Poem For Abbey Lincoln

She walks the night

in blue and black satin

the spirits whispering

softly to her



Don't you hear

the amber and the agony

that pour from her mouth

with every note she sings?

Such wealth is not man made

or the by-product of rugged individualism

it is the blues call in the night



It is the lassoed

harnessed

dispossessed

secrets

of the Universe

cast forth

like a puff of magic

glitter and gold

before your very eyes

Ask the trees

where she came from



Grounded on the earth

but walking in the heavens

with a reach that can inspire

and a voice melifluous that touches

the very heart of humanity.

Burying Big Mama

Sadie Mae was enlaid in a glass coffin like Eva Peron
so the many who adored her could flock past one last time
take in the face, the beauty, and the wisdom that had kept them for so long, finally free from suffering.
Mama Sissy, Aunt Sadie, Sissy, Mama.
Careful, concerned fingers of her prying daughters lifted the glass case to retrieve her one last time
propped her up in the middle of the living room before the viewing, just beyond the grand piano; the smaller piano set up in the music room,
it would make due for Betty to play.
The mortician's work was shoddy.
Johnnie and Sadie to redo her makeup and nails,
Thelma to press and curl to make her look presentable.
All of her dutiful daughters lifting her once more back into the midst of life and then once again into the belly of the grave, laid afresh in her glass coffin,
visible and ready to be seen,
her daughters
the pallbearers to carry the awful burden.

Interview With Grace Wells

Grace Wells is an acclaimed author of children's books. Her children's novel, Gyrlfalcon, won the Eilis Dillon Award in 2003 and was selected as an International White Raven's Choice. Wells also enjoyed a successful career as a television and music video producer based in London. Now living in Ireland, she has recently published her first collection of poetry, When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things. Her poetic voice in this collection recalls the works of such poets as Adrienne Rich and Dorothy Allison as she addresses such issues as home life, domestic violence, and the ties that bind in families and relationships. Wells recently agreed to do an interview with JuliusSpeaks. This is what transpired.


1.Tell us about your background and where you are from.

I’m from London, England, a mostly Anglo-Saxon background, with some Russian Jews from the 1890’s thrown in to spark thing up.
For some years in the late 1980’s I produced TV commercials and pop videos, but I’d always wanted to write, so once I’d come to Ireland in 1991, had children, and got those children into school, I was able to take up writing in a more full way. I also work in arts administration and facilitate creative-writing workshops.

2.Discuss the title of your book, When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things. What in particular is the significance of the title in light of the corresponding poem within the book?

The whole voyage of the book is to do with a sense of God being absent, and the terrible things that people do to one another while that sense of spiritual presence is far away. In fact, I could add, even while that presence is up close, because many truly terrible things have been done, and are being done, in the name of God.
But mostly the book is about a sense of isolation and the lack of a vivid Spiritual presence. There are poems about childhood and growing up, and poems about people living within difficult relationships or whose lives are challenged in other ways. The title poem is, I think, the first time that we see the narrator(me) acknowledge, and realize, that within all this craziness, there is an imprint of God’s presence.

I think the whole tension of the book is that the phrase means two things: one, that we are alone and isolated while God seems to be off doing great things elsewhere, and also, on the other hand, that right there, in our pain and our isolation, that’s where we really can see God manifest. Hafiz has written “No one can resist a Divine invitation/That narrows down all our choices
/To just two:/We can come to God
/Dressed for Dancing,/Or/Be carried on a stretcher/
To God's Ward.” These are pretty much poems about the stretcher ride.

3.Your poetry is filled with metaphor. Throughout your poems you reference animals, using them in metaphor-the fox, the horse, the wolf. What is the significance of these metaphors in your work?

I think we’ve been relating to our humanity via the animal world for a long time. A lot of our sayings, like ‘keeping the wolf from the door’, you can’t teach an old dog, new tricks’, show that humanity has never felt itself too far away from the animal world. Now the majority of us live in cities and the action that plays out on the screen of our lives, is not full of nature. But I haven’t lived in a city for more than twenty years. My life is informed by the countryside, it’s understandable that it should have come into my poems in a strong way. Neruda said “The sea, fish and birds have a material existence for me, I depend on them just as I depend on daylight”. I feel the same way. When I wrote in my poem ‘Pioneer’, “she is sung with fox bark and pheasant call./Creatures roost in her thoughts, her days/ are measured by the slink, the leap, the pounce,/ the pitched balance of wings breaking into flight”, I’m writing of the things that are crucial to me. The natural world is so jeopardized by human beings, that it’s vital people become more conscious of its central role in our lives—and very quickly. If I write a lot about nature, it’s because part of me is shouting about our need to protect all this, for our own survival. In the poetry the call for protection emerges in a more subtle way, but inside, I’m screaming.

4.Your poems speak to issues of domestic violence and the everyday strife of domesticity. Tell us of your personal experiences with these issues. How do your experiences inform this collection of poetry?

I didn’t exactly chose to write about domestic abuse. It came at me and that was the primary material I had beneath my hands, so that’s why those poems are there. I feel I’ve said enough in the poems about those issues without having to say more in a public forum. When I’m speaking directly with victims of abuse I’m more open about my own experiences. But in a way I don’t think it matters that the poems are about abuse, in essence they’re about struggle and overcoming that. Every life has struggle. I think it’s always good to read about people who have come through.

Traditionally women’s poetry was marginalized and derided because it often dealt with the domestic, and rather than veer away from the domestic because of that, I think I have an obtuse desire to really look at it. I feel it’s not what you write about, it’s how you write about it. I think these are good domestic poems. Besides, if we get the domestic right, then we’re in a position to write about the big stuff. As my collection progresses, and the domestic world becomes more sane and livable, the poetry moves its focus and expands to include things like poverty in Africa, and global warming.

5. Am I correct in identifying an abusive father and an abusive husband in the poems?

Well these two people don’t even belong in the same sentence. My father had been involved in the Second World War, he’d taught young men in the RAF, and seen hundreds of them go to their deaths. He was marked by the war, and like so many men of his generation, he couldn’t contain his grief and rage.

6. I find your poetic voice to be an interesting mix of Adrienne Rich and Dorothy Allison. In your collection, you also pay homage to Sylvia Plath. Can you draw connections between yourself, Rich, Allison, and Plath?

When I first read that question I was very flattered. I thought, well that’s amazing that someone is linking my name with Rich and Plath. I don’t know Allison’s work, and I haven’t been able to source any, so, sadly, I can’t comment on that. But actually, after the initial sense of compliment, I started to get concerned. I’ve never been drawn to Plath’s work, her love affair with death just doesn’t draw me in. I haven’t consciously paid homage to her, if I have, that’s accidental. I know I’ve paid homage to Raymond Carver. His work was very important to my own. His work is vital and life-saving. Plath’s is a downward spiral. That isn’t what I feel poetry should be about. For me poetry is the life-affirming guide-rope that leads us from trouble. Carver knew that, it was his legacy and his gift to us. Besides there have been so many wonderful women writers since Plath, before Plath even, that it distresses me greatly that she’s dominated the scene.

As for Rich, I’ve never felt comfortable with her work either. She’s on the dense, incomprehensible side. I believe poetry should be generous and open, certainly it should be language-driven and provocative, but not distressing to our own sense of ability to understand. Right now Rich’s work is on the secondary school syllabus here in Ireland. And though a number of students will love her, and be invited, through her, into the world of poetry, she’s actually going to make thousands more run from poetry and never pick up another book of poems. That’s not what I’d hope for my own work.

7. In reading your work, I immediately thought of Adrienne Rich and her commentary, through poetry and prose, on domestic life, particularly where issues of gender and gender equality are concerned. How do your observations and philosophy delivered in this collection mirror Rich’s commentary on domestic life? I specifically identify “ The Dress,” “The Only Medicine,” and “The Lone Parent Does Not Write” as speaking to Rich’s work.

Well, as I said before, I don’t feel my work and Rich’s resonate off one another—at least not directly. I like her line, “A thinking woman sleeps with monsters”, it was used as the title of a brilliant book by Rebecca Wilson, an anthology of work and conversations with Scottish and Irish women Poets published in 1990. That book was very important to me, and many of the writers in it were undoubtedly influenced by Rich, so I can see she’s been relevant to my work, in the way a grandmother might be, but women writers have come so far since then, that I feel it’s time we stopped gyring around those rather outdated forces.

8. Does the poem “Rescue” reference the 1970s film, Deep Throat? Alice Walker, bell hooks, and several other feminist writers have addressed this film in their work. What were your impressions of this film? If this poem is not about that film, could you speak to this tradition of misogyny in cinema and offer your perspective on it?

The reference is to a much later film, and it was just a fairly ordinary main-stream movie, one of many where human sensuality is miserably misrepresented. I’ve never seen Deep Throat and wouldn’t think to. Somewhere in the 60’s and 70’s the floodgates burst on sex in cinema. I’ve read it began in Europe, where attitudes were quite open compared to American cinema of the time. The result has been that some decades later we live in a pornographic culture.

Pornography has spilled into the everyday and we’re awash with it. So much so, that I don’t think there’s even an intelligent discussion about its presence in our midst. The bar keeps getting lower, nothing is protecting young people and children, especially girls, from the rampant sexualisation of their culture and thinking. While many women are able to move forward into more independent, fulfilling lives, the exact opposite is also true, we’re seeing the development of a vast sex-slave culture, where millions of women are trafficked into the West to lose their basic freedoms. At another level it is now normal for women to keep their thumbs in their beer bottles when they got out at night, so their drinks aren’t spiked. That this kind of behaviour as a normality shows us how deeply disturbed the culture is.

The World Health Organisation tells us that one in five women in the West live in abusive relationships, one in three in the Developing world. For me these issues are central; those figures are not marginal. Anyone who thinks feminism is redundant is wrong. The tensions and personal dramas women have faced for centuries are still with us, only they’ve mutated form. We haven’t moved as far as we think we have, we’re still fighting for our lives.

9. You write about moving from England to Ireland in your work. What impact has this transition had on your life? What are some of the changes you have found in your life as a result of the move?

I have a certain sense of displacement I suppose, I’m not an Irish poet, yet my whole working life has been here, so I’m not really an English poet either. Ireland has had a deeply formative influence on who I am as a person. Mostly for the good, but not in easy ways. Like anywhere, there are good and bad things about Ireland. As an English person, it can be difficult living here because of Ireland’s history. The terrible things that the British did down the centuries are alive and unforgiven. The Irish are still in a process of recovery. Though our islands are very close, we have entirely different pasts. Many elements make for a subtle but ever-present tension against the English, which can be hard to live with.

Mostly what I love about Ireland are the people. I have some really great friends here. They’re very earthed, very focused toward real concerns: our shared humanity, concern for the planet. I feel it’s because we have more space here, more of a sense of what needs to be saved. Ireland has provided me with a sense of nurture and Spirituality that I simply might not have found in England. The land here is very alive with resonance. People here talk about the veil between the worlds being thin. I always feel it’s because Ireland only has a small population, and you can still get away from them to hear the land speaking. The sense of place is very alive in Ireland, very vibrant.

Then there’s the language, Hiberno-English is a much richer form of language than London-English. I know it has found its way into my writing. I’m also immersed in the Irish poetry scene. It’s a small enough world, so you can really remain aware of who is writing what. I like that. If I were in England there’d be so many names and characters, and a kind of resultant chaos.

10. Looking at your life experiences and the issues that you address in this book, what is your personal philosophy on juggling issues of marriage, children, personal identity, and all of the inherent in those connections?

It’s a day by day thing. Even an hour by hour thing. Often I’ve been in a great space, I’ve worked at my desk for hours, I’ll emerge from my study a wise and profound being and, within minutes, have one of my children reduce me to a neurotic wreck. I don’t have a big philosophy, one is constantly juggling and seeking balance. The minute you have equanimity, it passes and you’re right in the middle of the next drama.

Beneath the glass-top on my desk there are a couple of messages I like to keep with me. One simply says “Faith & Courage”. Another says: “Our single purpose is to magnify that Light we share between us”. And the last is e.e cummings: “I thank you God, for most this amazing/day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees/and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything/which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.” I muddle along somewhere in that midst.

11. The last poem in the book, “Work,” speaks of catharsis. How has this collection served as your catharsis?

The process of poetry has been very important for many years as a form of catharsis. My work has been enmeshed in a process of transforming dark material into something worthwhile, something meaningful, and almost darkly beautiful. I haven’t wanted that destiny, but that’s what came towards me. So ultimately I have huge belief in the power of art to transform and heal. Art, darkness, sexuality and spirituality have been the big themes of my life. The great thing about this book is that it puts a lot of things to rest. It clears the air, empties the shelf space and allows for new work. C.S Lewis wrote, “we read to know we are not alone”. For me writing has always been about that, a sharing of our humanity. All along I doubted the sanity of publishing these poems, but I kept on because I knew there were women who needed to read them, women who needed to see a way out of abuse, or women who couldn’t recover from it. I kept saying to myself I was doing it for them, to help them heal. Now those women are coming forward and thanking me in person, I see that actually the whole process is also about my healing at a yet deeper level. They’re the ones who remind me how relevant my work is, how despite everything, I belong.


12. Thanks for this interview.

Interview With Shaindel Beers, Author of A Brief History in Time

With the recent publication of her first book of poetry,A Brief History in Time, I had the opportunity to interview author, Shaindel Beers, a former classmate of mine at Huntingdon College. Here is what transpired.

1. Your poetry is filled with some very astute perceptions along the lines of race, gender, and class. What is your background? Where are you from? What is your family like? What do they do?

I’m from a very small rural town in northern Indiana, called Argos, which, at least in the 2000 census, had a population of 1,613. It might seem unusual to someone that you can grow up somewhere that is 98% white and be so impacted by race, but I moved from Argos to Montgomery, Alabama, to go to Huntingdon College, and it was like another planet. I’d heard racist comments in Indiana, but they were the sort of things one “expects” from people of a certain generation. Like, my grandpa would say something and change the channel if he walked in and I was watching The Cosby Show. But I think there was a lot of jealousy in this. If you remember, on The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby’s character was a doctor, and the wife was a lawyer, and here’s my grandfather who has a sixth grade education and has had a hard life—farming (which always depends on the weather), factory closings (which depends on the whims of the wealthy, or the economy), all sorts of things. I think a lot of people from his generation in the same position probably felt the same way. It isn’t right, but you can understand where it comes from.

When I got to Alabama, the racism was much more real. First of all, there were people of other races—at least then in Alabama, Whites and Blacks. And, to me, it felt like the Civil Rights movement had barely happened. When I met one of my first college friends and wanted to go to Wal-Mart to buy some dorm supplies, she started driving the opposite way I thought we should be going. When I asked why we weren’t going to the Wal-Mart next to the college, she said, “Oh, that’s the Black Wal-Mart,” like it was the most common thing in the world. I heard other such gems such as a wealthy woman who said, “Of course, we’re not racist; all our maids have always been Black” and the one that appears in my poem, “Branching.”

For me, at least, gender and social class are so intertwined. I think that there is much more hope of social mobility for men than for women. There’s a book I haven’t read yet but want to called Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. I remember when I was in high school and things were rough, my mom would say things like, “Maybe some nice boy will marry you.” That really seemed to be the answer she had for everything. She bought me a subscription to Brides Magazine when I was around fifteen and seemed fine when my high school boyfriend at that time just assumed we were getting married and gave me a ring.

I think a lot of women my age were raised without the skills we really needed because our parents still expected us to move from their house to a husband’s. And that really seems to surprise a lot of people, but I think small towns are socially a generation behind other places.

As far as my family, they are sort of a “mad genius” family. That’s probably saying enough.


2. What is your ethnic makeup?

On my father’s side, I’m Russian-Jewish, maybe with a few other Eastern European countries thrown in. On my mother’s side, it’s pretty much everything from the British Isles. I can look up family tartans in Scottish museums and things like that.

3. Do you have a great interest in Greek mythology? Your knowledge of it seems to be very expansive. Does it inspire you?

I absolutely love all mythologies, but I know more about Greek mythology than others, probably because it was required in eighth grade. We had to memorize who was the god or goddess of what and read The Odyssey. I’m always fascinated by rewritings of myths and fairy tales for a few reasons. First, there’s less work for the author because the reader already knows the basic story, and secondly, because there is a wealth of the human condition for the reader to connect to. For instance, in Louise Glück’s Meadowlands, she uses the figures of Odysseus and Penelope to explore the breakdown of (presumably) her own marriage. Most of us know the story of The Odyssey, and most of us have suffered broken hearts, so putting these elements together creates something between the author and the reader that is greater than the sum of the parts. For my creative writing MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, part of my graduation requirement included giving a lecture on a specific topic in creative writing, and I did mine on “Feminist Revision of Myth and Fairy Tale.” If any readers are interested in it, they can let me know, and I’ll email them the lecture.

4. You seem to have lived a very interesting life--from the mundaneness of rural Indiana to the cosmopolitan life of the city. Give us a rundown of your life from birth to present. Where have you lived? What has marked you?

First of all, I don’t see how rural Indiana is any more mundane than living in a city. Wherever you are is your reality, and you can have a boring or an exciting life in either. I was born in South Bend, Indiana, which is where Kenneth Rexroth was born. (Maybe it will eventually be a city known for poets?) I lived in Argos until I moved away to Montgomery, Alabama, for college, then I moved to Chicago to go to the University of Chicago for graduate school, and after that, I kept moving further and further out to the suburbs, for jobs. (And I would do my graduate residencies in Vermont in the summers and winters from 2003-2005.) Eventually, I got a full-time college teaching position in Florida. I just wasn’t a Florida person and had to get somewhere where it would snow before I died of depression (or drank myself to death), and I ended up in Eastern Oregon. So far, it’s the best place I’ve lived. I have fantasies of a cabin in Montana or Alaska or somewhere more remote than this with bigger mountains, but this is pretty phenomenal for now. It’s also a great teaching position. It’s a rural mountain community college, and there are only three full-timers in the English department (myself included), so in addition to the regular Composition sequence, I get to teach Shakespeare, British literature, Fiction writing, Poetry writing, and Poetry as Literature. It’s nice to get to use my graduate degrees in both British literature and Creative Writing. Anywhere else, I’d most likely have to choose one or the other.

A lot has marked me. A. Lot. I’ll let people read my poetry collection and decide that.

5. You seem to have had a lot of experiences in terms of love and loss. What is the greatest lesson you have learned?

I’m still learning, but I think I’m discovering that you can survive anything if you have to. I’m also learning to value myself and not to mould myself into whatever will make other people happy, but it’s definitely a process.

6. Who are your greatest influences as a writer?

I’m just going to start listing here. As far as poets: Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, Richard Jackson, Eavan Boland. Fiction writers: Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Antonya Nelson, Ellen Gilchrist. I’m sure there are at least a hundred others, but I’m hoping readers will look up everyone on this list if they’re not already familiar with them.

7. What's next for you?

So far, I feel really fortunate to be booking readings since the publication of A Brief History of Time since it’s my first full-length book. I hope to keep giving readings and to keep up with my radio show, Translated By, on www.blogtalkradio.com . In June of 2010, I’ll be teaching at Writing Away Retreats http://writingawayretreats.com/ , which I’m really excited about.

I have a two book deal with Salt Publishing, which is just amazing. I’ve never even heard of another poet getting a two book deal! For my second book I’m working on, tentatively titled The Children’s War, I’m looking at children’s art drawn during war-time from the Spanish Civil War to the current time and writing an ekphrastic poem on each one that inspires me.

I have what amounts to maybe half of a short story collection so far, and one novel in progress that I wish was more in progress. And I always have stories and poems going on in my head.

Next stop on Shaindel Beers' Virtual Book Tour Kate Evans:Being and Writing.

This is a Great Interview with the Poet Ai

It felt very inclusive, I think, for a lot of people.
Yeah. And for Native Americans and Indians -- well, we just call ourselves Indians here; I'm vice president of the Native American faculty, too, so I have a lot of duties now here -- so it was another win for them, too, and for Oklahoma, which is a state that's had a lot of problems, like the Oklahoma City bombing. You know, that's the thing about minority faculty that I don't know if people understand: you are not simply filling one role; you don't go to a school just as a faculty member. You have duties. Like I am standing in for Blacks, Native Americans, and Asians at my school, generally, because I'm the only minority faculty in the English Department.
Seriously?
Yeah. There's a man from India, but that's it.
Is that something that you choose?
What? To help? To stand in?
To be there, as opposed to someplace where you would...
Oh! Well, I was here as a visitor, just for a year, and then when I won the Book Award, they offered me tenure starting in January. So I won the Book Award in November, and they offered me a full professorship with tenure in January. And I was like, "Well, Ai, a bird in the hand, you know... this is a really good offer." So I thought, well, I'll just take it. So I sort of ... they made it so fast, I sort of didn't think about it. And I'm here doing research on my Indian family. I'm not done with my research, and they gave me a lot of money, too, so you know, it's a good deal! There are probably other places I'd like. I wouldn't mind being in Arizona, but Arizona didn't make me an offer! And I'm doin' okay. I don't know. Oklahoma certainly has its share of bigotry, which I feel I have certainly experienced. I haven't talked to the powers-that-be about it, but I certainly feel that there's some out there, and I'm not used to the kinds of encounter here, and some of it has been anti-Indian. [laughs] So I'm gettin' it from everywhere! I talked to this taxi driver about it, 'cause she's trying to find her Cherokee grandmother. She said, "Oh, they're very prejudiced towards Indians here." And I said, "Well, why?" And she said, "Well, they think they have everything." I said, "Well, they lost everything!" So there's definitely some of that in my area of Oklahoma.
The resentment?
Oh yeah, I've heard that. Well, I've certainly had some problems; let's just put it like that. Some racial, and some sexual. It's a mix, when you're minority faculty and a woman, because it's race and sex. I'm not trouble-free.
Do you feel that from the other side, too, where you get exoticized as a woman of color, and given all sorts of exotic praise or put up as window dressing?
Oh, I'm sure it happens. I don't think I'm getting that here actually, which I guess is a compliment to the place. But I have sometimes wondered about the amount of praise I was getting. Slightly. [laughs] But it always happens, when you're a minority. I don't think I've been over-praised; I write good poems. I just think of it like that. I don't question it too much.
I never think of myself as a token. Anytime people try to make me one, I just reject it. I never really capitalized on my minority status. I didn't really want to do that. There were instances when I was younger when I certainly could have done that. I'm not an enrolled tribe member now, but I'd mentioned it in a magazine somewhere, and Indian people wrote me and stuff, but it seemed like I have so many mixtures, it wasn't right of me to capitalize on my Indian blood. And that might have been skewed, you know, I might have been wrong, but it's been proved to me since I moved here that it's not too late, and it's your family, so you have a right. I have a right to go in there and say, "I have this and that Indian blood."
It's real interesting here, 'cause my experience with the family background is not uncommon here; things that happened in my family are rather common here, and that's been good for me to see. Like, for instance, some of the Indian women married with whites and didn't get on the rolls, because they didn't want to be on the rolls. They wanted to be safe, didn't want to be Indian. And you would think, like when I was in Arizona, my opinion would have been, "Oh, that's bad; they were ashamed." But since I moved to Oklahoma and I can understand the historical circumstances, I understand that, and I'm not judging people for what they did then. They were trying to survive. But it raises interesting moral questions, and in some of my research I have to get the case files, and one family said they had a Choctaw mother, so they rushed out to Mississippi when they were doing the final rolls, and they tried to get on them. And the Choctaw/Chickasaw people questioned them over and over again. They would say, "Well, how does she look?" They got real down to it. They would say, "Was her hair kinky or straight?" I mean, it was totally naked. Over and over again, they'd describe her. She sounded Indian to me, but they went as far as to forge a letter from a Chief, saying she was Indian. They did bad things, and a lot of the names were similar to my family names. [laughs] I said, "Oh, they're pretty under-handed here; hmmmm, they could be family!" Two of the sons were in the Confederate Army, okay? So that would have been something. In the end, not enough names matched up, so they weren't my family, but they were denied tribal membership. But how would I have dealt with that? Two sons in the Confederate Army, for god's sake!
So there's a lot of interesting stuff in Oklahoma. They had slaves, too, you know, the "five civilized tribes," so there's all the different roles and mixtures, and it's just fascinating. So there is a rhyme or reason for my being here. I almost feel my great-grandfather, like the ghosts are out there. There are still things being hashed over today that began back when, on the Trail of Tears, for instance. If you tap into your ancestors, if you tap into the ghosts of these ancestors, they are still doing things. They are still saying, "Granddaughter, I want you to look into this for me." That's the way I feel about my great-grandfather, sometimes. He's saying, "You know, I want you to check on this; check on these mineral rights to this land that we have." So I'm looking for a deed, 'cause they sold the land, but they kept the mineral rights. It's all kinds of stuff here; it's just totally rich.
Sounds a little like the stuff that you touched on in "Passing Through."
Yeah, although I fictionalized it, so it's a woman who's half White. But yeah, that poem was sort of opening the door to what I'm actually working on for a memoir, for my own history. But, as far as I can tell, there wasn't any rape involved in what went on with my family's mixing; they willingly went to the other side or whatever, so that's interesting, too. But I don't know all the details. I have to track everything. I don't know whether I'll ever learn everything, but I'm trying to track some things down.
One woman here is Creek, and her grandmother was at Indian school when a White man married her when she was 12, and it was to get her land, see. So it's possible that my great-great-grandmother may not have even been married to this man, but she had a child with him. But it may have been that he had another wife; that's what I'm trying to zero in on. A White wife, see. Some of them had two and three families. One of the White men I looked at, he had several Choctaw wives. [laughs] He divorced one, and they said, "Why did you divorce?" He said, "I wanna get me another one!" It was weird like that. It was weird stuff! And then the last letter in his file is from one of the Choctaw wives, and they said, "Well, we understand he's a fugitive from justice." And I said, "Oh, could be my family; it's so wild!" It was really wild, you know.
These are your people?
[laughs] These are people I was hopin' might be my relatives! No, I haven't found them. You know, I'm lookin' up family names and a lot of times you get one name that's the same, and you don't know until you send for the case file from the national archives. Then you have all the information. So one name might be a family name, but then when you look at all the other wives, sons and daughters, they don't match up, right, so it's not your family.
And this will be your first novel?
Well, memoir. I wrote that novel, but it hasn't come out. I haven't dealt with my family history at all yet, so it'll all be in the memoir. It's so fascinating and interesting, it's kind of a riveting tale. I think it will be. It'll be part history, part memoir. There's not a whole lot out there about mixed-race people in the Old West in this area, so I thought I'd touch on a lot of things.
How will it be to have yourself as your subject for the first time?
It'll be okay. I sort of am a fictionalized subject in my novel, actually. I'm a character, and so is my mother, and my grandmother, my ancestors. But I don't know what's going to happen with that, because my editor keeps telling me it's not ready, and I don't want to do a re-write, so it's just in limbo. [laughs] I sold it, but I collected half the advance.
You don't care whether it's published?
Well, yeah, but I had to sort of let it go. I was upset for a while; I was real upset. But now, it's been so long since I sold it -- I think I sold it in '94 -- but it wasn't finished. It was only half-way through, I think. In '97, when I was in Boulder, I sent what I considered to be my final draft, and then she told me it wasn't ready, and then I was mad, and I didn't do anything for two years. Then after I won the Book Award, I had interest from other publishers, see, and then I told my editor, and she said, "Well, let me read it again." Then she thought it still needs works. It's at an agency, but I haven't signed with the agency, and they thought they could piggy-back with the memoir, so they were waiting for the memoir. So anyway, I don't know I'll do. Oh well. [laughs] It has interracial sex in it, so I wonder if that might be a problem. It shouldn't, but, you know.
Not anymore, though. The interracial movement is very strong now.
Well, that's what I'm dealing with. The novel is called Black Blood, and it turns on how much Black blood these people have, in the novel. [laughs] So how did they get mixed? By having sex with somebody in another race; that's how! But I think my memoir is really gonna be good. [laughs] If she ever finishes her research! I could go on and on; I guess you could tell. [laughs] It's weird because the past is living for me. I was brought up short in Austin, because I mentioned a rancher my great-grandfather used to work for in Texas, and a woman came up after and said, "I haven't heard those names in years!" He was one of those cattle kings, right, and the day of the cattle king is over, but to me it's living. I hadn't really thought about how much in the past that is. To me it's like it was yesterday.
Is that part of what you've described as "psychohistory"?
Well, no, psychohistory is more like ascribing some kind of psychological reason for an historical event. At least, that's how I think of it. But in the end, I might actually touch on some of that in my work -- maybe by saying, "Why did a relative not get on the rolls" or whatever. So anyway, I probably deviated from your question. And you're not payin' me for this interview, either!
No, ma'am!
Well, let's wrap it up, honey; it's almost 5! [laughs] What else did you want to ask?
Just a couple of questions. What do you see as the relation between history and poetry, or between poet and historian?
Well, I guess I sort of touched on that in the last conversation, right? The Greeks used to take a poet to battle with them, so the poet would stand on a hill or something and record the battle. And I do think of that as sort of my role sometimes. You know, we are observers sometimes, rather than participants. But other times we're participants/observers. I felt that way in Austin. I almost hated to leave. I went down for this book festival which is chaired by Laura Bush, so it was fascinating to be there and to have protests going on -- the festival was at the capital. At that time, I really did feel like it was almost Grecian, in that I was a poet and I was observing, and who knows, I might write something, sometime.
That was a remarkable event.
You know, I was supposed to have an interview with her; she was interviewing four writers, and it was going to be on an NBC affiliate. And that morning, as they drove off to the ranch, I thought, "Well, I guess there'll be no interview." And I thought maybe she wanted to interview me because I was born Texas, but I did win the Book Award -- that's how I haven't quite absorbed how big a prize that was. That was a really major award, and I'm sort of a representative of poetry now, in a way that I hadn't been before.
You were. But now there's larger recognition.
Yeah, definitely. I got so much press, you know. I went to the ceremony, week before last in New York, when Lucille Clifton won, and it was nothing like the year before. The press were everywhere for that 50th anniversary. There were press at this one, but they seemed to be everywhere the year before. I imagine Oprah being there had something to do with it, too, but we got a lot more attention I think last year. Plus, the press were all involved in the election this year. So that really was the year to win, for me anyway. It was a great year to win.
What do you think about Lucille Clifton winning this year?
Oh, I think it was great for her to win. I feel like she really has given a lot to poetry.
It's the first time two women of color have won, back to back.
I know! I was thinking about that, and I was saying, "Next year, that probably won't happen." [laughs] 'Cause someone somewhere is probably fussin' about it. You know they are. Well, Lucille Clifton is well-liked in poetry, she really is. She writes good poems, and she's a really nice person. It was great to see her win; it really was. We still didn't know, when we were sitting at our little table waiting for them to announce the winner, any prize you really don't know. I guessed; right before, my friend said, "Who do you think will win?" and I said, "Lucille." But until that moment, I wasn't sure, 'cause you don't know. Some people, I guess it's obvious, and others it isn't. Sometimes, when I'm judging things, you pick your finalists, and then, if it's close, then it's really tough. You have to keep reading and reading and reading. Sometimes that's really hard; sometimes when I judge I wish I could give more than one.
What do you consider the most important relationships between teaching and writing? You know, a lot of people say writing can't be taught.
Well, you certainly can teach students what makes a good poem and what makes a bad poem, and you can teach them how to write a good poem. It can be taught. For your gifted students, that's a whole other thing. But it can be argued that the raw talent is already there. You can teach somebody how to construct a good poem; you can teach someone how to read a poem; and how to tell if what they're reading qualifies as good or bad or mediocre. So there are definitely things that can be taught. And it also teaches discipline. I feel like the discipline that you learn in being able to sit down and concentrate on one subject and craft something can be carried over into other areas of your life. And that's what I try to teach my beginning students, many of whom are not going to be writers. Our beginning writing here is a Humanities course, so we often have many students who are just taking writing as a one-time deal. I really do think some things can be taught.
Your poem "Pentecost" ends with the lines, "If you suffer from the grave/ you can kill from it." This is the only published poem you've dedicated to yourself. Why?
[laughs] Oh, yeah, well, I was younger then! I guess I was into this Zapata thing back when. I got into Mexican history and I was reading a lot, and I was remembering that movie from years ago. To me, he was a hero. See, it was more like, not the reality, but the character I created that I was into. Now this is so old I don't know that I even remember exactly what was going on at the time, in my mind. It was just a long time ago.
You've never dedicated another poem to yourself.
No, I wouldn't today, I don't think.
Out of humility, or what?
Oh, I don't know. I guess I would, if I wanted to. Maybe I thought that was the be-all and end-all for Ai at the time, but I certainly don't think there's a be-all and end-all now.
To be a revolutionary?
No, it wasn't literal at all.
Iconographically.
Maybe. I don't know what I meant. Sorry! I can't help you! It was thirty... how many years ago was that? '78? '77? There's a lot of water under that bridge. A lot of poverty-stricken summers for Ai.
Really?
Yeah! I was pretty broke, before I got this job. I was so broke, they sent a grad student to get me, [laughs] and I had to use his credit card; I had to buy stuff on his credit card. The dean lent me a thousand dollars, when I got here, so I could rent an apartment. I was totally broke.
Last year!?
Yeah! I hadn't taught since Colorado. I couldn't get a job.
Get out.
No, I'm not kidding you; it was horrible.
And you went from that to winning the National Book Award.
Yeah. [laughs] But I had to sell my whole poetry collection to survive. I have hardly any books of poetry left. I would have to buy someone else's collection. I called this guy I sold them to, and I think he sold my stuff. So I have to begin again. And many of them were old, signed copies. It's really sad, but I guess it's okay.
So that's what you meant when you said that you'd worked off all your bad karma.
Yeah, I guess I have! I mean, it was horrible. I had a horrible time, beginning in Boulder, the second year. I couldn't afford the rent. I had to get out of there and go to Arizona. It's really a fuckin' nightmare. But Baby Ai can pay it now!
Isn't that strange - to go from a position of not being able to negotiate for yourself, to being able to get what you need done.
Yeah! I would say some guardian angel somewhere was lookin' down on Baby Ai.