A Careful Scattering

Each year, for the forty-two Christmases of our married life, my wife, Louise Hassel Burnham, illustrated the poems I wrote to celebrate the festival season of the years’ ending and beginning, the Solstice, Christmas, and New Year. Her illustrations were in a variety of media: line drawings, block prints (both wood and vegetable), collage and paint. Many of the drawings represent views of our house in Newton, Massachusetts, including such details as the front door, a mirror in the hall, the fireplace. Others include the names and places of family and friends woven into trees. Louise’s final card, from 2001, is a gathering up of many earlier cards. While the original intent of these cards was to celebrate a single year, together they sum up our lives over four decades. We discussed their publication before her death, and it was she who chose the title, “A Careful Scattering.” In their publication I want to remember our partnership, and to dedicate this book to her memory with love.