Obituary of Artis Elaine Bernard

Artis Elaine Simonson Bernard of South Portland, Maine, passed away on February 26, 2019 at the age of 84. She was surrounded by her family and by the love she inspired over a lifetime dedicated to the authentic, the against-the-grain, the slow and the wondrous. Born in South Dakota on July 26, 1935 to Herbert and Alice Simonson, she never lost her prairie stoicism, even while enduring the relentless advance of dementia. Her playful sense of humor never left her, nor did the warmth that drew people to her everywhere she went. After graduating from MacMurray College, Artis won a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Germany. Her passion for language and art took many forms, including teaching English as a Second Language and Freshman Composition, but first and foremost she was a poet. Her poems have been published in the Paris Review and elsewhere, and she earned both a Masters in Applied English and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Her poems reflect her close observations of the natural world, inquisitive mind, and empathy for human complexities. She met her husband, Dr. John Bernard, at a writing retreat in Breadloaf, Vermont, and they married in 1961. While he completed his Ph.D. in Minnesota, they started their family, and afterwards settled in St. Louis, Missouri, eventually moving to Houston, Texas. Even while raising four children, she continued to write poetry. In her work and otherwise, she was a champion of the underdog, a resister of the commercial, an appreciator of the overlooked. She looked long and deep at whatever captured her attention; she was radical in her refusal to be rushed. Retirement to Maine, where she and her family were longtime summer residents of Cliff Island, brought many new adventures, including a year spent teaching English in Hungary and volunteer activism for the Maine People’s Alliance. She and her husband led several student trips to Italy. When she found the publishing world frustrating, she created her own small press. Through Inleaf Press, she published innovative works that she selected and edited. She served as president of the Cliff Island Historical Society and collected oral histories from longtime residents of the island. Her legacy is one of persistence; of steadily making her voice heard; of ingenuity and inventiveness; and of human warmth and empathy. She is survived by her husband of fifty-seven years, Professor John Bernard, her brother Richard Simonson, her children Jenny (and husband Scott), Becca (and husband Michael), Yael (and wife Paula) and Ben (and wife Victoria), and grandchildren Julian, Elwen, Oliver, Leo, Sage, and Indigo. Services will be held at First Parish in Portland, Maine, on July 27, 2019 at 11 am. Prairie Walk at Sunset By Artis Bernard From our feet, grasses lit by wind proceed in ways that conceal and disclose. Grasses are gleaning the remaining light and holding in their enormous apron. From some hidden pocket a meadowlark sings, its song a simple loop of embroidery. Hesitant, close at hand, on all sides of us, as if long forgotten, the monody of crickets begins. And darkness begins to gather in the distance to enclose it within our reach. Listen. What is the prairie, never turned back, whispering still about the earth?