A Conversation with Arisa White

As I read You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, the new collection by poet Arisa White, published in 2016, I felt that I wasn't connecting deeply enough with this work.  Although I noticed and appreciated the bravery and beauty of these poems, many of which have titles from 'a List of terms for gay in different languages' on Wikipedia, I couldn't help but wonder: am I too old, too traditional, or even too straight to really “get” this work?  When I read poetry, I want to savor the beauty of the words and their arrangement, but I also seek to understand the meaning of the poems. This is essential to my enjoyment of poetry.  Fortunately, Arisa White agreed to answer my (somewhat eclectic) interview questions, presented here.  My hope was that a conversation with her would strengthen my understanding of and connection to her work. 

A Conversation with Arisa White

1) Welcome, Arisa, and thank you for being so gracious and patient with me!  As mentioned, I struggled a bit to find connection to your work.  Who do you think is the ideal reader of this collection of poems?

AW: I think someone who can live in the interstices.  Someone who understands and knows grief, a broken heart, who pines for things to be just, who is not afraid of her well, he who goes inward, they who write for the here and sensuous logic.  She who sees and resists the restraints put on the body,he who story tells and finds other ways, they who disobey hegemonic voices and choruses on and on 
and on . . . .

Spoken like a true poet, Arisa!   :)

2) Tell me something important about this collection that I may have missed.

AW: I don’t know what you’ve missed. Makes me think of the bus driving off as you run to it. And do you keep running because it is a bus you need to catch?  I wonder, what made you late?  What were the conditions that made arriving on time, now a missing for you? The funny thing is this collection is exploring that same thing--missing. The way it leaves a certain presence in the body. The absence shapes you. And as it does it’s shaping, you learn to exist with it. You learn a new understanding of your body and its emotional terrain as the relationship matures. In that maturation, things are nurtured--the imagination, for one, and the way you maneuver language, and quiet and silence too, so it better speaks to you, is another. So the language is full with you.  Each poem explores some form of missing and the transformation that occurs.

Arisa, at least I didn't miss the missing theme, mentioned above! Your poems eloquently express longing and loss and love.

3) What gift (or gifts) do you want to give your readers?

AW: Joy.  Nuanced emotional literacy.  Rigor.  Possibility.  Inspiration.  Contemplation.  Provocation.

I'd add Harmony to your list, Arisa.

4)  Do you hope to reveal, or conceal, in You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, which seems to be a love letter?   How autobiographical is this collection? 

AW: It does feel very much like a love letter. A love letter that has been written in private and public places in the body and within the culture at large. A love letter written at different points on the waves of love, at different moments when you encounter a “new” way of comprehending love. A love letter to how love leaves you open and changed. This collection is not autobiographical. It pulls from my personal sphere. Too much is taken from what is around me--gossip, media, family narratives, books, popular culture, music. The I in the collection is an outward I, an I in community, in intimate relationship to the ecologies that form its making. You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened is the house made from tensions of bodies in relationship to their own and other bodies. 

5) What, if anything, did you (or an editor) edit out of this book?

AW: There were six poems removed from the original manuscript. The work had a different tone, and at times reminded me of pieces that could have gone in my debut collection Hurrah’s Nest—those poems were more autobiographical. Some of the edited-out poems were an exercise in language, and after revising them, sometimes radically, they didn’t make sense to me.  I couldn’t place their sense within in the collection. With the removal of those poems, I was better able to see the overall creative enterprise of the work, and as result I then included the suite of poems “Effluvium”; “Effluvium” brings attention to AIDS and its impact on black women, but expands itself to address violence against women.

 
6) If you could set one of the poems in this book to music, and turn it into a song, which poem would it be, and why?   

AW: Not music, and that may be because there is already “music” present in the work—its prosody, assonance, slant rhyme, etc.  However, I do see “Lady in the House: Kitchen Speeches” as short film. That persona is so irreverent and radically self-possessed that to see her embodied would be great. The setting of the kitchen is very feminine, and so knowledge has been exchanged at kitchen tables, near the stove, washing dishes.  It is a powerful creative space, a space where women cook for revolutions, commune and congregate, take time for themselves, make themselves beautiful, prepare their medicines, concoct poison and bombs.

Arisa, it's interesting that you singled out this poem and mentioned that you can see it as a short film.  It's one of my favorites in your book.  I agree that the setting of the kitchen, sometimes called the heart of the home, is both feminine and powerful (I like that coupling). To my surprise, I've grown to love my own kitchen over the years; it has become a creative and comfortable space for me. There are many profound lines in "Lady in the House: Kitchen Speeches", such as:

"I've been searching for one pure answer, one complete
thing to feed loss.  Something grown for your mouths,
a recipe my pots don't refuse."

7) How does the writing process affect you, emotionally and/or spiritually?  Why did you choose poetry over prose?

AW: Writing is an integrative act.  Different parts come together to make something, and from that making something becomes known.  Something is realized, and what that means for me is that I’ve freed myself.  In the ways we are socially constructed and therefore disempowered, I get my power back, bit by bit, trauma by trauma, generation by generation, and so I know myself more by being engaged in the creative act that socially created me.  I’m more present in my body, even when I’m told to be fearful because I’m black, woman, queer, etc.  I can write myself right as an inhabitant of this earth.  My “I” has broader (in)sight.  And poetry aligns more closely with how I see/perceive the world.

Arisa, your statement, "I can write myself right as an inhabitant of this earth", is excellent.  The act of writing, to a writer, is, of course, extremely valuable.  As far as poetry goes, you seem to be a natural poet. 

After thinking about your answers, I realized that I needed to read your poems with more freedom, meaning that although your content is meaningful, I shouldn't seek or expect a complete, literal understanding.  I was reminded (once again!) that my approach to reading poetry should be different than my approach to reading prose. This  conversation did help me to connect more closely with your work.  Thank you very much for this interview, Arisa! 
 

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Thanks as well to Serena from Poetic Book Tours for arranging this tour and for providing a print copy of this book.  For more reviews and features, please visit the other stops on the tour for You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened.  I've linked this review to Serena's 2016 Poetry Challenge.

Thanks for reading!  As always, your comments are welcomed. 

Field Guide to the End of the World

Typically, field guides are books that help interested readers identify wildlife such as plants or animals, or natural objects, such as minerals, designed to be brought into the "field" or area where the  objects exist.  These books often feature detailed illustrations or photographs. According to Wikipedia, the first popular field guide to plants may have been  How to Know the Wildflowers by "Mrs. William Starr Dana" (Frances Theodora Parsons), published in 1893.  I knew I had a few classic field guides in my shelves, so I looked around my home to gather them.  Quickly, I found a small, eclectic bunch, mostly gifts from my mother (who nurtured the nature lover in me and my young family): A Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds (autographed by Roger Tory Peterson),  A Peterson Field Guide to Pacific State Wildflowers, The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather, and The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles & Amphibians.  And now there's a new kid on the block.  The newest addition to my collection is a field guide--to the end of the world.

"This is it, the apocalypse . . ."
~ Radioactive, Imagine Dragons

Published in 2016, Field Guide to the End of the World by Jeannine Hall Gailey is a collection of poems that won the 2015 Moon City Press Award.  This book is divided into five sections: Disaster Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Hard Science, A Primer for Your Personal Genome Project, and End Times Eschatology.  In the book, we are introduced to Teen Girl Vampires, Zombie Stripper Clones, and Alien Autopsies.  The tone of this collection is often humorous.  Martha Stewart's Guide to Apocalypse Living, with its "guide to storing munitions in attractive wicker boxes: page 52", has already been mentioned specifically as a very funny poem in other reviews of this book, and I agree.  This collection is filled with original, evocative images that underscore the importance of humor, even during the most troubling, uncertain, apocalyptic times.

There's notable, creative variety in the format of these poems.  Some are presented traditionally, while others, like Post-Apocalypse Postcard from the Viceroy Hotel, Santa Monica, and Post-Apocalypse Postcard from an American Girl ("determined for once to do more than survive"), resemble flash fiction; Shorting Out has spaces to illustrate the "shorts", and there's even a poem written in epistolary form, Letter to John Cusack, Piloting a Plane in an Apocalypse Movie.

Poetry, like music, must be felt to be understood.  You experience poetry by the actual reading of it, or by hearing someone else read it aloud.  Here is a sample from the book, a single, stunning poem, which the poet has given me permission to share. 


Every Human is a Black Box

We all carry our own road map to disaster, the faint voice recordings

that veer from mundane to hysterical in that last moment.
There's no turnkey solution to us; one person's milk
is another's poison; my mother swears green tea gives her hives.

My husband looks up from the field with scratchy throat and red eyes,
while I frolic in amid the goldenrod; at night I toss and wheeze
in the dust of my pillow while he snores dreamlessly.

Our lives have stood, like loaded guns -- for one, heart attack
by sauce alfredo, for another, 101 years of béarnaise and tobacco
troubled by nothing more than mild glaucoma.  Some of us
can disregard the warnings; others must cling tightly to directions.

When you slide into the grave, remember your body is a document,
a reminder, a memorial to distant waters, the siren call of cells
to sleep. Turn off. Shut down.  Mayday, May Day.

Another poem in the book that impressed me greatly is Yearbook: Not Pictured.  This poem is so clever and interesting!   The poet paints pictures of various moments in school "not pictured" in the yearbook, things that were personally meaningful and memorable (such as, "sneaking out to lie in the sun under that pink dogwood tree"),  and states that "the most important lessons are not the ones we were graded for".  How true!  Like all poets, she feels things very deeply, and remembers things well, although of course, memory is selective (relatedly, a young man signed my own high school yearbook with a line that I haven't forgotten, "the end is near").  In this poem, she presents a believable set of details from her time in school that casts us back to our own school days.

These apocalypse poems are poignant, but there are welcome rays of light--"let's just say it was all magical"--because "the poet clings, stubborn, to romance".  As I read this book, I marveled over many things, many times.  Jeannine Hall Gailey's work is full of thought, and fully brilliant. Although the book's subject is serious, this collection is also playful, heartfelt, and hopeful.  It is a celebration of life.  As you can tell, I'm a big fan of Jeannine Hall Gailey's work.  I've also read The Robot Scientist's Daughter, sci-fi poems published in 2015.  I'm eager to read She Returns to the Floating World, another collection of her poems, published by Kitsune Books in 2011.  In college, I read The Floating World in Japanese Fiction (sometimes it comes in handy to have been a Lit. major), and am especially interested in Japanese material now that I have been to Japan(!).  She Returns to the Floating World focuses on feminine transformations in the personae of characters from Japanese folk tales, anime, and manga.  It sounds quite intriguing to me!

Many thanks to Serena from Poetic Book Tours for organizing this tour, and also to Jeannine for graciously mailing me a print copy of her book because I wanted to read it in the traditional way.  For more reviews, please visit the other stops on the tour for Field Guide to the End of the World. I've linked my review to Serena's 2016 Poetry Challenge.

Thanks for reading what I've written!  It's your turn now.  Comments are welcomed.

Saris and a Single Malt

I'll  admit right away that I cannot be objective.  Sweta Srivastava Vikram is one of my favorite contemporary authors.  I cherish her work.  Over the past several years, I've had the privilege and pleasure of reading and reviewing a lot of her work--mostly poetry--and I've also interviewed her.  This past weekend, I was thrilled to learn that her article, Sweet Somethings, was published in the New York Times Magazine section (it's just a matter of time until one of her books is listed as a NY Times bestseller, I think).  This prolific writer is also the CEO and Founder of NimmiLife, which helps people reach their goals by increasing their creativity, productivity, and health.  Her newest poetry collection, Saris and a Single Malt, published by Modern History Press in 2016, is her most personal to date. It is fittingly dedicated to her beloved mother, who died unexpectedly in India in 2014. The poet's mother, the subject of this book, affectionately called Mummy and Mumma, is richly brought to life in these poems.

"For Mummy--wherever you are, I am sure the place has good whiskey and a beautiful collection of saris."

The book takes place in "real time", over the course of a harrowing thirty-six hours.  The poems in this collection are an autobiographical account of the poet's thoughts and emotions as events unfold during an extremely difficult time.  On May 30, 2014, Sweta and her husband, Anudit, caught a flight to New Delhi because her mother fell ill suddenly, and was rushed to the ICU at Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon.  "Poetry, pain, and prayers" accompany Sweta on this arduous and uncertain journey.  In Saris and a Single Malt, we are invited into the very core of this intimate experience, and we feel the poet's great pain and loss.  But although she is disconsolate and distraught after her mother dies, the poet still manages to describe her mother's beauty, with grace and eloquence:
 

"Motherless: I embraced poetry and Bhaiya.
Peaceful and beautiful: Mumma looked
like a poem wrapped in a lavender sheet."
 ~ May 31, 2014, Poetry, pain, and prayers, Sweta Srivastava Vikram 


As always, Sweta puts everything into her work.  Saris and a Single Malt is intensely personal, passionate, and profound.  In the poem "I Write", Sweta states that she must write in order to survive this ordeal.  She articulates her pain and agony throughout the book, beginning with the flight on May 30, 2014, and describes many parts of the experience, such as being at JFK Airport and on the plane, arriving at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, learning that her mother is gone, and some of the Hindu rituals that follow, in these poems.  I've been granted special permission to include one of my favorite poems from the book in this post.  This poem especially resonated with me.


 Forever Courage, Beta

I wear the butterfly pendant you gave me, Mumma.  I pull at it,
hoping the wings will set me free.  I want to get away from
everybody.  I want to know how to reach you.  I don't want to live in
the absence of your voice.  I wonder what you would say if I read
my plea.  Suddenly, I hear you whisper in the summer breeze. Never 
lose courage, Beta.  You've always been strong.  I swallow my angst.
Words, I tell you, they stay with me forever.

This sincere and courageous account touched me deeply.  I think that adults who have lost a loved one, especially a parent, will be able to relate to this honest and powerful work.  In the span of just over a year, in 2011 and in 2012, I lost both of my parents, first my mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer in 2010, and then my father.  Although my story is different than Sweta's, there are some similarities.  In 2011, I spent a long Memorial Day weekend worrying about my mother's health, waiting to hear news of her condition.  Soon afterward, like Sweta, I was in flight, traveling on a red eye from CA to NY while my mother was in the hospital, hoping to make it there in time.  Sadly, my mother passed away shortly before I arrived in NY.  While on the plane in the hazy, wee hours of the morning, I either dreamed or imagined or heard my mother say in her distinct voice something like "I am alright, Susan--please don't worry", and to this day I wonder if this was truly her message to me in her final moments. 

Although this book conveys Sweta's loss and sorrow, the poet also shares the joy of her close relationship with her mother.  She describes her mother's beautiful saris as "carrying the scent of sweet cardamom"  and smelling of  "cloves and single malt", her delicious cooking, and many other essential details. Saris and a Single Malt is a beautiful, heartfelt collection that is also a loving, poetic tribute to her mother.  In the Afterword of the book, Sweta talks about how she was able to better cope with her grief and find some peace after the loss of her mother.  It is a hopeful and helpful ending.

Many thanks to Serena from Poetic Book Tours for inviting me to participate in this tour and for providing a copy of this book.  For more reviews and features, please visit the other stops on the tour for Saris and a Single Malt.  I've linked my review to Serena's 2016 Poetry Challenge.

Thank you for reading.  Comments from my readers are welcomed and appreciated.

(PUBLISHING DISCLAIMER: “Forever Courage, Beta” excerpted with permission from the book Saris and a Single Malt, published by Modern History Press.  Copyright (c) 2016 Sweta Srivastava Vikram.  All Rights Reserved.)

The Couple Who Fell to Earth

"the world being a jagged heaven
my soles learn to tread more tenderly. My head of red clouds
and wounded distortions: bells and satanic flutes heard.
~ from Immanent, Pugatorio (with Dante Aligehieri), Michelle Bitting



Published in 2016, The Couple Who Fell to Earth is the third book by California poet Michelle Bitting.  This poet holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University, and not surprisingly given the mythological nature of her new book, is currently a Ph.D candidate in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. This book is divided into several sections: Earth, Heart, Immanent, Body, Wind, an Epilogue, and Acknowledgements.

The first poem in the book How Like Marriage is the Season of Flowers in which a forgotten, wrinkled flower bulb from the messy garage has become a single red bloom, sets the stage for the entire collection of poems.  Themes included in this poem reverberate throughout the book--transformation, change, rebirth--and abundant beauty: "beauty needs no apology".  (Thank you--we shouldn't feel guilty about noticing beauty in our daily lives!)  The poem is magically descriptive and layered.  It resonated with me in several ways.  The house, the home, and the love story, brought to mind the some lines from the great, classic song by the Talking Heads, This Must be the Place (Home--is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there . . .).

The Couple Who Fell to Earth is the second poem in the book.  The opening is quite dramatic, and features a couple who went "flying without a map as naked astronauts often do", and who "hurtled through space and burned up entering".  This poem is about passion and marriage, while the poem Gold Ring is about a very long marriage.  The book reflects a deep appreciation for the special richness, and, I think, the otherworldly nature of love, passion, and marriage.  In the Acknowledgements section Bitting cites other poets and writers who inspired her work, such as James Merrill and Frank O'Hara, but I was curious about a possible David Bowie connection to The Couple Who Fell to Earth, which is also the title of the book.  The Man Who Fell to Earth is a 1976 British science fiction film which stars David Bowie as an alien who has landed on Earth in search of water to save his home planet.  I asked Serena from Poetic Book Tours to ask the poet about this.  Here's what Bitting said about David Bowie:

"I've always been a huge Bowie fan so I suppose he and that film were in the back of my mind.  But it really just naturally came through the writing of the poem and maybe Bowie's song playing in the hinterlands of my psyche. Then he died, which I truly did not see coming. "

The Couple Who Fell to Earth is a dynamic, transcendental collection that shows a deep appreciation for life.  I wanted to linger, to become lost "in the lines", and I did, to some extent.  Over the past few years, I've increased my intake of poetry, and slowly but surely, I think I'm understanding it better (at the very least, I'm less intimidated by it as an art form).  I started reading the book one unhurried morning in bed (while a Saturday morning dove cooed outside of my window), and I enjoyed it a great deal.  While reading this collection, I thought about why I want to spend more time reading poetry.  Poetry lets you languish in language, longer.  Poetry "allows" you to mull over a word or an idea (which you can carry around with you, whether you're at the store, or perhaps more fittingly, in the woods).  Sometimes, I just want to think about a single word, detail, phrase, or idea, for a while, to slow down in this way.  Poetry seems to encourage this idea; you don't want to rush through poems, you want to take your time, to savor the vision and the voice.  Additionally, poems, like short stories, can fit into the small time spaces of our lives more easily than larger works.  But back to the book at hand.  Here are some shorter, exquisite lines from The Couple Who Fell to Earth:

"From this time on, love governs my soul."

"The rest is mystery and history re-seen."
~ Immanent, Pugatorio (with Dante Aligehieri)

And from the last poem in the book (one of my favorites):

"The soul of the soul of the soul is love."
~ Epiphany II  

Although I'm providing only small glimpses into The Couple Who Fell to Earth, I hope I've been able to convey the expansiveness and beauty that permeate this collection of poems.

Many thanks to Serena from Poetic Book Tours for inviting me on this tour and for sending me a copy of the book.  For more reviews and features, please visit the other stops on the tour for The Couple Who Fell to Earth. I've linked this review to Serena's 2016 Poetry Challenge.  As always, your comments are welcomed!

Paradise Drive

According to the Marin Independent Journal, poet Rebecca Foust studied sonnets intensely for two years before writing Paradise Drive, and even wrote her grocery lists in sonnet form for practice.  Published in 2015, this collection features 80 contemporary sonnets, and won the Press 53 Award for Poetry.

What is a sonnet?  Truthfully, I have not thought about sonnets in years, and had to refresh my memory with some quick, online searches.  Simply put, a sonnet is a song.  In terms of structure, a sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter. The two basic sonnet forms are the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean (from poets.org).  Paradise Drive features modern sonnets that tell the story of Pilgrim, the narrator and persona of these poems.  I may as well define Pilgrim as well.  A pilgrim (from the Latin peregrinus) is a traveler who is on a journey to a holy place. Often this is a physical journey to some place of special and/or religious significance (definition from Wikipedia).  It can also refer to a metaphorical journey.  This is an apt description of the persona in Paradise Drive, Pilgrim, who has traveled from Altoona, PA to Marin County, CA, and is now on a different sort of journey.

This collection of work is introduced by Tom Lombardo, the Press 53 Poetry Series Editor.  The first sonnet in Paradise Drive is titled Paradise Drive.  It describes the colors and physical beauty of Marin County, of Phoenix Lake and Mt. Tam, a natural paradise.  In the next poem, though, we meet Pilgrim, and we feel the angst.  She lives in a large house, and her children are gone; she is an empty-nester. (Hopefully, Rebecca Foust does not hate this term; I'm not sure how I feel about this term; my kids are not living at home right now, although my college-age daughter, my youngest, is a freshman in college, and comes home during breaks.)

In Cocktail Party (and also in Another Party, Another Bathroom), Pilgrim describes being at a party and escaping to the bathroom so that she can read in peace; books and reading provide solace from the surrounding superficiality, and indicate Pilgrim's quest, for something deeper.  These sonnets are humorous and intelligent.  Party Etiquette (1. Remain Upbeat and Polite) has a sardonic tone, in contrast to the "Tupperware optimistic" of PTA moms.  In the sonnet, The Quest, Pilgrim searches for something more elusive, "Maybe the chance to do an angstrom of good, make beauty or protest or laughter". At this stage in her life, Pilgrim does not want or need things.  She has done well financially and is comfortable.  Pilgrim cares about her inner life, and she wants her time to be valuable and meaningful, not frivolous.  In Party On, she laments "the fear of falling in love with it all", because she is content but doesn't want to become complacent--she wants something deeper and more meaningful. 

While reading this collection, I wondered if the book was autobiographical.  I found out (in the same Marin Independent Journal article referred to above) that the book is semi-autobiographical; Rebecca Foust says that 60% of it is about her, and the other 40% is "wildly" made up.  Unfortunately, the suicides of three Marin women were real. These tragic deaths inspired the poet's work, at least in part.

Over the course of several days and evenings, I read these beautiful, haunting sonnets, using a cloth butterfly as a makeshift bookmark.  Rebecca Foust succeeds in achieving what Pilgrim in the book sets out to do: to find a deeper meaning or purpose, precisely through her creative work and fulfillment as a poet.  The Notes in the back are interesting and shed more light on the background and content of these sonnets.  Rebecca Foust has certainly mastered the sonnet as a form of poetry, as a form of art.  Paradise Drive made me think about many things, and about sonnets, in a general sense.  I wondered if I still had my copy of The Sonnets by Shakespeare.  As you can see in the photo below, I found my copy, in a bookshelf.

Have you ever written a sonnet, maybe in school?  It's not an easy feat. (As we used to say in French class, c'est difficile!)  I've attempted to write a sonnet (Shakespearean), below, about Paradise Drive (which I will edit further), which will be best understood by someone who has also read the book.


Ode to Paradise Drive

Rebecca Foust's Pilgrim, like Anne Bradstreet
An idealist, an eloquent Persona
In sonnets, the poet's chosen choice
Animate Pilgrim's strong, vibrant voice.

Subjects are diverse--her "asparagus" son,
The Seven Deadly Sins (Overheard at the Party)
I read about Greed, Pride, Envy, Lust, Wrath,
Gluttony, and Sloth, I read about Dogs and Loyalty.

Pilgrim has a lot to say, that's no jive
She's risen above her Altoona past
But riches alone are not enough
Despair hovers (hidden), alongside perfection.

Life is just a party, but parties weren't meant to last
Pilgrim's quest is deep, meaningful, and vast.

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Thanks to Serena from Poetic Book Tours for inviting me to participate in this book tour.  For additional reviews and features, please visit the other stops on this tour for Paradise Drive.  I've linked this review to Serena's 2016 Poetry Challenge.  As always, your comments are welcomed!