by Robert “Bob” Bussey
It’s not too often that I get to interview one of my fellow reporters. In fact, it has never happened before, and probably won’t happen again. Jeanni Ritchie is a freelance writer who has submitted numerous articles to 318Central. She also writes articles that have appeared in the Rapides Parish Journal, CENLA Focus, Visible Horizon, Business Insider, and First Magazine. You might be familiar with a few of those. She has submitted poetry to Poetry Soup and Verbatim. Besides being a freelance writer, she has also published three children’s books under the name of Jeanni Thrasher. Those were titled “Gumbo The Bayou Dog”; “Gumbo Goes Camping,” and” Surfing, Dancing Seeds of Glory.” I could have interviewed her about any of those areas, and we did touch on them, but this is supposed to be about poetry, so we stuck mainly to that field of art.
Jeanni, I think her name really should have been Jeanni Shakespeare, started writing poetry for other people at an early age. I think she was meant to have been a female Puck from the Shakespeare play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Let me
explain. If you have read Shakespeare’s play, you know that Puck was a mischievous fairy who delighted in playing pranks on many of the other characters in the play. He was responsible for all the “star crossed lovers” complications in the play. In the play, Oberon asks Puck to find a magic flower, the juice of which is used on the eyes of a sleeping person to make them fall in love with the first living thing they see when they wake up. Oberon then asks him to put some of the juice in Demetrius’ eyes, but he puts it in Lysander’s by mistake which causes all kinds of problems.
Jeanni, it turns out, was a “ghost writer” for some of the boys in her Junior High. They had figured out that she was good at creating little rhyming poems. Her poems were like the magic juice from the flower that Puck used to play some of his pranks. In the case of Jeanni, the boys in her Junior High used her talents (the magic juice) to write short, rhyming poems to their love interests. They
would then give those poems to their girlfriends, pretending that they were the actual authors. For her services, Jeanni was paid in canteen credits. I guess she got to have some extra snacks without having to dip into her own pocketbook, and since she was being paid, I guess she was already a professional poet at a very young age. (And a professional matchmaker.) I wonder how many relationships she helped create that became as tumultuous as the relationships in the Shakespearean play. Shakespeare would have been proud. His play, via Jeanni, was taking place in real life, not just on some stage. I wonder how many of those boys ended up confessing that the poems were not theirs. I wonder. Jeanni’s eyes sparkled when she told me about this use of poetry, just like I am sure Puck’s eyes sparkled as he played his tricks.
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” William Shakespeare.
Poems go straight to one’s mind and heart, through one’s eyes, and are, therefore, a powerful aphrodisiac. Those young boys did not, I am confident, know the power of the poems they shared.
While the short poems she wrote under a tree in her backyard while in Junior High were for fun, and for someone else, Jeanni started to become serious about setting out her own feelings on multiple issues when she got to High School. At that time, a former boyfriend lost his life in a tragic car accident. Jeanni then began to write poetry for its therapeutic value. Using poetry as a form of catharsis would stay with her. Her poetry does not shy away from difficult social issues, and while there is not enough space in this article to delve into all the social issues she has written about, we will touch on a few. I think many of us can relate to the difficult issue of our children becoming alienated from us for one reason or another. I know that I had a difficult time with my parents for some years. (Aren’t all parents dumb according to many of us as we start to earn our freedom and leave home? Only to find out later that they were knowledgeable after all.) The following poem is about that period when our children are almost grown, almost understanding, almost loving, but are just the opposite: immature, indifferent, and hateful.
I Buried A Daughter
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
Her damaged heart caused mine to be irretrievably broken as well.
No mother should ever have to bury a child.
I found comfort in that as the years went on.
Not so much that she was in a better place,
for of course she was,
but because that meant I could stop worrying about the other four.
God would never take away any more of my babies.
It was presumptuous and dangerous to tempt God
but He was merciful, and they remained safe.
But I lost her just the same,
the separation as cold as death.
And this time I was the one being buried.
Buried alive.
By one of my own children,
a piece of my own soul.
My value as a mother having vanished in her eyes,
I was cut,
not unlike the excising of fat from a juicy cut of meat.
I’m the extraneous garbage in her life,
easy enough to toss aside
as if I never actually held value
when my children were all that ever truly mattered to me.
I never saw it coming.
If I could redo one thing in my life
it would be to prepare myself to lose more children
instead of assuming it could never happen again.
Burying the first almost killed me.
Being buried by my own living child is infinitely worse.
The poem, originally written more in prose style, is recent, having been set out in 2023. The first four stanzas are about the actual loss of a daughter at an early age. The rest of the poem is about the social issue of parental estrangement. The collapse of the relationship between a parent and a child as the child begins to take on more and more adult responsibilities and more freedom. With that freedom comes the freedom to not get along with someone who has been your caregiver, your protector, your confidant for many, many years. How many of us have said, “I sure wish he would grow up!” Or “I wish she would call me?” How many of us simply wish things had turned out differently. This poem hits all of those issues.
The next poem confronts another social issue. One of the lack of self-respect that is so easy to manifest itself in today’s society. How many of us have been “put down,” told that we would amount to nothing. Either by classmates or people who we thought were close to us. How many of us have finally had to figure out that it just isn’t healthy to hang around “negative people?” How many of us have had to break out of those traps or cages to create better lives for ourselves? That’s what this next poem is about. This is one of her more current works, having been written just this year.
I Need To Apologize
I don’t apologize often anymore,
insincere apologies diluting true repentance.
But this time I’m truly sorry
and I owe someone an apology.
I put her last;
I considered everyone’s feelings, even hers,
but her heart fell to the bottom of my priority list.
I should’ve put her first.
I shouldn’t have dismissed her pain as earned
and fought a little harder
to help her heal instead of compounding her pain.
I should’ve been her best friend, not her biggest foe.
My love for her presents as hate sometimes,
the conundrum felt by many who love someone
unable to walk the line.
I should’ve gently given her an escort
instead of pushing her into the crosswalk in rush hour traffic.
I’m sorry I didn’t treat her better.
She deserved more.
She deserved my adoration, my attention, my praise.
She deserved forgiveness and grace and empathy.
She deserved my loudest cheers and the biggest hugs.
She deserved to hear me tell her how proud I was of everything she’s accomplished and how I look forward to seeing her grow.
She deserved the love I gave so freely to others.
If seeking amends is saved for genuine remorse, the copious contrition I feel for her requires a public apology.
She needs to hear that I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I stopped building her up.
I’m sorry I didn’t step in when she started feeling like she was unimportant and unloved.
I’m sorry I added to the voices of negativity instead of infusing positivity into each situation.
I’m sorry I did that for everyone but her.
I’m sorry I didn’t make sure she knew she deserved my best, not my leftovers.
I’m sorry that I didn’t love her the way I should.
She is me.
So many of us struggle with feelings of self-worth these days. We underestimate our value, we doubt our potential, and question what we bring to the table. We let people walk all over us, allow companies to take advantage of us, and accept relationships that actively diminish us. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can decide at any moment to begin trusting in our own opinions of ourselves vs. the opinions of others. External validation is expendable; meaning, we don’t really need it.
If you don’t know your own value, somebody will tell you your value, and it’ll be less than you’re worth. Know your worth. You must find the courage to leave the table if respect is no longer being served. Only you can make the decision for what you believe your worth is and that will determine how you allow other people to treat you. Jeanni discovered the truth to all the above. And she artfully sets out the path to that realization. A good lesson for all of us.
Those are two tough social issues. But Jeanni does have a humorous side. In fact, I think we laughed during most of the interview. Its good to be able to laugh at your past and your mistakes. It keeps you sane. So, I will leave you with one that she submitted to Poetry Soup in a contest. She placed real high. This was written in 2019.
Generational Banana Love
My love affair with bananas
must have started shortly after my birth
because it seems to be a generational thing.
My daughter spit out every Gerber-strained
fruit that was not bananas,
just like Grandma did in the end.
They dribbled down her chin,
but I was not embarrassed.
The only time bananas embarrassed me
was in my high school sex ed class
when Mrs. Wiley showed us things
I was certain my mother didn’t want me to know.
She never would have looked
at a banana the same.
I never looked at Mrs. Wiley the same, that’s for sure.
Bananas go from generation to generation,
except when you use them
and generations just … die.
Jeanni can be found on the internet at different websites:
Jeanni Ritchie – Freelance Journalist
faith unfaded – for without faith it is impossible to please God…
She can also be found on Tik Tok at jeanniritchie.
She has written numerous articles for local publications. Including one called “My Terrific Tree-Climbing Toes that you can find at her Faith Unfaded website. It’s a good read! I wish I had more space to present it here.
Robert Bussey is a local attorney and poet who has resided in CENLA since 1986. He interviews other poets and then writes these articles to help promote poetry. You can reach him at Rlbussey450@icloud.com if you are a poet and would like to be interviewed.
