Poet Keeps Kin in Her “Sightlines”
Reading Set for Saturday in Alton
By Jill Moon (jill_moon AT thetelegraph dot com)
The Telegraph
April 14, 2006

(Photo by Jim Bowling. Caption: Poet Janet Riehl, center, is doing a poetry reading on the topics of family relations and grieving at the Second Reading book store Saturday. Three are several authors in Riehl’s family. Pictured, from left, are Riehl’s niece Diane Thompson and her two children Amelia McCarthy 9, and Margaret McCarthy, 6, and Riehl’s father, Erwin Thompson. All are holding published books written by family members. Note: In this family portrait we are sitting on the couch in the living room underneath the photos of Carl Roesch—my great-great-grandfather, Mathilda Roesch Riehl (his daughter)—my great-grandmother, and the Riehl home in Colmar, France.)

GODFREY—Generations ago, a patriarch planted a seed on the bluffs above the Great River Road that germinated around the world before psychically taking root there. Native daughter, Janet Grace Riehl, pays tribute to heritage and home, reading
from her debut collection of poems, Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Second Reading Bookshop, 16 E. Broadway, Alton.

Riehl’s literary life began here with her great grandfather, E. A. Riehl, who built the Riehl ancestral home in 1863, at the top of Thompson Lane off Stanka Lane. Riehl’s parents, Erwin and Ruth Thompson, still live on the property where she roamed the 100
acres deemed Evergreen Heights. “The biggest influence on me as a writer was my father,” Riehl said. “He is the greatest example of a working writer who showed me that writing was as necessary and natural as breathing, eating and sleeping.”

Riehl’s newly-released collection features 90 poems divided into five section dedicated to her sister, father, mother, the ancestral home and her own lakeside home in Northern California. Riehl wrote Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary after the death of her sister, Julia Thompson, caused by a car accident August 16, 2004. Her poems examine issues of caretaking, aging, death and bereavement from an accessible humanistic perspective.

Riehl’s previous works of short stories, personal essays, poems and artwork have been published in national literary magazines including the Harvard Review and a recent anthology Stories to Live By: Wisdom to Make the Most of Every Day.

Riehl graduated from Alton High School in 1967. She received a master’s in English from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and co-edited its poetry magazine, Sou’Wester. She lived and worked five years in Africa—Botswana and
Ghana—volunteering first for Peace Corps and later for British World Friends (Quakers).

Riehl supported herself for decades teaching and writing fro business and education. The Kellogg Foundation sponsored Riehl as a Fellow in International Development focusing on Latin American culture. She now lives in a rural area in Lake County in Northern California, where she operates Rocking Triangle Studio and sits on the board of EcoArts. This spring she was named as a finalist for the poet laureate of Lake County.