Category: Lyric Essentials

Lyric Essentials: Margaret Stawowy reads Three Poems by Robert Bly

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 Margaret Stawowy reads “Women and Men,” “Stealing Sugar from the Castle” and “Call and Answer” by poet Robert Bly.

Thank you for joining us, Margaret. You sent in a handful of Bly’s poems which I take to be a sign that he’s too good to pick just one. I’m hoping it also means you can illuminate Bly’s career and accomplishments for us. Who is Robert Bly and what can you tell us about his overall impact on poetry?

Margaret: Robert Bly is a poet, translator, anti-war activist and leader of a men’s movement. He has been writing poetry for more than half a century and has lived through a long historical timeline, political and literary. Because of his translations, many European and Eastern poets, who were relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, now have a new audience. This would include not only wonderful European poets like Transtromer, Hauge, Martinson, and Vallejo, but also Eastern poets like Issa, Mirabai and Hafez. Bly wanted to step away from the cerebral (some would say academic) Modernists and delve into the metaphysical poetic sensibilities of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Bly is also the author of Iron John, a book that inspired men to examine their masculine nature and to overcome a contemporary situation in which men have no rights of passage, resulting in difficulties to meaningfully take their place in the world. Finally he is a prolific poet with 25 books of poetry.

And, yes, he is such a wonderful poet that I had a great deal of difficulty choosing which of his poems to include for this blog post.

Sundress: Are these three poems, “Women and Men,” “Stealing Sugar from the Castle” and “Call and Answer,” from the same collection, or do they represent different periods of Bly’s career?

Margaret: These are more current poems. “Women and Men” is from Turkish Pears in August, a series of twenty-four short poems that he calls ramages, referring to passages of French flute music. I heard him introduce these at a reading, and he mentioned how he strove to create sounds in stanzas, and that in each of these poems, he is repeating sounds that call out to each other. You can also hear glorious sound repetitions and echoes in “Stealing Sugar From the Castle.” This poem and “Call and Answer” are from his book My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy. Bly loves music and whenever possible, he incorporates live music in his readings. Many of his poems also refer to music. At a reading, he once said that music is a direct link to the soul. I wholeheartedly agree.

May I also say, I am awed by the works of mature poets such as Jack Gilbert, Steve Kowit, Wislawa Szymborska, Marvin Bell and many others. They have extensive life experience and years of writing to draw upon. What I particularly like about Bly’s writing is that he manages to delve into the spiritual and psychological in such an invigorating manner, devoid of pomp and sanctimony. Check out his ghazal “Stealing Sugar from the Castle.” How many poets can get away with putting the word ‘joy’ in a poem, not once but multiple times! That takes a master.

Sundress: I do love the sounds he uses in “Women and Men,” although Bly seems to be in complete control of the piece—not at all wild or untamed as the word ‘ramages’ implies, but melodic and tender. Perhaps we should link to an appropriate musical accompaniment. To me, this poem sounds like the flute in this duo:

Sundress: “Women and Men” must also be an example of this “men’s movement” you mentioned. What is this “men’s movement” about?

Margaret: What I love about Bly’s book, Iron John, is that it was written by a poet who is influenced by Jungian psychology. Think about that. Poets and their poetry fail to elicit any meaningful reaction in the wider population, but this book took off. Bly hit upon an issue of pain and confusion that men in contemporary culture face. Many boys grow up without male role models in the house, either because fathers are physically or emotionally absent. In other words boys grown up without male guidance, and often turn to pop culture to fill the void. How can men honor the male aspect without becoming dominating patriarchs, or at the other end of the spectrum, eternal adolescents, or both. In Iron John, there is an emphasis on the archetypes found in old tales and on rites of passage that respect the essence of the wild and untamed aspects of men. Mythological realities help men understand where they came from and who they are in ways that pop culture, and even science cannot address. “Women and Men” is not really about the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement, as some refer to it, but it is written with the elegance and insight that come from his centered masculinity.

Sundress: On first listen, I did not immediately recognize that “Stealing Sugar from the Castle” is a ghazal, a form which is often glaringly obvious to me since it does have such a particular repetitive pattern. In my opinion, the ghazal is a form that is easy to follow, much like a haiku, but hard to master. I must agree—it is rather impressive that Bly got away with so much ‘joy’.

There is so much to pull out of this poem. What strikes me most is this bit:

I don’t mind your saying I will die soon.
Even in the sound of the word soon, I hear
The word you which begins every sentence of joy.

Which reminds me of the love poems of Rumi. You mentioned he was a translator. Did he by chance translate any Middle Eastern poets?

Margaret: Bly is also known for his translations of Hafez, who lived in 14th Century Persia, now Iran. Hafez wrote ecstatic metaphysical poetry that combined sacredness with sensual abandon in the ghazal form. Ghazals are written in couplets and contain a thematic word in the second line that repeats in the following couplets, such as the word “joy” in “Stealing Sugar from the Castle.” Each couplet should have a feeling of autonomy, as if the poet went and changed the subject, all the while maintaining a unity throughout. In the last stanza, the poet often addresses himself by name, or references other poets or friends, as Bly sometimes does in his ghazals. Although I haven’t written ghazals, I have written poems in couplets where each stanza refers to the previous stanza using a thematic word that changes from stanza to stanza throughout the poem. As with haiku, contemporary ghazals need not strictly adhere to the traditional form. The delight of the ghazal is found in the unexpected twists and turns as the reader moves from beginning to end. The masters, as usual, make it look so simple.

Sundress: “Call and Answer” takes a complete different turn—veers left, politically, and straight-forward in its delivery—and doesn’t seem to leave any wiggle room for interpretation. Reading it now, it brings back a lot of memories. In 2002, 9/11 was still a shock, but this poem is speaking about much more. Am I right to assume this was a reaction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as much as a reaction to the United State’s War on Terrorism? Do you remember where you were when you first read this and what you thought as a poet being called to arms, so to speak?

Margaret: I can’t speak to whether Bly was addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but certainly the war in Iraq, the War on Terrorism, and climate change. Like many others, I marched in protest against the Iraqi invasion, just as I had many years earlier against the Vietnam War. I wasn’t optimistic about the outcome of these protests, but I felt that I would not/could not be silent. My son and nephew were both approaching their 18th years, when they would be required to register for the draft. As Bly said, “What’s the sense of being an adult and having no voice.” I greatly admire how Bly can write an anti-war poem that beseeches the reader to speak up in such emotionally sonorous manner. (I tried very hard to interpret this quality in my verbal rendering of the poem without going over the top). I am particularly moved by the “angels hiding in jugs of silence,” by calling forth Neruda, Akhmatova, Thoreau and Frederick Douglass. What a range! I read this poem for the first time, perhaps in 2006, when my daughter, mother and I went to Paris. I remember sitting in the hotel at night reading poems from this book to them, including “Call and Answer.” The power of his words was deeply moving to us. I felt compelled to apologize to other Europeans over the French Fries/Freedom Fries jingoism that arose in the U.S. in response to the French opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

As for poets being called to arms, I was once in a workshop with Ilya Kaminsky, and he commented that Americans don’t write many political poems, whereas, Europeans do it all the time. Perhaps this is because we Americans didn’t have to live in a war-torn country in our lifetimes. I find it very challenging to write a political poem without it devolving into a polemic. Writing a successful anti-war poem is just about as hard as writing a successful love poem. I am still working on both of these challenges.

Sundress: Bly does bring a wonderful range of poets to the table, an impressive feat to stand on the shoulders of such great literary stock without being polemic. Other than his obvious mastery of several forms and topics, how else has Bly had an impact on your writing?

Margaret: Actually, I was at a lecture/workshop that Bly presented at a school of psychology that is now Meridian University. He was encouraging us to use unexpected, brilliant language and images to basically express the inexpressible. Of course, we were all floating on his inspiring lecture and poetic artistry. After five to seven minutes of writing time, he said, “Okay, let’s hear what you’ve got.” So we all went around and read our efforts. Mind you, these were mostly psychology students, with a few poets mixed in, including me. After a while, he turned to Jay Leeming, a protégé, and said something like, “Maybe this is too hard for them.” Resounding silence filled the space as we were all brought down to earth with the realization, once again, that writing poetry is hard. Very hard. You might think I would have been disappointed, but it was one of those moments when I could step outside of myself to view the situation, and actually, it was hilarious. Here we were, trying to be oh-so-metaphysical and failing oh-so-miserably. But the take-home lesson on that day and thereafter was this: figure out how to express the inexpressible. I aim to create elegant, startling and transcendent poems, and though I am never certain I will succeed, I am nonetheless willing to take that chance.

Sundress: Thank you so much for sharing some of your essential Bly with us. Do you have any recommendations of further Bly reading (or listening) for us? Additional poems, one of his live music and poetry fusions, an interview, and/or perhaps a contemporary or two of Bly’s for comparison?

Margaret: Thank you so much for inviting me to participate. Of course, you’ll want to start with the Robert Bly website: robertbly.com.

The following video has cameo appearances by Edward Hirsch, James Ragan, Gary Snyder, and others, not to mention a young Robert Bly.

Not surprisingly, this Norwegian from Minnesota was on Prairie Home Companion.

He was also interviewed by Bill Moyers

And on PBS, he was interviewed about the men’s movement.

There are also a series of lectures by Bly on various topics from Hafez and Rumi, to the men’s movement to folklore, and much more. These are voice recordings with still shots, not really videos, but there is quite a range of topics on Youtube to investigate. And some of these lectures/readings include music.

Michael Meade, a storyteller and leader in the men’s movement is a contemporary of Bly’s. Along with James Hillman and Bly, they edited Rag and Boneshop of the Heart, an anthology concentrating on the rites of manhood. See Meade’s website at mosaicvoices.org.

You may want to view the work of Jay Leeming, a fine poet who was also inspired by Bly. (He was the protégé at the workshop.) He and wife Adriana along with their daughter spend summers in Yosemite working as park rangers and facilitating at the Tuolumne Meadows Poetry Festival. See his work at jaylemming.com.

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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.

Margaret StawowyMargaret Stawowy‘s poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Atlanta Review, Ecotone Blog, Cricket, West Marin Review, Barnwood Poetry Journal, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Ginosko Literary Journal. She has won awards for her work from both Atlanta Review and Beyond Baroque. Originally from Chicago, she lived in Japan for eight years before relocating to Northern California where she works as a librarian. Margaret is a book reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly.

Robert Bly

Born in 1926, Robert Bly is an American poet, translator, storyteller, editor, and father of the “expressive men’s movement.” Published extensively, his most recent collections are Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life (White Pine Press Distinguished Poets Series, 2015) and Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems 1950-2013 (W. W. Norton, 2013).

Lyric Essentials: Rob Stephens reads The Star’s Etruscan Argument by Aleda Shirley

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 Rob Setphens reads the poem, “The Star’s Etruscan Argument” by Aleda Shirley.

The poem you’re reading for us is part of Shirley’s Dark Familiar: Poems, which the publisher, Sarabande Books, markets as “poems for grown-ups who believe in life and death.” Can you tell us a little more about the collection as a whole?

Rob: The most stunning thing about Dark Familiar is that Aleda names several of the poems after sets of colors – “Brown, Black on Maroon” or “Blue Over Orange.” The effect is this amazing shading that tints every poem, and every read. And even the poems that aren’t named for colors often start with color as an anchor, as in the poem “Plaint” that starts: “Here, the sky to the north is a bright slate blue.” I always admired the way she was able to be so specific about selecting a color or color set for poems that so accurately pair with the content, as with the “mild gold light” and the “whiter, cooler, cleaner light” that appear in “The Star’s Etruscan Argument.” It’s a brilliant way to organize a collection, but also a very challenging task, to be so well-versed in color; Aleda pulls it off masterfully.

I also chose the poem because Aleda, who was my poetry teacher at Millsaps College, passed away in 2008 (two years after Dark Familiar was published) after a battle with cancer. I’m not sure how long she had cancer, but when I read the book now it seems like marks of that battle are there; it’s a beautifully haunting experience for me. In the poem “Phantom Pain,” for example, she says, “The dead leave us incomplete. It didn’t occur / to me the emptiness would be permanent, / that nothing that came after would ease the ache.” And that’s how I feel about Aleda, this amazing woman who made such a mark on my poetry and on me, that the ache of losing her will never quit be relieved.

Sundress: I sometimes wonder what insider information publishers hold. Perhaps Shirley had battled cancer once before and won, a “grown-up who believed in life and death”; maybe she meant something else altogether. Either way, I find it interesting that there is so much color in a book titled “Dark Familiar.” I’m glad you chose her poem to read for us.

It sounds like Shirley’s work was pretty influential on you even before all of the heavy biographical information you can read into it now. Tell us a little more about Shirley as a teacher and mentor before we take a listen. How has she had an impact on your writing?

Rob: Aleda taught me in several workshops. I remember that once, mid-semester, I brought in an overwrought poem that was a self-indulgent fantasy in which I encountered a fairy on a car ride; at the time I thought it was unique, but I’m sure it was riddled with clichés and sounded completely inauthentic because I was trying to be Spenser. Aleda called me on it – “you’ll go back to writing like you’re Rob, in plain Rob language next time,” she told me. That’s the way she was, no-nonsense and able to steer you out of a poetry sinkhole.

It worked because in her directness you always knew that Aleda really wanted you to be the best writer you could be. She gave me a beautiful gift: I could be, and still can be, Rob in my poems, something I wouldn’t be confident in without her.

Also, Aleda was basically a dictionary, and sometimes students would try to put words in their poems just to test her vocabulary. They never found a word she couldn’t fully define. It shows in her work, too, this extraordinary grasp on diction – I love the line, in this poem, “my mind’s reeling in huge ambits.” Ambits is an unusual but perfect word there, and her poetry is full of such diction bullseyes. Her influence has certainly made me become more diligent and precise in my word choice.

Sundress: I love how she describes the casino, almost like a short story—that must be her “plain Aleda language”—from what I gather, is representative of the volume. So, the million dollar question (although just to clarify—none of us are getting paid for this): out of all the poems and the moments in Dark Familiar, why “The Star’s Etruscan Argument”?

Rob: An obvious answer would be that “The Star’s Etruscan Argument” is the opening poem in Dark Familiar, and it certainly is one of Aleda’s aces. But for me it’s all about the eeriness that the poem conveys, what with the panoptical “invisible systems at work, & God not looking out for any of us from the inverted domes in the ceiling that watch & record everything.” Everything about the casino is too perfect – the light too clean, the money too easily exchanged, the food too plenteous. And this concept that we ostensibly choose to be there – “I could choose to be anywhere,” she says, “but I’m not, I’m in the hotel of a casino” – is equally unnerving. I love the tension there between what seems like personal choice and power and the way in which we are guided by a “fabricated soundtrack.” It captures something very empty about the human experience – the illusion of control.

Sundress: Speaking of tension, what struck me most was, “Their eyes gleam with hope & its opposite, which is also hope.” Maybe I’m reading into it here, but she seems to be saying that hope binds you just as much as it promises to release you.

Rob: I like your reading, though I’ve always read those lines a little differently: the opposite of hope, at least in this context, is despair. But what hope and despair share, I think, is a sense of desperation, a certain admission that we are not in the driver’s seat. The gambling table is this situation under a microscope: both the newbie gambler glimmering with hope and the addict who burned through her life savings and is pushing the betting button with nothing left but that button, with no expectation of winning, with a total despondency – both of those characters ultimately are slave to Fortune. And in this hope and despair I again see the paradox of control, or the lack thereof.

You might see, then, how it’s a strange experience for me to read this poem and this book knowing now about Aleda’s battle with cancer – I imagine that every moment and every choice had that hope and despair in it. Aleda could make decisions about the minutia of daily life without being able in control of her health. How can a person possibly confront that absurdity? All we can do is keep pressing the button (and we don’t even get to pull the lever anymore, as Aleda points out!).

Sundress: It does certainly does give the text a different reading; somehow, knowing the context “The Star’s Etruscan Argument” feels more like a metaphoric confessional poem. When I first heard the ending, “& God not looking out for any of us from the inverted domes in the ceiling that watch & record everything,” I took is as a general comment about the nature of consumption and solidity—the borderline omnipresence of the money-making machine and yet how disconnected we all are, even from God—slightly on the sardonic side. But now, well, I get the impression that perhaps Shirley was speaking a little more personally. Perhaps God wasn’t watching out for her.

I’m glad you brought her to our attention. I know that Dark Familiar was her final book, but do you know if she published any poems after? Or any thing else you can leave us with to mule over?

Rob: Thanks for this opportunity to share Aleda’s work. I don’t know whether she published more poems after Dark Familiar, but it wouldn’t surprise me – she was always working hard to keep poetry alive, which is the main reason why I chose to read her poem here, to keep her work alive.

For my last comment I’ll point to the ampersand that Aleda used throughout Dark Familiar – usually I’m often not a huge fan of that mark, but there’s something really perfect about the way she uses it. It’s quieter than “and,” more subtle, which is the opposite of how I think of Aleda, who was (at least as I knew her) extroverted and hilarious. But in this poem, Aleda establishes this incredibly intimate voice, a voice that feels like it trusts you despite everything else around being untrustworthy. And the ampersand is a part of that. I think that’s a wondrous feat, and I hope listeners can hear that in the way I read it.

Rob Stephens Rob Stephens is a PhD student in creative writing at Florida State University. He writes poetry, children and YA books, and whatever else. When not writing, Rob is the social media specialist for Team Tangie Real Estate. In the past, he has written an e-book on the Paleo Diet and  300 questions for a 90s trivia game, but he is not an expert on either topic. In his spare time he enjoys playing and teaching board games, and once upon a time he earned a MLIS degree. He also plays piano and was a music major at Millsaps College. He may be reached at www.robthepoet.com.

aleda-shirley

Aleda Shirley was an American poet and the author of three collections of poems: Chinese Architecture (University of Georgia Press, 1986) and Long Distance (University of Miami Press, 1996), which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and Dark Familiar (Sarabande Books, 2006). Shirley passed away in 2008.

Lyric Essentials: Orooj-e-Zafar reads excerpts from Bilal Tanweer’s The Scatter Here Is Too Great

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 Orooj-e-Zafar reads us four excerpts of Bilal Tanweer’s debut novel, The Scatter Here Is Too Great.

Thanks for recording for us, Orooj. Before we take a listen, tell us a little about your love story with Bilal Tanweer. Is this the first novel of his you’ve read or one of many? I’m not personally familiar with his work, so perhaps you can tell us a little about him? Or what you know about the book that can help put the passages you’ve selected into context?

Orooj: The pleasure is mine! This is, I believe, his only novel, also a winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2014, after his extensive work as a translator of books by Ibn-e Safi. Story-telling being his forte, he has published short stories with international magazines like Words Without Borders and Granta.

When I read this small bio behind The Scatter Here is Too Great, I was impressed. I never met him personally but I asked a friend, studying at his university to tell him, “he changed my life.” From the way my friend described it, he didn’t see it coming at all. His humility is admirable because he wrote for the people of his country and in that, he feels he succeeded.

He told an interviewer that “fiction writing came late and translating, even later,” but his flair of the written word is nothing short of a gift. A reviewer called The Scatter Here is Too Great “a collection of blood-stained letters to Karachi,” and it could not be truer. He wrote stories about the city at its prime and fall—its people, its places, their niche and interaction thereof—that he believed were lost if not retold and felt for. With multiple narrators, all connected to the other by either the city or circumstances, you don’t have any room to surface. The realness and profundity of his language—vernacular but narrating grotesque, unfortunate events—is that of a poet; it kept me gasping for air throughout the book.

The bits I chose to read out are the pages preceding a new part of the book. He used a bullet-shattered windscreen as a metaphor for the city he grew up in, using different (or rather the same) descriptions of it to carry his stories forward. Not only did this part of Karachi become a dangerous place to live in, it lost its more prominent voices to cruel circumstance.

Sundress: Forgive me for asking the obvious before we listen—this is not a translation, but was written in English, right? Can you tell us a little about English literature in Pakistan?

Orooj: Of course but I’m still discovering it myself! Tanweer originally wrote it in English, yes but I suppose Alamgir Hashmi understood the untapped potential Pakistani writers had to tell this country’s story and make it accessible. He was the first English-language Pakistani writer I knew of. Recently, thanks to the glowing reviews I read about them, I discovered Mohammed Hanif, Muneeza and Kamila Shamsie.

Sundress: “The hole at the center throws a sharp, clean web around itself and becomes crowded with tiny crystals. That is the metaphor for my world.” That’s a hell of an image. This sounds almost like a fable, like the book will be an attempt to give a complete image of a war, of the brutality and the day-to-day.

Orooj: That’s exactly what it did. The image of war like you said, doesn’t hit you right away. As I said before, the language is so colloquial, the tragedy comes as a shock, but not a surprise. It is almost like a snare in this part of the book; nothing goes horribly wrong at first until it does.

Sundress: Listening on to this second clip, The Scatter Here Is Too Great sounds like more than just a letter to Karachi—I hear any city suffering under the fear of a bullet. I think perhaps it’s also how you’re reading it, but it sounds more like a love letter to the human spirit. A universal message. But what roots it in Pakistan? Can you share some of these colloquialisms with us?

Orooj: I agree and I’m glad you share my views. Maybe unintentionally he struck a chord with, not just the Pakistani in me, but also the human. As for its placement, Tanweer takes real places like Clifton Beach, Lyari etc. He uses native words for parents, (Amma/Ammi, Baba) and even incorporates some of the local lingo (aray bhaiyya), even if some are derogatory terms. Then of course, the surreptitious meetings between characters and the events that followed – bomb blasts, robberies.

Sundress: The idea of layered stories always appeals to me, so I’m curious. Without giving away too many spoilers, what are these “different stories” that the windshields are telling?

Orooj: First we have “A Writer in the City” about a boy and his father, now impoverished playing a game with blackboards. He comes and goes in the book, through different points in his life, growing up to be like his father – you guessed it – a writer.

There’s the couple who sneak away to be away by themselves, the girl seeking some time with her beau who she “swears she’s in love with” and the boy, hormonal and eager but with an interesting background of his own. The one I found most interesting was that of an ambulance driver who had a meltdown after he was helping victims of a bomb blast in the city.

Sundress: This is definitely my favorite section. Hearing you read this tale brings back the news media for me—Peshawar certainly feels new and immediate again, but this passage is less hopeless than news coverage. Your pacing catches that “sense of wonder” Tanweer’s talking about. I get the sense that even though there are multiple protagonists, this need for wonder is Tanweer’s; “…stories were reasons that allowed us to connect ourselves to the world, to compose ourselves in ways others could read… we needed stories in order to imagine the mad world we live in.” That’s such a powerful idea.

Orooj: Exactly. What I love about this book is that though it has multiple protagonists, the main character is Karachi itself. There’s a powerful monologue in the story, part of which was, “the city is dying,” and it completes the story until that point so perfectly. All the characters are pieces playing their part, most victims but so significant in Karachi’s tale. This is why I think it’s something everyone should read.

A mentor once told me, “poetry is not for the lazy,” because there’s a reason every word in a poem is where it is, even its punctuation. The flow in a written piece is crucial especially when it comes to slam poetry. Reading The Scatter Here is Too Great made me realize that every one of his stories was vital – irreplaceable – to Karachi’s tale. Quite simply, he narrated the horrors housing in those streets, eloquently defending that it was not always like this and there will be a time when it will not.

Without him “prettying it up,” he makes you see that it wasn’t just the poor who suffered, or the uneducated, or even the prominent. You did not have the time to fall in love with a particular character because you only knew them for so long. The scatter of sorrow, anguish and pain was truly too great. Heroically, he collected whatever he could of the timelines that were cut short and gave realism a completely different meaning for me.

~

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.

OroojOrooj-e-Zafar is a Browncoat nineteen-years-young mosaic in her first year of med school. She fancies herself a certified overthinker and spoken word poet, frequently performing in front of audiences in her city at venues such as Kuch Khaas, among many others. Orooj is a reader for cahoodaloodaling and has been published at The Missing Slate, Pankhearst, Up the Staircase Quarterly. She recently released her first spoken word album, the articulation of my vertebrae: from being spineless to finally standing tall. She resides in Islamabad, the dharna capital of Pakistan. She has been married to slam poetry since she heard the word, ‘onomatopoeia’ and would like nothing more than to wake up to a hot cup of chai and a good poem; engaging conversations are a close third. Her best friend is her copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. She’s been playing the guitar for eight and a half years (badly), sings decently enough and bakes till her problems go away. Some days she is Ron Swanson and others, Leslie Knope. Though she married slam poetry early and (un)foolishly, the universe itself remains her one true love; she’s just passing through.

TanweerBilal Tanweer, whose native language is Urdu, was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. He received his MFA in creative writing at Columbia University. A fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2012, Tanweer’s fiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in various journals, including Words Without Borders, The Caravan, Granta, and Vallum. He lives in Lahore, Pakistan where he is an assistant professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. The Scatter Here Is Too Great won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2014 and was a finalist for both the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 and The Chautauqua Prize 2015. Recently Tanweer was selected as a Fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude for 2015-2017.

Lyric Essentials: April Michelle Bratten reads “Songs to Joannes” parts I-V by Mina Loy

Welcome to our first installment of 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 April Michelle Bratten reads the first five parts of Mina Loy’s “Songs to Joannes”.

Sundress: April, before we take a listen, let’s put this poem in a little context. I know Mina Loy was a contemporary of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams (I just love saying his name), but what else can you tell us? Who was Mina Loy?

April: I “accidentally” discovered Mina Loy several years ago. I imagine this is how a lot of people find her now: accidentally. I had fallen into a Wikipedia black hole, which is much like a You Tube black hole; you continuously and obsessively click links, delving further into a topic until you land somewhere drastically far away from where you originally began.

I found that Mina Loy was not only a top writer during the Modernist era (early 1900’s) but she was also an artist, mostly specializing in strange lamp shades and light fixtures, but also illustrations and found art. I learned that she was famous, now, for having been forgotten. She was never written into the history books even though she was deeply connected to many writers and artists from that era; she hung out at Gertrude Stein’s salon, she met WCW through a theatrical production they put on together (she had a brief affair with him and apparently broke the doc’s heart) she was close friends with and was photographed many times by Man Ray, and she was friends with Marcel Duchamp during the years he created the infamous “Fountain.” The list of her contacts truly goes on and on. However, she did not merely circle this group of people. She was also being published and featured in art galleries. She was their contemporary. Her friend Ezra Pound wrote to Marianne Moore, “Is there anyone in America except you, Bill [William Carlos Williams] and Mina Loy who can write anything of interest in verse?”

Portrait of Man Ray - inscribed, Never say I don't love you, circa 1925Portrait of Man Ray – inscribed, Never say I don’t love you, circa 1925
La Maison en papier - 1906La Maison en papier – 1906
Consider Your Grandmother's Stays - 1916Consider Your Grandmother’s Stays – 1916

Loy’s tumultuous and deeply compelling life story ended on a strange note. She wound up a penniless elderly woman rooming with several young people in their 20s, rifling through garbage cans (her roommates called her “The Trash Lady”) finding pieces for her found art. She gave one last gallery showing in 1959, which was attended by many of her old friends from the Modernist era.

Communal Cot - circa 1950Communal Cot – circa 1950
Christ on a Clothesline - circa 1955-59Christ on a Clothesline – circa 1955-59

My fascination began with the mystery of Mina Loy. How does one so important to an entire movement of writing and art completely fall off the map? My admiration and respect for her was found in research and of course, by reading her work.

Sundress: If you had to guess, why do you think she “fell off the map”?

April: It’s a provocative question. I think there are a couple of possibilities. One of the most defining moments of Loy’s personal life was when her husband disappeared. The story is a complicated one, but the summation is that Arthur Cravan bid farewell to his wife and set out on a sailboat to travel from Mexico to Argentina. Mina took a different boat, expecting to meet up with her husband at the end of their travels, but he was never seen or heard from again. The devastation and grief that followed Mina around for the remainder of her life turned her into a recluse. She dropped out of the artist “scene” and mostly kept to herself after Cravan’s disappearance.

However, one could also simply suggest that the reason she “fell off of the map” was because she was a woman. There are already a few prominent women to cover from that period and school of thought: Adrienne Rich, Gertrude Stein, and to a slightly smaller degree, Djuna Barnes. God forbid another woman should happen into the text books. The Modernist era, like every other period of time we have experienced, was male dominated, and therefore the study of this period tends to be more focused on men.

Sundress: The cannon does tend to favor white males. Speaking of which, Enclave has a new project, The New Canon: A Redefinition Project—a great idea to help rewrite the canon. Which book would you petition them to add?

April: I have heard about this exciting project! I have a wealth of possibilities, but for brevity, I will stick with my two favorites. First, I would immediately add Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. I feel it is one of the most important novels, not to mention one of the best novels, I have ever read. It is striking in its content, brutal in its delivery, and is tremendously affecting on the spirit. If you haven’t read it, please do.

Secondly, I would add Mina Loy’s collection of poetry and essays, The Lost Lunar Baedeker. My copy is a little bruised and beaten up. It is one of those books that you return to repeatedly, for inspiration, for insight, for the joy of language. Loy manipulates language in a way that I have never seen before. I envy her crazy skills. She is not an easy read, but she is definitely a poet that should be critiqued, examined, and studied. Also, you might fall in love with her.

Sundress: I’m open to falling for a love poem. Loy’s most famous work, published in 1915, “Songs to Joannes”:

Sundress: What I immediately notice is a very strong, self-assured sexuality; Pig Cupid his rosy snout/rooting erotic garbage is both grotesque and sexy—a pleasant surprise considering “Songs to Joannes” was published five years before women had the right to vote. Was it this sensuality or something else which drew you to this poem?

April: Loy’s sensuality is apparent in every piece that she wrote. She oozed with a freedom and an honesty that was shocking to readers at the time. In fact, the story goes that the poet Amy Lowell was so offended by “Songs to Joannes” that she refused to be published in the same journals as Loy.

This poem first drew me in because of its incredible use of language, line breaks, and pacing. I was immediately drawn to the strange and wonderful rhythm the poem created. What is even more enticing, is that this poem is about a sexual affair and the abortion that followed. This poem was written in the 1910s. For a woman from this time period to write so boldly about this subject matter both surprised and delighted me. She was certainly a force to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately, I only recorded the first five parts. This poem is an epic—34 parts in its totality, all just as spellbinding as the first five. There is sensuality in this poem, indeed, but there is also sorrow, uncertainty, loss, anger, wonder, love, mystery, and hope. Tonally, “Songs to Joannes” seems to sum up a great deal of Loy’s complicated life:

IX

When we lifted
Our eyelids on Love
A cosmos
Of coloured voices
And laughing honey

And spermatozoa
At the core of Nothing
In the milk of the Moon

Sundress: You’ve convinced me—I must hunt this poem down to read it. Which other ones do you recommend?

April: Mina Loy’s poems are difficult to find online, so I would recommend buying The Lost Lunar Baedeker to read some of my favorites. From this collection I adore “Omen of Victory,” a very short and intensely visual poem about a group of women sitting for tea. Her poem “Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots” is another favorite of mine with the lines, “Love is a God / Marriage expensive / A secret well kept.” Her essay, “Feminist Manifesto” is another must read, and should be somewhat easier to find online. You can also check out a small taste of her work at The Poetry Foundation.

Sundress: What have you, as a poet, learned from Loy?

April: Mina’s work, both her writing and art, has been a significant part of my experience as a writer. I was a young poet when I “found” her. She was the guiding hand for my exploration into experimental language and the usage of visual art as an instrumental inspiration for poetry. I felt compelled to write several poems inspired by her artwork. By my own volition I studied Modernism, Futurism, and Dadaism, and eventually minored in art history in college. The mixture and collaboration of poetry and the visual arts is still a passion of mine, which is evident in the journal I edit and hopefully, in the poetry I write.

Most importantly, Mina Loy taught me that vulnerability and boldness are permissible hand-in-hand, and I should never be timid about sending that story out into the world.

~

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.

April Michelle Bratten April Michelle Bratten has been editor of Up the Staircase Quarterly since 2008. Originally from Marrero, Louisiana, April has a BA in English from Minot State University in North Dakota. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southeast Review, Zone 3, Thrush Poetry Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Gargoyle, among others. She is also a contributing editor at Words Dance Publishing where she writes the article “Three to Read.” April has a chapbook, Anne with an E, forthcoming from dancing girl press in the fall of 2015. You can learn more at aprilmichellebratten.com.

Mina Loy Bio Pic

Mina Loy, born in England in 1882 as Mina Gertrude Löwry, worked as a poet, model, playwright, novelist, lamp designer, model, and visual artist in Paris, Florence, and New York City. A feminist, she was part of both the modernism and futurism movements. “Songs to Joannes” was originally titled “Love Songs”. Its avant-garde lyricism and erotic sexuality shocked readers. Loy died in 1966 in Aspen, Colorado. Her most famous book is The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems; her novel Insel was published posthumously.