Hi everyone! This February, Arkana editors had the privilege to visit and participate in the AWP conference held in Kansas City. At our booth, visitors had the opportunity to write down short one-liners which our editors have now strung together to make one cohesive poem created by the friends we made at AWP this year. We hope you all enjoy this piece, and we look forward to seeing you all again at next year’s AWP!
The first thing my mother did after the divorce was to go to Knotts Berry farm.
I never found any solace in dusty old Saints
—until I found a ledger sick of your external bullshit
Aline. Aline. A tree of Emerald Starry aligned with lined on metal strings
The scars on every inch of sun-scorned flesh became a galaxy. Limitless Breathtaking, Unknowable.
Tut mir Leid. Why? Because you needed to be loved not burned
I glut myself on the feast of their words,
From honey fed lips. My bared teeth are as red as my curls
Names don’t change others. They can change you for better or worse, that’s for you to decide
And afterward everything echoes, stream to the street in movement
I’d like to exist here, between your thumb and forefinger
like a corner of a page of your favorite book
I river the tongues of my ancestors so they may flow into my body
Missing my cats, my roommate and my girlfriend
Desperate to eat a steak
Ode to my grandmother’s stitched table cloths, her spice dense air, her full plates and full smiles
I remember reading about how ancient trees existed before fungi knew
how to break them down.
Not that the fungi didn’t exist but that did not know how.
That somehow they had not yet reached their potential
as the true ferryman of the natural world.
Thank you again to everyone who provided lines to make this poem possible. Our editorial team had a lot of fun experimenting and trying our best to fit as many of your contributions into this piece as possible. While not every line made the final cut, we are beyond blessed to be part of such a creative and fun-loving community, and we thank all of our contributors for their participation in this fun little thought exercise. Hope to see you all at AWP next year!
Hello everyone, we’re back after a long break with another Contributor Spotlight post. Read on to hear more from Issue 14 contributor and writer, Sekhar Bannerjee. Keep an eye out for more posts like this in the future!
1. Was this poem inspired by personal experience or the experience of someone you know?
The poem has its primary origin in the disturbing visuals of bombed residential complexes, schools, fields and churches in Ukraine. The intensity of emotions that you feel triggers a domino effect on your memories of personal loss.
2. The contrast between the quiet of prayer and the sound of a bomb is stark. So is the contrast between blue geraniums and weeds. What is the significance of contrast as a device in this poem?
That’s a very good question. I always try to juxtapose the opposites in my poetry because I sincerely believe that life is a study in contrasts. Its vastness, cyclicity and complexity defy common tenets of logic and reason. Maybe, we have survived the meanness of evolution partially due to the irrationality that nature and human civilization have bestowed on us.
3. Does the pomegranate hold any additional significance?
Pomegranate is a unique fruit. Each seed of a pomegranate is like a drop of fire, or, for that matter, a drop of blood. Ancient Greeks believed that pomegranate originated from the blood of Adonis. In most religions, the pomegranate is considered to be sacred. A broken pomegranate is a symbol of the entirety of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection. In Jewish ancient customs, it occupies a special and hallowed place. Pomegranate is also considered a forbidden fruit. It is a recurring motif of fertility and prosperity as well. To me, a pomegranate is a symbol of renewal that we always seek.
4. Does December hold a certain importance to the narrative or is it used to evoke winter?
Yes, December has a special relevance in the poem. Besides being the epicentre of winter, December is, in climatic essence, gothic and unfeeling. December is also an omnivore because it tries to devour every iota of warmth – both tangible and intangible, at your disposal.
5. When you speak of entering your sleep, do you mean death? I know pomegranates are associated with Persephone and her marriage to Hades. Are you suggesting some sort of elopement with death?
Sleep is a temporary cessation of everything. A blank space, a solace, a brief end. To me, sleep is a limited death, an afterlife and to be able to wake up again is a homecoming. Every morning is a new birth. It is more so when you face an inconducive environment. The myth of Persephone and Hades also proposes to explain the interplay between life and death and the cycle of seasons.
6. I found the playground to be a metaphor for a graveyard, or an afterlife of some sort, where the “seeds” or souls of the dead go to lay at rest. Was this your intention?
I agree. A well-defined yet unkempt playfield resembles a secluded place for something beyond usual understanding. It is kind of a bracketed emptiness which encloses all our griefs, memories and anticipations. In our unconscious mind, every dead relative or a friend is as real as a living person only residing in a different realm, a different space, a different country where they immigrated. Like someone living far away.
7. This poem seemed to centre around death, or loss. What was your inspiration behind writing this poem?
The primary trigger behind writing this poem was obviously the disturbing visuals of Russian bombing of civilian areas in Ukraine. But a poem is more than a reaction to an occurrence, an event, a design or a mishap. I have lost a number of close relatives, mostly elderly, in the last couple of years. The visuals might have unstitched the loss, and the profundity of such feelings just overwhelm you.
When asked about what we had to look forward to in the future from him, Sekhar had this to say: ” I am currently working on the manuscript of my next poetry book ‘Probably Geranium’ which is scheduled to be released in December this year. I am also trying to write a series of poems centred around the rotation of seasons, production of tea and fledging emotions in a tea estate in the sub-Himalayan Bengal, not far from my family home.” Below, find the cover to “Probably Geranium,” as well as a link to purchase the book here.
I am a first-year student in an MFA Creative Writing program. I was unaware of and still learning about all the people and processes in the publishing industry. What I do have is a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. I have studied systemic inequalities and their effects on people of various racial, ethnic, and social groups. Through that I have learned the significance of all cultures and people, and I believe human connection and observation is essential to recording our history and keeping human expression alive.
I think the publishing industry has an issue. Publishers with the largest outreach and impact lack diversity, though this is changing. VIDA: Women in Literary Arts is one of many organizations and publishers creating a space for representation. They produce the VIDA Report, an online interactive report where they quantify diversity in at least ten publishing companies. They are not the only ones; these numbers can be found with simple searches. VIDA, like many, publish writings of marginalized voices, and they state that they are a “research-driven organization…to increase critical attention to contemporary women’s writing as well as further transparency around gender equality issues in contemporary literary culture.” Women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ communities are making their way through the literary world but are VIDA’s efforts as effective as they could be?
The truth of the matter is for the writing industry to make some vast and strong changes, people are going to have to become uncomfortable. People are going to have to continue to stand up and make that space for others but also start creating new connections. However, all the programs, journals and publishing companies being created to find new writers will go to waste if the education about them is not present. For example, Red Lining was a practice under Jim Crow laws where banks outlined areas of lower resource availability. In these areas, home loans were not given, healthcare was not as accessible and financial institutions turned their backs. Redlining was focused on Black and Latino neighborhoods, meaning it was a systemic demonstration of racism that affected every person within the area. It was banned in 1968 but still affects school districts and resource availability. People who are from redlined areas have greater health complications and fewer educational opportunities. The schools within these areas typically have a larger number of students of color and are still underfunded. The writers who live in these areas exist but are more than likely unaware someone is looking for them, that their voice is significant, and that the publishing industry is looking to hear them. They do not know what opportunities exist (and sometimes opportunities aren’t made for them).Schools are not the only places where people are not aware of how significant their voices truly are. The LGBTQ+ community is still not fully represented either and for the same reasons.
V. F. Cordova, a philosopher and writer of Native American Philosophy came to my mind when I was learning about diversity shortcomings among publishing writers. In chapter 7 of their book, How it is (2007), they talk about each person in existence having a matrix. This matrix is representative of everything that you are, everything that you believe, your dialect, your language, your heart, your truth, your definition of right and wrong. It has been commonly thought that once your matrix is built, you have made the connections you are able to make, and your matrix will only align with those similar to you. V.F. Cordova thinks that is not true. We do have a matrix of thoughts and beliefs, but we can use them to tap into other people’s matrices and use our differences and similarities as a point of connection. Cordova writes “There are no absolutes. The complexity is infinite because part of that complexity is change, motion. Whatever is, is in motion, and change is inevitable in the world.” There is no one “Truth” or belief system but an ever changing, fluid motion of thought that I believe should be recorded. Thanks to organizations such as VIDA, White women are being seen and heard; they have taken over the publishing industry, but that is not diversity just yet.
Women have fought for their representation, and they now know what it takes to be heard and be seen by this industry. We need writers from every background, every culture, every race. As writers, we record history and for so long people have been written out, we know this. The paradigm shift is occurring, but it is time to get our feet wet and really promote listening and providing space. We need to show our matrices and show that connection is human and natural. I firmly believe that every person has something important to say. If they want to shout it from the rooftops, how come we aren’t showing them the roof? Educating people on what is there and available is vital, and listening to people already shouting on other roofs is vital. We need to be connected, our matrices need to cross and build a bond so the gap can be bridged. Having a place at the table is not enough, the same conversation of wanting diverse writers to be published has been occurring for decades but no one is sitting in the seat. It is the job of literary journals, publishing companies, magazines, etc., to stand up, go out, and make space for the voices they are wanting to hear. Here at Arkana, we are constantly trying to do just that. We are, as a team, constantly working to be the most diverse we can be.
Shelby Nipper is a writer, artist and current student in the MFA program at the University of Central Arkansas. She obtained her BS in Anthropology in 2018 through UCA, where she also published two articles in the Journal of Undergraduate Research in Anthropology (JURA). Her passion for art and human expression pushed her towards a career in writing. She is a native to Conway, Arkansas and currently resides there.
In Fall of 2023, Arkana editors had the chance to speak with writer and poet Mario Duarte, whose wonderful poem “Turquoise” appears in Arkana’s 14th issue. This is the first of several contributor spotlights which will be posted every Friday on our blog for the next several weeks, so keep an eye out for more interesting interviews featuring our amazing artists!
Arkana: What was your inspiration for this poem?
Mario Duarte: It was inspired by a real event, a vacation to Santa Fe and a relationship in crisis.
ARK: Is the door mentioned in your poem metaphorical or physical?
MD: It is both. The protagonist of the poem feels a sense of closure literally and figuratively.
ARK: I like your simplicity. What are some of the thought processes that allow for such a strong poem to be written in such few words? Or I guess how did you determine what details were significant to the poem?
MD: My strategy in this short poem was to focus on a few details and actions; for example, the shirt, the color, how it was buttoned, how the shirt is used to dry tears, and the closing of a door. Every detail must invoke a sense of who these two people are, the state of their relationship, and what happened. The details and actions create a scene that despite being small encapsulates the end of something larger, the realization and emotional weight that something is over that still haunts the protagonist.
ARK: I love your use of the word “sighing” in the last line of the poem. What is the logic behind this word choice? Is there a logic?
MD: The word “sighing” is meant to literally invoke the sound of a door closing but more significantly it is cry of despair and regret that the relations is over,.
ARK: The way you break the lines in this poem is one of the best things about it- It feels almost as if the reader is breathing at the pace of someone crying as they read it- was this intentional on your part as a writer?
MD: I do think the line breaks reflect the sadness, regret, and the torment of the speaker of the poem—the enjambment of the first line initiates that feeling of being off center or broken.
ARK: Your bio indicated that you have an upcoming short story collection- tell me about it!
MD: Thanks for asking. In April 2024, the Ice Cube Press will release Monkeys, a series of linked stories inspired by my childhood. It centers around a Mexican American boy growing up a in predominately white town in the Midwest. In January 2024, the Resistencia Press will publish To the Death of the Author, a poetry collection. It consists of 72 short or micopoems, including “Turquoise” that are a kind of diary of my thoughts, feelings, sightings, experiences over a six-month period of my life.
ARK: This poem’s simplicity is a great part of it’s beauty and I’m curious if you had earlier drafts, and what they looked like! What did your drafting process look like for this poem?
MD: I typically write a quick first draft in my notebook which is likely the case with this poem. Later, I will type it into the computer, and make changes as I type. Even later, I will look at it again, make changes, and then send it out to a magazine. These changes are usually the refinements of a word or sharpening an image. If it is rejected, I will make some changes, usually small ones and send it back out, especially if it is a poem I think should be published. It was very likely that most of “Turquoise” is unchanged from the first draft.
If you’re looking forward to more work from Mr. Duarte, he recently finished writing another short story collection that focuses on the lives of the elderly. He has also completed the first draft of a new collection of poems that are absurdist in nature, a style inspired in part by Russell Edson, Charles Simic, and James Tate. He is now beginning to work on another poetry collection and another short story collection–as you can tell, he likes to stay busy.
We are excited to visit with Wendy Taylor Carlisle. Wendy’s work appeared in Arkana’s first issue with her poem, “Amber Got her Girls Back, and Now They Live in the Abandoned Restaurant.” She is the author of The Mercy of Traffic (Unlikely Books, 2019), Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008), and Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000 and Belle Point Press, 2023), among other works.
Kathy M. Bates: It’s been seven years since Arkana’s inaugural issue, and I’m delighted to check in with you.
Recently, The Mercy of Traffic won the 6th annual Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award. Many Arkana editors and readers, myself included, are drawn to place-based narratives. Talk to us about place as inspiration.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle: I came first to the Arkansas Ozarks in 1973 and knew it to be my home. In 1980, I built a house on 67 acres 6 miles outside a town of 2000 folks, and have lived on that patch (if not continuously) ever since. My house sprawls down the backside of a stony hill where everything galvanizes me–the people and the rocky soil, the hummingbirds and loud spring peepers. When I get up at sunrise with the dogs, I look out my door into the woods and know this is my permanent landing place. As I have said elsewhere, I hope to live and die on this land and be buried with the dogs in their graveyard behind the shop. Five of them are already there, waiting.
KMB:Reading Berryman to the Dog was first released in 2000. Earlier this year, it found a new home with Belle Point Press. Tell us a little bit about the 2023 release.
WTC: Casie Dodd, the editor of Belle Point, puts it this way, “Our mission is to celebrate the literary culture and community of the American Mid-South: all its paradoxes and contradictions, all the ways it gets us home.” I am both complicated and paradoxical, as are my poems. I’m in my home place. I celebrate these facts. When Casie asked me if I was willing to look again at Berryman, a book orphaned when its press shut down, I was pleased. This was a first book, concerned with writing its way out of certain traumas, but I stand by the poems, and I’m grateful to Casie for doing the same. We did some editing and excised some. I believe it’s a better book.
KMB: As writers, we have our favorites. It could be a special word, a few collective lines, or perhaps a concept that appeals to us when we reflect on an individual piece or our writing as a whole. And as resonance, readers have theirs. Are there any of your favorites that you wish garnered more reader attention?
WTC: In 2018, a publisher in India, Cyberwit.net, requested a book. I sent along some poems I had which had been published in journals and never collected. I regret not waiting for a US publisher because some of the poems in that book bear another look. I am especially fond of the 10-minute play Atlanta is Burning, which nails its time and place and is fun to perform. The poem Arkana published is also in this book. “Amber Got Her Girls Back…” is one of my all-time favorite works, combining as it does the facts and fairy tales we concoct to get through life.
I hold close to my heart a poem from Mercy of Traffic, “I Do What I Do,” which begins, “I am a heart in a prison of bone / I am a needle and a ladle.” because it was a gift entire from the daemon, duende, muse, angel, whatever you call poetic inspiration.
KMB: If writing is considered a form of exploration and exposure, some poems, regardless of content, are exhilarating to write, others exhausting, either mentally or emotionally. Your work touches on risk, loss, love, reality, change, acceptance, and so much more. Are there poem(s) that you can remember that sent you to these highs and lows? Did they find a way into your published work, or were they held too close to be shared?
WTC: Nothing is too close to be shared. Some things are too cruel to be blatant. I have a checkered past that I lean into for poetic fodder, but some things don’t present as poetry. I find it difficult to write about the deaths of loved ones until a good amount of time has passed. Even then, I’m not sure about writing such loss. This is my favorite, “After Great Loss.”
Up until this most recent acceptance from The Perch (Yale School of Medicine), I had written very little about my recovery from substance abuse. After 36 years sober, the poem “Ladies Meeting” came as a gift. Everything else is up for consideration.
KMB: Have you ever had any revision regrets? What did you do with those regrets?
WTC: When I work a poem to death, I regret that. I revise a lot. Often, I don’t know I’ve overdone it until the poem gets a few rejections. Rejections call me back to the first draft to begin again.
KMB: Rejections seem like an inevitable step in the process, at least for writers seeking publication. I think many new writers are shocked when they look at the acceptance rate. Many give up before they even have a chance to begin.
How has your experience over the course of your writing career changed your mindset about rejection and momentum?
WTC: Sometime in the 90s, I was at the Dodge Festival when it was still in Waterloo Village and had the delicious luck of hearing Stanley Kunitz speak. He said 10% of submissions was a good acceptance rate. This allowed me to, as a poet once said, “have a normative relationship to my failure rate.” The dream of some writers to be magically “discovered” is just that, a dream.
The great success of poets depends on many factors, not always talent. What gets you known, besides talent and passion, is energy, connection, persistence, and willingness to take editorial direction (you didn’t get that poem directly from the Gods). When a poet writes more, she publishes more. Also, I get a great boost from belonging to a group that brags about rejections. It’s heartening to know that other poets lose and keep on trying. This year, I have 41 rejections. I take heart from the fact that I also have 15 acceptances (not counting my reprinted book), and there are still some submissions lurking out there.
KMB: Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you have a regular routine?
WTC: I begin a poem with longhand notes written anywhere, on anything. I am a creature owned by discipline, except when I’m not. Generally, I’m up with the dogs between 4-6, and I read for a couple of hours, then begin to transcribe, or if I’ve gotten a line or a word that interests me, I write the first draft of something. Sometimes, I write at 3 a.m. After 7 p.m., I’m useless to poetry.
KMB: What advice do you have for other writers and artists?
WTC: Oh, dear, the same dreary advice and one gem(not mine)—Read more than you write.
Don’t worry about “influence, whatever that is—if all your poems sound like Emily or Walt, Brava! you’ll outgrow or better your influences.
Write every day, even if it’s just a note-to-self. Notice I didn’t say, be brilliant every day. You’ll write some stinkers. Think of that as “writing through” to get where you’re going, your best poem.
Above all, poetry has to be unhampered by ego, personal first, then universal. Follow Sandra Cisneros’ advice: “write as if what you had to say is too dangerous to publish in your lifetime.”
KMB: Suggest a poem that has been an inspiration for you.
WTC:W.S. Merwin’s “Berryman.” It’s the whole poem, actually, but those last 7 lines really comprise the whole enterprise of poetry for me.
…..“I asked how can you ever be sure …..that what you write is really …..any good at all and he said you can’t
…..you can’t you can never be sure …..you die without knowing …..whether anything you wrote was any good …..if you have to be sure don’t write”
KMB: What’s next? Are there any other publications or projects you are excited about?
WTC: I’m working on the next book, called tentatively, The Portal to the Strange, from a 2017 quote of Matthew Zapruder’s. After that, a New and Selected, perhaps.
KMB: Thank you so much for sharing your words and wisdom and work with us all of these years. We always look forward to more.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle writes poetry in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Poetry Award for The Mercy of Traffic. Her first book, Reading Berryman to the Dog, was reissued by Belle Point Press in 2023, Discount Fireworks, was reprinted online by Doubleback Books and a chapbook-length selection of her work appears in Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (Cornerpost Press, 2023.) She has been 15 times nominated for a Pushcart Prize and three times for Best of the Web. See her work in pacificREVIEW, San Pedro River Review, Atlanta Review, Freshwater Review, Tab, Rattle and others. Find more about her at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
Kathy M. Bates holds an MFA from the University of Central Arkansas and served as Arkana literary journal’s managing editor for issues 11-14. Her work has appeared in the Mid/South Anthology from Belle Point Press, Necessary Fiction, Parhelion, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter/Instagram @HelloKMBates and at www.kmbates.com.
“Spontaneous poetry: – like spontaneous combustion” – Unknown Leaf
Seeds of poetic lines were planted at this year’s AWP conference in Seattle, Washington, for Arkana’s Poet Tree. Thanks to the help of illustrated narrative editor Sydney Austin and nonfiction editor Melanie A. Wilson, the seeds have grown into one beautiful poem.
From the creative minds of Sara Pierce, Sarah Kruse, Kris Bigalk, Santiago, Al, Jasveen Kaur S., Linda Cooper, A. True, Natasha Herring, and many other writers who are unknown leaves in the wind, we give you the Poet Tree poem for 2023.
Leaves Never Drop When I Expect Them To
I walk amongst the midnight trees, and then wherever I turned there was the moon and you. An earthworm made of gold eats nothing but cold grass, these soft laws in little light, bluebirds in flight like small fears flying south as if there were no sun. In the absence of light the roots entangle in knots of consistency.
I am that dead tree made of dead trees. I slipped the soul through blackened teeth, tongues, touch and taste the serendipity of song. Just the tip the tree top said to the thirsty roots crawling for the worms finding bits of the ocean under a turned leaf.
I carry rivers like anglerfish interred to stars careening towards evergreens among night skies. The forest is ripe with what was, my moon–
soft lover holds me in motion
like a strand of trees in the city. A test faithful to who you are Wilderness.
There’s More!!
Do you recognize a line or someone’s name?
Please share this blog post with them so they can see how their line helped create our Poet Tree poem!
If you don’t see your line in the poem, keep reading. We have some honorable mentions that we loved!
Honorable Mentions:
“All stories start from somewhere, but this one starts with a squish” – Andrea Rivard
“Trust the leap but not the lilypad” – Elinor Servmgar
“The Boy turned green, so he planted a seed.” – Lucas
“She is all limbs-thin and taught. A tree falls in the forest and she unfurls like a loosed bowstring.” – Unknown
“Up up under the ground” – Allyson Weber
“like incest with a squid” – Unknown
“After the Ferris wheel and the fireworks, I take a breath.” – Nancy Knowles
“Keep eyes on aisles of distant minds.” – Stormy Matthews
“Artists envision and the world follows” – P. Chung
“Their tired eyes drifting over empty branches and dried willow sprigs” – Alex
“spidley fingers heavy with moss & life” – KC Crawford
“and the last bell rang out” – Unknown
Thank you to the other writers who anonymously added a leaf to our Poet Tree!
These include M. Gholamz, Joshua Jumsen, Lyndsie Clark, Savannah Worthington, Alex Carrigan, J. Jacob, Scott Morris, Nancy Boutilier, Jordan Griffin, Benjamin C. Roy, Cory Garrett, Saige Johnson, Susan Ito, Annike, Micah Arnold, Luca R. Hatigan, Paul Williams, Chavonn Shen, Tracy Root Pitts, Stephanie Ciecierski, and J. Olson.
Congratulations to our Arkana t-shirt drawing winner, Sara Pierce!
We want to thank everyone who helped us create this Poet Tree.
We hope to see you all next year at AWP in Kansas City, Missouri, to create Poet Tree 2024!
Want to discover more poetry, prose, and art? Read the latest issue of Arkanahere.
We are excited to announce the new MASTHEAD for Arkana Issue 13!
In the coming weeks, we will check in with our genre editors here on our blog to learn more about their teams. In the meantime, we are already reading your submissions, so keep sending us your best work! Just a few of our current requests include place-based nonfiction that continues to give a voice to under-represented topics or issues such as regional concerns or communities, more 10-minute plays, and flash fiction. We would also be excited to see more illustrated narratives, a photo or story album that tells an intriguing narrative. This is just a short list! There is more to come as we highlight each team.
Do you have something ready for us to read? Find out submission details on our Submit Page.
Want to see what we have published recently? Explore our current issue here or check out something from the Archive.
We love sharing our enthusiasm by celebrating our artists as much as possible. We nominate our writers’ work yearly for the Pushcart Prize and for other prizes, including Best of the Net. Also, for each issue, we award an Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction and Editor’s Choice Award for Poetry.
Looking forward to another great issue!
All the best, Kathy M. Bates Managing Editor, Arkana Literary Journal
Arkana is an online literary journal whose mission is to seek and foster a sense of shared wonder by publishing inclusive art that asks questions, explores mystery, and works to make visible the marginalized, the overlooked, and those whose voices have been silenced.
Arkana Editors chatted with writer, artist, and professor, Rosetta Marantz Cohen. Her poem, “Spartan Woman” is featured in Arkana’s 11th Issue.
Featured Artwork: “Self-Portrait,” by Rosetta Marantz Cohen
Arkana: “Spartan Woman” is reminiscent of an otherworldly epic that draws you into its lyrical narrative and demands your careful attention throughout. How do you, as a poet, approach a lengthier and more detailed piece like this one? Does that approach differ from how you might write more condensed work?
Rosetta Marantz Cohen: The complexity of the subject seemed to demand I write a long poem, one that spans a woman’s entire lifespan. I wrote the poem in sections; each, initially, had its own title. Once I finished, I realized the titles weren’t necessary, that the poem told a coherent and chronological story.
I had never written such a long poem before. I consider myself a formal poet, and those forms (sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, etc.) often dictate their own lengths. I’d thought I liked the constraints of formal poetry, but I found it very freeing to write this poem without any kind of metrical constraints. …Though I suppose that staying true to the historical sources I was using substituted one form of constraint for another.
Ark: Much of “Spartan Woman” includes references to life in Sparta. How did you approach researching for this piece? Is research a primary facet of your other work as well?
RMC: Though my reading often inspires ideas for poems, I’ve never before used such extensive primary and secondary research in composing. During the pandemic, when I was confined to the house, I became interested in reading a lot of history, and specifically about women in the past who pushed back against their constricted lives—rule-breakers and outsiders. “Spartan Woman” grew out of some fascinating reading about this very alien culture where everything in the society was focused on war, and where women were useful only in their capacity to create more male soldiers. My favorite source was Sarah Pomeroy’s Spartan Women, which describes in great detail some of the odd practices that were considered normal in Spartan society, including infanticide and the cross-dressing of young brides.
Building a life story from historical research was so satisfying and engrossing for me that I continued the series, writing several more lengthy poems about other “outsider” women—a medieval anchoress, a woman in Salem during the witch trials, a pioneer schoolteacher. Each of these long poems have been built on primary and secondary research and the whole process allows you to become immersed in the character you are creating so that I’ve come to feel I know them as real people.
Ark: Where did the inspiration for the piece come from?
RMC: As a professor of Education with a focus on women’s education in the developing world, I have been teaching for many years about the lives of women struggling against social constraints, poverty, prejudice. Until this year, I had never thought to turn life stories into poems. Once I started writing about this character—this woman from Sparta in 600 BCE—I saw the links between my academic work and my poem. Her difficulties were not wholly unlike the barriers women face today in some parts of the world.
Ark: How did you go about revising “Spartan Woman?” Is the finished piece similar to the original draft, or did the piece undergo many changes?
RMC: I knew I wanted the poem to have multiple sections, each dealing with another pivotal moment in the speaker’s life. I revised a good deal. My husband is an English professor and he is my best critic. He catches every word that is “off” and he is (almost) always right. So I do revise with the input from a trusted critic. It always amazes me how “good” a line can sound when you first write it, and how “wrong” it seems the following day.
Ark: So, what are you working on now?
RMC: Right now I am finishing a book of five long poems based on the subjects I note above—the anchoress, the pioneer teacher, the witch, and also a contemporary woman who is herself an outsider from the dominant culture. What I have found is that all these voices have become linked in surprising ways. They share a kind of visionary capacity—an ability to see themselves outside the norms and restrictions of their time and place. They also share a deep sense of loneliness. They (we) have become a kind of sisterhood of misfits.
Rosetta Marantz Cohen is the author of two prize-winning chapbooks of poetry, Domestic Scenes (Foothills) and The Town of Insomniacs (Finishingline), and four scholarly books. She is the Myra M. Sampson Professor of Education at Smith College.
Mel Ruth is a PhD student at Georgia State University, with a focus on poetry. Mel has pieces published in Pleiades, Emerson Review, New Pages, and more. They were a Slice Literary Magazine “Bridging the Gap” Finalist, and their chapbook A Name Among Bone, was a semi-finalist in the 2020 Black River Chapbook Contest, and the winner of the 2021 Cow Creek Chapbook contest. They/them or she/her/hers. Follow them on Twitter @Mel_Ruth_.
A Name Among Bone is Mel Ruth’s first poetry collection. It won the 2021 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize held by Pittsburg State University and was published by Emerald City Press in 2022.
The heavy-weighted title is followed by an acknowledgment page containing the brief two words preface “for Nan-Nan.” Both reveal the main melody of this collection: family and lineage. The relationship with one’s grandparents can be as intimate and impactful as one’s parents. They are farther in blood distance but may be closer in family history. Ruth’s poems in this collection depict the beauty and mystery of that relationship in her family.
Figurative language is Ruth’s strong suit in this collection. Metaphors are dense and they carry symbolic meanings.
“Running Waters” is the first poem in the book. The title is a metaphor suggesting generations passing down like water in a waterfall. Ruth starts the poem with the speaker calling her father about her confusion about the family genealogy. She describes the sound of her name as “crisp like embered / leaves littering dirt.” (4-5) Then she uses a parallel structure to show contrast: “You wanted / a son, I wanted not to be // here atop this mountain.” (5-7)
The latest generation in the family, though the youngest, represents the successful extension of blood, and gets the most attention, like a mountain top the family looks to. It also shows the speaker’s awareness of her father’s expectations of her and her stress of being the focus of the family. As Ruth continues to trace up, she adds more metaphors. “The dirt / our bed and we return” is another powerful one to show people’s final fate. By the end, Ruth brings in the shooting target image, one that she repeats several times in this collection, to symbolize her trying to find the missing puzzle of her ancestry or to decipher her family’s genealogy.
Parallel with Ruth’s imaginative figures is her economy of words. The poem “View-Master: Revisited” is a narrative poem about the speaker’s Nan-Nan. It starts with how Nan-Nan is called, then what Nan-Nan means to the speaker’s family. In an extended metaphor, which contains 4 lines or 21 words, Ruth describes Nan-Nan’s function and contribution to the family, also how Nan-Nan’s sudden death brings trauma to them.
….. …..She was the thread ….. …..that bound us like the patchwork
….. …..of a story quilt, cut too soon, creating ….. …..chaos in the fallout. (3-6)…..
The metaphor implies the warm feeling the speaker feels for Nan-Nan, and the attention the family gets from Nan-Nan. However, Nan-Nan’s funeral has some chaotic scenes: “Shattered / glass angels, broken bloody noses, a pink / marbled coffin.” This scene is disappointing. Not what Nan-Nan asked for, and not what the speaker’s Pop-Pop wanted for her. By the end, Ruth continues to paint the scene with concise language: “Stolen knick-knacks / in the lounge, bitter / coffee, fake sugar.” (10-12)
The last three lines are a pun, suggesting both the literal and metaphorical meanings: knick-knacks, like good memories, were stolen, and the sweet words from people at the funeral are like fake sugar, not genuine. The coffee is bitter as the loved one is gone. In 3 lines of 8 words, Ruth draws a scene that arouses a lot of imagination and association in the reader’s mind.
Later in the collection, “Outside Your Skin You Are Narrative” is a poem that reveals both Ruth’s extraordinary storytelling skills and ability to embed strong imagery in her poetry.
The opening line draws interesting pictures in the reader’s mind, hooks them to read on, and leads them to imagine the scenes: “Cleanse everything with lavender. Your / body, your home, us.” As the reader reads on, they get to know that this is not the speaker’s voice, but Pop-pop’s memory of his mother, the speaker’s Nan-Nan. Then Ruth sketches vivid, dynamic pictures with sensual five senses:
….. …..long
….. …..hair in salt scented breezes ….. …..engulfing carnivals and oceans,
….. …..or whipping out of half open ….. …..windows in a rusted station? ….. …..wagon, rolling down highways
….. …..to Tennessee. (3-9)
The sight of “long hair,” the smell of “scented breezes,” and the contrast of hair flying in the open windows against a “rusted station wagon” together paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Each word is imaginative and concrete. They reflect the difference between reality and dream. “You / believed in angels, but / your ancestors called them ghosts” (Ruth 10-12) suggests the gaps between family generations or different interpretations of life dreams. By the end, Ruth keeps painting rich and beautiful pictures in the carnival:
….. …..of Ferris Wheels and merry- ….. …..go-rounds in neon
….. …..lights, chasing Elvis, chasing ….. …..angels. Only part of ….. …..this was. (14-18)
The ending adds multiple layers of meaning to the poem. From concrete, fancy images of “Ferris Wheels and merry-go-rounds in neon lights” to slowly move to more symbolic images like “chasing Elvis” and his song in Tennessee, then to move to what the poet is doing now – her pursuit of art, poetry. This poem covers a long time and a broad space to arouse the reader’s imagination.
The last poem in the collection “Memoir: A Poem” adds the memoir element to poetry. Its last line provides the title for this collection, and it is also a lyric poem that reflects Ruth’s strength in using images to stir the reader’s emotions. It’s another poem for Nan-Nan.
The open line “I read you gone” composes a one-line stanza. It sets the grave tone for the poem. The large amount of white space allows the reader to digest the heavy topic. Instead of telling the reader her helpless and sad feeling, Ruth depicts it in imagery:
The image hits the reader with pain and grief. Then Ruth draws a lighter, livelier picture following this grim topic: “I // want to see galaxies on my / nails, feel civilizations on / my palms.” This shows the contrast between reality and dreams. The ending is another picture Ruth composes to embody the theme of the poem, also the theme of the book:
….. ………. ………. ………. …I need ….. ………. ………. ………. ………. ….to dance. To be
….. …..the solid center of bright ….. ………. ………. ………. ………. ….pink target. To count
….. …..each grain of rice. To have ….. ………. ………. ………. …found a name among bone. (9-14)
Even with Nan-Nan’s passing away, Ruth understands she cannot be broken. She needs to stay calm and collected, for her ancestors, and also for her dream. She needs to put herself together to be the solid center of a target, counting the memories like counting the grains of rice. She has Nan-Nan in her blood and bone and will never forget her. The repeating shooting or target images in the first and the last poems echo, both reflecting the speaker’s goal: to hit the target right.
A Name Among Bone reflects Mel Ruth’s free and mature use of the different poetic craft elements in her work. Her figurative language, natural talent with imagery, and storytelling ability contribute to making this collection as strong as the title suggests, meanwhile generating an everlasting effect on the reader’s mind.
Zhihua Wang is a poetry candidate in the Arkansas Writers’ MFA Program at the University of Central Arkansas. She worked as the Managing Editor of Arkana from 2019-2020. Her recent work is shown/forthcoming in Aji Magazine, Last Leaves, San Pedro River Review, Nurture, The Curator, Eunoia Review, Down in the Dirt, and Writers Resist. She is working on her first poetry collection: Faraway Hometown.
Recently, Arkana‘s managing editor Kathy M. Bates sat down with writer and educator Megan Neville to discuss her writing and poetic forms and themes at work in her latest poetry collection, The Fallow.
Transcribed by Melanie A. Wilson.
Kathy M. Bates: We are happy to share in the excitement of your first full-length poetry collection The Fallow. Teaching, writing, contests, traditional and non-traditional paths, tell us a little about your writing journey.
Megan Neville: Writing is something I have done my entire life. I know a lot of people say that, but it really is. I put together little books when I was a kid, when I could barely write words. I did a zine when I was 13, 14, 15-years-old. So, writing has been something that I have always done and it has always been intrinsically linked with teaching. When I really started to take writing seriously, in my adult life, I have to give a lot of credit to the National Writing Project at Kent State University. NWP is an organization that operates on the philosophy that K-12 teachers should be writers themselves–if we are going to teach writing, we need to write. So, I did that in 2007 and that just reinvigorated my passion for writing. That’s when I started to really see myself as a writer again. That’s where the journey to where I am now was rekindled.
KMB: At what point during the writing and organization of The Fallow did you decide on the title? Fallow is in essence remains that are left to restore over time. Tell me a little more about the title and deeper connection to thematic elements within the collection.
MN: Yeah, that’s huge. You know, it was originally going to be “Our Lady of Impermanence”, which is the title of one of the poems. But then I realized that the poet, Traci Brimhall has a book with a very similar title and I obviously didn’t want to be too similar to someone else’s book. I was looking around at other things in the book trying to figure out what was kind of a unifying theme. And the whole idea of fertility is huge in this book, and the intentional non-use of fertility. My poems touch a bit on the concept of motherhood and mothering, and it’s very much a book about the fact that I’m not a mother, I don’t have children and I don’t want to have children. And just kind of exploring maternal instinct and things like that in the context of not being or wanting to be an actual mother.
I also think about it from an agricultural standpoint, because I am in Ohio so that is something that once I get an hour outside of the city I live in, is a big thing. You know, leaving a field fallow is purposeful, right? It’s so that things can regenerate and restore nutrients and kind of nurture the land itself, as opposed to just always spawning things from the land. So, you know, when you first hear the definition of the word fallow, it might seem like something negative like, oh, that’s sad. It’s not bearing anything, but then when you think of the purpose of it, I like to think of that as a metaphor for why I have chosen not to be a mother.
KMB: Let’s talk a bit about how form mirrors content but more potentially exposes context. Namely in “Rotational Fall,” there are 3 stanzas parted by pages as well as appearance. How are your choices informing the underlying story you hope to relay?
MN: I love this because I love to play with form. And I love any way to enhance content. So, when I play around with form, like for “Rotational Fall,” I’m basically trying to let the reader into how my brain is working, like how I’m grouping thoughts together or how different stages of the poem were created and how they play off of each other. With “Rotational Fall”, you have to physically rotate the book while you’re reading it.
That poem was based on a story I heard on NPR about, forgive me, I forget her name, but an actual competitive equestrian rider who died after a rotational fall a few years ago. Just hearing that story sent me tumbling. I used to ride horses when I was a kid, and just thinking how someone could die in such a tragic way, doing something that I did for fun, for recreation. It really threw me for a loop. So just that whole circle and cycle and rotation and the fact that the whole rest of the book is about cycles of violence, cycles of matrilineal turnover and things like that. It felt like it would fit to make people actually turn the book around a few times when they’re reading.
KMB: There are many other poems that use white space, dropped lines, and intentional location. Do you often see these elements in the first draft, or do they come into play upon revision and reflection?
MN: A lot of times when I write a poem, I’ll write it out exactly as it looks in my mind, with pauses, things like that, like visual caesuras and dropped lines, and things like that. It will just come out right away. But then sometimes when I’m playing around with a poem, and I’m not sure exactly how it should be, I actually just put it all together as one block of prose. And then I play around with different ways of using indentation and lineation and things like that.
There are a couple of poems in this book that were originally published differently. Like “Stand Her Ground” is one, for instance. When that originally appeared in the Longleaf Review, it looked very different than it looks now. The other one that I’m thinking of is “Searching Plan B Availability in Utah” which originally was a prose poem. So I think some of them have evolved over time as they live in my mind and they just take up more space, sometimes they need to expand, and I like using blank space in poems in general because they often feel like you need that reflective space somewhere.
And then some of it also has to do with whether it’s a poem I imagined myself reading aloud, in front of an audience, versus if it’s a poem that I picture people reading with their eyes on a page.
I tend to be a very extroverted introvert, at times; I love being around people, but then they exhaust me and I need time to myself. So if I’m in a phase where I’ve been very extroverted, I find that I tend to write a lot of poems that are more traditional looking because I’m going to envision myself reading them in front of an audience. But then when I’m more in my little hidey-hole, I tend to write poems with a lot of visual aspects.
KMB: As a follow-up, considering poem evolution, many writers feel like their work is never really finished. What are your thoughts about that? How do you know when you are finally ready to let go of a piece?
MN: There have been a handful that I’ve let go of, but the vast majority I see as constant works in progress. When a poem is published somewhere I feel like that’s just a checkpoint. That’s where the poem is at that time. It’s like a photograph where it’s like, that’s how this person looks at this moment in their life, but they’re not going to look like that forever. As a teacher of writing for high school, I do a lot of encouraging my kids to know that your work is never fully done. You just write drafts of it. And that’s very hard for them to internalize because they want to know exactly what something’s supposed to look like. And that’s why as a writer, I like poetry because I feel like it can evolve and I feel like all the poems that I have right now, are in a lot of ways in conversation with older poems that I’ve written. So, I feel like every poem that I write is kind of like a little branch, like an offshoot of other things that I’ve written, and little tendrils can come off of them as they constantly evolve.
KMB: What about the process of choosing the order for your poems?
MN: It’s messy and I love it. That’s honestly one of my favorite parts of putting together The Fallow. I print everything out, as I’m sure many writers do, and I spread everything out on the floor. My apartment is not big enough, and plus the cat tries to help, so sometimes I’ll go someplace else where there’s a lot of floor space or table space. And I just spread out every single poem that I’m thinking of putting in a manuscript and I go through and I put little like tags on them, like what are the themes in the poem or the images in the poem and then I start grouping them together. And then once I have groups, I start to tease them out. Then I expand because I don’t want all of the poems with the same theme to be together. I want them to be spread out. So that instead of there being like a clump of poems about one theme and then a clump of poems about another theme, I like to have everything spread out a bit, so that just when you think you’re out of one theme, as a reader, you get drawn back into it again. So there’s this sort of spiraling out or going forward and back and forward and back and forward and back. So that’s how I chose what order they went in.
And then with the two sections, I tried a lot of different ways of doing this. I really wanted the first section to be more about origins and then the second section more about consequences.
KMB: You mention groups and themes, some of those conversations are more difficult than others. Which was the hardest poem to write?
MN: I think one of the hardest ones, I wrote in 2019 in a workshop I was in with Ada Limón. It was the one about “Searching for Plan B availability in Utah because no this is not what you think.” I was writing it in this sort of scathing and angry mood, and I realized the jealousy and suspicion invoked in that poem would cause more of that. And so, that was a poem that kind of ate itself as I wrote it.
And I love that poem. It’s really short and really simple, but that was the hardest one to write because it involves so many things that I wanted to say that I knew I would be in trouble for saying. And as a K-12 teacher, that’s something I’ve struggled with a lot as a writer. Because for some reason, the teaching profession in the United States, I’m honestly not sure if it’s like this in the rest of the world, but teachers here are sort of infantilized. We’re expected to be non-sexual beings and we’re expected to be, you know, prim and proper all the time. I’ve been in education for 18 years but I’m a grown-ass woman, you know, so I have the same thoughts and issues and desires and experiences that any other 41-year-old woman has.
So writing several of the poems in this book, I realized I was taking a risk by putting them out into the world. But I realized that I was taking more of a risk by keeping them inside, so I went ahead and wrote them.
KMB: Looking back, is there anything you would have taken away or added?
MN: You know, there’s the one poem I wish I would have followed a little bit further with is “Body of Knowledge.” It goes as far as celebrating the clitoris, yet there’s so much more to sexuality than just the pleasure centers. I sometimes wish I would have expanded on that one a little bit more. Sometimes I feel like I was a little bit too safe with that one.
One of the ways that I thought about that poem and kind of reconciled putting it in the, despite wishing I’d had gone further with it, is that the fact that it doesn’t interrogate quite as much as I would like it to interrogate. But I think that represents a vulnerability, searching for pleasure and trying to understand my own capacity for pleasure despite not being taught that such a thing exists. I think that kind of leaves open, like, hey, there’s more to learn. I like how that gets represented in the poem.
KMB: Can you isolate a favorite poem from this collection? Why?
MN: I’m gonna have to say they’re all my babies, I love them all. But I’ll go with “Elegy with Apologies to Leon Jakobovits James,” because that one is my 2020 poem. It’s the most recently-written poem that made it into the book.
It’s my locked-down, teaching remotely, trying to live, reflective covid-era poem. And I mean, a lot of people wrote 2020 poems. I think we all wrote some 2020 poems. This one covers everything starting with my father’s death at the end of 2019, right before the pandemic started, and goes both forward and backward in time. I was still grieving for him when the whole pandemic started, and the pandemic has been just a years-long ball of grief upon grief upon grief. The structure of the poem is based on the concept of semantic satiation, which is when you say a word over and over again until it just doesn’t sound like that word anymore. It doesn’t have any meaning anymore. So the idea was, maybe if I talked enough about all the grief that I was experiencing, that it would go away. So, it was very cathartic for me to write and I love the way it turned out.
KMB: With the excitement of a new release, we know the journey continues. What are you working on now?
MN: It’s really interesting because in my own writing process, I go through phases where I write and write and write and I can’t stop writing. Then I go through phases where I don’t write quite as much. Right now I have not written a poem in about five months. But I have a lot of them brewing.
I’m working on some creative nonfiction, though. Right now I’m developing an essay about the intersection between teaching, watching the TV show Euphoria, and texting like a mom–which is something my teenage students say is a thing. That essay is what I’m working on right now. I do, like I said, also have a few poems brewing. I tend to write poems in chunks. I just get a word or a phrase or concept or an image stuck in my mind and I just jot it down, and then I ignore it for months until I have many of those and I start to look at how we put them all together. So I’m in the very nascent phases of writing some poems and then working on a couple of essays, as well.
KMB: Well, it is definitely exciting when it all comes together, and we hope to see more soon!. Thank you so much for speaking with us!
Megan Neville (she/her) is a writer and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, Pleiades, Poets.org, Wildness, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2019 Wick Poetry Center Contest for Peace & Transformation and has been a finalist or semifinalist for the Write Bloody Book Contest, the Akron Poetry Prize, the Frost Place Chapbook Contest, the Tupelo Press Sunken Garden Chapbook Contest, the YesYes Books 2020 Open Reading Period, and others. In 2021 received a Best of the Net nomination and two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Megan is also an editorial assistant for Split Lip Magazine. Find her on Twitter @MegNev.
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