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Poet to Poet: Candelin Wahl and Lisa Ludden

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

Dear Candelin,

I just read your poem “Attending Murmurations Dance or Precarity,” and I thought it was beautiful. I was really interested in how each stanza worked like a sentence, like a complete thought, using the stanza and line breaks as punctuation really.

I was particularly drawn to the opening stanza: “how seamless the dancers lean in, float apart/their near collisions fluid as starlings/and swallows that swoop their way/to evening roost”.

Perhaps we should talk a little bit about what interests us in writing, or what we’re working on, or what we’re concerned with in poetics?

I look forward to talking with you.

Lisa

 

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for reaching out – and for your careful reading of my poem. I’m looking forward to sharing my own responses to your poems, as well as exchanging ideas and process notes

I have a daily journal practice that I’ve been keeping since 2012, and it’s been a godsend for helping me name and follow my creative priorities. I was converted to “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron six years ago and credit her insights for restarting my writing practice.

Best Regards,

Candelin


Dear Candelin,

Ah…daily writing practice. Well, I try. For the past two years, I’ve been working pretty diligently on a poetry manuscript, so, in collecting, writing, and rewriting those poems, I did write almost every day. I think because I had a project in hand, and I had given myself a timeline (to finish the book this summer, and begin submitting it in the fall), I had to write daily. I began working with an editor in January, and once I got the manuscript back, I went through it page by page. I would try to tackle one poem a day. And for the most part, I kept to that schedule, although when I got to poems that needed a complete overhaul, or if I was writing a new poem to address a gap in the book, then those poems would generally take longer. This type of intense revision was new to me, but I found it incredibly useful. I really started to recognize my patterns in writing, the forms I was drawn to (couplets, prose poems), and the types of syntax inversions and line breaks that interest me. I also learned a lot about the stages that my poems go through. For the most part, my poems go through multiple drafts.

Take care and talk soon,

Lisa

Hi Lisa,

I’ve just read your three poems again from MockingHeart Review. I was so struck by the emotional tone, and how the three poems held together as a set. I often have trouble expressing a larger “idea” that comes out of a scene or event in my life. But each of these pieces succeeds at just that. What I notice is how you vary your poetic form to match the mood and rhythm of each poem’s language. Maybe we can dialog a bit about form – how we make the decisions for each poem?

Here are a few of my impressions:

“Tread Water, Please” is so immediate and specific, with many layers of meaning in the conceit of swimming, treading water, and breath. My favorite line is “I don’t feel fit for permanent space.”

“Holding Pattern” spoke to me most strongly. A spare scene in just the first line, followed by a lyrical yet straight-forward lament: “I don’t want to be available.” Judicious use of italics helps readers track the heaviness in your heart. The last line is restorative without being perky or off-handed: “But the regeneration comes in fits and starts if you let it.”

I admire “Gathering” for its brave prose form and haunting language. “…the molten thought becomes something heated, something cooled, something burning and there is nothing holding me to the earth but the salt,…” As someone who grew up on Long Island Sound in Connecticut, I relate to the power of salt water and the healing from swimming in it.

You asked about Burlington Writer’s Workshop (BWW) and its literary journal Mud Season Review. Please check out their website.  I started coming to the weekly BWW workshops in early 2015 and found my creative home and support community. I committed to myself that I would submit once a month, which really helped me write more regularly. I had recently left a corporate marketing career in favor of part-time freelance writing (mostly web content for corporate clients). I had been a blocked creative writer for most of my adult life, so this was a heady, liberating time. I wrote some memoir pieces, a short story or two, part of a children’s musical play, and wrote lyrics to about twenty songs. This was how I discovered that my passion is poetry, and I’ve been immersing myself in that genre for about two years. I’ve attended three all-day Poetry retreats and several workshops led by guest writers, including Baron Wormser, former Poet Laureate of Maine and a gifted instructor.

Last summer, I was accepted as the Mud Season Review Poetry Co-Editor, a volunteer position. This 5-15 hour a week position has been extremely rewarding and has really jump-started my own writing. I’ve been inspired to submit my work widely, and I’ve had a handful of poems published online. Recently I was thrilled when Stone Coast Review in Maine accepted one of my pieces for their Summer 2018 print issue. I’m following the advice of Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way,” journaling every day for the past six years, and enjoying the process and journey of my artistic recovery. I tend to lapse on the weekly “Artist Date,” but when I do them, there’s almost always a creative reward in the form of a new poem or song.

Thanks,

Candelin

 

Dear Candelin,

Congratulations on your publication in StoneCoast Review. It’s a great journal.

And thank you for the kind words about my poems. I’m so excited that you homed in on the rhythm and form because that is something I think about quite a bit, especially when focusing on the line itself, as an entity.

A few thoughts about how I make decisions about forms in poems:

I tend to work a lot with prose poems and poems in long lines. One of the draws of the prose poem is how it can really dictate the rhythm of the poem, like the lines are running over the edge, and the reader is forced to keep up. Sometimes this causes a problem in my work, so I find I must be really specific with punctuation, otherwise, it can be difficult to follow the logic of the poem.

This past year, however, I have found myself writing more in couplets. A few months ago, I was working with a small series of prose poems that weren’t quite working, so I tried writing one of them in couplets. After sharing those versions with a friend, she suggested that I rework all of them in couplets. What I find compelling about the couplet is the placement of the line break, what that does to expand the possibilities of meaning in the poem, as well as to propel the poem forward (which is what I like about the prose poem).

How I make craft decisions really depends on the content unless I’m responding to a prompt that dictates a form. I struggle with adhering to strict forms in my writing, so I’ve also been trying to write in form, with constraints, to challenge myself. I’ll usually pick one formal element, to begin with. I worked with the ghazal form with a poem that was in couplets already, and that I wanted to incorporate repetition into, but I didn’t want it to be a poem about repetition. In the end, I took great liberties with the form and used the repeating word in within alternate lines.

Some of my questions for you: How do you determine form for your poems? What is that process like for you? What are you currently working on now, and what formal shape is it taking/or not?

Talk soon,

 

Lisa

 

Hi Lisa,

Your comments inspire me to experiment with a wider variety of forms – thank you! So far, my writing process has been to start out drafting stanzas in free verse. Once I get the language close to what I’m trying to say, I go back and see if there’s another form that could support the lines better. I’m also drawn to couplets – they provide nice breathing room between images and lines, allowing readers to consume a poem in smaller, hopefully, memorable bites. Other forms I admire, which I’ve only dabbled with, and haven’t come close to mastering. But I’m not giving up: prose poems found poems and centos. Mud Season Review recently published a striking portfolio of the latter two forms by a poet named E. Kristen Anderson – lines taken from Anne Rice novels and other popular writers.

A few of my own poems cried out for a more chaotic look and layout. I can’t say I’m at ease with this type of rule-breaking (though all gratitude to e.e. cummings). But it’s fun for me to go a little wild with shape and punctuation or lack thereof. It’s been many years since I studied poetry, so I’m taking it slow as I rebuild my vocabulary and study of the craft.

What I’m working on now: I bounce between writing song lyrics and poetry. I’ve tried to focus on poetry for the last two years. But lately, I’ve been drafting songs and scenes for a musical play. I’m hoping to work with a composer/collaborator. So, any new poems are in the seedling stage. I do have a long-form poem simmering. It will be after a seven-page poem I’ve always loved by Julia Alvarez called “Making Our Beds.” To help keep that moving along, I’m jotting, jotting, jotting: impressions, images, snippets of conversations I hear – the material goes into my phone as a voice memo or into my notebook. I’m on the wait-list for a residency in October, and this poem will be my project. Whether or not I’m accepted at the residency, I’ve blocked out those two weeks for writing. If not, I’ll fashion a DIY retreat of my own, which I’ve done before. I’m thinking of a friend’s (heated) vacation house on Cape Cod…

One fun thing I’ve done this past year is participating in open mic poetry readings. This was at the encouragement of a wonderful guest poet named Partridge Boswell. He led a series of three workshops on “Revision,” which culminated with eleven of us reading at the Monday night “Lit Club at the Lamp Shop”, a local poetry open mic. His belief is that poems are always in some stage of revision and reading poems in public is a great way to “take them out for a test drive.” Since then I’ve read several times and have become much more relaxed about sharing and revising my work. Quite liberating!

So, I’ve introduced another two new topics you might share about: Your thoughts/experiences on participating in public readings & your approach to revisions.

Cheers,

Candelin

 

Dear Candelin,

Thank you for sharing “Trashed” with me. The poem uses the space well. Particularly the space in the line

 

“Which neighbor takes toast ………… with pure Irish butter?”

I know how long to pause here. The whole poem does that, really instructs the pace. Although, with that said, I’d be interested to hear you read it. Perhaps the pace I move at as a reader doesn’t wholly match yours. I think about that often, especially with poems that move across the page in non-traditional ways. I’m not worried about the reader not reading the poem as I would, but more curious about how the reader is reading the poem.

I’ve been working on trying to participate in more public readings over the last few years. It’s funny, I stand up in front of students all day long and at relative ease, but it’s very different standing up and sharing poems. I’m trying to get over that and have found that I’m starting to enjoy reading my work in public more and more. I think the idea “that poems are always in some stage of revision” is true, and I like the idea of the reading being a “test drive.” It puts a little less pressure on the outcome. Thank you for sharing that.

My approach to revision…well, when I draft, it’s usually messy pages of notes on a legal pad that I eventually come back to. Then, I will rewrite by hand or type the draft (more often I rewrite first), and work with the poem for a bit. Then usually it sits while I think about what the poem is after. That’s when I go back and really dig into the draft, both in terms of craft and content. The short answer, I suppose, is that my poems sit in the draft stage for a long time. I’m always envious of writers who are willing and able to share their newly penned poems at workshops, where the words and images seem instantly connected. I find that I have to dig more for words. The idea roots in my mind long before I find the page, however, since having children, I have more difficulty holding onto lines in my head, so once they’re there, I must write them down immediately.

…Yes, I would love to keep in touch. I second your comment about how nice it is to talk to another writer.

Lisa

 

###

 

cwahl-headshot

Candelin Wahl is an emerging Vermont poet who explores relationships in all their tangled forms. She is Co-Editor of Mud Season Review. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the 2017 Best of the Burlington Writer’s Workshop, HerStory and Red Wolf Journal.

 

lisa ludden

Lisa Ludden lives, writes, and teaches in Northern California. She is the author of the chapbook Palebound (Flutter Press). Her poems appear in Natural Bridge, the Plath Poetry Project, LUMINA Online, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her first full-length book of poems.

New Issue and Exciting News!

~ Clare L. Martin ~ 1 Comment
Our new issue is LIVE. We couldn’t be happier with the work in it. Beautiful, engaging, and moving verse. Thank you to the poets who have entrusted us with your work. To our beloved readers: Enjoy! And, of course, thank you.
 
With the publication of Volume 4, Issue 1, I say thank you to all of our contributors who have made this work such a joy over the almost four years of this endeavor. It is with joy that I announce the appointment of Tyler Robert Sheldon as Editor in Chief of MockingHeart Review. Tyler has the vision, energy, integrity, and poetic sense that promises an exciting future for poets and readers. I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the decision to place the leadership position in his hands.
 
MHR will take a bit of a rest as we undertake the transition process. Expect to hear from us through our blog, Beats, and again in May when Tyler sets forth on this rewarding, enlightening, and fun-filled adventure.
 
I am so very grateful for the support of so many and for the opportunity to help bring poems I love to the world. Please enjoy our new issue and share it with your friends, families, and colleagues.
 

Clare L. Martin, Founding Editor, MockingHeart Review

Pushcart Prize Nominations

~ Clare L. Martin ~ Leave a comment

MockingHeart Review is proud to announce its nominations for The Pushcart Prize!

Donney Rose
“Etymology of at the end of the day”
https://mockingheartreview.com/volume-3-issue-3/donney-rose/

Hedy Habra
“Or Weren’t We Always Told To Remove Our Makeup at Night?”
https://mockingheartreview.com/volume-3-issue-3/hedy-habra/

Meggie Royer
“How to Live Without Fear”
https://mockingheartreview.com/…/vol-3-issue-1/meggie-royer/

Megan Burns
“50 PRAYER”
https://mockingheartreview.com/a…/vol-3-issue-1/megan-burns/

Anne Elezabeth Pluto
“Wake”
https://mockingheartreview.com/…/volu…/anne-elezabeth-pluto/

Cati Porter
“Match”
https://mockingheartreview.com/volume-3-issue-3/cati-porter/

An Interview with Sam Rasnake

~ Clare L. Martin ~ 7 Comments
MHR‘s Contributing Writer/Social Media Associate Charlotte Hamrick interviews MHR poet, Sam Rasnake.

 

I first “met” Sam Rasnake in the online writing forum Fictionaut. I was new to the site and a little intimidated by sharing my poetry with a group of strangers who weren’t strangers to each other. Sam was one of the first commenters of my work. His comments were always supportive and kind and he was (is) always willing to help me out when I was stuck or unsure of a piece. His own work is a beauty to behold. Sensitive, lyrical, intensely interesting. I’m so happy to be in a position to interview him for MockingHeart Review. Heartfelt thanks to Sam for sharing his time and thoughts.

~Charlotte Hamrick

 

What is your earliest recollection of the desire to write down your own thoughts?

I had a fantastic high school English teacher who turned me on to the deep wells of Bob Dylan, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor. Her class discussions made me try writing in a creative way. She showed me how to want to be a writer.

Do you remember your first poem? What was it about?

I began writing poetry in high school – showing them to no one. I kept them in a Japanese puzzle box. The first one was “Time,” a sonnet-like piece about – wait for it – dying.

Is poetry your primary genre? Do you work in any others?

Poetry has always been my focus in writing – and reading. Over the years, I dabbled in fiction, but the works seemed to morph into prose poems.

When my Father died in 2012, I stopped writing. Actually, I stopped writing about six months before he died when bone cancer began to impact the quality of his life in an extreme way – and I didn’t attempt to write for about a year after he passed. I was teaching college fall of 2013, and a creative writing class in non-fiction helped jump-start my work. I made myself do the class assignments with the students. We were using Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth-century French writer, philosopher, and creator of the personal essay, as the basis for our works. His “Of” pieces served as models for our “On” works – the subjects ranging from objects to abstractions to family to dreams… from the mundane to the universal to the personal. Writing began to feel comfortable to me again, and the words began to flow. I wrote many successful pieces that term. Nearly all have now been published in various journals. I thanked the students for their help – and gave a nod to Montaigne, one of the most important writers I’ve ever read.

Lately, I’ve been writing flash fiction as well as poetry.

I’m always interested in the writing process. Tell us a little about yours. Do you ponder a poem for a while, keeping it in a draft stage and working on it periodically or do you write it all at once, as the inspiration and words strike you? How much editing do you do on a piece?

I’ve always approached poetry from the Stanley Kunitz method. I had always written this way, but he articulated the method that closely resembled my own. The poet waits for the poem. This requires patience. In other words, I don’t choose the poem – the poem chooses me. I don’t decide my topics. I let the topics find me. I need to be overwhelmed by a subject or focus, and that does happen. Over the years, I’ve learned how to recognize the feeling of a poem coming my way. And it does begin with a feeling and not a thought.

As the years disappear from me, I find that I writer fewer drafts. I seldom write every day though I’m constantly reading the works of others – poetry, fiction, non-fiction. My poems now tend to come to me in a more complete or finished way. With some – probably the better ones – no words or phrasings are changed. The best ones arrive whole. For this reason, I have few stranded lines or incomplete poems. I should add, however, that I also have fewer finished works. I consider a finished work to be a published work – or at least what I consider publishable.

When I’m ready to begin writing a poem, I go to my journal and write what I’m hearing in my head. A poem is finished when I go to the computer. I seldom edit from a keyboard. The work is, for the most part, already finished.

Some writers advise writing every day, to actually force yourself, that it’s good practice. What do you think about that p.o.v.?

As a writer, I can’t be forced or coaxed. Subjects or topics are the same way. For this reason, I’m more comfortable in a writing group than I am in a writers’ workshop. I either do or do not write.

I do believe that a good writer – or a bad one for that matter – should be reading, and I do that.

Even though I may not be writing, I’m constantly flipping through my journal – I’m on #28 now. A Moleskine notebook, lined pages, with a soft cover is perfect. I’m halfway through 28. The first entry begins with a “finished poem” – “Some Kind of Compass” – printed from my computer, then taped onto the journal’s pages. I’ve included images as well. The poem is an ekphrastic piece based on the film Degalog, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ten-hour masterpiece. The date of my entry is 11 January 2017. The draft of the poem is found in the closing pages of journal #27. I’d been asked by Didi Menendez, editor of Poets Artists magazine, to submit a piece for a themed issue – the male muse. The poem’s subject came to me instantly and was finished quickly – with few changes. Apparently, I wanted to tinker with one stanza before submission, and I did that on 1/13. The poem is submitted on 1/14. My next entry in journal #28 – after a couple of pages of random thoughts or comments about “Some Kind of Compass,” my favorite music recordings, and the poetry of Paul Celan (I must have been reading his works at the time) – is on 22 February. My point is that I don’t write daily in my journal – or maybe I should say I don’t plan on writing daily. Sometimes it happens to be daily, but that is the exception. Normally, days will go by without an entry. On occasion, weeks or even months will pass. I write when I write.

Do you have a favorite place to write that’s particularly conducive to your creativity?

My green chair beside the fireplace is my spot. I love to write there. The window to my left faces the mountains that begin the Cherokee National Forest and the glass doors to my right lead to the trees on the hill behind my house.

Where was the strangest place that inspiration hit you for a poem and how did it turn out?

My cousin worked at a funeral home, and years ago I had to see him at work for some reason – I don’t remember why. He was called away briefly, leaving me alone in the embalming room. A poem began nudging me at once – filling my head with images of Hammer horror films. I didn’t have a pen or paper, but I began writing the poem – “The Dead”. It turned out well. The piece was published and nominated for a Pushcart.

Are there any recurrent themes in your poems? If so, why do you think that is?

My response is more mode than theme, but it does connect with theme. For many years, I’ve been working in an ekphrastic mode, writing pieces that connect to literature, art (in its many forms), music, and cinema. The creative arts have always been important to me. This, no doubt may be due to one of my earliest memories: my Father’s college textbook – Art History of the Western World.

As for a recurring theme, I’m not certain, but my best guess would be loss. For example, my favorite filmmakers – Krzysztof Kieślowski, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Orson Welles – are focused on the theme of loss, and I respond to their works because of it.

Do you have any favorite words?

Highway, window, door, path, road, stream, river, line…

Do you have any tips to share regarding motivation and/or discipline in completing a piece?

Read more – as often as possible. Reading can help a writer find the way into a work. Also, listen to music. View works of art. Watch films. Travel. Soak up the world. Let the world – the individual’s world – find a way to your own work, and let that work reflect the self. The “self” has a unique voice, and for the poem to be exceptional, that voice must be present in the lines. Voice – one that is true – takes an enormous amount of patience to find, but it is what sets the work apart from the numbing, uninspired dullness that language can have. Poetry should inspire, should change us, should serve as a map that leads to a personal truth. My poetry doesn’t have to be for everyone, but it does have to connect with me. For this reason, I do not write for an audience. That’s not to say I don’t want an audience; I do. But, that’s not the reason I write.

There is a burgeoning poetry community online and new lit journals popping up all the time. Some people think it’s just so much “look at me” noise and unworthy of notice while others celebrate more open and diverse opportunities for poets to share their work.  What do you think?

Today, there are more poetic opportunities than ever. We have more access to venues, more access to a myriad of voices. I do celebrate writers, and enjoy, learn from, grow with their works. I read many journals these days – mostly online, and my circle of writer friends continues to grow.

I find it impossible to name one poet who is my favorite – I have several. Who are some of your favorite poets and/or poems?

My favorite poets – the poets I’ve read the most – are Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Jorge Luis Borges, William Stafford, Yosa Buson, Natasha Trethewey, William Blake, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Wisława Szymborska, Jack Gilbert, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jane Hirshfield, Lucille Clifton, Han-Shan, Paul Celan, James Wright, Anne Carson, Jack Gilbert, Joy Harjo, Frank O’Hara, Gary Snyder, Adrienne Rich, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Lynda Hull, Larry Levis, Yusef Komunyakaa…

If I had to pick one poet: Elizabeth Bishop – one book: Geography III – and one poem: “Crusoe in England”. A remarkable writer.

 

sam rasnake

Sam Rasnake‘s works have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He has served as a judge for the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, University of California, Berkeley, and as a musician recorded has recorded with Radio On, the Show Yourself sessions (Aftermath Records). His most recent book is Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press, 2013).

I Show Up–A Poet’s Life Feature

~ Clare L. Martin ~ 1 Comment

I Show Up

By Karla Linn Merrifield

 

Show up, show up, I remind myself, a constant mantra.

 

That’s my number-one priority as a poet. I show up with pen and journal in hand…at my laptop keyboard…with an ear tuned to a turn of phrase during dinner conversation, newscasts, my tour guide’s explanation of tide pool biota…and with an eye out for a significant detail on the horizon of misted mountains or by my feet on a rainforest trail. I show up, in the present, attentive to the moment, open to the potential for a word or an image to reveal a path toward a poem. I show up; imagination takes over.

 

In this poet’s life, the whereness of showing up frequently takes on great significance as I have long been a “vagabond poet” as my blog readers know. I’ve tripped over poems in Antarctica (The Ice Decides, Finishing Line Press); I’ve netted them on the Amazon River (Attaining Canopy, FootHills Publishing). By way of example, here’s the title poem for the former book:

 

The Ice Decides

 

The ice decides
where I can go.
The ice divides
life from death,
safe passage from abyss.
But it is the light
on the ice that defines
beauty, terror, silence,
the blue awe of Antarctica.

 

Show up, poems happen. One rare day Sheshat, the Egyptian goddess of writing spoke to me on the site where Percy Bysshe Shelley once stood and where he began to conceive “Ozymandias”— “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!/ Nothing beside remains.” That place, his poem, urged me on. I took my turn to write.

 

And, today as I write this I’m floating on a small ship anchored in British Columbia, Canada, offshore of SGang Gwaay (formerly Anthony Island) on the exposed southwest coast of Gwaii Haanas (Queen Charlotte Islands), a native World Heritage Site, a sacred site of weathered totem poles, ones upright yet and ones fallen. I show up where the Haida population was decimated by epidemics introduced when Europeans make contact with them in the 1800s. Each house post, mortuary pole, and longhouse beam ravaged by time and tide seemed to hold a poem in its cedar heart. I showed up, stood before them, began to write.

 

 

After Kay Llnagaay

 

There are no fools
……………among totem poles
…………………….trickster raven assuredly
supernatural beings—monsters—
……………glance up………scan down
…………………….atop the full capricious moon
mounting cedar
…………..rooted on Earth
……………………..centering shine on sea shine
owl…….orca
…………beaver…….bear
………………….otter…….fox
and Foam Woman
…………..many-breasted
///////////////////////feeding imagination
here…. eever 
…………….to all carvers
…………………….of holy totems

 

If you are a fellow poet reading this, you probably know you need not travel farther afield then your own breakfast table to show up, to find your poem’s genesis as Billy Collins did in “Cheerios.” He showed up in a Chicago restaurant and found his poem when “a bar of sunlight illuminated my orange juice.”

 

And, if you are a reader of poetry, you need only open a book, turn a page, and we will sweep you away to where—and how and why—we showed up to imagine the exotic and the quotidian alike. I promise.

 

 

KLM Author Photo 2, Athabaskan Fractal

Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee, and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 700+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 13 books to her credit, the newest of which is Psyche’s Scroll, a book-length poem, published by The Poetry Box Select in June 2018. Forthcoming in June 2019 is her full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North, from Cirque Press. Her Godwit:  Poems of Canada (FootHills Publishing) received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. She is a member of Just Poets (Rochester, NY), the Florida State Poetry Society, the New Mexico Poetry Society, and The Author’s Guild. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet Redux, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com. Google her name to learn more; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.

 

 

Informing the Past: Allison Joseph’s “Confessions of a Barefaced Woman”

~ Clare L. Martin ~ 1 Comment

9781597096096_FC59f376982ce95 (1)

Informing the Past: Allison Joseph’s Confessions of a Barefaced Woman


Reviewed by Tyler Robert Sheldon
Allison Joseph’s new collection Confessions of a Barefaced Woman is a forthright and unabashed examination of the speaker’s personal lives. From past girlhood to her present as an assured and confident woman, this narrator troubles the idea that self-reflection should—or even can—be nostalgic. Impulses here layer upon one another, with later poems informing ones earlier in the collection just as our futures often inform our pasts; a highly aware melding of form and content. The collection opens with the young speaker on a subway, discovering across the aisle how life treats less fortunate individuals: “it isn’t funny on the number six train / when I look up from my chem book, see a man / across the aisle both clothed and exposed, / his pants held up by rope, dirt clumped in his matted hair” (“On the Subway”). The narrator’s careful noting of detail is mirrored by the poem’s attention to sound, with the plosive hints of “up” and “rope” dancing in the background. Such meticulousness is a hallmark of this book and of the characters within, and when the speaker departs the train several stops too early to walk home, that unfortunate detail is noticed immediately.

We learn more in “In the Public Library,” our first glimpse into the speaker’s interests—and her passion for reading. Some details are worth overlooking to escape into books, the narrator confides, such as the library entrance “reeking of piss, booze, its pavement / giving way.” Even when the books are just as frayed, they are so because of other readers who imbue them with their awe and adoration. In the miniature city of writing, the speaker “lean[s] on words and love[s] / all this—broken bindings, smudged print, / fondled pages, my library card.” Sometimes the richness of inner worlds is more than enough. Confessions shows this idea in “Bad Dogs” too, where the narrator must run past yards laced with these growling creatures, “coming home from school, book bag / bouncing on my shoulder, socks / sagging around skinny ankles.” The bookbag is an important detail here, emphasizing what she values most. When a dog bites her arm, the speaker envisions it as a writer would, “one sudden fist of a dog” that results in stitches. Visceral detail is often key to telegraphing emotion, and Joseph’s speaker gives this dog a signifier that for many would inspire fear.

As she grows older, the speaker treats objects with both reverence and resentment, showing the struggle that comes with finding one’s adulthood. “Grown-Up Shoes” epitomizes this conflict, where she buys a pair of dress shoes to feel adult. “How eagerly I’d awaited / your coming,” she remembers, these wondrous shoes meant to emphasize “legs and calves / to make the other girls go home.” Alas, they are not as advertised: they hurt her feet, and “what looked sexy / in photos made my legs / into stalks, feet into boats.” The passage into adulthood does much the same to all of us, and for a while, we too might sit, “toes jammed together, / barely peeking from the hole / at the tip of each sorry shoe.” The lines in this poem are short and narrow, no doubt like these shoes, and thus the poem moves quickly another form-and-content pairing.\

In “Advice on Being a Pesky Little Sister,” the speaker shows that reverence for signifiers of age doesn’t always extend to other people’s property. She advises wryly (or regretfully?), “Sit on your sister’s records, / especially if she’s saved for them / for weeks, shattering favorites first.” Whether from jealousy or the simply working out of siblinghood (familiar to many), she likes to “[f]ilch and crease / her magazines, ones she buys, / hoards away—Cosmo and Glamour.” Fairly innocent in the larger scheme, these actions get attention, all that’s needed when even the wrong kind is enough.

Less wholesome is behavior exhibited by the speaker’s father, who yells at her and at her sister over meals; “Dinner Hour” shows a man who has no time for tenderness. While eating, he would drive home what a “waste we were, how we never / turned off lights when we left / a room, and did we think he / was made of money/” Even when the mother intervenes, it’s clear that the damage has already been done: they will never be able to satisfy this patriarch. This poem is constructed in ten careful quatrains, which is not only aesthetically pleasing but may also double (for the speaker) as a buffer against wild emotions, a single layer of insulation against a chaotic father.

Joseph works with form throughout this collection, notably in “Adolescent Confession,” a sestina that moves so naturally the form is hard to detect when the poem is read aloud. The ending words of each stanza, rearranging throughout, are always vital, and fluidity is never sacrificed for the sake of the form. In the first stanza we learn of a captivating insecurity:

When I was a girl,
I had such bony legs—
a flat body, no breasts.
To compensate, to cheat—
I stuffed my bra, hoping to be hot.
What a pathetic sight.

The struggle undergone by the narrator eventually resolves into adulthood, where she is satisfied with her lot at last: she has matured. But throughout the poem, her overarching worries of inadequacy will be familiar to many readers, regardless of sex or gender. This poem and others humanize the speaker, and as in many other poems, we can see ourselves reflected clearly.

The poem “Some of My Best Friends Are White People” inverts the more common defensive expression, and shows the confidence the speaker has in herself and her choices. She notes, “The audience assumed that my husband had to be black, / because I’m black, and clearly proud to be so . . . / The assumptions go on and on.” Joseph, who is married to the skilled editor and fellow poet Jon Tribble, has surely experienced questioning looks firsthand—but she, like her narrator, rightfully knows both happiness and confidence. As the speaker points out wisely, “monitoring the toll of racism [is] too big a job for just one race.” She is admirably stronger than many other narrators in the world.

In “After Shaving My Head, I Begin to Think Beauty Is Overrated,” the speaker is daring and admirable for defying expectations, but jubilant as well: her scalp is “able now / to pick up frequencies of cold it’s never felt before. With growing older comes both maturity and playfulness, each one an essential part of being a balanced person, and the narrator shows this through her shaven head. Her reasons, simpler than what others assume (“to be able to glide hands over scalp with / nothing impeding the motion”), are not enough for everyone else: “Surely this gesture means something.” Joseph shows that intentionally or otherwise, the personal is always political, and doing what one likes in the face of that fact makes one all the stronger. This poem, a series of enjambed couplets, is also playful in form when contrasted to the book’s other pieces: no other poem is structured this way, making this one stand out in all the right ways. Readers are also given segments of situations here—work, home, classroom—that are brief and quick, just like these short stanzas.

“A History of African-American Hair” is related to that rebellious poem, celebrating the process of styling hair and the labor that goes into doing so. Like “After Shaving…,” this poem is in couplets, a listing of the “knots, snags, / tangles . . . // goopy gels, / greasy lotions, pressing oils and pomades” that the speaker has faced in the past. Joseph’s narrator, in the end, is “glad as any woman can be / that I cut my hair, that the woman in the mirror // now has hair she can touch, / cropped close to scalp, to skin.” Happiness comes with experience, Joseph asserts: it is a fine-tuning of the self into the resonant present.

Toward the end of Confessions, Joseph reflects on what it means to be a poet: the expectations, cliché’s, norms, and behaviors that come along for the ride with that label. In “Daughter, Mother, Sister, Wife,” she muses on each in turn: “When your daughter is a poet, burn all your possessions before you die.” Poets, who have a propensity for turning every day into the studied and sometimes the near-sublime, can be are sharpest critics. The speaker continues, “Burn all / your correspondence; but be warned, / she’ll make something of the cinders.” The inverse is just as unique, as Joseph notes: “When your mother is a poet, / your breakfast may be marmalade . . . / You may not get fed at all.” In these lines, so whimsical and wry on the surface, a deeper discontent—even regret—begins to emerge. The hinted past, delineated here, isn’t all goodness or nostalgia. The hard moments of the narrator’s life make that life both complicated and fascinating, wholly absorbing our attention with each page. In Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, growing up is a medley of complex emotions, each informing the next moment where, when there is darkness, we can glean a little light.

Readers can purchase Confessions of a Barefaced Woman at one of Joseph’s many readings or from Red Hen Press, as well as from regional and national booksellers.

Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (Red Hen Press, 2018)

 


Allison Joseph lives in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is Professor of English and  Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University.  She serves as poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review.  Her books and chapbooks include What Keeps Us Here(Ampersand Press), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon University Press), In Every Seam(University of Pittsburgh Press), Worldly Pleasures (Word Tech Communications), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon UP), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press), My Father’s Kites (Steel Toe Books), Trace Particles (Backbone Press), Little Epiphanies (NightBallet Press), Mercurial(Mayapple Press), Mortal Rewards (White Violet Press), Multitudes (Word Poetry), The Purpose of Hands (Glass Lyre Press), Double Identity (Singing Bone Press) Corporal Muse(Sibling Rivalry Press, forthcoming) and What Once You Loved (Barefoot Muse Press). Her most recent full-length collection, Confessions of a Barefaced Woman was published by Red Hen Press in June 2018. She is the literary partner and wife of poet and editor Jon Tribble. http://www.allisonjosephpoetry.com/

Tyler

Tyler Robert Sheldon is Associate Reviewer and a contributing writer for MockingHeart Review. His newest books are Driving Together (Meadowlark Books, 2018) and Consolation Prize (Finishing Line Press, 2018). He received the 2016 Charles E. Walton Essay Award and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Pleiades, Quiddity, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and other venues. Sheldon holds an MA in English from Emporia State University and is an MFA candidate at McNeese State University. He lives in Baton Rouge.