writing, her wit and sense of humor as she's already working on poetry book number two.
Fess, who has been a cellist since the age of five, working professionally with many symphonies in the region and leading her own quartet, the Serenata String Quartet in Macomb, she also worked as a nurse for many years in 'every nursing home' in Macomb.
And does she ever have tales to tell through her rhyming words. From dentures to losing her sense of smell due to COVID to card 'cheaters' and bath aides, she finds humor and a patter in her daily life as a 'senior.'
'There was nothing to do.
We were locked in and when I'm bored, I start writing,' she explained how the book of poems began. 'I just started writing about two poems a day about the stuff that was happening daily.
Just what I saw happening and what I was experiencing as I was getting older. I already had a handful of poems written before COVID, but when we couldn't leave our rooms, I started writing more. Anything that happened, or happens, I write about it.'
Fess' six children each wrote poems of their own as part of the book's dedication, and son, Jerry, who lives in Macomb, did the illustrations in the style of children's nursery rhyme cartoons to accompany some of the 60ish poems in the book. She handwrites all her poems in notebooks (they've found some stragglers, Jerry mentioned), and one of her sons scanned in her notebooks pages so they could get them formatted into a book. The names have been changed to protect the 'innocent' (and the card cheaters), but every poem is about a real person, place, happening or thing. But why poetry and not just essays?
'Because of music, I have a beat going on all the time, so poetry fits with that,' she explained. 'I grew up with that internal beat, and I've always loved writing. I was even the poet laureate when I was at Macalester College.' While the book of poems – some a little serious, but most a little silly, fun and tongue-in-cheek – started five years ago, because of some health setbacks, it was finally published just recently, on Aug. 9. Fess, who was born on Halloween in Minneapolis, MN in 1939, even has a few references to her spooky beginnings in the book, including a poem from her son, Craig, about being a 'good witch.' In the forward, her kids – five sons, Scott, Craig, Frederick, Jerry and Chad, and one daughter, Linda - state, 'This book of poems is, above all, a tribute to our mom's extraordinary gift: her ability to find – and share – laughter in almost everything … Mom had a way of turning the ordinary into comedy gold.'
Fess is never without a notebook and pencil, where she jots down words and phrases she hears, and in her mind, she's already composing a poem based on that particular term or turn of phrase. {Fun fact: I mentioned the work 'stinkpot' in reference to children, and she wrote it down immediately – that's when I was shushed.} The new poems, along with those 'stragglers' her kids found in other notebooks here and there will go into her second book, which she thinks she'll finish much more quickly this time around. She's getting her strength back in her right arm, so in addition to writing, she's thinking about getting back to her beloved cello, knitting and maybe even getting back to the bluegrass fiddle lessons she taught to area students before the stroke.
'The big thing through all of this has been her sense of humor,' Jerry, who sat in on the interview from his mother's Grand Prairie Apartment. 'She's always thinking about what she might turn into her next poem. She loves juicy gossip (at this, Roxy put her hand up to her ear and grinned), and there's a lot of that going on at the homes.'
Fess nodded when asked if she keeps her ears (and eyes) open for the juicy gossip, adding that even though she changes names in her poems, her friends and others often will recognize themselves. And their reaction? All positive.
'Everyone has been really positive about this book,' she added. 'But once in awhile, people are very careful about what they say around me.
'But once I settle on a subject or an idea, I just start rhyming words until I get to the plot,' Fess shared. 'And when I hit those rhymes and it all comes together, well, it just feels really good. And I'll have the other book done in about a month because I get inspiration almost every day. There's no shortage of things to write about!'
Fess' book currently can be found at BarnesandNoble. com and searching 'Tales from the Home' by Roxy Fess.
