Mary McDermott Wolfe

poems by

Christine Aiken Wolfe

~72 pages, $14 (+ shipping)

Projected Release Date: April/May 2025

An Advance Sale Discount price of $8 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $13/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. 

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

Christine Aikens Wolfe released a full-length book of poetry, Garlanding Green (Dos Madres Press, 2018). Her poetry appears in Gargoyle, Loyalhanna Review, Nerve Cowboy, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry Magazine, Rune, Sonnetto Poesia and more. She’s anthologized in A Critique of the gods, Phoenix Rising from the Ashes, The Gulf Tower Predicts Rain (in press), Fission of Form, The Potter’s Wheel and Love & Ensuing Madness (on-line). Christine’s fiction has appeared in the anthology The Wild Hunt (Air & Nothingness Press, 2021), in Rune and in Voices from the Attic (Carlow University) Christine is president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society and takes Madwomen in the Attic workshops at Carlow.

In Mary McDermott Wolfe, Poems by Her granddaughter, Christine Aikens Wolfe has fashioned a vividly detailed memory book of poems, many in the voice of the intrepid Mary McDermott Wolfe, an Irish Catholic young woman of privilege who grew up in early 20th Century Johnstown, PA. A highlight is Wolfe’s rendering of her grandmother’s eagerness to marry in a wonderful sonnet, “Waiting.” The chapbook is enhanced by historic and family photographs. Much to be considered and enjoyed. Cheers! ~Joan E. Bauer, author of Fig Season and The Camera Artist

Christine Wolfe’s book about her grandmother is told in three voices: Mary’s son, Dermot; Christine the granddaughter; and Mary McDermott Wolfe. Mary’s part combines a fictional diary and actual letters written to her father. In these, the language of 1901 delights. The first letter begins, “Dear Papa, No disappointment can outweigh the joy, the rapture I experienced in being vouchsafed a visit to Jerusalem the Holy.” Quite a read. ~Jay Carson

Christine Aikens Wolfe’s poetry is tender and astonishing. In Mary McDermott Wolfe, her words aim far beyond the span of one life. She plunges readers into old longings, fears and joys—all in order to generously share her inheritance with us. ~Helen Young Chang

The Birth of Mary McDermott

from a family history written for his children by their father Dermot F. Wolfe

We turn now to the distaff side, where my knowledge is more expansive.
Your grandmother, Mary Helene McDermott, was born on May 26, 1880
the daughter of John McDermott and Julia Cox McDermott in Johnstown.

She was the third child, two older ones died in infancy
cause unknown to me. John McDermott, her father, was born
(almost certainly in the year 1850) in County Roscommon, Ireland

And his mother Bridget McDermott McDermott came to America
with her husband with infant John and six older siblings,
possibly as a result of the potato famine.

I know that John was poor as a child,
and that a brother, Peter, served as a drummer-boy in the Civil War.
Their father – a furnace man and a pioneer employee of Cambria Iron Company
from its 1853 inception – was said to have counseled Bridget his wife
to help their boys get work outside the mills.
John helped at home, went to school, and clerked in his uncle John’s general store.

Next, young John sold insurance / then furniture before partnering
in the grain & feed business with Wertz & Lingenfelter.
Quite successful McDermott, Wertz, and Company lasted 20 years.

Bridget McDermott and both Cox parents
attended John & Julia’s wedding in glorious July, 1878
at St. John Gualbert Catholic Church in downtown Johnstown
settled on Railroad Street near Julia’s parents.

Businessman devoted husband he and Julia
prayed for children Indeed. Two were born and then died.

Then Mary, May 26, 1880
Joy bubbled as their dear girl, baptized Mary Helene, thrived, grew, and blossomed.
A dark-haired fairy-light girl, who, from her first walking days
would dance and sing to herself anywhere in the house.
This last was told to me, Dermot, by my mother
who called it a story told her by her father John McDermott.
I believe he loved her dearly.

Tuberculosis

from a family history written for his children by their father Dermot F. Wolfe

Thus it was that your grandmother lost her mother at the age of five and
was reared by her grandmother whom she called, “Ma Cox.”
Ma Cox’s youngest two, Cora & Kate – three and five years older than Mary
became sisters to her.
Tuberculosis – the word leaked mourning / death / mourning

Ma Cox’ eldest son went away to St. Francis College
1881 – contracted tuberculosis brought it home
though they sat out on the porch in four seasons, hot / cool / cold / cool
their lungs their lungs
In the next six years, ’81 – 87, four of the Cox children, including Mary’s mother, Julia Cox McDermott, died of TB, as did their father.

Without a wife to help him raise his child, John McDermott and his young Mary
relocated to live with Ma Cox, a widow
and her two youngest – Cora and Kate – who survived tuberculosis.
I think of my mother and grandfather, packing traveling up Railroad Street
What could they have been thinking and praying as they left their home?
Would their sorrow be understood? reflected?

from the fictional journal of Mary McDermott circa 1887

Ma Cox and Papa seem so strong, they smile at us watery smiles
but smiles I understand the message, We must go on
though my wet pillow could tell them something else.

I want to grow calm
I truly love living with Aunts Cora & Kate
more like sisters to me I call them Cora & Kate.
Today I’m quiet pondering Ma Cox is at home
while Papa, Cora, Kate, and I go off to work or school.

We gather as a family for dinner, then adjourn to parlor
to pray the rosary. Tonight – the sorrowful mysteries:
tears roll down my face as I repeat the refrain
Now and at the hour of our death, Amen. Now and at the hour of our death…

I gaze at Ma Cox, she’s my model, back straight, lips stretched
around her words. Her staunch face. She shows her suffering,
but leads us on. How will I do this? I’m only a child. Ma Cox
lost her eldest four children including Mama and Papa
and I lost Mama entirely.

The Great Johnstown Flood

as told to Marion Aikens Wolfe (daughter of C. Wolfe)
by her grandfather Dermot

{Mary McDermott turned 8 on May 26, 1889}

May 31,1889 three days after the start of rain
There’s a knock on the door a neighbor bursts in
John McDermott’s in his afternoon bath. “Run, John, the dam
has broken!” John jumps out of the bath, grabs his pants, a shirt and
Mary’s hand. She has come running at the neighbor’s shout.

“Run, Papa. Run for Malsi’s Alley!”
her short legs twinkle along beside her Papa’s
as they run up to the safety on Green Hill
just minutes before
a huge wave
sweeps through Johnstown
forty feet of water looking like the flank of some huge
tyrannosaurus carrying lumber, houses, and debris in its maw.
slapping its tail: brown sludge thick with cars, bodies on mattresses,
even a railroad car.
people gasp this immense beast of destruction roars toward them
The leviathan flattens the city, plugs debris up against the only stone bridge
starting a conflagration atop the bridge. What an end to the flood.
Their home on Railroad Street? Not one stick standing.

May 28, 1889 {3 days before}
a heavy rain started to fall on Johnstown
People prepared in case Johnstown’s rivers:
Stonycreek, Little Conemaugh and Big Conemaugh flooded
a small disaster like this occurred about every five years

The next day, downtown streets are under five feet
of water, rain still coming down. But that year South Fork Dam,
a wealthy Pittsburgh men’s Hunting & Fishing Club
(Henry Clay Frick the largest shareholder), that year
the spillway at the dam’s front broke open. Usually blocked
to retain fish, that spillway kept water bottled in
until the dam burst…