Tonight I was an audience member for the Virtual Poetry Launch Reading & Conversation! Four Way Books w/ Yerra Sugarman, Cyrus Cassells, and James Fujinami Moore. I did drop off during Cyrus' reading and missed most of James' reading--but the host said they would send me a recording.
Initial notes: Both Yerra & Cyrus mentioned or read poems that touched on Jewish themes. For Yerra, her poetry was about her Aunt Bird, who was a holocaust victim. Cyrus' piece "Ready, Aim, Fire" (I believe) included a line about a Rabbi needing to put up signage that said "Firearms not allowed in synagogue pews, nor near the Torah" (I'll need to buy his poetry and come back to revise this if I'm not quoting precisely).
How strange, the synchronicity occurring here. The last poem I read at the open mic in Providence (The Smile) was about Majdanek, a concentration camp in Poland, and Yerra & Cyrus both discussed how they visited Krakow. Also yesterday on our walk, we passed the Gates of Wisdom Jewish cemetery with the fallen tree and the gravestones that were knocked over. This in conjunction with me recently finding out I have an estimated 6% Eastern European Jewish DNA (From region of Belarus, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Ukraine) and the message, at least to me, seems clear: I need to work harder to uncover whatever part of my past is connected to my until recently totally unknown Jewish ancestry.
Anyway--back to tonight's reading. Yerra's poem "I Have Nothing to See Her With" was short, but resonated deeply with me. Her Aunt Bird "whose life is a ripped page" was someone she didn't have much knowledge about--and the poet described how the information she needed was "accidentally" found or sort of dropped into her lap when she was exploring a repository of information about the holocaust in Jerusalem--I believe Yad Vashem. She also mentioned that she found information unexpectedly about her aunts (plural!) from the DC Holocaust museum.
Yerra also read from her 5 part poem, I think it was called "Hampered, Conjured"? or Perhaps "Bone by Bone She Remembered" (My Zoom connection was really cranky tonight) but anyway--there were a few lines that stuck with me, such as "The meat of her voice" (the poet described her aunts life being like a stew in her mouth, a strange but evocative line) and how bone by bone her aunt's body changed into light. Other images "the city's starless womb" & "sonorous with horseflies" -- these are lines that stuck with me because of what they conjured up in my mind--a city's sky darkened by light pollution, the buzzing of horseflies--and I need to inject my own poetry with more of this type of power.
Another line that struck me hard was "God was a runaway child who ate the Earth with a spoon." Damn, Yerra, you really hit me over the head with your work tonight! No wonder she has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, PEN American Center’s PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, a “Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and its Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, a Canada Council Grant for Creative Writers, a Chicago Literary Award, and a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award.
Guess I'm obsessed with Yerra Sugarman now. I have to mention another line, the last line, that stayed with me, where she was asking "How to turn grief into a green stem sprouting."
So, for Cyrus, he mentioned he had an epigraph poem "Dark Fields of the Republic" by Adrienne Rich, which I've never heard of so want to read now. His poem "Ready, Aim, Fire" and his second piece, dealt with timely issues--such as gun control & stand your ground murders in Florida. Right before my internet connection dropped I remembered a line he read that was like "A rushing bullet is not a dream."
THEN--I lose connection and came back in for the very end of James Fujinami Moore reading. I have to say, James was a real hottie. He had sort of longish black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a white button up shirt that was unbuttoned just enough. ANYWAY, I heard most of his last poem "All I Couldn't Make Beautiful" which was redolent with images--like James as a young man making figures of the virgin Guadalupe? I remember the line where he described it as making "golems out of stolen scraps of clay." Golems--being a Jewish mythological figure, means each poet tonight in some way mentioned Jewish culture.
The Q&A was really interesting! The first question was "How do you balance timely events with the timelessness of poetry" and the poets talked variously about "maintaining a balance" that didn't erase specificity but also allowed them the freedom to write on the subject, if, in Cyrus' words "they were compelled to bear witness." Cyrus also said that he told his students frequently that their poetry-writing selves were bound to be 2 years ahead of where they were now. So some of the timelessness is built into the "consciousness" that is writing poetry. I've never heard that before--but I don't disagree with the sentiment. James mentioned how he had submitted his final drafts for his book in 2019, which, being before COVID was "a whole self ago." Amen, James, Amen.
The second question was about the poets research process when writing poetry. Yerra talked about her research into Holocaust databases & sources, and how she visited Krakow. Cyrus lived in the Jewish Quarter in Paris, and also visited Krakow. They did want to ensure accuracy of information--but also allowed for "serendipity" to play its role as well. Cyrus especially made a point to say that "messengers and guides came with the information" he needed organically. He spoke about how he felt he was being made a "repository of information" which was necessary because the older generation who was passing on this information was dying out as time went on--and there was a "collective need" for a language that helps us to understand what happened.
James' answer to the question about he researched his poetry is most similar to what I do. He agreed with Yerra & Cyrus that there was a responsibility of "truth-telling" but his own approach was "scatter-shot" based on his instincts and involved falling down rabbit holes. He talked about how he would get stuck on an unresolved question or image that needed to be explained, that would "loop" in his brain.
Hopefully my Zoom will play nice.
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