Bringing Poetry to New Places

I love unusual venues for poetry readings. A friend of mine, Sondra Gash, had a beautiful house tucked away on a back road in Lebanon, NJ. During the years that she lived there, Sondra hosted a few poetry salons each year. She did this to support her poet pals and to support CavanKerry Press, the press that published her collection, Silk Elegy. One side of the house was all windows overlooking a babbling brook and lots of trees and vegetation. It was a perfect spot for poetry. Sondra invited poets and other kinds of artists for an afternoon of poetry and conversation. The salons were wonderful. Recently, though, Sondra and her husband made the difficult decision that it was time to sell the house and move to a retirement community.

So Sondra and Ira moved to Winchester Gardens in Maplewood, NJ. One of the enticements to move there was that the Social Director suggested that she could continue her salons there. After a period of getting used to her new digs, Sondra put together the first reading. She invited me and five other poets to gather on Monday, May 19 for an evening reading. I was stunned by the beauty of this senior residential community. The grounds were beautiful with tons of flowers and the buildings were big old stone structures.

Above is the Great Hall where the reading was held. The furniture was rearranged so that the audience could sit in rows. We had approximately fifty residents turn out for the reading. They were engaged and enthusiastic.

With the assistance of the Social Director, Sondra prepared a program brochure. Inside was a photo of each poet and a bio.

This is just before the reading got underway. Left to right are Gail Gerwin, Ed Ryterband, Sondra Gash, Howard Levy, Teresa Carson, and Joan Cusack Handler. I'm standing at the far right. As I was sitting waiting for the audience to arrive, I saw a familiar-looking woman walk in. Much to my surprise that was Rose Spear, a woman I used to teach with at Millburn High School. She was a German teacher; I was an English teacher. I went over and we got reacquainted. It was an unexpected pleasure to meet up with a former colleague. Then the reading got underway, each of us reading for approximately ten minutes. What a pleasure to read in such an exquisite room.

Me reading three poems. Following the last poet, Sondra led a Q&A which was very interesting. I had the impression that some of the seniors would like to try to write some poems of their own. Then cookies were passed around and we engaged in some conversation with those who chose to come up and chat with us.

I'm not ready to move in, but I would definitely like to go back for another poetry reading or to lead a workshop.

Poetry Salon: Debra Bruce

I am happy to host today's Poetry Salon for Debra Bruce. I first met Debra on the Wompo Poetry Listserv. I then had the pleasure of meeting her in person at the West Chester Poetry Conference when we both served as panelists on a critical seminar exploring undervalued women poets. Debra's latest poetry collection is Survivors' Picnic, a collection filled with a variety of masterful form poems. Debra is also the author of three previous collections. She lives in Illinois and is a professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University.

Debra is going to speak with us about Survivors' Picnic.




DL: Tell us how you went about writing these poems and assembling them into a collection.

DEB: I wrote the poems over a period of 15 years, along with many others that didn’t make it into my book. I’m an embarrassingly slow writer, and during these years I was busy teaching full-time and raising my son. Sometimes I wrote in direct response to the events of my life—mothering, breast cancer survival, and the end of a long marriage. Sometimes I would get an idea for a project-poem or series—a sequence about the six wives of Henry VIII, for example, which budded while I was teaching the court poets of the 16th century—especially Thomas Wyatt. I wrote two of the poems—two wives—but couldn’t find a way to do the other four. Sometimes I wrote poems just to exercise in a specific form, which I love to do, trying my hand at the ballade, villanelle, and a few pantoums. And as I read during these years, I fell under the spell of writers like Kay Ryan, whose example enabled me to write some of what I consider my strongest poems. Reading Ryan made me feel that I’d been given permission to bask in sounds—internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration—something that had been frowned upon during the “plain style” decades. Ryan also showed me how to be more oblique rather than direct or explicit—a good lesson for someone who had studied with Anne Sexton back in '73, as I was just starting out.

When I decided to put the manuscript together, I discovered poems that didn’t hold up, some that didn’t fit in, and a general repetition of sounds, images, and subjects. Several poems, even some that I’d published in good literary journals and that I personally liked, had to go. I’m glad I waited as long as I did because it enabled me to do this kind of winnowing, and I think the book is stronger for it.

DL: Tell us the story behind your cover.

DEB: When I published my earlier books, first with the University of Arkansas Press, and then with Miami University, I had a helpful staff to design covers for me. This time, with Word Press (Word Tech Editions), an independent press, I was on my own. Clueless, I started asking other poets, and someone suggested I check out the collection at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, a great venue for women poets as well as visual artists. Suzanne Keith Loechl had done a series of empty dresses on clotheslines set against deeply colored, swirling landscapes. I had looked at hundreds of images online, and when I found her work, that was it. I was thrilled when she agreed to let me use her image. As it turned out, this painting, “I Dreamed I Could Dance,” had become part of a website Suzanne created to honor friends she’d lost to breast cancer. No wonder it spoke to me. 

DL: How did you select the title for your book?

DEB: Titles have always been difficult for me. When I was married, my then-husband often came up with titles for individual poems and even books. My previous publishers had editors who had a knack for it, too. This time I was on my own. One of the poems in the book, “Annual Survivors’ Picnic,” felt like a “title poem,” but the wording wasn’t quite right for the whole collection—“annual” pins it down to a single event. Survivors’ Picnic sounded good, suggesting the shadow of fear that all survivors live with, and the deepening of life’s meaning and pleasure created by that shadow, as shade can deepen the beauty of color. 

DL: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

DEB: I hope readers will take away a phrase or line that they can’t shake out of their heads—the music of it as much as what it says. And if a reader has experienced something I’ve written about, I hope she or he will feel that I’ve articulated the experience just right—nailed it.

DL: Please choose a favorite poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.

DEB: “Plunder” is a poem I would choose as a favorite because it makes music, which is of utmost importance to me. (Frost famously said, “All the fun’s in how you say a thing.) And it’s also a poem that can speak to many different experiences, though I had a specific experience in mind when I wrote it. I love poetry when it’s clear but not confined. Emily Dickinson has a powerful poem that starts, “I’ve dropped my Brain—My Soul is numb—,” which describes some kind of emotional or spiritual dark place or psychic freeze, describing it vividly and concretely without specifying what caused it.


Plunder

Now that your surgery’s
savagery’s smoothed over
and the calm you’ve put on is balm
for all, and in the interstices
between catastrophes you find yourself
enjoying joy;
now that your Why?
is wisely subsiding, knowing no one
knows why one grows gold
slowly and one’s bright green gets torched
overnight;

in this intensely present
tense, in its rush
of cherished perishables, you might splurge
skyward, spreading
your colors in a freefall
never dared before; or
with minimal fanfare slip
into the life you left, the least
predictable most delectable,
in whose midsummer noon you pop
a flip-top in thirst, and think…
and though you simply sip,
deeply drink.


Let's listen now to Debra's wonderful reading of "Plunder."


Please stay for the Reception. Help yourself to a glass of Malbec, some brie and cheddar on crackers, fresh fruit, and don't forget the Belgian chocolates.

Overheard at the Party: “Debra Bruce's poetry is a secret treasure—to be discovered and read and re-read.  Every lover of language can partake of Bruce's passionate picnic.”—Molly Peacock

Before you leave, be sure to pick up a copy of Survivors' Picnic.

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Poetry Salon: Karla Huston

I first met Wisconsin poet Karla Huston online in a poetry listserv we both belong to. I later had the pleasure of meeting her at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival. We've met at each festival since that first meeting. I feel particularly excited about hosting this salon for Karla's first full-length collection as I had an opportunity to read and critique it a few years before it found a publisher. Although A Theory of Lipstick is Karla's first full-length collection, she has previously published six chapbooks.

Let's hear what Karla has to say about her book.

Diane: Tell us how you went about writing these poems and assembling them into a collection.

Karla: The poems were written over a long period of time—more than ten years for some. Others are more recent. I struggled assembling it, even though I have published lots of chapbooks. Maybe because this was my first full-length book, I wanted perfection, a big “yowza” of a book. I started with more than 100 poems. I read and reread them hoping for magic. I read about organizing manuscripts. I even tried Billy Collins' method of organization: throwing the poems on the floor and walking around in them in my stocking feet, picking them up to form an order

I also depended on the kindness of friends, especially Diane Lockward, who offered to take a look, finally giving the book sense and shape. Her suggestions were invaluable.

After it lingered for another couple of years, I finally took a new look, took courage and sent it to Scott Douglass, editor and publisher of Main Street Rag Publishing. Because I’d won his 2003 chapbook contest, he agreed to read it. To my great pleasure, he accepted it and suddenly, I had a book contract in my hands. 

Diane: Tell us the story behind your cover.

Karla: The cover art was a simple matter of Googling images with lipstick; the art of German artist Christine Dumbsky came up in the queue. She loves poetry and was pleased to work with me. What I appreciate most about the cover is the image of the world painted inside the strawberry.

Diane: How did you select the title for your book?

Karla: The book should have been called Still Waiting for as long as sat in a drawer. But Chuck Rybak, UW Green Bay professor and friend, suggested the title from a poem in the manuscript. The poem, “Theory of Lipstick,” was a Pushcart Prize winner in 2011. I have several poems about lipstick in the manuscript so Chuck’s suggestion was perfect.

Diane: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Karla: A Theory of Lipstick is about desire, about pop culture, about women and aging—dog catcher’s wives, mothers, women looking out windows. It’s about junk drawers and birds. It’s also about having fun with language and sound, about play. I hope readers resonate with the poems and images.

Diane: Please choose a favorite poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.

Karla: Perhaps one of the most difficult poems to read aloud because it’s so easy to get tongue-tangled, “Theory of Lipstick” was also a lot of fun to write. I have a lovely book on the history of lipstick; I researched lipstick colors and kinds (gloss, pot rouge, lip liner, the whole genre of lipsticks meant to plump lips, make them bee stung). I was fascinated by the fact that during World War II, women could afford little else but a new tube of lipstick. I had a very good time putting this together—one line, one image, one mouthful at a time. 


Theory of Lipstick
         Coral is far more red than her lips' red…
                        —William Shakespeare

Pot rouge, rouge pot, glosser, lip plumper, bee
stung devil’s candy and painted porcelain
Fire and Ice, a vermillion bullet,
dangerous beauty lipstick, carmine death rub, history
of henna. Fact: more men get lip cancer

because they don’t wear lipstick or butter
jumble of a luminous palette with brush made
to outlast, last long, kiss off,  you ruby busser,
your gilded rose bud bluster is weapon and wine.
QE’s blend: cochineal mixed with egg, gum Arabic

and fig milk—alizarin crimson and lead—poison
to men who kiss women wearing lipstick, once illegal
and loathsome—then cherry jelly bean licked and smeared,
then balm gloss crayon, a cocktail of the mouth,
happy hour lip-o-hito, lip-arita, with pout-fashioned chaser

made from fruit pigment and raspberry cream,
a lux of shimmer-shine, lipstick glimmer, duo
in satin-lined pouch, Clara Bow glow: city brilliant
and country chick—sparkling, sensual, silks
and sangria stains, those radiant tints and beeswax liberty—

oh, kiss me now, oh, double agents of beauty
slip me essential pencils in various shades
of nude and pearl and suede, oh, bombshell lipstick,
sinner and saint, venom and lotsa sugar, lip sweet,
pucker up gelato: every pink signal is a warning.


Now let's gather around and listen to Karla read "Theory of Lipstick."


Please join us for Karla's book salon reception. Enjoy some beautiful fresh strawberries, a margarita, and some delicious guacamole with crackers.

Overheard at the party:  
 
“From the title poem … to the linguistic highwire act she performs in “O Hair,” Huston writes the way her mother wore lipstick—“red was her color...and she was taking all of it with her”—this poetry is bright red, and the poet has firmly in her sights nothing less than everything.”—Philip Dacey

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Before you head for home, please get yourself a copy of Karla's book. And feel free to leave her a comment or a question in the comments section. Thanks for coming!

Poetry Salon: Adele Kenny

It's my pleasure to host a salon to celebrate the publication of What Matters, the newest poetry collection by Adele Kenny. Adele lives a life fully immersed in poetry. She has for years run a workshop at her home. Many New Jersey poets can trace their published poems back to Adele's living room. She also has for years run the Carriage House Reading Series in Fanwood, NJ, and has hosted many poets there. I've heard Adele read several times, have read her books, and am now happy to hear what she has to say about her new book. Please join us.


Diane:  Tell us how you went about writing these poems and assembling them into a collection.

Adele:  My muse is fickle – she takes three-martini lunches, and heads to the south of France for months at a time – which means that I don’t write as often as I’d like. The forty-seven poems in this collection were written over the past ten years.

For me, poems almost always begin as single images. This was especially true of the poems in this collection. A very few of the poems also appeared in Chosen Ghosts but were extensively revised for What Matters; I included them because they are part of a “story” that overlaps from one book to the other, just as life experiences sometimes overlap. My goal was to create a collection of poems that would be intimate rather than private, a collection that would touch the universal part of readers’ hearts, as well as the personal.

Diane:  Tell us the story behind your cover.

Adele:  My good friend and fellow poet Edwin Romond wrote of the cover, “I don't think I know of any cover of a poetry collection that better captures the soul of the contents than yours. Absolutely perfect.” I was grateful for that note from Ed because the cover painting (Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti – poet, painter, and Christina Rossetti’s brother) was the first picture that came to mind when my publisher asked if I had any ideas for the cover illustration. I’d written an ekphrastic poem based on the painting (“In Memory Of,” in section three of the book), and the painting image admittedly haunts me.

A long-time fan of the Pre-Raphaelites, I feel close to Beata, which, I believe, “speaks” the meaning of What Matters: loss, grief, coming to terms, healing, survival – all things I suspect were present for  Rossetti when he made the painting, although his particular circumstances were quite different. In addition, Rossetti explained in a letter that he portrayed the woman in Beata (his wife Lizzie) in a state of “spiritual transformation” – a fundamental theme of What Matters.

I considered other possibilities for the cover but always came back to Beata. My publisher (John Weber at Welcome Rain Publishers) generously purchased the rights to use the image, which is housed in London’s Tate Gallery.

Diane:  How did you select the title for your book?

Adele:  Strangely enough, What Matters had a title several years before it became a book. Like many images in the poems, the title came to me late one night. It literally “popped into my mind”  before I’d even begun to think of the poems in terms of a collection. I woke up the next morning knowing that What Matters would be the title of my next book. That day I took a long look at my newer poems (revised, written, and in process) and began to see them arranged in sections relative to the experiences that drove them. The title powered the long process of writing, editing, tweaking, and selecting.

Diane:  What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Adele:  What Matters is a book about survival, specifically my own experience with breast cancer (the three sections of the book – before, during, and after), but it’s more than just a collection of poems about an illness. In fact, few of the poems focus exclusively on that. Interestingly, though, as it worked out, the official publication month of the book is October, and October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I like to think that What Matters offers meaning and hope to readers who have dealt with the illness themselves or through family members and friends.

Most importantly, What Matters affirms that we’re all survivors of one thing or another (grief, fear, illness, losses of loved ones); individual experiences differ, but we’re all survivors. What Matters looks at life as it is and celebrates the moments in which healing begins, the ways in which the human spirit survives, and the ways in which we remember how to live. I’ve come to believe that one of the things poetry does best is to tell readers that they’re not alone. I hope the poems in What Matters do that.

Diane:  Please choose a poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.

Adele:  The poem I’ve chosen is “Like I Said” because it’s one of the lighter poems in the collection and shows that sometimes it’s good to take stock of things and to “laugh at life” (it’s also a “goof” on grammar and pop culture) – the point being that, despite whatever else, “what matters” is the peace we make within ourselves.

Like I Said

Okay, so it’s Sunday. I didn’t
go to church. I’m an Irish Catholic,
I know about sin, but I was tired and
just didn’t feel like getting dressed.

On Thursday night, I fell and broke
a slat from the garden fence. My
hip still hurts – the bruise is as big
as my Yorkie’s head.

That would have been enough, but
this morning the vacuum coughed up
a hairball and quit. The only food in
the fridge is a bearded yogurt.

The washing machine refuses to spin.
There’s no clean underwear left, so
I’m not wearing any. Like I said,
I was tired; I didn’t feel like getting

dressed, so I didn’t go to church and
abdicated rights to all that grace.
I put on a pair of dirty jeans, a dirty
shirt, and sat outdoors all morning.

I did nothing but talk to my dogs,
watch squirrels, and wonder what it
might be like to nibble Prozac from
Johnny Depp’s lower lip.


Let's all gather round while Adele reads her poem for us:

Now it's time to enjoy the snacks that Adele has requested. First, her favorite beverages, Korbel Natural Champagne and Yoo-Hoo. Then something sweet: dark-chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate frosting and something savory: Cornish Pasties (small D-shaped pies filled with meats and veggies). These snacks might very well serve as a metaphor for the collection.


Overheard at the party: “In Adele Kenny's finely wrought meditations on grief and loss, she never forgets that she's a maker of poems; in other words, that the poem in its entirety is more important than any one of its utterances, phrasings, or laments. What Matters straddles two of the exigencies of the human condition: diminishment and endurance. It abounds with poems that skillfully earn their sentiments.” (Stephen Dunn)






Before you leave, be sure to pick up a copy of What Matters. Feel free to add comments in the Comments section.

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For another poem from the book, check out Survivor which was featured on October 1 at Your Daily Poem, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Video: Adele reads selections from What Matters

Visit Adele's blog, The Music in It, for weekly prompts.

Poetry Salon: Marie-Elizabeth Mali

Marie-Elizabeth Mali is the author of Steady, My Gaze (Tebot Bach, 2011) and co-editor with Annie Finch of the forthcoming anthology, Villanelles (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series, 2012). She serves as co-curator of louderARTS: The Reading Series and the Page Meets Stage reading series, both in New York City. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Poet Lore, and Rattle, among others. Although we've never met in person, we share a mutual interest in using video with poetry and have often communicated about that. I'm happy to have her here in my poetry home for a salon to celebrate her first full-length poetry book.

DL:  Tell us how you went about writing these poems and assembling them into a collection.

MEM:  About half the poems were written or revised during my MFA program and formed part of my graduate thesis. The rest were written since I graduated. The book went through three major overhauls, including two title changes, as I sent it out over a twelve-month period. At first, I threaded the themes of identity (Venezuelan-Swedish-American), spirituality, politics/war, gender, and relationship throughout the book and had three numbered sections. I then decided to group similarly-themed poems together and title the sections. That allowed for the second and fourth sections to come into focus and mirror each other. They’re both made up of seven short, linked poems. I always intended to start the book with the prologue poem in Spanish. The decision to make its translation the epilogue provided a welcome sense of closure to the book, as well as serving to allow people into the poem who don’t speak Spanish.

DL:  Tell us the story behind your cover.

MEM:  At first I wanted to use an image by a Venezuelan artist for the cover as a nod to how much that part of my identity figures in the first section of the book. After I didn’t find the perfect image, I thought about using Frida Kahlo’s, The Little Deer, since the title poem is an ekphrastic poem based on that painting. But I decided Kahlo’s work is too iconic and would narrow the focus of the book in a way that I didn’t want. I then thought about how much fire imagery there is in my work, both literally, since my grandparents died in a fire, and metaphorically, as an image for transformation and loss. I was chatting with Matthew Dickman at the Dodge Poetry Festival last fall and showed him some images of fire that I was considering and he suggested a lit match (Thank you, Matthew!). I found the photo of a lit match on the Getty stock photo website and immediately knew it was the one. I like how short-lived a match flame is and how it evokes the way some people use a single flame as a focus point for meditation, all of which fit my book’s themes.

DL:  How did you select the title for your book?

MEM:  The title of the book comes from the title poem, an ekphrastic poem based on Frida Kahlo’s painting, The Little Deer, in which a deer pierced with nine arrows wears her face. The steadiness of her gaze in the midst of suffering inspired the book’s title.

DL:  What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

MEM:  When readers put down my book and walk away, I hope they feel more awake to the “full catastrophe” of being human (as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it). I hope they feel more available to fully experience life’s gorgeous and monstrous complexity, more alive to the world, others, and themselves.

DL:  Please choose a favorite poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.

MEM:  I’ve chosen “To the Five-Inch Stilettos I Didn’t Buy Twelve Years Ago” because it’s a fun poem to read. It comes from the third section of the book—titled “I Celebrate the Husband”—in which the poems explore many aspects of gender and relationship. This poem came out of a prompt to write directly to an object you did not acquire. I’d wanted to write about a boyfriend’s foot fetish for a long time but hadn’t found a way in until this prompt. The funny thing is, after writing this poem, I read Brendan Constantine’s “Kink” and discovered that the most common fetish is feet and shoes!

To the Five-Inch Stilettos I Didn’t Buy Twelve Years Ago

He wanted you more than I did. My boyfriend,

when he was five, would crawl under

his mother’s table when her friends were over.

He’d slip off their high heels and stroke

their feet. They’d ooh and ahh, call him a good boy.

He’d bite his too-red lips to keep from moaning

out loud. He still bit his lips like a nervous squirrel

when we were together. He begged me to buy you,

said I’d never have to walk anywhere, just wear you

to bed with sheer black stockings, seam up the back.

Now I’m with a man who loves my feet, but

doesn’t want to lick each toe while dreaming

of his mother. Yesterday, I got a pair of sky-high

strappy platforms and greeted him at the door,

a taller, sexier version of wife. Smiling, I led him

to bed and he unstrapped them one by one.

Don’t be jealous, my pretty patent-leather, studded,

five-inch darlings. Wrong time, wrong man.

Now let's gather round as Marie-Elizabeth reads the poem for us.

 

Time to step over to the table and help yourself to the treats suggested by Marie-Elizabeth. We have organic blueberries, plain macaroons, mojitos, chocolate-dipped macaroons, and dark chocolate. How decadent—and perfect!

Overheard at the Party:

"Wholehearted" is an undervalued word; to my mind it means not blind enthusiasm or unthinking embrace but something more like the full consent of the self to experience, to be present in the glorious and wounding matrix of the here and now. I can't think of a better word for Marie-Elizabeth Mali's poems. She wants "the honeyed sizzle beyond all language,” wants to be a vulnerable and conscious participant in the life of things as they are, awake to love and the struggle to live freely and compassionately.  "How to hold the ocean," she asks, "when the vessel leaks? Rise your wild, / dear animal . . ." —Mark Doty

Before you leave, be sure to pick up a copy of Marie-Elizabeth's book and have her sign it. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the Comments section.

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 You can visit Marie-Elizabeth at her blog.

Poetry Salon: Sherry Chandler

I wish I could meet poet Sherry Chandler in person, but she lives in Kentucky and here I am in New Jersey. However, we share the same publisher, Wind Publications. I recently read Sherry's first full-length collection, Weaving a New Eden, and really loved it. It's full of women's voices, history, story, and terrific poetry. I felt transported to the Kentucky of years ago. But since I'm not there then or now, I've invited Sherry to join me here for an online Poetry Salon. So please pull up a chair. 

Sherry will first talk to us about her book.

Diane:  Tell us how you went about writing these poems and assembling them into a collection.

Sherry:  I had a twofold purpose in writing these poems. One was simply to preserve my mother’s voice and some of the stories she told me about her rural childhood between World Wars I and II. This is work I began with my Finishing Line chapbook, Dance the Black-Eyed Girl. I am always struck by the contrast between the cultural modernism of history books and the rusticity of life in our rural and small-town backwaters. In many ways, when my mother was born in 1917, life for farm women in Kentucky hadn’t changed a lot since Rebecca Boone’s day.

The other purpose was to use these persona poems to create a balance to the romance of the farmer that runs strong among Kentucky’s men of letters (gender use deliberate). Reading a book called Pioneer Families of Missouri, I found an anonymous quotation that I stole and put in Rebecca Boone’s mouth, “The men and dogs have a fine time, but the poor women suffer.”

Eventually a friend suggested that I could take the poems all the way back to Rebecca Boone. So I wrote a grant that was funded by the Kentucky Foundation for Women. It allowed me to work with Leatha Kendrick as an editor and guide to assembling the manuscript. It was Leatha who urged me to keep a lyric presence in the book along with the persona poems. One model was Natasha Tretheway’s Native Guard and another was Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Kyrie. My treatment of Rebecca Boone was highly influenced by Maurice Manning’s previous treatment of Daniel Boone in A Companion for Owls.

The rest was a matter of reading copiously and finding tidbits about women that could be used to create a character. For my grandmothers, I leaned heavily on genealogical work generously shared by others. Form played a tremendous role in helping me differentiate so many voices. Rebecca Boone speaks mostly in the best approximation I can achieve of blank-verse dramatic monologue. I think of her as my Shakespearean character, the Chorus who steps to the edge of the proscenium and comments on events. She knows more than she could possibly know.

Other characters speak in Ginsberg’s American sentence (a form I think I learned about on your blog), a ghazal, a triolet, and acrostics. The constraints of form forced me away from my own voice and provided me a way to give each speaker her own rhythm and mood.

Diane:  Tell us the story behind your cover.

Sherry:  Because the title is Weaving a New Eden, I had at first suggested that we use something like a landscape as a tapestry coming off a loom. That turned out to be a better idea in theory than in execution. Then Wind publisher Charlie Hughes suggested that we turn to Suzanne Stryk for suggestions. We were still looking for landscape, and we tried several, but they were too Edenic in the Biblical sense, with trees and snakes and such. Then Suzanne suggested floating this nest on a near-black background and it was just perfect – there was the weaving, the wilderness, the disconnectedness. I could not be more pleased with the cover of this book. And I urge everyone to visit Suzanne’s website and experience some of her art.

Diane:   Why did you title the book Weaving a New Eden?

Sherry:  When Kentucky was being settled, it was promoted by land speculators as a New Eden, and, as I’ve said, some of the romance lingers. Kentucky is still a beautiful verdant place, though mountaintop removal mining is ruining our mountains. Nevertheless, the New Eden aspect was always a part of the story.

When Maurice Manning reviewed a selection of the poems, he suggested that eventually, as I kept writing, an over-arching metaphor would emerge. That metaphor was always weaving. Early on, I knew that I wanted Rebecca Boone to be a weaver. The Boones had been cottage weavers in Wales and carried the skill with them to the United States. And, of course, weaving was an essential skill for women on the frontier. In one source, I read that worn-out clothes were a major hindrance for men who came into Kentucky to claim land. Nakedness caused some of them to turn back. So when “Rebecca Boone’s Loom Has Its Say,” what it says is that “My cloth provided cover for a conquest.” Further, weaving is as mythic as Eden itself.

And finally, I use weaving forms of poetry – pantoum, sestina, sonnet crown – so you might say the title was inevitable. What you might call the title poem, “Rebecca Boone Weaves a New Eden,” is a monster sestina that took me weeks to get right. At one point I had to just scrap it and start over. And yet, I felt I had to get it right, had to have it in the book.

Diane:  What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Sherry:  Friends and acquaintances who have read this book have compared it to a saga. Some even say they can’t put it down, so on the simplest level, I want readers to find this book a good read. Others have said it’s a history book, and I would like readers to learn a little bit about the complexities of history and the cost of U.S. expansionism. Although Kentucky is a backwater now, the move to cross the Appalachians was the first very important step in accomplishing Manifest Destiny. I wouldn’t mind if readers finished the book with a new respect for the possibilities of form as a way to create dynamic poetry. Most of all, I want readers to hear these women, to hear the woman’s side of the story. These grandmothers of mine are individuals, but I hope they are also everywoman.

Diane:  Please choose a favorite poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.

Looking Over into the Promised Land

When Rebecca stood on Big Hill and gazed

over into Eden, into a land

of salt-lick springs and canebrakes,

did she snap

with her strong teeth the skin of an apple,

a Northern Spy or Summer Winesap,

suck its juice onto her tongue as it ran,

as streams along that savannah,

into the palm of her hand?

As she gaped at flocks

of pigeons that blacked

the sun, herds of brown-black

bison whose trampled traces made her highways,

was she amazed

or did she just eat an apple?

Sherry:  I wrote many long serious poems in Weaving a New Eden, but from time to time I did try to strike a lighter, more whimsical note. I wrote a limerick, a roundeau, a triolet; I wrote a poem in the voice of a cat, but of all the lighter pieces in the book, this nonce-form, rhyming poem is my favorite.

For one thing, it is just mouth candy. I wrote it for sound, to chime and rhyme. But I also like this notion of Rebecca as a reverse-Eve, who eats the apple and enters Eden. Has her cake and eats it, too.

I think I got a brilliant inspiration when I thought to equate the apple juice running into the creases of her palm with the streams running through the Bluegrass savannah, identifying Rebecca’s body with Kentucky. I was eating an apple myself at the time.

Winesap and Northern Spy are legacy varieties of apple, but I don’t know if their legacy stretches back to the 18^th Century. I’m also told that people in the Boones’ time didn’t eat apples the way we do, but rather used them for cider and cooking.

But I think humans have always snapped their teeth into apples.

Diane:  Now let's all gather round while Sherry reads her poem for us.

Party Time! Sherry has put together a delicious assortment of Kentucky goodies. Please help yourselves to fried apple pie, moonshine juleps sweetened with maple syrup and sprigs of peppermint, and hoe cakes drizzled with sorghum molasses. Sherry says, "Not exactly dainty fare, but all these foods are mentioned in the book."

Overheard at the Party:

“Few poets can move, dazzle, and enlighten us in a single book, but Sherry Chandler can—and does—in this volume of poems.”—Leatha Kendrick

“Weaving a New Eden is personal, historical, political, inspired—a thoroughly satisfying work of art.” —Maurice Manning

Before you leave, be sure to pick up a copy of Sherry's book. You'll be glad you did. Then while you enjoy your snacks, please feel free to leave some comments or questions for Sherry in the Comments section.

 

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Poetry Salon on Sunday

I am really looking forward to this reading on Sunday, May 1. It's an at-home, old-fashioned kind of poetry salon hosted by a friend. She's hosted some before, and they are always so nice. My friend lives in a woodsy area with a babbling brook running behind her house. Yes, it really does babble. Lots of big windows, so it looks and feels like what's inside is part of what's outside. Then there's always a nice table of delicious treats. And, of course, poetry. Madeline Tiger and I will each read for about 20 minutes, followed by poetry conversation. We hope to see lots of friendly faces there!

Poetry Salon: Glenna Luschei

I've never met Glenna Luschei in person, but I feel a kinship with her. In 2006 I reviewed her chapbook, Seedpods. By way of introduction here, I'm going to resurrect my opening words from that review: "Glenna Luschei’s name is well-known in poetry circles. She’s been moving in those circles for many years in many different roles. As a poet she has published seventeen collections. As a translator she has published an additional three books. As the founder and publisher of Solo Press, established in 1966, she made it possible for many other poets to see their work in full-length collections. Now in its fortieth year, the press no longer publishes books, but continues to put out a chapbook series as well as Solo Café, an annual journal. Luschei also served her community as the Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo for the year 2000. As a philanthropist in 2002 she permanently endowed the editorship of the highly regarded journal, Prairie Schooner. And as if all this weren’t enough, she’s also an avocado rancher."

Since I wrote that review, Glenna's number of collections has increased, but she's still the same lovely, generous poet. It's a pleasure to host this salon in celebration of her new collection, Salt Lick: A Retrospective of Poetry. Let's hear what she has to say about the book.

Diane: This book strikes me as an enormous undertaking. Tell us about the process you used to gather together and winnow down the mountain of work that spans a 40-year career and 21 collections of poetry.

Glenna: I think in order to compile a retrospective such as Salt Lick you must work with an editor or friend who has known you for a long time and watched your development. I had that good luck with John Crawford of West End Press in Albuquerque. I lived in Albuquerque forty years ago, even before he moved there, but we had the same friends and knew the same terrain. I fell in love with the desert and the high, dry mesa of Albuquerque. I grew up in Iowa which produced the best crops in the world but also the hottest summers and the coldest winters. Someone was always sick and that person got to recover in the sick room which was the story and poetry room. Some of my poems in Salt Lick were started in the sick room seventy-five years before.

I think the best feature of John was that he could share my pain with me, that of losing a daughter
during the Aids Pandemic when she was only thirty-six, the most beautiful age for a young woman.
John always talked of my resilience which surely is the watchword of a poet putting together a retrospective. We have to go down for healing, come up for air. No one escapes tragedy which is a blessing in a long life, a long book.

John was tireless. He read through all of my chapbooks, artist books, and trade editions. We had
another old friend, Bill Witherup, who helped us select poems. That friend has since died. I was  pleased we could acknowledge him and I am dedicating the next issue of my magazine to him. What I realize now is that all the people are interwoven in the book. They speak to each other through the pages—and the ages.

I think the way I helped the most was just sitting back and watching the process. I was just grateful it was taking place.

Continuing on the subject of a retrospective and how we keep touching on themes and people, William Stafford once wrote me that the book I sent him (I think it was Matriarch) was like a train trip with stops at stations.  I think the themes and the people I keep coming back to are the stations. They are signals for me.

It seems significant to me that during the process of the book John and I both lost our mates.  Because of an accident on the avocado ranch where I live, my husband Bill died the week Salt Lick was published.  He never got to see it. He loved Susan Kelly's painting and helped me choose the cover image of a New Mexican landscape and dwelling with a moon overhead. John's wife Pat, of native American heritage, was my dear friend, a life-long supporter of poets and artists. I pray that we honor them with our work. She told me once that I published her first poem.

Diane: Tell us the story behind your cover.

Glenna: I try to return to New Mexico every year. I held both DH Lawrence and Wurlitzer Fellowships there plus teaching assignments. When cover artist Susan Kelly and her husband, Booker, moved to San Luis Obispo because of his health, Bill and I became close friends with them and got together for Saturday walks and poetry evenings. Their house in San Luis Obispo held many New Mexican artifacts and above all her gorgeous oils. She and I often talked of a collaboration which will take place this summer in Santa Fe. She will illustrate a number of my poems and we will hold poetry readings with Southwestern poets. A third artist will take part in our show—Margaret Berry, from Lincoln, Nebraska. She has illustrated my poems in encaustic art or wax. I love it that an idea can gather momentum and go on in unexpected ways.

Diane: Why did you title the book Salt Lick?

Glenna: The title of the poem including the salt lick is "Salt of the Earth." I spent summers at my grandparents' farm in the Nebraska prairie which is filled with buffalo grass and Spanish bayonet. When I was trampling through the grasses, I came upon a salt lick created by the tongues of cattle. I must have been three and remember it vividly as the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was my first work of art, the uncarved block as the Taoists say. It was a work of nature and formed my idea of art as something simple and organic. Does this seem hard to believe? I still can't think of anything more pure than a salt lick. People have also pointed out that there is an erotic connotation to the title. I hadn't thought of it, but that's okay, too.

Diane: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Glenna: First of all, that life is joy, even the hard parts, and a feast. I hope readers will like my bringing New Mexico into California in "Rain Dance." Landscape is so much a part of poetry, as are images. I hope beginning poets will take heart that they can have a retrospective in mid or late life, too, if they do what William Stafford said to do: "Let poetry be a beacon for you in your life." He said that the poets who last aren't the early prize winners so it's important not to be discouraged. Just follow the beacon. As if we had any choice!

Diane: Please choose a favorite poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.

Glenna: I am choosing "Rain Dance" as one of my favorite poems because it illustrates forgiveness by which I try to live my life.


Rain Dance

Twenty years of waiting for him
to apologize, to ask me to dance.
I asked him

and we danced at our son’s wedding
to his Mexican beauty. Two hours
with Mariachis, all night with DJs.
Salsa, meringue, samba, cha-cha-cha.
Even to Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,
while the machine threw out smoke.

And on the bronzed California hills,
it began to rain as in the green
corn dance at Zia Pueblo. It rained down
mudhens, kashares, crickets, lightning
bugs and lightning. The Wall
broke into wet crumbling adobe.
Our grandchildren slid down the berm
like salamanders.

And I forgave him,
understood why smoke
got in my eyes, why lovely things die,
why I loved him.
The shine on our children’s faces
when they saw us dancing
made me grieve for our estrangement.
Our children, with splits in their heads
like Frankenstein’s monster, would not heal,
become whole, until I merged with the other
half of the nucleus. I grieved
that I withheld this peace from them.

And we danced in the rain until dawn
until the bride was green with dollar bills.


Glenna: In the third stanza it is interesting that when I read the lines: "I grieved / that I withheld this peace from them" some people think I am saying "piece" instead of "peace," because I am talking about the other half of the nucleus. I also am uncertain about the last line. Sometimes I change it to say "until roses fall upon the path." People then protest and say they wanted the payoff with dollar bills. I like to read poems that people comment on or protest. I think a reading is communication, not just one person getting up there to pronounce.

Thank you, Diane, and dear readers, my lovers.

***************

Now let's all join Glenna in her garden and listen to her read "I Want To Be Your Poet."

I'm more than happy to have Glenna as my poet! Now please help yourself to a glass of sauvignon blanc and some pineapple spears, watermelon, and pear slices wrapped in prosciutto, all chosen for you by Glenna.

Overheard at the Party:

"At the heart of Glenna Luschei's poetry is . . . a fierce love, the kind that keeps us always connected to those with whom we travel, albeit all too briefly, through this life, the kind that tenaciously embraces every memory and dream. For some forty years, she has published honest poems rich in intimacy and passion that manage to balance love and loss, fulfillment and despair, mourning and reconciliation—the heart's inseparable pairs."—Steven Shur

Before you head for home, please be sure to pick up a copy of Glenna's book. Then while you enjoy your snacks and some more poetry, please leave your comments for Glenna in the Comment section. Thank you for coming to the salon.

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Poetry Salon: Barbara Crooker

Barbara Crooker is a poet I first met online at the Wompo listserv. We soon met in person when we got together for dinner prior to a reading I was giving in Pennsylvania where Barbara lives. We've met numerous times since then—at poetry retreats, AWP, and conferences. We've also read together and attended each other's readings. It is my pleasure to now host a poetry salon for Barbara's third book, More, recently published by C&R Press.

Barbara will now talk to us about her book.

Diane: You have two previous collections. Is this new one a continuation of or a departure from those books? What's familiar, what's new?

Barbara: Radiance, my first book, was organized like a quilt patch, with each section containing poems on the main themes: a child with autism, an aging parent’s decline, the search for spiritual meaning in a secular age, love in a long-term relationship, ekphrasis (poems on paintings); all of these touching on some aspect of light. After an introductory section, the others line up in seasonal order, going from black and white winter to the radiance of autumn. In Line Dance, my second book, I had the themes (line, breath, dance and song), then found the cover art and tried to have the poems’ arrangement tie into the art—it’s a line of nests. I wove the four themes, the way birds make their nests, while at the same time, I connected the poems within the sections echoing the conga line in the title poem. So More is more of a departure (pardon the pun), in that this time I’m using a block construction, with all the poems on the same subjects (art, my mother’s illness, family poems) grouped in the same section, each one dealing with a different definition or aspect or function of the word “more”:  the hunger for more, (“Everybody’s got a hungry heart,” Springsteen); the desire for more love (“There is no remedy but to love more,” Thoreau); the need for more beauty, via art and culture (“It is the artist’s duty to create a world that is more beautiful,” Van Gogh); the reach for more of everything (“All I ever wanted was more,” anonymous).

Because it took so long for me to get a first book out—15 years of constant contest entering and submitting—I became a student of how books are put together. I can see a case for both types of construction (the woven or tossed salad approach and the block method); as a reader, either way works for me. I’m also, as a reader, very impressed with writers who are able to start with an idea, then organically construct their books, writing poem after poem as they go. I don’t seem to be able to work that way, alas. So my method of construction is more like a person doing a giant jigsaw puzzle, with poems spread out all over, only it’s a puzzle where you don’t know what the final shape is supposed to look like. You just have to trust your intuition, and keep dancing in the dark. 

Many of the same themes and subjects thread through all three books. I think we’re all given a limited number of things we can write about; the trick is to try to do it better, or, at least, differently, each time. I hope that these poems are deeper, richer, fuller, than the ones on the same subjects in the previous books. I’m trying to work in layers, to add more complexity. And I also hope that it’s clear that poems are about more than their subjects, that these are merely Richard Hugo’s “triggering towns.” I’m trying to catch, with flat, two-dimensional paper and pen (or computer), three-dimensional multi-faceted fluid and ever-changing light and life. . . 

Diane: Tell us the story behind your cover.

Barbara: One of the delights of my life has been going to The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts every eighteen months, and getting to meet other writers, musicians, and visual artists, while I’m there. When the painter Marilyn Banner, who I’ve known for twenty years or so, started working with encaustics, I was smitten, and chose this painting after much indecision. I narrowed it down to six, and kept going back and forth between them, not an easy task on dial-up. This one, in the end, spoke to me because it not only gives the sense of exuberance and expansiveness that I hope the poems convey, but also because I saw echoes of Matisse in the brush strokes and use of black, of Dufy in the color choices, plus the freedom of Monet, the boldness of Kahlo—poems about all of these artists are in section 3. One thing you can’t see in the cover is the texture. My response to encaustic work is visceral and tactile; I just want to lick them. 

Diane: Why did you title the book More?

Barbara: When I stepped back and looked at the work, it seemed that this was what most of the poems in the manuscript had in common. Years ago, the late poet Ann Silsbee said in an e-mail, “When I think about your work, 'plenitude' is the word that always comes to mind,” and although that word wasn’t quite right as the book’s title, the concept was there, in the back of my head.

Diane: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Barbara: Czeslaw Milosz has said, “Poetry is the passionate pursuit of the real,” and my hope is that readers will feel they’ve encountered something real between the covers. I also hope that readers will see that I take as my motto these words of Wendell Berry, “Be joyful, even though you’ve considered all the facts.” I hope that my work is accessible, even though I know it’s a two-edged sword. But most of all, I hope I’ll have readers, people who actually want to hold a book in their hands, and who will read a book of poetry not just once, but many times. I may be describing an endangered species, as recently, books on Kindle surpassed the number of physical books sold on Amazon. But I hope not!

Diane: Please choose a favorite poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.


Ode to Chocolate

I hate milk chocolate, don’t want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don’t want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau.  I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.
I like my heroes complicated and brooding,
James Dean in oiled leather, leaning
on a motorcycle.  You know the color.

Oh, chocolate!  From the spice bazaars
of Africa, hulled in mills, beaten,
pressed in bars.  The cold slab of a cave’s
interior, when all the stars
have gone to sleep.

Chocolate strolls up to the microphone
and plays jazz at midnight, the low slow
notes of a bass clarinet.  Chocolate saunters
down the runway, slouches in quaint
boutiques; its style is je ne sais quoi.
Chocolate stays up late and gambles,
likes roulette.  Always bets
on the noir.


Barbara: I chose “Ode to Chocolate” because it’s something I love, something I like to give as gifts.  Instead of a book launch party, I’m bringing chocolate to every reading I do this year (dark, of course!), and handing out squares to the audience. This time it will have to be virtual chocolate, but I hope that the readers of your blog will enjoy every bite!

Now let's all gather round and listen to Barbara read her poem for us.




Party Time! Barbara invites us all to join her in some refreshments.

Barbara: Pull up a wrought iron chair, and come sit with me under the plane trees by a fountain. Yes, we're in a small village somewhere in France. Here comes the waiter with our order: café noir (rich dark coffee) and pain chocolat, the world's greatest culinary invention, a flaky buttery croissant with a layer of chocolate inside. Coffee in France comes with its own square of dark chocolate, bitter and sweet at the same time. How civilized! Spread out your linen napkin, and let's dig in. Best of all, since this is a virtual party, there are no calories!

Overheard at the Party:

“Every time I come face to face with a new poem by Barbara Crooker, whether it's in a literary journal, on-line, or in a perfectly splendid collection like this one (her newest), I shake my head in wonder all over again. In my opinion there is virtually no living poet out there who can spin out an image like she does.”  Marilyn L. Taylor, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin


Don't leave the party without picking up a copy of Barbara's new book. Verbal chocolate! Delicious. While you enjoy the snacks and the poetry, please leave some comments for Barbara in the Comment section. Thanks for coming to the salon.

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Poetry Salon: Susan Rich

It is my pleasure to host a poetry salon for Susan Rich whose latest book, The Alchemist's Kitchen, was recently released by White Pine Press. Ideally, I'd like to have this party in my home, but since I live in New Jersey and Susan lives in Seattle, that's not possible. I've known Susan for several years on the Wompo listserv. Then we met in the fall of 2007 when we both read at the Burlington Book Festival in Vermont. We met again later that same year at AWP in New York.

Everyone, please get comfortable and let's hear what Susan has to say about her new collection.

Diane: You have two previous collections. Is this new one a continuation of or a departure from those books? What's familiar, what's new?

Susan: I think The Alchemist’s Kitchen is a departure in a number of  ways. This is my first time composing poems out of history, out of visual art, out of what it means to be living in middle life. My past two books, Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer's Tongue, focus more on the external world, the poems located in the different countries I’ve worked in: Bosnia, Palestine, Republic of Niger, and South Africa. And although I still love to travel, I’ve now claimed a more permanent geography in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, this summer the anthology New Poets of the West, comes out and it includes two of my poems. So although I grew up in Massachusetts and lived there until my mid-30’s, I am now officially a “new poet of the west.” This makes me ridiculously happy.

More importantly, perhaps, is that The Alchemist’s Kitchen is my most ambitious book. Dealing with my mortality isn’t easy, let alone writing about it. There are many poems in The Alchemist’s Kitchen that I didn’t want to write. For example, the third section of the book focuses on the strangeness of aging with poems like “The [In] Visible Architecture of Existence,” “Letter to the End of the Year” and “Curating My Death.” Perhaps because I passionately did not want to write these poems, they seem to have an extra sense of urgency about them. My personal sense of privacy and decorum lost. The poems won.

This is also true of the poems concerning the life and art of Northwest photographer Myra Albert Wiggins (1869-1956). Drawing inspiration from the visual arts always seemed a little too hoity-toity to me. I began writing the Wiggins poems as a challenge to myself. Could I focus on a historical artist, one that is all but lost to history (the way I may someday be) and re-infuse her work with life? I acquainted myself with her husband and her daughter, her trips to Paris and Jerusalem. By the end of two years, I felt I knew Myra better than I know myself.

Getting back to your question, some things stay the same, of course: attention to cadence, image, and surprise. I’m constantly trying to push forward in these areas. I hope I’ve succeeded, but that’s for my reader to decide.

Diane: Tell us the story behind your cover.

Susan: I think we need an all weekend party for this story! The cover comes from a photograph by the German photographer, Phillip Schumacher, whom I met last summer at an artist residency in Spain. Phillip creates what he calls “one shot films” which means his pictures usually include a broken narrative, an unexpected situation and sometimes a detail of the absurd. The kitchen pictured is located in the Villa Hugel, the family home of the German Industrialist, Alfred Krupp, which is now a famous museum.  I hadn’t expected to use a literal kitchen on the cover, but I fell in love with the pans illuminated in a lilac glow, the door within a door, and the overall film noir atmosphere of the image. Plus, I loved featuring the work of Phillip, a photographer whose work I admire so much. Phillip is only at the beginning of a very successful career and it’s an honor to introduce his work to North American audiences. One more thing: the cover only features 1/3 of a very large image which includes a life-size plastic stag, an angry chef, and an oven. Interested guests can visit my blog to see the the photograph in its entirety.

Diane: Why did you title the book The Alchemist's Kitchen?

Susan: The title of this collection came to me far more easily than the titles of either of my past books. I was re-reading Denise Levertov’s New and  Selected Essays—many of which were written, I believe, during her time in Seattle. In her essay "Biography and the Poet" (1992), Levertov takes up the question of literary biography of poets (and by extension, she expands, all biographies) as to whether we need to know about the drugs and dalliances of the poets’ lives or if they are “the chaff which the imagination has discarded.” For the most part, she rallies against being too inquisitive regarding the facts of the writing life. But the essay is balanced with praise for certain biographies such as Walter Jackson Bates' Life of Keats, where the biography is in service to the poems or to essays or journal pages some poets had published.  Sometimes, Levertov says, while understanding the life of the poet, “one is grateful for a glimpse into the alchemist’s kitchen.” I immediately felt myself drawn to the phrase.

I’ve re-interpreted Levertov’s original sense of looking at a poet’s memoir or biography being the alchemist’s kitchen to the poems themselves being the material of alchemy—the ordinary objects turned to gold. In researching more on the nature of alchemist—in its original meaning—I learned that Alchemy has a double origin in Greek philosophy and Egyptian texts. The origin of the word itself is thought to be Arabic. But what fascinated me the most was that the alchemists were not merely interested in turning base metals into gold but were also in pursuit of spiritual discipline and that the transformation of metals was secondary to the wisdom that the alchemist would himself attain through his work. One of my favorite quotes by the poet Stanley Kunitz goes like this: “The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.” So to answer your question, I’ve used the term “alchemist’s kitchen” as a metaphor for the process of writing poems. That said, I also am a great lover of food — growing it, preparing it, bringing friends together to enjoy it.

Diane: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Susan: Joy. Wisdom. Entertainment. A hearty appetite for the power of poetry to transform our everyday existence into something better—a way to make sense of the incongruities of our lives. As a reader, when I pick up a poetry book, I yearn to be surprised, to find words that teach me about my interior life, that make me want to read a poem or a line over, and over again. My hope is that I’ve created such an experience for other readers—or at the very least—made them hungry for “a praline heart” or “Spanish torte.”

Diane: Please choose a favorite poem for us and, if you like, tell us why you chose this one.


Rental

I’m afraid to own a body, you said
the regressive tax on breast and thigh
would be too high; then you circled

my wrists, held them brightly
and I registered in your eyes, the look
I imagine of accountant or old paleontologist

appraising semiprecious finds.
When you pose me toward the light
and we touch, you take

a transparency with your eyes;
as if April evenings can be
known things, as if

our rental car agreement
extended to tongues and only then
under certain conditions

to wondrous singing.
Praise song for contracts signed
in pocket parks where we

descend with little savings—Bless
even the promissory note
reneged, the unreality of love’s

retreating. Your voice remaining
a little distant, but still companionable
like the announcer on late night radio—


Susan: I chose “Rental” because it is a poem I most definitely did not wish to write. It was the first poem I finished last summer while I was in residence at Fundacion Valparaiso. A relationship that I had been involved in in Seattle had ended abruptly and the last thing I wanted to do was wallow in those knife wounds of heartbreak. There I was in Andalusia, on the shore of the Mediterranean, and yet memory kept interfering with the sun. Until I wrote this poem, no others would show up. Not surprisingly, once I finished “Rental” it became easier to move on to new work. And somehow, in spite of how much I didn’t want to write this poem, I’ve ended up liking it very much. I especially appreciate the ending which tries to name that odd sensation of hearing the ex-lover’s voice—the same voice that uttered love cries during the relationship—speak in the aftermath.  Poetry works in a myriad of exasperating ways. How lucky I feel to be a poet in this life. Sometimes I need to remember how much I wanted to be a writer from the time I learned how to read. And here we are—living the writing life—having drinks and even ice cream in the blogosphere.


Now comes the best part of our salon. We get a chance to hear Susan read her poem, "At Middle-Life: A Romance."

What's a party without something delicious to eat? Please help yourselves to a parfait, some cookies, fresh fruit, and cold fruit punch.

Overheard at the party:
"These are poems of praise and wonder graced by a delicate touch."—Brian Turner

“Don't read Susan Rich’s latest book on an empty stomach. Although The Alchemist’s Kitchen contains a wide, intelligent, and  thought-provoking variety of poems, it does food better than most of the restaurants I’ve been in.”—Mark Brazaitis, Peace Corps Worldwide


Be sure to pick up a copy of Susan's book. Then while you enjoy your snacks, please feel free to ask Susan some questions. Leave them in the Comment section. Susan has promised to respond. And thanks for coming to the salon.

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