Never the Loss of Wings cover

Poetry | Soft cover | 74 pages | $16


“These poems are a celebration of our immortal ‘wings’ even as we face our own mortality. Now in my 8th decade, I am experiencing the diminishments of my body more intensely and immediately than I had been able to imagine. I know I am not alone in this. Yet simultaneously the gift of life is more accessible than ever.”

Maryhelen Snyder

Praise for Never the Loss of Wings

“I think this book contains poems on the theme of aging, as fine as any that I know. The fact is that ours is a generation living beyond the usual markers and therefore, with faculties more or less intact and a lifetime of skills still available, we are capable of exploring what is in fact the largely unexplored territory of late life.

“There are many poems in this book that are so lucid and alive as to give the lie to any notion that aging must reduce a poet’s acumen. That acumen is first and last a matter of the perceiving heart, and in their vivid, precise, musical perceptiveness—their immense generosity of spirit and candor—Snyder’s poems bring vividly, convincingly alive the marvels of her ordinary/extraordinary living. Her poems affirm my intention to keep going in the direction from which they spring. A poem that gives courage as well as pleasure is a rare, cherished gift.”

Peter Pitzele; author, Our Father’s Wells

Portait of Maryhelen Snyder

About the Author

In her later years, Maryhelen Snyder was a retired psychotherapist with ongoing involvement with the profession. She also had a long history of teaching, having taught preschool through post-graduate level. She has been published in numerous journals, and has four books in addition to Never the Loss of WingsSun in an Empty Room (2012),  No Hole in the Flame (2008), Because I Praise (1998), and Enough (1979). Other circles of meaningful connection during her life included her co-housing community in Vienna, Virginia, her Langley Hill Friends Meeting, fellow poets with whom she continued to meet and share work, and an ever-branching family of four children and ten grandchildren.  

Snyder discusses writing, aging, her poetry, and the soul. From “Of Some Renown,” a video series. July 2017.