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In her poem “Bone Flute,” the late Los Altos writer Irene Adler reflects on an ancient instrument and the human who crafted it millennia ago.
“Someone learned to make it sing / Thirty thousand years along, it still makes / music of breath in a hollowed bone,” the poem notes.
Though she died in 2023, Irene Adler’s words will live on, thanks in part to the posthumous publication of a collection of her poetry, titled after that poem: “Bone Flute: A Woman Speaks.”
“Even after one is gone, their words, and their music, is still in the world. It’s like she was singing to us through these poems,” Angela Narciso Torres – Irene Adler’s friend, fellow poet and editor of the collection – said of the titular piece. “It gave me goosebumps when we found it.”
“Bone Flute” was released on April 29 of this year, by Paloma Press, a San Mateo and Morgan Hill-based publisher co-founded by former Poet Laureate of San Mateo County Aileen Cassinetto. Paloma Press is the first Southeast Asian press founded on the Peninsula, Cassinetto said, and aims to support a diverse and inclusive literary landscape. Narciso Torres approached her to see if Paloma Press might be a good fit for Irene Adler’s collection and Cassinetto quickly agreed.
“It moved me because the relationships and friendships that sustained Irene Adler’s writing life did not die with her. Here’s her friend still campaigning to have her voice out in the world,” Cassinetto said. “By publishing this book, we recognize the craft and the creative vision that it reflects.”
Irene Adler was a prolific writer.
“I would guess that in the last 10 years of her life she woke up just about every morning with poems in her head and rushed to write them down by computer or even by notepad,” Alan Adler, her husband of 61 years, said. “She tended to write about things that happened to her or people she knew,” including her own difficult childhood with an abusive father, and the unexpected death of a grandchild in 2012.
Alan Adler is the inventor of, among other things, the aerodynamic toys of the Aerobie brand, and the AeroPress coffee device, and the couple’s longtime partnership proved fruitful and supportive.
“I enjoyed a very creative life and I was thrilled that Irene did too. We were cheerleaders for each other, I think,” he said.
Like Narciso Torres, Alan Adler is especially fond of the titular poem in the collection, in part because of his and Irene Adler’s connection with music.
“I made flutes for years and Irene was helpful to me because she had better ears than I do, and she would help me refine the timbre of the flutes,” he recalled.
Her poetry is “very lyrical. She draws a lot of imagery from nature … she was also not just a very good describer, an image maker, but also she was very fluent,” said Narciso Torres. “She did have a very good ear for what made a line sound musical.” A pianist and music lover, her work is “driven by sound almost as much as image,” she added.
Cassinetto, who is also the co-editor of an upcoming companion to the first National Nature Assessment, a report recently gutted by the Trump administration, shares Irene Adler’s love and deep concern for the natural world, naming the poem “Spring At Filoli,” inspired by the local estate, as one of her favorites. Several of Irene Adler’s nature poems, including “Spring at Filoli,” are included in the online gallery “The Nature of Our Times.”
“She used poetry to make sense of the world throughout her life,” Narciso Torres said. “She often reflected on her philosophy of life, and often meditated on death and what that would be like, what we’re here for and what our purpose is; how to live a life meaningfully.”
Narciso Torres recalled Irene Adler as a generous friend who was “endlessly curious about the world and other people.” They met at a workshop through Stanford Continuing Studies, led by poet Nan Cohen (who wrote the foreword to “Bone Flute”). They bonded over their shared interest in poetry, took more classes together and eventually forged a two-decade friendship that included frequent sharing of poems. Narciso Torres went on to become an editor at RHINO Poetry, and was delighted to see Irene Adler’s poem “White Hyacinths” (also included in the book) published in RHINO’s journal in 2017 .
After Irene Adler’s death, Alan Adler reached out to Narciso Torres about the possibility of curating a collection, sending her around 2,000 of his wife’s poems. The prospect of sorting through them “was a daunting task, to say the least,” Narciso Torres said. Irene Adler was in some ways like a mother figure to her, and she grieved her loss deeply.
“Going into the poems was really emotionally challenging for me,” she said, but, with the help of her son Timothy Torres and fellow poets and editors Naoko Fujimoto and Gail Goepfert, she eventually selected the 100 poems included in the book, organized in reverse chronological order and representing the years 1999-2003.
“In the absence of Irene I was responsible to represent her body of work as best I could,” she said. “Obviously I’m not her, but I’ve known her for 23 years so I felt I had a good sense of what she might consider a publishable poem. I kind of knew what she would feel proud of.”
For many years, Adler taught English as a second language (ESL) through Palo Alto Adult School, following a stint teaching high school English.
“She had an encyclopedic knowledge of English language, grammar … the best-read person I’ve ever known,” Alan Adler said. She was also a philanthropist, supporting cancer research, and after her death, Alan Adler endowed a chair in her name at Stanford Medicine. Royalties from “Bone Flute,” Alan Adler noted in a press release, will also go to cancer research at Stanford.
On July 2, Adler’s legacy will be honored at an event at Books Inc. Palo Alto, featuring Narciso Torres along with Cohen, Robin Ekiss, Peter Kline and Cintia Santana, all of whom knew Irene Adler as a poetry student.
As for how the late author herself would feel about the publication of her work, her husband said she’d be thrilled.
“It came out really beautiful, and Angela did a wonderful job with editing it,” Alan Adler said. “I think Irene would love it.”
More information is available at palomapress.org/bone-flute. An event honoring the legacy of Irene Adler will be held on July 2, 7 p.m., at Books Inc. Palo Alto, 855, El Camino Real #74, Palo Alto; booksinc.net.
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