McCartney Times

Olivia Harrison opens “Came the Lightening: Twenty Poems for George” with a Pablo Neruda epigraph. It closes with the lines: “In the end I’ve found you / On the blank page in front of me.”

What Harrison seems to have found in this work, being published two decades after the death of her husband, Beatle George Harrison, is a thoughtful, meditative peace. While some of her poems explore the pain and confusion involved in grieving, many more celebrate her 23-year union with a partner who seems the definition of a soulmate.

In his forward to “Came the Lightening,” film director Martin Scorsese dubs Harrison’s book a work of “poetic autobiography.” Indeed, Harrison includes a poem about both her childhood and her husband’s, recounts the early days of their relationship moving into their Friar Park estate and considers time spent parenting, gardening, visiting with famous friends and being surrounded by music. The poems about coming to terms with being a widow prove just as compelling, looking clear-eyed at loss and building something new on the foundation of what was.

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Source: Olivia Harrison’s ‘Poems for George’ is a moving story-in-verse | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette