Posted on October 21, 2022
I struggled over the summer to get writing. I realize I’m not supposed to say I took a break in my writing regimen, especially before I started an MFA program, but after a year of struggling with writing, community, and my identity, I found myself resisting my usual practices and wanting to engage in only pleasure, only things that required little to no brain power. I walked a ton of dogs. I watched the summer heat of Louisiana melt things I never knew could be liquids. I made and drank lots of smoothies (strawberry, blueberry, banana, lime juice and spinach was my go to combination). And I visited friends before the big move halfway across the country.
It felt odd to take a break from poetry. I had not in a few years, but I was able to spend some time with my undergraduate professor, Morri Creech, in the spring semester and he reminded me that he lets the poems arrive when they ready. He allows himself to engage in other creative pursuits to feed his soul while he waits for the next poem to show up on the page. I’m not a Pulitzer finalist like he is (or nearly as cool and kind as him), but I have to hope that if this works for him, maybe, just maybe, the poetry gods might bless me with new poems after a respite as well.
So I picked up Ada Limón’s Sharks in the Rivers after having read her newest book The Hurting Kind. I have been an avid fan of Limón’s since undergrad when a good friend and poet gave me a signed copy of Sharks in the Rivers he’d bought from AWP that year. I doubt he would have guessed she’d become my favorite poet, but maybe he did. After all, he knew me and the poetry I desperately wanted to write well since we’d spent a lot of time revising each other’s work over burned Starbucks coffee. I am very thankful for his introduction to her work (and of course, his friendship). It has fueled my creative spirit when nothing else has.
My favorite poem in the book, “Flood Coming” is the second in the collection. It’s a shorter poem of three stanzas of quatrains using harder sounds to slow down the quick pacing of the lines. The lines range from 7 to 10 syllables with heavy stresses that resist being iambic in only a couple of places where anapests and one spondee replace them. It creates a heavy cadence mimicking the heavy content of a “pulled-apart world,” “bad news like a brush fire,” and “the day’s undoing.” Mid-way through the poem takes a turn in that it begins to tell the reader what to do with the verbs “Let” and “Don’t.” These give actionable things for the reader to do in preparation for the “flood” or rather the “day’s undoing” and helps this reader feel as if the speaker of the poem is with me in this struggle. This poem and this book insist over and over again to keep trying, mixing the natural world and the urban world’s problems to push the reader. It’s pushed me to get better. It’s also pushed me to keep creating and ultimately writing despite the “beasts [that] are knocking.”
Another book I’ve returned to is my friend (it feels VERY cool to say this) and mentor, Rose McLarney’s book of poetry, It’s Day Being Gone. I was fortunate to be in two of her workshops focused on the natural world while at Auburn. But like Limón, McLarney spins beautiful images of flora and fauna, roping the reader into the Appalachian mountain landscape and making them confront their humanness in the midst of it. As someone who spent many summers along the Blue Ridge, these poems remind me of a place I used to call home. As I started planning my return to North Carolina, these poems reminded me of why I never wanted to leave when summer ended.
When I wasn’t re-reading Limón or McLarney, I began drawing again, something I do as a hobby. Something where the pressure of being good at it is much lesser, but the creative drive was still satiated. I also found myself opening an old story from my Master’s thesis at Auburn which proved exciting and fulfilling in that at least I was writing even if it wasn’t poetry. I did not realize how much I needed to let the poetry part of my brain breathe. It had been busy in the last year, but not in ways I always enjoyed.
And then I began picking up books for fun, not caring whether they would change my life or not. I let myself be drawn to them by their cover art. I am a sucker for a beautiful cover. As much as I hate to say it, there’s not much that’ll make me buy a book faster than a colorful and interesting cover. I know, as a writer myself, this is probably literarily immature of me (I suppose I am the reader the marketers and artists for books aim for in this sense). Most importantly maybe, this was a less intimidating way to choose a book.
I picked up Things in Jars by Jess Kidd while visiting a friend in Auburn, Alabama. One of my favorite bookstores sits downtown, a few doors down from the famous and ancient business called Toomer’s Lemonade, where you can find the best (and maybe, most expensive) gallon of lemonade. But Auburn Oil Booksellers had a window I could not help but look into as I walked home from my classes. Generally, the vibes are light. It’s a clean space with organized shelves, a few local soaps and bath bombs on the store floor. The books cover the white shelves along the walls. Things in Jars (first edition paperback) sat amongst other attractive covers. It’s blue, teal, and white design of tree branches stood out to me as intricate and beautiful but odd with the tiny gold snails that littered the print.
The story starts at the prologue, detailing a child with “pearly eyes” and fish-like qualities. But the first chapter establishes our main character, Bridie Divine, an odd woman destined to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy Englishman’s child. As I followed this odd older woman through the story, I was delighted to encounter more mysterious and mystic characters than just the aquatically inclined child of the prologue. Jess Kidd weaves a story between characters that often resemble those of Charles Dickens’ in their own gothic mystery. In examining the unbelievable, Bridie Devine rediscovers her power as an investigator, her memories as a child, and a relationship she didn’t know she missed. Kidd takes the reader along for a ride in an often bumpy carriage around Southern England, chasing the kidnappers of this magnificent and extraordinary child. I was extremely pleased to find that this book and it’s intricate and beautiful cover, lived up to the expectations I had for it.
I bought A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes that trip as well, though not for the cover (it is nice). I was drawn to it for the blurb by Madeline Miller as a banner across the front in bright yellow. I’d read Circe the summer before and absolutely loved Miller’s take on the often demonized sea-witch of Aeaea. In the same mythos as Circe, Miller says Haynes “gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.” A Thousand Ships was also Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020.
The book begins with the muse of poetry, Calliope. She is bothered by an old man wishing to write him the next big epic. Instead of giving him a story of men fighting big battles and winning prizes of their enemies heads, she gives the story of the women in the Trojan War: Clytemnestra, Helen, Penelope, Cassandra, Hecabe, Polyxena, Andromache, Creusa, Chryseis, Hera, Aphrodite, Athene, Eris, Themis, Gaia, the Moirai, the Trojan women and the Greek women. In her retelling of The Iliad and The Odyssey, Haynes refocuses on the women giving them depth and new life. In allowing these women to be more than just the labels (demons, goddesses, heroines, harlots, wives) Homer and the Western world has previously given them. These women are complex and no longer the two-dimensional characters of the past telling.
The book is set up in chapters told by one particular woman. Often the following chapter moves to another character only to return to the previous one next. If taken apart and read on their own, each chapter reads like a short story. However together, it paints a complex picture of the “women’s war.” I thoroughly enjoyed brushing up on these mythic and legendary women as well as their male counterparts, but mostly I enjoyed hearing the voices of women (even fictional) too long silenced.
These books have reminded me of the things that matter. The connections to poetry through intricate images, the fern lined forests and the human condition. The stories told in fiction and poetry that ask the reader to follow enchanting and necessary tales. Even though I wasn’t writing poems every day as I hoped I might be, I found myself nourished and ready to begin carving out some ideas for writing when I finally arrived in Greensboro.
CALISTA MALONE is first-year poet. She currently serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and is an editorial intern for Cave Wall.
