Category: Lyric Essentials

Lyric Essentials: Jill McDonough Reads “To His Mistress Going to Bed” by John Donne

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Jill McDonough reads “To His Mistress Going to Bed” by John Donne.

Damn! I felt like I was in high school again when I chuckled at the lines “By this these Angels from an evil sprite, / Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.” I guess I’m forever fourteen. There are so many places to start, but I guess we’ll dive right in—what’s your take on whether or not Donne is a chauvinist? Is it more complicated than that?

Jill: Oh yeah. Both.  Four hundred years later there’s so much we can’t know, but I can’t help feeling like he’s making fun of himself.  It’s so insistent and lawyerly, and there’s no specific woman here, no way to see the beloved.  It’s all about him, his desires and arguments, and she’s just an outfit and pubes.  Which is how we feel when we objectify people; it’s not about them, duh.

Of course I read this anachronistically–I’m alive now, I’m O My America!-n, I laugh at “balls,” which I doubt was meant to be funny. But I think one of the things poetry does, when you’re writing it, is give you permission to be a dick as long as you admit it, sort of apologize for it by making fun of yourself a little bit.

There are a couple ways to look at this poem’s conceit–one is that it’s all just a speech he makes while taking off his clothes in front of a skeptical, fully-dressed woman who’s trying to read a book or something: that’s funny.

Another way is that he’s describing what he’s doing as he’s doing it: she’s mostly undressed and down on the bed and has welcomed his hands “before, behind, between, above, below,” the best jam-packed line of iambic pentameter ever. And then instead of just fucking her he goes off on this tangent about balls and judging books by their covers while she’s like DUDE COME ON.

I love teaching this poem.  I’m teaching a lecture class in the fall to first-years, a new class called “Reading Like a Writer,” and the one thing I know I’m going to do is read this to them the first day, and talk about why “between” is my favorite word in the poem.  Then I’ll make them write short essays all term choosing the most important word in every piece we look at, explaining why it’s the best word.

It’s also a great poem for helping people hear meter, and understand what it can do.

Also you get to say “O my America!”

Chris: Totally! All of this. It’s all so good. I love “My Empirie” too. Part of me wants to think John Donne went around writing his lines of poetry like graffiti in a sort of “dicktation” fashion like Jonah from Summer Heights High. I’m sure he wasn’t, but in my mind it’s a beautiful image.

So, why is “between” your favorite word in this poem?

Jill:  That’s where it all shifts: it’s five words, all iambs, all prepositions, hella Bs, and even with all those constraints it moves so fast. We shift in that tiny space from hands on the front of a body to hands behind the body to hands between somebody’s legs to now she’s horizontal so hands are on top and underneath. It’s this little miracle of meter and economy and sound and narrative and implied sex.  It does so much without being vulgar or explicit, just funny and frank and direct.  “Between,” in a poem that blabs on about sex forever, is where we actually get to some crotch.

Chris: You mentioned the meter and using this poem to teach what it can do for a work. Is the iambic pentameter in this poem one of the qualities that makes it essential to you as a writer? What’s the meter adding to this poem?

Jill: I teach meter to everybody.  They get scared, and I mark the stresses in their names, point out that “MOther FUCKer” is two trochees, “SHUT UP” is usually a spondee, that they are already using meter all the time.  It’s just a way of organizing sound.  (That was a line of iambic pentameter:  it’s JUST/a WAY/of ORG/an IZ/ing SOUND.)

In this poem the rhythm is like time travel–I can read this poem out loud and know that John Donne–JOHN FREAKING DONNE–moved his mouth and breath the same way I’m moving mine.  He’s dead, but he still gets to borrow my body for a minute, to keep saying these same lines in ways, because now it’s filtered through my brain, my body, my America!-n-ness.  Plus it’s long enough that by the time you finish reading it aloud you kind of know what meter is: da DUM/ da DUM/ da DUM/ da DUM/ da DUM.  be FORE/ be HIND/ be TWEEN/ a BOVE/ be LOW.

There’s also tons of substitution, so you can dive in to “O MY/ a MER/ ic A/ MY NEW/ FOUND LAND”–spondee, iamb, iamb, spondee, spondee.  Or show them how they need to quit just trying to get to ten syllables because sometimes five feet is more than that:  “MY KING/dom SAFE/li est WHEN/ with ONE/ MAN MANNED.”  Which makes up for all the time they spent in high school trying to make “shall I/ com PARE/ THEE to/ a SUM/ mer’s DAY?”  all iambs.  What kind of weirdo shouts the TO?
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The winner of a 2014 Lannan Literary Fellowship and three Pushcart prizes, Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and REAPER, forthcoming from Alice James Books. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years.  Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry.  She directs the MFA program at UMass-Boston and 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center online.

Christopher Petruccelli is an associate poetry editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and has successfully survived his first winter in Fairbanks, Alaska. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Cider Press Review, Nashville Review, Still: The Journal, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Action at a Distance, is available from UIndy’s Etchings Press. In his free time, Chris enjoys smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey with older women.

Lyric Essentials: Sarah Ann Winn reads “A Display of Mackerel” by Mark Doty

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Sarah Ann Winn reads “A Display of Mackerel” by Mark Doty.

Sarah, I’m having trouble saying this any other way so I’ll just say it plain: Mark Doty’s poetry is damn good. Do you remember your first Doty experience? What was it like for you to discover his work?

Sarah: My first Doty experience was during an Elizabeth Bishop class back in grad school. My mentor, Jennifer Atkinson, had mentioned that I “might like” him, and I sobbed my way through School of the Arts that night. It felt so close to the bone to me. I had recently lost my grandfather, who raised me, and who adopted me when I was 13, so those poems were painful to read at times, but they went bravely and eloquently down a road I knew I would be traveling. It was comforting in a time that I was feeling very alone to be reminded that grief can be expressed through beauty. I think that’s the job of poetry, and I was in the presence of a master.

Chris: Bishop is one of my favorite poets. I’m not sure how she does it, but all of her work feels fortified. That might be a weird word for it, but I think it’s the right one. I can sense that in Doty’s poetry as well. What do you think he’s expressing in “A Display of Mackerel?”

Sarah: I think that “A Display of Mackerel” is almost the outcome of the School of the Arts philosophy—the entire book seems to be posing the question of “Considering how brief our time on this planet is, what were we put on this earth to do with all of our might?” Not just as poets, but as people. The conclusion here seems to be Notice and Participate. I think what “A Display of Mackerel” points towards is that our job is to be part of the world, reflecting it, and doing our best to shine as a participant. Enter into your community seems like a big message in this poem.

Chris: You mentioned it’s the beautiful expressions of grief in School of the Arts that make Doty a master of poetry. What are the moments in “A Display of Mackerel” that incite those same notions?

Sarah: It’s hard to read a Mark Doty poem and not encounter an idea of how fleeting life is. He transcends the immediate reality quickly, conflating the fish with a Tiffany window, to the art made by a jeweler, to ideas of what beauty is for, which then takes us to what WE are for as human beings. (Fish markets are not places where I’d expect to encounter a discussion of mortality and life’s purpose, but clearly, any outing with Mark Doty can turn metaphysical.) As with his poems about grief, the poem is a meaningful exploration of how to reframe the idea of the lonely and suffering artist into something productive and beautiful.

Chris: “A Display of Mackerel” covers an incredible amount of ground. How is it that this poem handles all this complexity—the metaphysical, the quick transcendence, commentary on community/human interaction—and doesn’t lose the reader?

Sarah: I think that one of Doty’s strengths is showing how everything is part of everything else. We move seamlessly between the ideas of our temporary passage through this world and that of the mackerels’. It’s a natural conclusion to arrive philosophically where he does if we align ourselves with the fish—who doesn’t want to be a “flashing participant?”

Chris: I am, unfortunately, not very well versed in Doty’s poetry. I think I’ve only read parts of Fire to Fire and some of his other writing here and there. Does all of Doty’s poetry wrangle with the metaphysical?

Sarah: I think his grappling with the metaphysical is what makes him a great poet. He may not do it in every poem, but there is always an underlying idea that our time on earth is brief. Not every poem arrives at the same conclusion, of course, but there’s a definite urgency to his poems, which might be part of his appeal to me.

Chris: I know you recently saw Mark Doty and Aimee Nezhukumatathil give a reading. Would you like to gush and make all our readers jealous?

Sarah: Gush is the right word! I live close enough to DC that I can take advantage of some of the wonderful opportunities the city offers. The event was at the Philips Gallery, and hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Theater.  They both read poems inspired by the gallery’s special exhibit, Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks. (Highlights of which included poems inspired by paintings by Klimt, Van Gogh, Magritte, etc.) I’m fascinated by ekphrastic writing, and love art, so this evening felt like all of my favorite things packed into a two-hour event.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s work is so funny and personal. It distills huge ideas in moments, which makes her an excellent counterpart to Mark Doty, since his poems of the night seemed to focus on smaller details and magnify them into a universal truth. I stood in line twice waiting for them sign my books, like the fan-girl that I am, and I was the next to last person in line in Mark Doty’s signing line, as the night drew to a close. He was as kind and patient with me as if I had been the first person in line, showing no signs of being eager to be done with the night. I’m so grateful, because (of course) I was as impatient as anyone else to tell him what his work meant to me (and share a dog story.) It was a really amazing night. How often do you get to meet your poet heroes?
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Sarah Ann Winn’s poems, prose, and hybrid works have appeared or are upcoming in Five Points, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Massachusetts Review, Passages North, and Quarterly West, among others. Her chapbooks include Field Guide to Alma Avenue and Frew Drive (forthcoming Essay Press, 2016), Haunting the Last House on Holland Island (forthcoming Porkbelly Press, May 2016) and Portage (Sundress Publications, 2015). Visit her at http://bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling.

Christopher Petruccelli is an associate poetry editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and has successfully survived his first winter in Fairbanks, Alaska. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Cider Press Review, Nashville Review, Still: The Journal, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Action at a Distance, is available from UIndy’s Etchings Press. In his free time, Chris enjoys smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey with older women.

Lyric Essentials: Daniel Crocker Reads “How to Watch Your Brother Die” by Michael Lassell

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Daniel Crocker reads “How to Watch Your Brother Die” by Michael Lassel.

Daniel, you recorded reading this poem a few years ago back in 2013 with the caption, “One of the best poems ever written.” I reckon it’s not lost its impact. What was it like to discover this poem? Do you remember when you first came across “How to Watch Your Brother Die?”

Daniel:  I can’t remember exactly where I read it. I think I was taking an independent study in LGBT literature when I was introduced to it. Either way, I remember it hit me hard the first time I read it. Although I think I’m a pretty emotional person, I’m not always a very emotive person. I’m not ashamed at all to say I cried the first time I read this and several times reading it since.

I remember those times in the ’80s and even the ’90s. There was so much fear and misinformation. There was Reagan. Of course, homophobia was wide spread at the time. It’s hard to believe now that a disease killing so many people would be politicized and framed as some sort of moral failure, but that’s just how it was then. This poem took all of that political discourse and made it personal in a beautiful, powerful and painful way. It’s hard to ignore a poem that has that much power in it.

Chris:  Lassell’s poem certainly isn’t holding any punches. It’s a powerful piece dealing with a wide range of emotions. What do you think is key to the poem’s ability to handle so much fear, hate, loss and confusion and not become overwrought?

Daniel: I think for a poem like that, the key is to just tell it like it is. That is, your audience is going to know if you’re just trying to manipulate them emotionally. If you got something, and you just tell it plain, then the impact is like a comet. It just hits you. It’s a hard writing habit to learn. It took me years. I can’t speculate how Lassell did it, but I will anyway. Probably, he just had this important thing to say and he just said it without over thinking it or trying to make it “poetry.” Instead, he wrote something right to the point and powerful.

Chris: How does “How to Watch Your Brother Die” compare to Lassell’s other poetry? Is all of his work charged with identity politics?

Daniel: It’s not. He writes in a lot of different genres and in a lot of different ways. To me, somehow, that makes this poem even more special. It’s in my top five poems of all time, and that’s saying something. I’ve read a lot of poems.

Chris: Do you think more poets and writers would benefit from following that advice—telling it plain? Or does it work best in a specific time, place, and medium?

Daniel: For the most part, I like the ones that tell it plain. That said, many of my favorite poems are lyrical and many of my favorite poets write lyrical poems–and those can be just as powerful and moving. In general, the more brutal the subject matter, the more power “plain” language can have. I put plain in quotes there because while it’s certainly easy to follow, there are also some very beautiful lines in “How to Watch Your Brother Die.” I just don’t want to confuse accessible language with boring language as those are two different things.

Poetry is so complex and there’s such a variety, so many different types right now, that it’s easy to get excited about (even though every year or so we all hear that poetry is dead–it’s not). I don’t want to be one of those writers who advocate a certain style as being better than others because it really just depends on what the poet can do with whatever style they write in.

Chris: You discussed the emotional weight of “How to Watch Your Brother Die” the effectiveness of telling it like it is. What other mechanisms are at work in Lassell’s poem that qualifies it as “essential?”

Daniel: It’s a part of history. It was written early on, at the start of the AIDS epidemic. It’s kind of hard to imagine what that time was like if you aren’t  old enough to remember it. There was so much confusion and fear. Parents were keeping their kids home from school because they didn’t know if you could catch it from a water fountain or what. There was so much misinformation. The sex talk I got as a kid, was basically my Dad handing me some pamphlets on AIDS and telling me to read them. There are several good documentaries on this, and I would suggest How to Survive a Plague as a good place to start.

Back to the poem itself–it does so many thing so brilliantly. First, writing in second person forces the reader into empathy. Writing it from the point of view of the straight brother also made it easier to relate to for most people. Again, there was so much fear and homophobia at this time. Rather than angrily rail against it (though there is certainly anger in the poem), Lassell invited people into a world they may have known very little about. He humanized the epidemic for a lot of people who wouldn’t or couldn’t (for political, religious, just plain homophobic reasons) humanize it for themselves. So not only is it a great poem as far as poems go, but it’s also an important poem–which, as far as I’m concerned, makes it immortal.

Chris: Thank you for sharing and reading such a powerful poem. I keep thinking about the scar and all that it represents–rage, both physical and emotional pain, and, ultimately, it becomes a symbol of forgiveness and love for Lassell’s brother. What’s your favorite line or image? Maybe picking one is tough—go for two.

Daniel:  Mine has to be the scar as well and for all of the reasons you said. I also love this, “Think that/ you haven’t been kissed by a man since/ your father died. Think,/  “This is no moment not to be strong.” From a technical perspective, I love those bold line breaks. More than that, I like what it says about traditional masculinity. Those attitudes are changing though, and that’s a good thing.

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Daniel Crocker is the author of three collections of poetry, a novel, and a short story collection. His recent chapbook, The One Where I Ruin Your Childhood is available to download for free at the Sundress Publications site.

Christopher Petruccelli is an associate poetry editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and is currently trying to survive his first winter in Fairbanks, Alaska. His poetry has appeared in Connotation Press, Still: The Journal, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Action at a Distance, is available from UIndy’s Etchings Press. In his free time, Chris enjoys smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey with older women.

Lyric Essentials: Lydia Havens Reads “The Story” by Hieu Minh Nguyen

Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Lydia Havens reads “The Story” by Hieu Minh Nguyen.

Before we get into the great poem you recorded for us, what can you tell us about Hieu Minh Nguyen? And how did you first come across his work?

Lydia Havens: What I can tell you about Hieu Minh Nguyen is that a lot of his work has made me feel so much less alone. Before I read This Way to the Sugar, I was 16 and starting to remember pieces of a sexual trauma I didn’t know how to piece together. Later that year, I saw him perform at the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam. He actually performed the poem I chose to record for you, and I remember just crying in the audience and thinking, Wow, he gets it. Later, he made it to the finals stage, and he performed a poem called “Haunt Me”, which is about the repression of traumatic memories, and again, I was left bawling and feeling like someone had put it all into words. That’s when I truly fell in love with poetry, I think. That’s when I gained my voice as a poet.

To answer your second question, I think I stumbled upon his work on Button Poetry, right before his book was published. The video was called “It Was the Winter…”, and I remember just being mesmerized by it.

Sundress: This is a heavy poem and I think it does some important work. What do you think makes “The Story” so effective?

Lydia Havens: “The Story” is real. That’s pretty much the only word I can use to describe it. There are no frills, no sugar in this poem, as it should be with a poem about childhood sexual violence. I know when I first started writing about my own trauma I was so scared to just flat out say, I was lured into a child pornography ring. My parents didn’t even know for years. So when I heard Hieu say at iWPS, I never told my mother I was molested, that was what got me to take a step back and just exhale, because like I said for the first question, that was the moment when I realized somebody gets it. I think, as poets and as readers, we all have that poem that hits home on an huge level. Well, this is that poem for me, and I’m sure it’s many other CSA survivors’ poem. But even if you’re not a survivor, even if you just realize that this should not happen to anybody, it’s effective because you can realize that these “stories” follow us everywhere. To school, to work, to the grocery store, to our favorite restaurants, and all the way back home. That’s when people, the lucky ones who have never experienced this, stop and think about what they can do.

Sundress: I agree, this poem acts as a big stop sign to get people to really listen to a real problem in our society. For me, I found the second listen extremely chilling. “We all know this story,” had a more ominous current knowing now what was coming. Because, although this is true, we do all know this story, it wasn’t the story I was picturing. Nguyen played on those expectations. Listening a second time, I realized how quickly I, too, was willing to allow the narrative to end at being just a ‘phase’ or a family joke; how unaware we are sometimes of the untold stories.

How does “The Story” compare to the rest of This Way to the Sugar?

Lydia Havens: This Way to the Sugar is one of my favorite books in general. “The Story” is one of many poems in the book about childhood sexual abuse. There’s a series of poems, which are all titled “Teacher’s Pet”, which talks more in depth about his own trauma. The book also talks about racism, homophobia, and a few other topics which for some reason I’m having a hard time describing. The final poem of the book is called “Nostophobia”, which leaves me sobbing every time. It’s about how he’s not afraid of losing his mother, but rather “of no longer being a son // to have to attend a funeral // without her”. Something about that strikes every chord inside me with something incredibly heavy. It just leaves me grief-stricken.

Sundress: What about Nyugen’s treatment of language do you think makes his writing such a powerful vehicle to tell these stories?

Lydia Havens: I’ve heard lots of writers (even poets!) call metaphors “frills” or “sugarcoats”, and I just don’t agree with that at all (most of the time). Metaphors can not only enhance a poem, but also become a fluid part of it. Nguyen does this so easily. There’s a line from another one of his poems, “I’m the one who buried everything that had a face” (from “Dear Friend (for JD)”, which is in This Way to the Sugar). It is such a gut-punch of an ending for the poem, but it’s also (for lack of a much better word) effortless. I really admire how whenever I read one of his poems, I think to myself, That’s a REALLY good way to put that! Why didn’t I think of that?

Sundress: Please share your favorite Nguyen performance with us.

Lydia Havens: My favorite is actually another I’ve seen live, and is also about childhood sexual abuse. It’s called “Haunt Me”. This is from the Individual World Poetry Slam Finals in 2014 (I’m one of those cheering voices at the end):

Sundress: For those who enjoy Nguyen, which other spoken word poets would you recommend?

Lydia Havens: Oh gosh, so many! Danez Smith, Ariana Brown, Sara Brickman, Rhiannon McGavin, Tonya Ingram, and Olivia Gatwood. They’re all amazing.

Lydia HavensLydia Havens is a 17-year-old poet and performer from Tucson, AZ. Their work has previously been published in Words Dance, Persephone’s Daughters, The Fem, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and The Harpoon Review, among other places. They are the 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slam Youth Champion, and the author of the forthcoming chapbook GIRLS INVENT GODS. Lydia currently works for Wicked Banshee Press. They have been winging their eyeliner for over two years now, and still can’t get it even. You can find out more about them at their website, www.lydiahavens.com.

Lyric Essentials: Lauren Camp Reads “Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert

Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Lauren Camp reads “Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert.

What was your first ‘Jack Gilbert’ experience? And can you tell us a little about him?

Lauren Camp: I remember reading a Jack Gilbert poem, “By Small and Small: Midnight to 4 A.M.,” in The New Yorker more than a decade ago. I doubt that was my first experience of him, but it was the most potent. I was on an elliptical machine at the gym and nearly fell off, it was that good. He wrote about love so well, so potently. That poem, all heartbreaking nine lines about his wife Michiko, ended up in the book Refusing Heaven.

After a late start in writing and publishing poetry, Jack Gilbert won a lot of acclaim quickly, nabbing a Yale Younger Poets Prize, and within two years of that, a Guggenheim Fellowship. He wasn’t up for such fame and attention, though, and pulled back from the public eye. He lived in Europe for a time. He loved deeply, and from all I’ve read of him, he lived each day and experience fully. He wrote of the women he loved and the relationships with great honesty. Ultimately, he only published a handful of collections.

Sundress: What most struck you about this particular Gilbert poem?

Lauren Camp: “Failing and Flying” wows me. I am drawn in from its start in ancient Greek mythology, which I’ve loved since I was a girl. In that first line, it offers a position of ability, success rather than failure. Gilbert twists from legend to human in the second line…and to many humans. “The marriage fails,” he writes, and that marriage is any number of marriages we know of or have lived within. “Love comes to an end.” We know this too. This is human.

I love those throwaway words “like” and “that” — as in “Like being there by that summer ocean…” — which we writers might otherwise remove. Used in this way, those words become strong. They allow Gilbert to jump to the middle; they unbalance us just enough.

The poem moves from grand and ancient to familiar and communal to individual. After this narrowing, the poet returns again to a human perspective on the legend of Icarus: “…not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end…” That statement is attentive, generous, reasonable. It allows for all our failures.

Sundress: The ending to me seems both deeply personal and to express a particular truth—that Icarus is the fall each of us risks when in love, and that the flight should be celebrated even if it ends in heartache. Or, less eloquently, it is better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all. What a cliché. Icharus, even, is a cliché. And yet it works.

Lauren Camp: I agree that the ending could well express a particular and important truth. I think this is especially so for Gilbert. Perhaps, too, “everyone” in line one is mostly him. How many times did he live that last line in his relationships? Of course that line, and all it holds, could be accurate for all of us, but poets seem to most fully take on subjects they know intimately.

Sundress: In fact, most of the lines and language is simple and straight-forward. I think my favorite lines is “the gentleness in her/like antelope standing in the dawn mist,” itself with a ‘throwaway word’. Perhaps the magic of Gilbert’s poem is in how he makes much out of the ordinary.

If you had to pick one line, which would you say is most inspiring?

Lauren Camp: I’ve been torn about which line is most inspiring, and finally have come around to the first. The arrangement of it wows me. It is not an easy entrance. Who is the everyone? Is he talking to me? Is there an implied judgment of us? (Yes, of course.) And that “also” … so powerful. It means there is something else he did, something we know or will be led to know. Six words and we’re hooked.

Sundress: It’s a great hook. Gilbert actually had me at the title of the poem. “Failing and Flying” is such a strong title, especially as the poem opens up and you realize it’s about a failed relationship. The words are completely reversed from what I’d expect of an Icarus poem, or a poem about divorce. In the first part of the poem, he seems to be playing with the expectations of several off-hand comments that are often said when a marriage fails, before beginning to rewrite his narrative; “but anything worth doing is worth doing badly”—I think that’s my favorite part, where he begins to celebrate the journey of love.

There’s an amazing amount to unpack from this poem, so maybe that was unfair, asking just for one line. Go ahead an pick a second one.

Lauren Camp: I don’t think I can pick more favorites. To my mind, the poem has 25 critical lines. Take any one out, and the poem lacks a center and confirmation of its purpose.

Gilbert is deft in bringing ancient Greece and contemporary society together in this poem. He reminds us that what happens now has occurred before. Jack Gilbert believed in delving into life, and this poem shows that. Does the sorrow of failing sting? Not as much as it would have if Icarus (or the narrator) hadn’t also soared. Icarus (and the narrator) saw the heaven of the experience before they smashed to the ground.

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the adverb “just.” The editor in me wants to take it out of my work, but Gilbert proves, as I’ve been re-discovering, that sometimes seemingly inconsequential words hold power. “I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, / but just coming to the end of his triumph.” Including that adverb softens the fall. In this instance, “just” means “simply, only, no more than.” It is not full failure, but the result of taking the journey.

Sundress: How has Gilbert’s work influenced you as a writer?

Lauren Camp: Gilbert’s language seems pure and direct. Look at this line: “Like the people who / came back from Provence (when it was Provence) / and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.” It expresses a) a certain sort of privilege, b) a statement on a changing society and c) an awareness of how judgmental people are, or maybe better put, how little people truly experience what’s around them.

Gilbert is smart and clear. The reader doesn’t have to disassemble the meaning. He gives it to us, poem after poem, in easy morsels. He’s put each bite in front of us. By delivering his poems with such brevity and clarity, we have no choice but to taste it all, exactly. We swallow.

photo credit: Anna Yarrow
photo credit: Anna Yarrow

Lauren Camp is the author of two collections. Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, won the Dorset Prize and will be published by Tupelo Press in 2016. Her poems appear in Poetry International, Slice, The Seattle Review, World Literature Today, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Other literary honors include the National Federation of Press Women Poetry Prize, the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize, an Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, and a Black Earth Institute Fellowship. She produces and hosts “Audio Saucepan”—a global music program interwoven with contemporary poetry—on Santa Fe Public Radio. Find her at LaurenCamp.com.

Lyric Essentials: Kristin LaTour reads “Teaching Experience” by Marge Piercy

Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Kristin LaTour, whose full-length collection What Keeps Us Alive was released from Sundress this fall, reads “Teaching Experience” by Marge Piercy.

Kristin, before we dive into “Teaching Experience,” can you tell us a little about Marge Piercy? Where did you first come across her work?

Kristin LaTour: I first read a couple of Marge Piercy’s novels in a contemporary lit class in college in the early 1990s. Then I found her poetry when I was browsing a bookstore. I loved it. It was lyrical free-verse, something I hadn’t encountered in much of my reading or education up to that point. It spoke to me, my values of feminism, religion (even though we are not of the same religion) and finding meaning in daily life. I went to the local bookstore and bought every book of hers that was out at the time, and then every book after that.

Sundress: Are religion and feminism prominent themes in Piercy’s work? And, I’m assuming she taught at some point, is education also a reoccurring theme?

Kristin LaTour: Religion and feminism are pervasive in Piercy’s work. Her Judaism and concerns for women also come into her novels, although the feminism more so. She also writes about the environment, science and the intersection of politics with all of these. Her writing reminds me of Margaret Atwood, another feminist/environmentalist/humanist writer.

Education does come up now and again in her poems. It is usually brutally honest. She has a poem about how awful it is to go to colleges to give readings and stay in dismal dorms and have few people attend her readings. I can’t recall the title of that poem. She has another about the pointlessness of MFA programs, and that was long before the explosion of low-res programs. It’s titled “For the Young Who Want To” and includes the line: “The real writer is the one who really writes.” I thought a lot about that poem before applying to an MFA program, and it made me remember that a degree wasn’t going to turn me into a poet, and really, I’d have to be aware to stay true to my own voice and not become just like my mentors there. Piercy isn’t a formal academic, but she has lectured and given workshops at hundreds of colleges and conferences. She teaches in the best way, without all the trappings of a bureaucracy. I envy that.

Sundress: Being able to teach without the trappings of bureaucracy is certainly a privilege, or at the very least, extremely lucky. How do you feel about “Teaching Experience” as an educator?

Kristin LaTour: From the teacher side of me, especially when I teach developmental writing classes, the first part of this poem makes so much sense. The students don’t want to be there. I do everything I can to engage them, but usually all is for naught with the majority. And the second half, yes, that too makes me nod my head. When I have a student one-on-one we get more done, and the energy levels off in both directions. I can relax, and the student opens up. Also, teaching something like roasting a goose is much more fun than teaching writing, at least the fundamentals. Plus, we get to eat the goose. Commas, not so much.

From the student side of me, I get it too. Sometimes the things we are supposed to learn aren’t exciting. We go in with bad attitudes and shut down our receptors. I listen better in small groups than in large ones, like classrooms. Being a student who taken many poetry classes and workshops, there’s also the point that you can’t write poems from nothing. One has to have lived life to get all the nuances of it. We can’t expect high schoolers to write the same poems as people in their 50s. Both can be great poets, but they are different based on their experiences.

From me as a fan of Marge Piercy, I want to shake the students who wouldn’t give her every ounce of their attention. And I want to go on a nature hike with her. I also know I have students who have loved taking class with me and would say the same thing to students who get bored in my classes. “Pay attention! Open up!” And those few who gotten to know me outside of class know that teaching goes on outside of my classroom. So does laughter. And sometimes tears. Hopefully for good reason.

Sundress: I remember helping out in secondary classrooms during my undergrad, it made me laugh to hear her list her students, especially the one“pricing my clothing piece by piece”—I’ve met that student, the one staring intently at you but obviously not listening to a word you’re saying. And yet, the poem overall, is moving and inspirational; while listening to this, I picture this speech being given to poetry grad students. Stylistically, how does “Teaching Experience” compare to Piercy’s other work?

Kristin LaTour: This poem is much like her other poems as far as style and form go. Like I said, her work showed me how free verse narrative poems could work.

I like how this poem starts out with a command a metaphor. This is what teachers are told to do, and how a lot of teachers feel, at least once in a while. After the first two stanzas of metaphor and imagery, the poem gets more narrative, but by the third stanza, I trust that this is a poem, not just a story. I also like the line breaks in the 6th stanza. “I could show you how,” sets up a little mystery, makes me curious to know what she can teach me. The break that ends with “bones” is creepy. Then the last image brings in an element of environmentalism, another passion of mine as well.

The last three lines inspire me as a poet. Since Piercy’s poems were my first big inspiration for writing, having her teach me about poetry. And there’s the irony, that she can be in a classroom and not get through to students, face-to-face, but little me in Ashland, Wisconsin, is learning from her.

Sundress: If you could tell her students to read Piercy, to take that time to sit and read and learn from her, other than this poem, which ones would you recommend?

Kristin LaTour: I’m going to stick to Piercy’s older work since we’ve been focusing on that. In her 1992 book, Mars and Her Children, I’d like to look at “Softly During the Night” for a lesson on the environment. The poem is a simple one about an overnight rain that gives way to a cloudless morning, but the last two lines strike me. The leaves on roadside bushes hold drops of water that “bear witness to what came and left/ furtive as if it took instead of giving.” Our relationship with the natural world is complex. We take from it, and it gives to us, but there’s something more here. There’s a symbiosis that we don’t always understand. And Piercy leaves us wondering with her just what it takes from us.

Going back even further to her 1977 book The Moon is Always Female, which was the second of her books I read, there are two poems I think teach lessons. For a protest poem with some lessons on grassroots action, I like “The Low Road.” The poem starts with how “they” can take a person and torture her, and how there’s nothing the solitary person can do to stop “them.” But the rest of the poem grows to a couple fighting their way out of a mob, three people forming a “wedge,” a “dozen make a demonstration,” and finally ten million can make a nation. Together, as a group, we can make a lot of progress in the world.

The last poem is “For Strong Women.” Obviously this is a feminist poem, but it’s message is rousing and moving. The first five stanzas start with the phrase “A strong woman” and then develops what she does. She works, takes abuse and keeps going, doesn’t let others tell her she can’t accomplish a task. She deals with physical pain. The last stanza starts with the idea that a strong woman is comforted by those who love her for her strength and her weakness. The last three lines are a raising of fists and a kick to the chest at the same time. “Strong is what we make/ each other. Until we are strong together,/ a strong woman is strongly afraid.” I don’t know if Piercy meant the “we” to be just women, or both women and men. I like to think of it as both. Pierce was writing in the time when Roe vs Wade was new, and here, almost 40 years later, we are dealing with women’s health clinics closing, being attacked by men with guns, rape culture, and a continuing struggle for equality in many aspects of society. We all need to learn to come together and be strong for women and other marginalized groups.

Sundress: How do Piercy’s novels compare to her poetry? Which novel would you first recommend to those who like her poetry?

Kristin LaTour: Piercy’s novels are also very feminist, environmentalist, and she also varies from historical fiction to sci-fi/speculative fiction. The first novel I read was Braided Lives. While I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s when abortions were legal, I felt deeply moved by her writing about young women’s sexual lives and the freedom and danger that came with having relationships with men. I had never read anything so explicit and honest about young women’s sexual lives and it resonated with me like someone had turned on a light in a dark room. I loved He, She, and It a sci-fi novel that blends feminism, the pros and cons of artificial intelligence and religion. She’s never a one or two-dimensional writer. Everything comes to a full life. While I haven’t read either of the novels in years, I can bring the characters and settings up in mind easily.

Comparing the two based more on content isn’t as easy. Her imagery in both is vivid. Her wit and opinions come through in both. She’s honest, not holding anything back. I really admire that quality. I hope in my own poems I do the same. I can’t even say what novels I’d recommend based on her poetry. All of them, really. If you are a fiction reader and want to get into her poetry, I’d start with Mars and Her Children. It’s a good overall starting point. If someone wants to explore a more linear set of poems, Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing moves through the seasons, but also has a foot in Judaism, the image in the title coming from the story of Ezekiel. Her newest book, Made in Detroit, touches on much of Piercy’s life, and readers will find a lot there to enjoy, from friendships between women to gardens to cats. Well, you’ll find cats in all her books of poetry. Lots of cats.

Kristin-LaTour-polka-dot-author-photo-255x300Kristin LaTour’s first full-length collection, What Will Keep Us Alive, is available from Sundress Publications. Her most recent chapbook is Agoraphobia, from Dancing Girl Press (2013). Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Fifth Wednesday, Cider Press Review, Escape into Life, and Massachusetts Review and in the anthology Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century. She teaches at Joliet Jr. College and lives in Aurora, IL with her writer husband. Readers can find more information at KristinLaTour.com.

Lyric Essentials: Kate Garrett Reads Excerpts from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Truman Capote

Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Kate Garrett reads excerpts from the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote.

This is the first book-turned-movie someone has recorded for us, and a delightful pick at that. (I have reoccurring nightmares of someone submitting a recording of 50 Shades of Grey or Twilight.) How true to the book is the movie?

Kate Garrett: ​50 Shades or Twilight? Ha! No thank you, I’d share your nightmares… but as for Breakfast at Tiffany’s: the book and the movie are different pieces of art, in all the important aspects, anyway. I read the book well before I’d seen the film, and felt so disappointed by the Hollywood ending, especially since it’s a classic movie and everyone speaks highly of it. And I do love it now; it took years. But they took a beautiful piece of art about alienation and anxiety (or angst, but we’ll get to that later), and made it into a decent romcom. But – if I look at literary Breakfast at Tiffany’s and cinematic Breakfast at Tiffany’s separately, then I can appreciate both. I can also appreciate what the film did for women, because Holly is a strong, complex character for the time, even on film. Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard have, over time, become my favourite leading film couple, but only since I convinced myself they are not the same Holly and narrator (Paul Varjack is not named in the novella, though Holly calls him “Fred” from time to time, after her brother) as the ones in the book. The Holly in the book is a sex worker (the film shows this, but it’s more ambiguous) as well as a society girl, and the narrator is a gay male writer who has inexplicably fallen in love with her. The film does interesting things, like making Paul Varjack a sex worker as well, to an older rich woman, but it’s all a bit watered down for my liking. And that ending… changes everything.

Sundress: You’ve peaked my interest about the original ending, but we won’t spoil that. The romcom romance is such an iconic pairing. What is the dynamic like between “Fred” the gay male writer and Holly the sex worker as compared to Paul and Holly? What image should we have of these characters leading up to the first audio you recorded of the novella?

Kate Garrett: There is less attachment than in the romcom setting. “Fred” does show concern about Holly, but he doesn’t want to save her. She’s a fascination – there’s the impression that he would like her to be happy, and be more cautious, maybe, because she screws up a lot and gets into situations she shouldn’t, but she’s also entertaining and simply fascinating for him. And Holly sees him as a comfort; sometimes around “Fred” her mask will slip, but she’s always quick to try and pull it back on again. They are friends, but he’s infatuated with her on an emotional or metaphysical level, not necessarily a physical one. He thinks she’s intriguing. It’s as much curiosity as it is love. But it’s an addictive curiosity. I mean, if she wasn’t important to him, why would he be telling us all about her?

Sundress: When you sent this in, you titled this excerpt, “Buy Some Furniture and Give the Cat a Name” which I found really interesting. Listening, I would have titled it “The Mean Reds”—perhaps because the scene was so iconic for me—but instead of titling it after Holly’s problem, angst, you titled it after Holly’s what if. Who is Holly Golightly to you?

Kate Garrett: ​Holly Golightly is someone I’ve identified with at various points in my life, but she’s so much more than that. And we’re talking literary Holly, not cinematic Holly. Holly Golightly is possibility and “what if”s. So I focused on the furniture and the cat having a name because she is always chasing that, as so many people do. But particularly at the time of writing, Capote was bucking against the idea that everyone finds it easy to buy furniture and give the cat a name. Of course it isn’t easy, but it’s “normal” to assume that’s how human beings find fulfilment in our society. And maybe Holly won’t find it there, maybe she’ll find it somewhere else. Any of us could find it somewhere else, I mean seriously, what is furniture? Holly just feels like potential. For all of her moments of hopelessness, she feels like a promise. She represents that to the narrator, and to Mr. Bell the bartender, even to Doc Golightly, to most of the characters in the book – apart from the ones who she actually feels will bring her that furniture-fulfilment, that Tiffany’s life, those are the ones who let her down – but everyone who falls in unrequited love with Holly does so because she reminds them to keep looking, that there is more. She unsettles them, but they love her. She breezes in, and breezes back out again. But she has a heavy heart under all that lightness. That’s the mean reds, the angst. And when I was younger, that mean reds description would have been all I talked about today – it described anxiety, which I’ve suffered severely with since I was a very small child, in such a way that made me feel comforted. And literary Holly has all this awful trauma, and I found that comforting too, because so did I. But now I question the furniture and the cat, and what that means, all the time. I used to run around looking for it like Holly – geographically, from person to person, to drink, to whatever. But is it possible to even get to that place? Maybe. I still don’t know. Maybe we get the mean reds because we’re chasing something flimsy. But in my life, that’s where the poetry comes from – I still get my own mean reds and if I never name my metaphorical cat (my actual cat does have a name, I just don’t think she cares) and never have breakfast at Tiffany’s, what I do get is the writing that comes out of the push and pull. Good things come out of it.

Sundress: This second clip, “Never Love a Wild Thing,” also mentions, in passing, that that iconic euphemism for angst. It’s been years since I’ve seen the film, but I can only really remember ‘the mean reds’ making one, spectacular appearance: the one you recorded above. How often does Holly talk about her mental health, her angst, her inability to settle down? Capote’s “Golightly” seems less light—although surly as flitty—than the film. Is this a valid take-away?

Kate Garrett: She is less light than the Holly in the film, but she still covers up her depth with a substantial layer of bullshit. (Am I allowed to say bullshit?) She talks and talks at length, to everyone, about unimportant things, she claims one aspiration is to marry rich and have children, and we know she doesn’t really want that – we know what she wants is a place like Tiffany’s, but isn’t sure where she’ll find it. One of the minor, passing characters calls her a phony, but he says she knows she’s a phony. This is true. She does. I don’t think we are supposed to ever believe she’s just this lighthearted pixie. We get a glimpse of what she’s been through, and of her angst, trauma, and sadness, but it’s very rarely put into words. But we see what the narrator sees, and therefore why he cares about her so much. Her rants and rambles and knowing tones when she speaks about socialites and cafe society are hiding her insecurities.

Sundress: “It is better to look at the sky than live there…” Do you agree? Is it better to be a wild thing?

Kate Garrett: I don’t believe in being tame if it doesn’t suit you, even if you become a little more domesticated, a person can still be a wild thing. It’s fine for some and not fine for others. But for me, it’s better. Being wild doesn’t necessarily mean to use Holly as an influence – like, flitting around the world sleeping with hundreds of people along the way, forever and ever, amen, isn’t the only way to do it (but if someone wants that, they should go out and get it, obviously). Freedom can be the freedom to think and feel and do as you please. I’ll always be a wild thing, even though I’m married and a mother, because my thoughts and feelings and actions are my own, and yes, I have my own mean reds that make it impossible to be calm and settled, even though I’m happy. But living in the sky – it might be scary, but it’s open and spacious and liberating.

Sundress: How has Truman Capote influenced your own work?

Kate Garrett: His use of simple language to say complex things – making connections between disparate concepts/places/objects, or just surprising the reader with what’s said next. Capote’s prose is so straightforward, but still stunning in every sense of the word. There’s no reason why these things shouldn’t also be applied to poetry if that’s what the writer feels comfortable doing – and I like the depth of my poem to be accessible to others (even if I do say strange things in my poems sometimes), otherwise what’s the point. And Capote’s writing really gets under the skin of his characters, of people in general, whether he’s writing fiction or non-fiction, even though it looks like he’s writing in this slick and superficial way. I don’t know if I ever manage to pull off his tricks, but I admire them.

 

Kate GarrettKate Garrett writes poetry and flash fiction, and edits other people’s poetry and flash fiction. She is a senior editor at the independent writers collective Pankhearst (Slim Volume & Fresh) and founding editor of Three Drops Press, home of the fairytales, folklore & mythology themed webzine Three Drops from a Cauldron. Her work is widely published online and in print, and her most recent poetry pamphlet, The Density of Salt, is forthcoming in 2016 from Indigo Dreams Publishing. She lives in Sheffield with her husband, a cat, and three clever trolls who call her ‘Mum’.

Lyric Essentials: Donna-Marie Riley Reads “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair” by Pablo Neruda

Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Donna-Marie Riley reads “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair” by Pablo Neruda.

We generally start by acquiring some background information on the poet or writer chosen; however, Neruda is one of those rare poets loved by poets and non-poets alike and needs little introduction. Instead, why don’t you share some of your favorite facts about Neruda and, if you can remember it, your first encounter with his work?

Donna-Marie Riley: My favourite fact about Neruda is that he was so politically involved. I think writers, and poets especially, are often perceived as these one-dimensional characters with little interest in anything outside of their craft. Or else that we are hermits who do not wish to engage with the world. But Neruda was actually a well-known diplomat and even served as Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. Neruda seems to be globally most well known for his love sonnets (I’ll admit that’s true for me), but he often wrote political poems as well. I think this is important because I think art should be political. And to use art as a means of addressing societal issues impresses me. It’s not something for which I have the skills myself.

My first encounter with Neruda’s work came via a lover. She directed me to read his poem Sonnet XLV (better known as “Don’t Go Far Off”) and it was a poem that we returned to and exchanged between one another countless times over the duration of our relationship. “Will you come back? Will you leave me here dying?”

It took me a long time to decide upon a piece to read for this because I kept trying to think of which poets had made a poet of me and I couldn’t identify who that had been, if anyone at all. I can’t say I have been deeply influenced by Neruda’s writing style. Neruda was never about improving myself as a poet, but about discovering myself as a lover. Perhaps it was circumstantial, but Neruda’s poetry had a profound effect on the way I love and the way I communicate love. Colourful and rhythmic, always half-sad. He grew me into a lover that, above all, promises tenderness, even in moments where great harm has been done, even in moments of panic.

Sundress: I didn’t grow up in a household with poetry, but I remember my mother’s copy of The Captain’s Verses on her bedside table. Neruda’s love poems have grand appeal, and seem to be relatable in so many different ways. You told me the story behind “Don’t Go Far Off”—what made you choose “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair”?

Donna-Marie Riley: “Don’t Go Far Off” is during the love, “I Crave Your Mouth” is the aftermath, or possible even the before. A poem of hunger. I love the restlessness of the poem, the movement of it. “I prowl through the streets… I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps… I pace around hungry… like a puma.” I feel akin to that nervous agitation, the inability to stay still. I like poems that disrupt me and this one’s very good at it.

Sundress: Although it’s a pretty straight-forward poem, taken in context with the rest of his love poems, this one could be labeled as “less tender” than others. What particular truth about love do you think Neruda was getting at in “I Crave Your Mouth”?

Donna-Marie Riley: I think the truth that “I crave your mouth…” addresses is exactly the one you mentioned in your answer – love is not always tender. Love is not all passive pining. It’s a heavy yearning. An overwhelming need. Having said that, I don’t know that “I crave your mouth…” is necessarily a love poem. It doesn’t read love to me. It reads hunger. Closer to lust than love, maybe. And closer to loss than lust. A blind fumbling for something that’s long been gone, or was never yours to begin with, never will be.

Sundress: You mentioned earlier that you’re also a fan of Neruda’s political poetry. You gave us a love/lust poem which ‘disrupts’ you; can you tell us a political poem of Neruda’s which similarly ‘disrupts’ you?

Donna-Marie Riley: I’ve tried since your last question to find a specifically political poem of Neruda’s that resonates with me, but I’m afraid to say I’ve failed. I don’t know that I claimed to be a fan of Neruda’s political poetry. More that I find it impressive and intriguing that he was able to bring his work to a political platform even as an artist, as a creative type, and as a poet most renowned for his “love poems”. I even admitted it was true for me that I am most familiar with his love poems. And yet, is it cheating to say I think the two are not mutually exclusive? That his love poems are also political poems and vice versa. I think love is a political act. Even moreso when made public.

There is a man called Tim Freke, who is an authority on world spirituality, who decreed that, “Love is the answer.” He pointed out that, “For millennia saints and sages, poets and pop stars have been telling us that harnessing the transformative power of love is the secret to creating the world we want to live in. Is this just well-meaning naiveté or could it actually be true? Love can be seen as simply fluffy and sweet, but it is also deep and strong. Love is not only a wonderful feeling of connection; it is a powerful force for social transformation.”

And so while I respect Neruda’s involvement in what people might consider more conventional “politics”, it doesn’t stop me viewing his love poems as any less socially active. In fact, I also said that Neruda had a direct effect on the ways in which I choose to love and display love, and I think that speaks to this as well. People perhaps tire of love, how it tinges everything, especially the arts. It’s every poem, story, photograph, film. But there’s a reason for that. It takes precedence over everything. It is the singular emotion from which all other emotions stem. And when not from love, from the lack of it. And so again, maybe his political poems were separate from his love poems, but this does not mean his love poems were not also political.

Donna-Marie RileyDonna-Marie Riley is a young poet currently residing in the South West of England. She is author of the poetry collection Love and Other Small Wars, published by Words Dance, and her work was also featured in Red Paint Hill’s Between Sentiment and Sensation: Women’s Writing Project, Vol. I. She acts as a contributor and social media assistant for Words Dance Publishing and as Senior Poetry Editor for the lit magazine Persephone’s Daughters. When she is not writing, you can find her watching cartoons, adding to her rapidly expanding postcard collection, or quietly wringing her hands. You can find her work on her personal Tumblr: five–a–day.tumblr.com.

Lyric Essentials: David Ishaya Osu reads excerpts from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today David Ishaya Osu reads three excerpts from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

I doubt Whitman needs much of an introduction—an American poet, journalist, and essayist, and often credited as the father of free verse, Whitman is a staple of the American canon—but can you tell us about Whitman’s importance to Nigerian poetry and writing? How did you discover Whitman? Does he have a large readership in Nigeria?

David Ishaya Osu: I have no idea on what Whitman’s importance there might be to Nigerian poetry and writing. I am also not aware of Whitman’s readership statistics in Nigeria. What I am aware of is that I feel a connection to Whitman, humanly. I first saw Whitman in Microsoft Encarta in 2010 or so; and when I came across Leaves of Grass at AMAB Bookshop, I had no option but to grab it.

Sundress: I love that you sent in 3 recordings for Leaves of Grass—the first two are pulled from “Song of Myself” and the third from “Burial Poem”. I have to ask, which edition are you reading from, and do you have any preference of one edition over another?

David Ishaya Osu: Mine is the Dover (2007) unabridged republication of the first edition published in 1855. I’ve not bothered to look up other editions. Maybe when I’m tired of drawing lines in this copy, I will get others.

Sundress: This excerpt from “Song of Myself”—written, and made mainstream so many years before American women were able to vote—is one of my favorite feminist poetic bits. What does this particular section mean to you?

David Ishaya Osu: I see this section as an intriguing record of the humanity humanity is. It means to me, for living sake, that being a member of the universe is enough right to be treated with equal worth – no bias in favour of gender, wealth, race or social class. On the other hand, history and ongoing events have so shattered our senses, tolerance and empathy. “And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man / And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.” I think you should listen to this song by ASA: “Sometimes I Wonder.”

It’s time we took deeply to heart that we all are our mothers.

Sundress: I don’t want to detour too much here, but I love the connection you made between Whitman’s century-and-a-half-old poem and a contemporary singer from halfway across the globe. I particularly like Asa’s lines, “Didn’t nobody tell you, no man’s ever made it higher by bringing other people down. You tried and you could lose the ground.” Can you tell us more briefly about Asa?

David Ishaya Osu: I had to wait till today, September 17, 2015, to reply this part of the interview. The reason is simple: it’s Asa’s birthday today. In the spirit of the moment, she’s the only one on my playlist today. Maybe Onyeka Nwelue would be the right person to talk about Asa more, since he’s had countless moments with her at her concerts and elsewhere. However, my encounter with Asa is via telepathy – her songs, reading her interviews, and just running my mind on her fantastic videos. Asa is an endless poem. Asa is one Nigerian songstress whose voice enters you but never to leave. For instance, in “The Way I Feel,” I see the persona as all of us – the world. And this world is actually on its shoulder – from environmental threats to emotional blackmails to the Chibok girls that are still missing to the legacy of white supremacy to the system of miseducations to the complete waste of myths, to man’s refusal to find friendship in water, birds, in the flowers of ourselves. The other things I know about Asa are that: she lives in Paris, she seems highly bohemian –no wonder she rises above the status quo– and, most importantly, she’s added Yoruba to my tongue even when I may not exactly know what it is – but then, the heart knows. Bukola Elemide is simply the goddess.

Sundress: “Leaves of Grass” is my personal favorite work of Whitman. I’m very interested to hear why you picked these particular five lines. What spoke to you here?

David Ishaya Osu: A large part of our humanness has been cultured on the prejudice against pain and people whose parts do not entirely fit in the play of society. This girl will end in hell, that boy is for heaven, we seem to prove. What this has caused is that we behave both in favour and in fear of people and their performances. Heaven is here, hell is there, we say and seek. How contradictory that the more we run away from hell, the more of heaven we do not get. This sophistry has compounded our despair. And this, to me, is what Walt Whitman is painting; hence the need for “the poet of the woman the same as the man.” We live in a dire reality where our cases are prejudged by our gender and class; less interest is paid to understanding the urgency and the cruciality of the situation at hand. What then shall we do?: Humanity is humanity’s responsibility, boy or girl or rich or poor or cross or crescent, humanity is humanity’s responsibility. Compassion ought to re-become our currency. Who is this poet? Well, the poet is you, the poet is me, the poet is her, the poet is him. The poet is all of us. The poet is the world. The world of woman the same as the world of man. Some people call it egalitarian, I call it poetrilitarian (laughs).

Sundress: I’m not as familiar with “Burial Poem” as I am with your other two Whitman choices. Can you walk us through the poem and highlight why these two lines, “I cannot define my satisfaction..yet it is so,/I cannot define my life..yet it is so.” resonate with you?

David Ishaya Osu: One major way of being alive for man has been the hobby to hypothesize every particle that happens within and outside his portion of space. Definitions here, definitions there; yet these definitions have seemed to continually elude their definers. What have followed after this attitude, obviously, are records of prejudice, records of post-judice, guilt, ostracism. This is the truth, that is falsehood; and the ideas keep conventionalizing and keep clashing with each other, simultaneously. Somewhere, somebody blames a school; another person elsewhere suffers a rape heritage. What is this? What is that? Questions upon questions upon thousands of responses. With and without the foregoing, much of what we are aware of is that we are present at our various ends and means of living. For an explanation, I would this is how the lines resonate with me. Millions and millions of millions have remained ‘something’ – something in that song, something in a lover, something in that apple, something in that moon, something about a dress, something about something. Something about something, yet it is so. I personally feel it’s time we edited the dictionary and other books of meanings; not in the sense of throwing them away, but in a way of appreciating other perspectives and narratives that are unlike our expectations – and this is what the humanities and arts in general embody. And by the way, everything is art, everything is writing itself in our very eyes.

Sundress: How has Whitman inspired your own writing? Do you find yourself becoming a “poetrilitarian”?

David Ishaya Osu: I treat my reading of Walt Whitman (and other people) as both psychic and corporeal. Both intra-action and interaction. Without feeling bigheaded, Whitman is to me a sibling the same way a dream works with sleep, the same way I respond to good news, the same way somebody says of your fine dress, of a dancer doing her magic, like that like that. There, lips touch lips and we term it kiss. Just connections. Like I earlier said: everything is writing itself in our very eyes. Everything is inspiring everything – an itch under the scrotum would inspire either a body movement or a bath, a body somewhere will cause a head there to turn 360. I was watching a movie one day, and when a character in the movie yawned, I instantly yawned too. You know, when I thought it quietly, I said to myself that life is a reply. Something is inspiring something somewhere somehow, and vice versa. And nothing.

On the poetrilitarian, yes; or, no, I am that I am (laughs).

~

What is essential to you as a writer or poet? What piece changed your life? Gave you hope, validated and voiced your fears, was there while you triumphed over them? What piece brings you joy? Made you laugh or grin like a fool? Who was it who made you sit back in wonder, inspiring you to be a stronger writer? We want to know. Send us a recording (or packet of short recordings) of you reading your Lyric Essential—a short story, a handful of poems, an excerpt or two—to SundressLyricEssentials AT gmail DOT com. Then we’ll talk.

David Ishaya Osu (b. 1991) is a Nigerian poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Atlas Poetica: A Journal of World Tanka, Birmingham Arts Journal, Off the Coast, The Kalahari Review, Vinyl Poetry, RædLeaf Poetry: The African Diaspora Folio, A Thousand Voices Rising: An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, among others. David is a board member of the Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation, and he is currently polishing his debut poetry book. David is a street photography enthusiast.

Walt_Whitman_-_George_Collins_Cox

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist born in 1819. Whitman, often called “The Father of Free Verse,” was controversial in his time but is now among the most influential poets in the American canon.

Lyric Essentials: Pui Ying Wong Reads “Everything is Plundered” by Anna Akhmatova

Sundress: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Pui Ying Wong reads “Everything is Plundered” from Anno Domini by Anna Akhmatova.

I’m excited you picked a poem by Anna Akhmatova. I received a verse of hers in the mail from a Russian member of postcrossing (an online website which allows strangers to swap postcards globally) and was hoping to investigate her. I’d love to hear your take on Akhmatova’s contribution to the literary world. What attracted you to her?

Pui Ying Wong: Akhmatova wrote poetry throughout her life, from poems with romantic leanings in her youth to later poems of deep meditation on her life, inevitably tied to the tumultuous time in post 1917 Russia. Her influence was far reaching even outside of Russia and many regard her to be the voice of dissidence. Joseph Brodsky considered her a mentor. Her poems were widely read by the underground Misty Poets in China, not to mention readers in Europe and elsewhere.

But to me I’m drawn to the simplicity, the exactness of her poems that are also infused with great emotional power. Her subject matters are often grave and yet there is this “beautiful clarity” she aspired to. “Everything is plundered…” the poem is heartbreaking and affirming at once. She wrote this around 1921 when so much in Russia was in upheaval. I don’t know if the poem was written before or after the execution of her first husband Gumilev, who was also a poet. This poem still reaches across time and historical context to land squarely in our digital age. It’s unforgettable.

Sundress: Is the duality of the poem’s stark opening:

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death’s great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

and it’s sudden positive response typical of Ackmatova’s work?

Pui Ying Wong: As in “Everything is Plundered”, Akhmatova’s poems often suggest a rich emotional energy. Economy of line, abrupt turn, associative short-circuits are some of the features in her poetry. Her images are not totally naturalistic but are infused with ingenuousness of feeling. A poetic temperament that’s by turns austere and tender, but never formulaic.

Sundress: Can you speak to Ackmatova’s dissidence in this poem?

Pui Ying Wong: When Akhmatova wrote this poem she had already lived through WWI and the Russian Revolution. She saw many friends leave Russia for Europe or America, her former husband was executed. In times of oppression and great distress, despair, fear and cynicism are all part of the understood human responses. In this poem, through describing the concurrence of the inner/outer events, the self’s emotion waited until the last stanza. It is mystical and true. If the goal of oppression is to crush the human spirit, the poem is like a searchlight in darkness.

Sundress: You mentioned that her husband was executed, and that as a society, they were oppressed—was it dangerous for Akhmatova to be writing the poems she was writing?

Pui Ying Wong: In her life time, through war, revolution, civil war, and a totalitarian regime, Akhmatova saw her work condemned, banned, and she herself narrowly escaped arrest. There’s no doubt that for decades after the revolution, life for many writers was precarious. Besides her former husband, her close friend, poet Osip Mandelstam, was arrested for his anti-Stalin writing and died later in the camps.

Akhmatova’s son Lev was imprisoned on numerous occasions by the Stalinist regime. In the preface of her poem Requiem, she wrote about the time when she waited at the prison queue to deliver food packages to him:

“One day somebody” identified” me. Beside me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She had, of course, never heard of me; but she suddenly came out of that trance so common to us all and whispered in my ear (everybody spoke in whispers there):’Can you describe this?’
And I said: ‘Yes, I can.’
And then something like the shadow of a smile crossed what had once been her face.”

Sundress: How has Anna Akhmatova influenced your own work?

Pui Ying Wong: In my own writing I try to strive for clarity, and pay attention to the emotional life in my poem.

More than poetic style, form and fashion, the luminosity and emotional power in Akhmatova’s poems have timeless appeal for me.

Sundress: Several of Akhmatova’s poems are available online to read. Are there any you’d recommend? Or perhaps another interview/review/article for us to follow up on?

Pui Ying Wong: In terms of recommendation I would say read “Requiem” and “Poem without a hero”, long considered her masterpieces. But since poems in different periods present another perspective to her poetic sensibility, and she wrote more than ten collections, try reading samples from these different collections. Another recommendation is to read different translators. They are not the same and they do affect your experience of the poems. Unfortunately I don’t have a specific one to recommend, and I crossed reference in my own reading.

It is also helpful to know something about the history and social context in which the poet works. Look up some on Russian history, and on Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, the close poet friends Akhmatova wrote in a poem called “There are four of us”.

~

What is essential to you as a writer or poet? What piece changed your life? Gave you hope, validated and voiced your fears, was there while you triumphed over them? What piece brings you joy? Made you laugh or grin like a fool? Who was it who made you sit back in wonder, inspiring you to be a stronger writer? We want to know. Send us a recording (or packet of short recordings) of you reading your Lyric Essential—a short story, a handful of poems, an excerpt or two—to SundressLyricEssentials AT gmail DOT com. Then we’ll talk.

Pui Ying Wong was born in Hong Kong. She is the author of a full length book of poetry Yellow Plum Season (New York Quarterly Books, 2010), two chapbooks: Mementos (Finishing Line Press, 2007), Sonnet for a New Country (Pudding House Press, 2008) and her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Southampton Review, Angle Poetry (U.K.), Crannog (Ireland), The Brooklyner, Gargoyle, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), among others. She is a book reviewer for Cervena Barva Press in Somverille. Pui Ying lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.

Anna Akhmatova 2Anna Akhmatova was the penname of Russian modernist poet Anna Andreyevna Gorenko. Born 1889, her work was censored by Stalinist authorities; additionally, war, revolution, and the totalitarian regime destroyed many of the primary sources of information about Akhmatova’s life, leaving few details. Requiem (1935-40), one of her best known pieces, is a series of short lyric poems about the Stalinist atrocities.