Tag: Sunni Brown Wilkinson

Sunni Brown Wilkinson Reads Lisel Mueller

Welcome back to Lyric Essentials! Today we’ve chatted with educator and poet Sunni Brown Wilkinson about Lisel Mueller’s work, revealing what you’ve been reading in your work, and connecting writing to occupied spaces and histories. As always, thank you for tuning in!

Ashley Hajimirsadeghi: How and when did you first discover Mueller’s work?

Sunni Brown Wilkinson: I’d seen Mueller’s name around on the internet for a while on poems I really liked, and then about a year ago a poet friend posted ‘Alive Together’ on her Facebook page one day and wrote about how much honor she gave that single poem, how profound it is. I went to the library a week or so later and checked out the book Alive Together, Mueller’s newer and selected poems, and fell in love with her work. I’ve been exploring her poetry ever since.

Sunni Brown Wilkinson Reads “Alive Together” by Lisel Mueller

AH: Mueller’s work is often said to engage with history and folklore, with both personal and private lives. As a writer, do you relate to this inspiration, and if so, how? 


SBW: I very much relate. One of the things I love most about Mueller is the way she celebrates the domestic life as a vibrant, necessary space, but also connects that space with history and specific historical or artistic figures. It’s as if she’s constantly braiding together moments in her day, things she touches and people she loves, with something she read about a composer or a study on bees or a meditation on Monet. She sees how things intersect.

And her own family history of fleeing Germany at the onset of WW II at age 15 with her parents and, from the safe harbor of America, watching her native country implode, informs nearly every poem, if not contextually than in spirit. Where we come from and the road of our past, the marvel of being able to live the life we do, are themes that seem to hold onto the hands of nearly all of her poems.

Sunni Brown Wilkinson Reads “Things” by Lisel Mueller

AH: How has Mueller’s work inspired you? 
SBW: My mentor in grad school, Christopher Howell, once said, “Your work should reveal what you’ve been reading.” I love how Mueller does this so openly in her writing. She writes directly about Mary Shelley, Patricia Hearst, science magazines, composers, fairy tales. Each poem is a portal into this living space where other great minds work and mourn and live. She keeps a humility about her own genius by admiring the genius and discoveries of others.

Her poem “Reading The Brothers Grimm to Jenny” is just heartbreakingly lovely. The line “Jenny, we make just dreams/ out of our unjust lives,” and the image at the end of herself holding “the golden key” for her daughter, whose understanding of the world is rooted in her mother’s words, reveal this person who knows the worst of the world and still believes in the magic. And who reverences the childlike belief that good will conquer all. She both questions and celebrates that.

There’s a warmth, a curiosity, and an admirable dexterity of the mind that comes through in every Mueller poem. She’s equally comfortable writing about her grandmother’s gold pin, bees, roadtripping down the highway, and picking raspberries as she is writing about classical music and composers, Monet, the Queen of Sheba. Why wouldn’t you want to hang out with someone like that? She’s interested in everything! She’s down to earth and deeply perceptive. Her language is electric and accessible. If we could choose a BFF dead poet, mine would be Lisel Mueller. She reminds me to stay curious, read gobs, and live purposefully in my own quiet
spaces.

AH: What have you been up to lately? Got any exciting news to share (about life, writing, anything!)? 
SBW: I recently started writing essays. I’m taking a very slow route to putting together a
collection, but I’ll get there. I’ve already got the central ideas in place and am tinkering
with the parts. It’s also coming up on Halloween, so that means we’re reading scary stories at our house and going for hikes in the foothills and having fires in the fire pit and making lots of soup, so life is good!

Lisel Muller was an American poetry born in Germany. After fleeing Nazi Germany at age fifteen with her family, Mueller became interested in memory and history within poetry, which led her to produce prolific work. She is the author of the Second Language (1986) and The Need to Hold Still, among many other books.

Read more about her at Poetry Foundation.

Read her poem “Afterthoughts by the Lovers.”

Find her in-depth obituary in The New York Times.

Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s most recent work can be found in Western Humanities Review, Coal Hill Review, New Ohio Review, Ruminate, and South Dakota Review. She is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and The Ache & The Wing (winner of Sundress Publications’ 2020 Chapbook Prize).  Her work has been awarded New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and the Sherwin W. Howard Award and was runner-up for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. She teaches at Weber State University and lives in northern Utah with her husband and three sons.

Find Sunni’s collection The Marriage of the Moon and the Field here.

Read two of her poems here.

Find an interview with Sunni here.

Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is a multimedia artist and writer. She has had work appear in Barren Magazine, Hobart, DIALOGIST, Rust + Moth, and The Shore, among others. She is the Co-Editor in Chief at both Mud Season Review and Juven Press, and reads for EX/POST Magazine. More of her work can be found at ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Marriage Of The Moon and The Field by Sunni Brown Wilkinson

Little Owl in a Dark Room

singing whoo whoo, and the creaks
of the old crib as he lifts

himself up. Summer in the covers
and fall around the house.

Stillness. Now whoo whoo
and ba ba ba. In the oldest language

he lifts the morning
over our heads. The ceiling

tilts as I rise. Cold wood like a river
under my feet

This selection comes from the book, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field, available from Black Lawrence Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

My poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Adirondack Review, Sugar House Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, BODY and other journals and anthologies. I am the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press 2019), and winner of New Ohio Review’s inaugural NORward Poetry Prize. I teach at Weber State University and live in northern Utah with my husband and three young sons.

Danielle Hanson received her MFA from Arizona State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books and a Senior Reader at Atlanta Review, and was formerly Poetry Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, and associate editor for Loose Change Magazine and Carriage House Review.  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals and anthologies, including Poets & Writers, Iodine Poetry Journal, Rosebud, The Cortland Review, Willow Springs, Roanoke Review, Poet Lore, Asheville Poetry Review, and Blackbird.  She has been on staff at the Meacham Writers’ Conference and the Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference, and completed residencies at The Hambidge Center.  She has received several Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations.  She is the 2017 recipient of the Codhill Press Poetry Prize, Finalist for the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Poetry, and 2016 recipient of the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub.

Her second collection Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press, 2018) won the 2017 Codhill Press Poetry Prize, and was previously a Finalist in the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry in 2017, the Wick Poetry Prize in 2017, the Codhill Poetry Award in 2017, the Antivenom Poetry Award in 2016 and 2017, and the Richard Snyder Prize in 2016 and 2017; and was Semifinalist in the National Poetry Series in 2017, the Crab Orchard Series in 2017, the Elixir Press Prize in 2016, and The Washington Prize in 2016. 

Her debut collection Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017) previously was Runner Up for the 2012 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize; Finalist for the 2015 and 2016 Robert Dana Prizes for Poetry; the 2015 and 2016 Blue Lynx Prizes; and the 2014 Codhill Poetry Award; and Semifinalist for the 2015 Miller Williams Poetry Prize; the 2012, 2014 and 2015 Crab Orchard Poetry Series; the 2013 and 2014 42 Miles Press Poetry Awards; the 2013 Elixir Press Antivenom Award; the 2015 and 2016 Codhill Poetry Award; the 2015 Washington Prize; and the 2015 Richard Snyder Publication Prize.  

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Marriage Of The Moon and The Field by Sunni Brown Wilkinson

At Last the Light in the Trees Wavers

The young man who flies from New York to Salt Lake to fill in
for a famous pianist (stomach flu) is also a famous pianist. We
are second row at the symphony, and the pianist is skinny,
early 20s, and he plays a song like lanterns crashing.
Something modern. But first he plays Beethoven. We watch
him sway on the piano bench, eyes closed, anchored by his
torso and pointed leather shoes, and I wonder about his
mother. How many hours of practice did she hear? The
Emperor Suite over a screaming pot of tea. Endless staircases
of Chopin while she plucked his clean underwear from the
basket, folded the waistband in half, tucked under the crotch.
And for all the art about Paris or the sea, why not more about
laundry? About children, teaching them to pee like grown-ups:
elbows on their knees, legs swinging while they wait, wait,
wait, afterward the curved pink mark on their bottoms, a
funny frown. Sweet Mary Cassatt, what do I owe you? What
can I give you, who are both hands and mirror? In The Bath the
beautifully plain mother washes the feet of her daughter. They
gaze downward like suburban saints. Quiet, ceremonial. The
heart is harnessed in a thimble and every day it’s the morning
of creation. My son on an evening walk at four years old says
the moon looks like a floating egg mama I love living on earth.

This selection comes from the book, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field, available from Black Lawrence Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

My poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Adirondack Review, Sugar House Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, BODY and other journals and anthologies. I am the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press 2019), and winner of New Ohio Review’s inaugural NORward Poetry Prize. I teach at Weber State University and live in northern Utah with my husband and three young sons.

Danielle Hanson received her MFA from Arizona State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books and a Senior Reader at Atlanta Review, and was formerly Poetry Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, and associate editor for Loose Change Magazine and Carriage House Review.  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals and anthologies, including Poets & Writers, Iodine Poetry Journal, Rosebud, The Cortland Review, Willow Springs, Roanoke Review, Poet Lore, Asheville Poetry Review, and Blackbird.  She has been on staff at the Meacham Writers’ Conference and the Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference, and completed residencies at The Hambidge Center.  She has received several Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations.  She is the 2017 recipient of the Codhill Press Poetry Prize, Finalist for the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Poetry, and 2016 recipient of the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub.

Her second collection Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press, 2018) won the 2017 Codhill Press Poetry Prize, and was previously a Finalist in the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry in 2017, the Wick Poetry Prize in 2017, the Codhill Poetry Award in 2017, the Antivenom Poetry Award in 2016 and 2017, and the Richard Snyder Prize in 2016 and 2017; and was Semifinalist in the National Poetry Series in 2017, the Crab Orchard Series in 2017, the Elixir Press Prize in 2016, and The Washington Prize in 2016. 

Her debut collection Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017) previously was Runner Up for the 2012 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize; Finalist for the 2015 and 2016 Robert Dana Prizes for Poetry; the 2015 and 2016 Blue Lynx Prizes; and the 2014 Codhill Poetry Award; and Semifinalist for the 2015 Miller Williams Poetry Prize; the 2012, 2014 and 2015 Crab Orchard Poetry Series; the 2013 and 2014 42 Miles Press Poetry Awards; the 2013 Elixir Press Antivenom Award; the 2015 and 2016 Codhill Poetry Award; the 2015 Washington Prize; and the 2015 Richard Snyder Publication Prize.  

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Marriage Of The Moon and The Field by Sunni Brown Wilkinson

At Last the Light in the Trees Wavers

and moves on like an old woman
turning away

from the mirror. Everything dims.
Now the lamp

is master. November,
and the rake face–

down in a pile of leaves
is like a kid playing dead,

the stick of his back staying
perfectly still.

And at night in our bed
the bird of me returns

to the tree of you.
All we’ve shed: leaves

and feathers on the floor.
The dark and your limbs

draw me in.
I’ll sing now

in my little house of bones.

This selection comes from the book, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field, available from Black Lawrence Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

My poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Adirondack Review, Sugar House Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, BODY and other journals and anthologies. I am the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press 2019), and winner of New Ohio Review’s inaugural NORward Poetry Prize. I teach at Weber State University and live in northern Utah with my husband and three young sons.

Danielle Hanson received her MFA from Arizona State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books and a Senior Reader at Atlanta Review, and was formerly Poetry Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, and associate editor for Loose Change Magazine and Carriage House Review.  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals and anthologies, including Poets & Writers, Iodine Poetry Journal, Rosebud, The Cortland Review, Willow Springs, Roanoke Review, Poet Lore, Asheville Poetry Review, and Blackbird.  She has been on staff at the Meacham Writers’ Conference and the Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference, and completed residencies at The Hambidge Center.  She has received several Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations.  She is the 2017 recipient of the Codhill Press Poetry Prize, Finalist for the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Poetry, and 2016 recipient of the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub.

Her second collection Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press, 2018) won the 2017 Codhill Press Poetry Prize, and was previously a Finalist in the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry in 2017, the Wick Poetry Prize in 2017, the Codhill Poetry Award in 2017, the Antivenom Poetry Award in 2016 and 2017, and the Richard Snyder Prize in 2016 and 2017; and was Semifinalist in the National Poetry Series in 2017, the Crab Orchard Series in 2017, the Elixir Press Prize in 2016, and The Washington Prize in 2016. 

Her debut collection Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017) previously was Runner Up for the 2012 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize; Finalist for the 2015 and 2016 Robert Dana Prizes for Poetry; the 2015 and 2016 Blue Lynx Prizes; and the 2014 Codhill Poetry Award; and Semifinalist for the 2015 Miller Williams Poetry Prize; the 2012, 2014 and 2015 Crab Orchard Poetry Series; the 2013 and 2014 42 Miles Press Poetry Awards; the 2013 Elixir Press Antivenom Award; the 2015 and 2016 Codhill Poetry Award; the 2015 Washington Prize; and the 2015 Richard Snyder Publication Prize.  

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Marriage Of The Moon and The Field by Sunni Brown Wilkinson

Nesting Dolls

The biggest one carries all that weight
inside her it’s a wonder

she doesn’t fall over.
Pull apart her two halves and out

comes another, rouged and ready
to open again. Quiet, and you can hear them

breathe, a tiny ocean
sound in each. Just now a thump

under my ribs says No more room
in this borrowed house. Like cells slowly dividing,

we make our peace by letting go.
It’s almost time. We’re verses

with space in between
for our own small hallelujah. Selah,

the Hebrew word that marks a rest
after each Psalm. I want to say Selah in between

each house on my block, all the sleepers
in soft places. When the wind tore

at our house and I was afraid
the big pine would fall,

we all slept in the front room,
nothing but our breath, covers rising

and falling, a stone–light
through the blinds,

two children and their parents
dreaming. Deeper inside, the unborn

tapped, and the train whistle cried out—
my son says, like someone calling your name.

This selection comes from the book, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field, available from Black Lawrence Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

My poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Adirondack Review, Sugar House Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, BODY and other journals and anthologies. I am the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press 2019), and winner of New Ohio Review’s inaugural NORward Poetry Prize. I teach at Weber State University and live in northern Utah with my husband and three young sons.

Danielle Hanson received her MFA from Arizona State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books and a Senior Reader at Atlanta Review, and was formerly Poetry Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, and associate editor for Loose Change Magazine and Carriage House Review.  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals and anthologies, including Poets & Writers, Iodine Poetry Journal, Rosebud, The Cortland Review, Willow Springs, Roanoke Review, Poet Lore, Asheville Poetry Review, and Blackbird.  She has been on staff at the Meacham Writers’ Conference and the Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference, and completed residencies at The Hambidge Center.  She has received several Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations.  She is the 2017 recipient of the Codhill Press Poetry Prize, Finalist for the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Poetry, and 2016 recipient of the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub.

Her second collection Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press, 2018) won the 2017 Codhill Press Poetry Prize, and was previously a Finalist in the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry in 2017, the Wick Poetry Prize in 2017, the Codhill Poetry Award in 2017, the Antivenom Poetry Award in 2016 and 2017, and the Richard Snyder Prize in 2016 and 2017; and was Semifinalist in the National Poetry Series in 2017, the Crab Orchard Series in 2017, the Elixir Press Prize in 2016, and The Washington Prize in 2016. 

Her debut collection Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017) previously was Runner Up for the 2012 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize; Finalist for the 2015 and 2016 Robert Dana Prizes for Poetry; the 2015 and 2016 Blue Lynx Prizes; and the 2014 Codhill Poetry Award; and Semifinalist for the 2015 Miller Williams Poetry Prize; the 2012, 2014 and 2015 Crab Orchard Poetry Series; the 2013 and 2014 42 Miles Press Poetry Awards; the 2013 Elixir Press Antivenom Award; the 2015 and 2016 Codhill Poetry Award; the 2015 Washington Prize; and the 2015 Richard Snyder Publication Prize.