The Last Love Letter

At dawn there is everything but the fat bird’s song everything is quiet fog. Everything is the matter.

This is it. I will not write again. These words however simple or dull, however gorgeous or bright, are final. Do not wait by the post box anticipating word from me. Instead, to your garden, to your morning chores—do not wait in vain for something that will not come.

I can perhaps now tell you—since this is the last of it—that you are mistaken. I am not full of regret. And, though you believe that by your clever means, you have turned me away from love. You have not. Remember that night with her—when you took it upon yourself to do such cruel things in order to drive me away; your goal, I suppose, to make me loathe you—I’m here now to tell you, you have failed. It’s true that if I could choose to feel nothing toward you that would be my choice. But love is not a choice. No, it’s more of a curse than a choice.

Now, now that this has ended and there is no chance of looking into your eyes again. Or of hearing the warm timber of you voice next to my ear lobe. No chance for me to once again be drawn into your dark pretense. Now I can tell you that you have changed nothing.

I still love you as desperately as a fool. It is you who my heart speaks to when sleep is an elusive partner. It is your tongue for which I spice the meal. It is your mouth with which I wish to share this wine.

I have accepted this lot of mine. Lost myself in the days and melancholy of my living, I pour my heart into the lives of my children and remain deeply devoted to my marriage. It is as we know it should be; this happy ending.

Even so, do not believe that anything has changed. Pretend all you will but I know that you are no more cured of this cursed loved than I am. You, on your adventures and journeys, take me with you. I am there at every turn. This is my one consolation; knowing that you are as haunted and tortured as I am.

Remember when last we met how you reached to embrace me in farewell? But I stood just out of your reach? You do not know that I looked back. That I saw the deep grief and regret in your eyes as your hands fell to your sides. This is my parting gift to you: to let you believe that I no longer care for you. To let you dwell alone together with me, in that same pit of desire, to roam the night of unrealized dreams longing for the lips you will never again caress, for the arms and hands that will never hold you.

I think of you now as I finalize my departure, sort through my belongings and write this final letter which I will not mail; as  I will think of you however bitterly or tenderly, when I lay my head upon my pillow tonight. 

Ruby

This bit is the product of a creative exercise intended to help the writer to think differently while creating. We did an hour long free write wherein our facilitator called each of our names every few to several minutes and the called person would call out a word which we had to incorporate into our writing. This is my result. I cannot recall all of the words that were called out except for more obvious ones like hotdog and root beer. We were also given a prompt which I do not recall.

               Once upon a time a ruby-throated hummingbird was building her nest on the branch of a silver birch tree. She gathered feathers and cob webs and bits of algae to soften the bed for her babies. She whirled about in a hummingbird-hurry working to finish this project.

               Spiders tumbled and Ruby’s personality was such that she fretted and worried over her nest making. Eggs were imminent and she hadn’t even eaten half her weight yet today. Her fuchsia breast pulsed with every beat of her heart. And her mate who was nowhere to be found—was of no assistance in these matters—and now thunder rolled overhead. She flitted to the Rose of Sharon for some lunch and noticed a wee fairy reclined on a nearby toadstool.

               “What Ho!” said Ruby, but the fairy, looking rather glum—her affect as flat as a pancake—said nothing. In fact, she acted as if she’d not heard Ruby—

               “Say! You! Fairy!” Ruby called again, “I’m in need of some fairy assistance!” Still the fairy was still. Until—along came a tree toad—he tiptoed carefully up trying to startle and perhaps capture the fairy with his hotdog ways. So Ruby lit down and slid her narrow beak under the fairy’s wings—lifting her and carrying her off to her newly made nest. Still the fairy was still.

               “Perhaps I’ll have to take you to the witch for a diagnosis,” Ruby mused, “the witch has all the knowledge there is about fairies and she’ll surely know how to cure you!”

               “Eh” said the fairy.

               “What’s that?? Come again?” said Ruby.

               “Eh” said the fairy.

               “Listen here, Ms. Fairy, I haven’t even eaten half of my weight yet today and, as you can see from this lovely nest…eggs are imminent! Now snap out of it! I need you to conjure me some fairy—blossoms.”

               “Eh” said the fairy. And she glumly raised her glum arm and voila, buds of lavender appeared all along the birch branch.

               “Thank you, thank you!” said Ruby, “you passed that test!”

               Ruby became so excited she flitted from blossom to blossom to sip the nectar she found there. But she did not notice the swarm of bumbles approaching. Nor did she see the lizard whiling his way up the trunk of the silver birch his long tongue licking out into the air as he neared the doldrums fairy.

               “Hey,” he said, “Que pasa Fairy?” Upon which Ruby plunged at him and pecked with her pointy beak.

               “She’s my fairy!” Ruby insisted, “We’ve the same ancestors and I’ll thank you to take your scaly self out of here!”

               “Chill out sister! That’s the dullest fairy I’ve ever seen! You think she could conjure me up some flies?”

               “You will not sabotage my nest,” said Ruby pecking at him three times until he turned tail and headed slowly back down the birch tree trunk. Now the fairy slept soundly in Ruby’s nest—or was she dead? The quick-witted bird wondered and so she landed on the little fairy’s knees and trembled until the fairy was shaken awake. Fairy looked about in a daze.

               “Where’d that butterfly go?” she said.

               “I’m not butterfly,” said Ruby. “I’m a humming bird and have imminent eggs and you must fly out of my nest now!”

               “Have you got any root beer?” said the fairy.

               “What is root beer, dear?” said Ruby. She flitted again from flower to flower, nipping an intermittent gnat from the air in a frenzied manner. Suddenly the fairy perked up and groomed her comely wings until they were looking quite dapper. And she flew away.

This is the Accompanying Note from a Map to a Mystery

1.         When you go, go alone.

2.         Two weeks before you depart, on the night of a new moon, place five grains of sand in your palm and sleep with them pressed against your cheek.

3.         Do not be disturbed if the sand has seemingly vanished by daybreak. (This portends good things.)

4.         The sand must be from a rocky shore and you may require a magnifying glass to count out just five grains. This is vitally important. Any less and you will not sleep. Any more than this and the gods may take displeasure at your greediness.

5.         Wear shoes made only of natural things—this may be difficult and expensive and you may have to have the shoes specially made. (If you do; try to retain the services of someone from the Sioux or Navajo nations—barring that a good Italian shoemaker will suffice. But say nothing of your intentions. Say only that you need the shoes for a wedding, which is not a lie. You’ll discover why this is so when you arrive.

6.         On the day of your departure, eat no seeds and drink only reds, as if you were the unclean and starved for some quenching sangria.

7.         On this day, if you happen to be in the company of a newborn, a virgin, or a homeless man or some other sacred being, you might want to reconsider your plans and leave on the next half moon, instead.

8.         Be sure to wash your hands and feet before your departure.

9.         Take nothing with you.

10.       Be silent. 

St Non's Rock

This is a rock. It is a rock found on the path to the ancient well of St Non near St David’s, Wales. One side of the rock is one and one half inches long and flat. It is a hard piece of stone genus unknown.

The rock is three-quarters of an inch thick. Looking end to end, it is a rectangle with one of its points chipped away. From above, the rock appears to have a finger shaped edge as if some pregnant future saint laid her hand there as she labored to give birth to another future saint.

Not counting a small notch-like overhang the rock has six sides including ends. The rock will stand on one side if you like but it cannot on the other side. There is a bit of yellow lichen on this rock. It is blackened in places, perhaps by the petrified blood of someone ancient, someone nearly beatified. There is a rust mark on the rock which is the color of red clay the sort of clay you’d imagine the feet of a clay man were made.

There are many planes on this rock and to count them will involve an eternity and who other than perhaps this rock, or perhaps the dead or ascended or the Gods themselves, has an eternity?

One particular side is flat and one half an inch wide but curved on its edge and with strike marks or perhaps wear from the blade of a stone saw; the tool perhaps of a humble and devout mason who kept the Sabbath and provided for his family and when he grew older he formed a guild and from this one old mason sprung every temple, every old stone chapel, every man-made salvation.

There is white on the rock, a fading design, once decorated ornately with all the signs and symbols of a mysterious ancient religion, now lost to this world. Lost only because it chooses to be so for what is a religion without the faithful? It is nothing. Just as this mysterious rock is nothing more than a rock. It is no longer part of an ancient cathedral that stood as a place where voices together could rise up in worship and in awe.

The rock is no longer a part of the arched entry way to a magical place. But be still and do not grieve for like DNA this rock contains everything needed to recreate faith. This rock is a blue print. This rock is a key. It unlocks the mystery. This rock makes solid beauty. It is the structure of now encasing ancient wisdom and foretelling of sacred tomorrow.

All of this is held in the hands when holding this rock.

A Review of Injuring Eternity and an interview with poet Millicent Borges Accardi

Injuring Eternity by Millicent Borges Accardi, $14.95, Mischievous Muse Press 2010 

A Portuguese-American poet, Millicent Accardi’s second collection of poetry is Injuring Eternity. Ms. Accardi is a National Endowment for the Arts and California Arts Council Fellow, among others. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, The Tampa Review, New Letters and Wallace Stevens Journal. In addition, she has been anthologized in Boomer Girls (Iowa Press), and Chopin with Cherries (Moonrise Press). Ms. Accardi’s residencies include: Yaddo, Jentel, Vermont Studio, Fundación Valparaíso in Mojacar and Milkwood in Cesky Krumlov. Forthcoming in spring 2012 is a third collection of poetry: Only More So (Salmon Press, Ireland).

           The title of this collection of narrative and persona poems, Injuring Eternity, sets up a tension for the reader and Accardi does not disappoint.  Injuring Eternity sets about the work of killing time by arranging itself in the shape of a day, with the named sections: Morning, Noon, and Evening.

Just for the sake of mood consider each of these lines:

                                    Her dealer around

the corner waiting in striped pants (67)        

Black widow spiders

Abound in the wet darkness (77)

A few moments before her heart crushed

Her upon the ground from a fall(26)

    . . .Her

Black pants and uncrossed legs

Against his white fingers were all

She could see of the piano keys (1).

     A shadow lurks throughout the book; and the reader remains expectant never knowing when a dark chord may sound. Against this tension, there are poems which speak to the death of Brittany Murphy, school shootings, a make-up counter,  Karl Marx (appears in two poems), Billy Holiday, Miles Davis (also repeats), the Gulf oil spill, passion, a carpenter spitting nails and others.

The variety of poems in this book is unified by the voice of the work which is bicultural, bilingual and female.  There is a way in which Accardi flips language on its head that brings to mind turns of speech which a student of the English language might use; this gives lines or words a lilt in certain poems, a fresh approach to language.  Time, in context, ticks away in flashes and instances; from the child reminiscing about the father or the wife struggling for existence, as in the poem, “Birth:”

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

In the living room, you my dear husband, my

you sleep: on the worn out sofa, like a child,

or a man who has given up. If my four legg’ed

shadow can crawl past you all will be well.

The Bible and the headstones will rest

with me, buried deep in trampled grass:

it is where they belong. You never gave me

any trouble, dear husband, but you never gave me

any encouragement, either (13).

            There is a duality throughout this volume. A duality of tradition against change, of culture against culture, and of man against woman; the gender clash is illustrated specifically here in the final stanza of Accardi’s startling poem, “Argument,”

                                   

Like frozen water. We wish, for a moment,

we liked resistance. We wished we needed a cause

to believe in. In this city we keep trying. We hear

The word of hymns on fire.

In this city, we are the Ugly Americans.

As if I were a mad women,(sic) or someone to give

A wide berth to, you slap my face, an action

You would never take back home in the states (85).

         In these often dark and mysterious poems the reader, taken into a childhood memory,  is locked with the poet in a brutal and inescapable place, as in the poem, “Music Remembered from the Womb,” which begins; “Their music was played/ long before father’s coarse/ face abraded my shoulder, ( 32)” revealing a father’s incestuous treachery. This poem leaves the reader in that place of devastation, with no hope for mercy or redemption, “And I see what he/tells me is true./The unmade wonder/of closed eyes, and the awful, awful/luck(33).”

From this darkness we turn the page to become immersed in a childhood memory in “Blessing in Disguise,”

Ms. Accardi was kind enough to answer a few questions about her book…

BluemoonNortheast: Do you have a favorite poet or style of poetry?

MC: I am partial to subtle poems that do not tell the whole story, that paint a distant abstract portrait of a snippet of time. Like the work of Lynda Hull. I like the mystery in poems and am fascinated by subtext and what is left unsaid, the underlying truth belied inside the words on the page. Very much, I like the work of Antonio Machado, Fernando Pessoa, Carl Dennis, Neruda.

BluemoonNortheast: Janet Holmes says that your poem’s “speakers navigate-between casual lies and the unknowns youth is especially privy to, building, poem by poem, a body of hard-won truths.” What can you tell us about the voices you conjure in this collection and do you have a way you connect to these personas?

MA: It sounds really stupid or ignorant or un-educated but I find myself mostly listening a lot, like Yeats’ automatic writing. Many of the poems I do not feel were written and sweated over by me but delivered through me, as a medium does. If I sit quietly and pay attention, I can get a good first draft, then my job in the next drafts is peeling away whatever does not belong to get the poem on the page to match the poem in my head. So often my subjects and personas are not things I pick or even like but subjects that are given to me. It’s like what used to be called a party line, in my parents’ and grandparents’ time—a shared telephone where someone could pick up the line at any time of the day and hear people talking. Now, that sounds insane too. But I try to listen to the phrases I am given, whether it is through a thought or a dream or a phrase or some sort of starting point.

BluemoonNortheast: Can you talk a bit about the title as relates to time and the three sections of the book, Morning, Noon and Evening?

MA: Every moment in life is precious and the Thoreau quote means to me that each should be savored and lived and not wasted and I hope through whatever issues my narrators are going through in these poems that they are descending upon the time and not pushing it away. As the book came to be a book, it seemed to me that poems needed to be classified either by subject matter or by voice, that some pieces were morning poems while others were evening. At some point it seemed natural to split them up into sections of time, instead of all together. Shifts in tone or subject matter abiding, they seemed to fit easily into these categories.

Do you have a favorite poem in this collection? If so why is this poem your favorite and my we reprint it here?

Oh my. I enjoy reading aloud “Serving” at readings. It seems to have its own dramatic twists and pulls and it is a good poem for those who have ever worked in the service industry to identify with. I also like “Birth” because it was my first, what I felt was successful poem. And “Living Only with the Hands” and “Mourning Doves are also, I think successful. If I had to pick one poem to represent the collection I think I would select “Mourning Doves” because it encapsulates time and the importance of savoring each event as well as an interaction between people and the natural world.

Millicent Borges Accardi's website: 

From Injuring Eternity:

Mourning Doves

Have such soulful

Eyes, their gray suit

Of feathers blurs and sinks

Them into the background

Like a creature in hiding.

They hover below the wild

Bird feeder set up for the finches

And harvest the shells, the thistle

Seed casings and what drops after

The finches and faux robins and phoebes

Have feasted. The mourning

Doves huddle and nest in the mountains

Of seed shells and dirt and make circles

With their small bird bodies turning

Into the ground digging a place around

Them as if they were under a shrub with only

The black drops of ink from their tail feathers

Visible. In a group, they lie in wait, their dear gray

Eyes gloomy and sullen and innocent and they want

What the world desires, to be fed and comfortable

And consummated and happy.

The Birth of Little Bull (a villanelle)

(When he was born the moon was beyond full)

And truth be told to thrive is to consume.

He crowned the water spilled, a son, our Little Bull!

We tried to speak but none of us was able,

when his bright cries arose to fill the room.

(When he was born the moon was beyond full)

A son, on Easter Sunday, the stuff of fable.

His face turned up toward God and spring in bloom.

He’s crowned, as waters spill, a prince, our Little Bull.

He’s born the world is new and life is beautiful.

His bones and blood and heart knit in the womb

(When he was born the moon was way past full)

Rest here, in these soft arms, all matriarchal,

as Venus, now betrothed, awaits her bridegroom.

He’s crowned, let waters spill, grandson, our Little Bull.

Rare blessings seem to spill as from a pool,

and darkness is now jailed within a tomb.

(When he was born the moon was beyond full)

He’s crowned as waters spilled, a prince, our Little Bull.

This is one of two sestinas I wrote for the 2nd Annual Villanelle contest over at Numéro Cinq find out more by visiting Numero Cinq

The Death of Emily

This story first appeared in The Sylvan Echo, online literary journal.

Dickinson’s Missing Cemetery Gate Found

2-27-2004

Boston (Reuters) – An ornate wrought-iron gate that guarded the New England cemetery plot of the 19^th Century American poet Emily Dickinson has been found at an antique shop after being missing for two decades, a descendant said on Wednesday.

The Death of Emily

A fly buzzes when I die. It’s the sound the life support system makes as I flat line. I slip out of my body and hang around the drop ceiling. I can see the top of everyone’s head. I didn’t know my doctor was balding. He has an interesting strawberry-mark – a little map of Texas with ten hairs growing in it. I wonder if he knows about it.

            No one notices me. They are just realizing I’ve gone missing. People run around the room, code blue. I feel young again. I want to let them know they can stop worrying. I am still here—right as rain. And I can fly.

“I’m okay. I made it,” I say. No one hears me.

            The stillness in the room is like the stillness in the air between the heaves of storm. And then people go nuts. They use those paddle things. The doc yells out amounts of medication — and “clear” – before he jolts me. They stare at the monitor. I want to sit up and sing, “I Love a Parade.” My ticker is no good. We know that. That’s why I’m scheduled for a triple bypass. It’s five a.m.

Heart failure is a misery. This event is no exception, bad enough to drive me out. Maybe that’s the secret to immortality – hang tough through unspeakable torture. And? I think, as I float above the din. I move to the side of the room where there’s a window to the hallway. A man from housekeeping is cleaning the glass when I code.  I wonder if the smell of ammonia tipped the scales.

My daughter will be devastated when they tell her I’m dead. People think it’s the next crisis. It isn’t half bad being dead. I feel I have some place to go, better than I have in years. I imagine my daughter’s face and find myself looking into it. In the waiting room, she anticipates news of me. She reads a magazine.  Mary is thirty-seven. Even so, her face looks like a dumpling to me. I want to blow raspberries into her cheeks. Her cuticles are chomped. Her fingertips are stubby and wounded-looking. She absently flips through pages. Is she praying? I hear something but her lips never move. Someone will be killing me off for her in a few minutes. I’m okay; I want to let her know.

“I’m alright. I’m still here,” I whisper.

Thoughts of my body cause me to drift back to my room. I watch the goings on. My chest is cracked open and the Doc’s latex-ed hands are bloodied. He looks defeated. I like to think it’s about me. But I think it has more to do with failure. His hands are poised for a stranglehold. One foot is forward. He’s ready to seize at something that isn’t there anymore.

The room’s been transformed into an operating room. Others, nurses, people who came running when the alarms went off, stand waiting for the clock to run out.  Eyes are somber – but no one cries.  Experience has wrung them dry, I guess. An orderly appears and disappears in the doorway with a food tray. The window washer progresses down the hallway. I follow. His pores are enlarged, some have stubble pushing through. His dark eyes scan the glass. I think he is worried about me. He and I turn to look when anyone walks by.

The nurse looks dismayed. After weeks together in the town of Ticker-Care we are friends. She lunched with Mary in the cafeteria once. I can see now that the top of her hair is violently teased and lacquered; there are particles of dust on it. She backs away from the bedside. The doctor speaks. Breaths gather firm.

“Emily,” he says, stepping near to my bedside.

I’m drawn on a downward draft as he rubs the wrist. He and I were not prepared for this last onset, the end of one reality. A brilliant light collects in this lost room. “Wow!” I want to say. “This is fantastic!”

Mary’s shoulders have quiet flakes of dander on them. She waits outside the closed door to my hospital room. The doctor removes his spattered gloves and jacket. Coming from the room he extends himself to Mary. On his hand is another strawberry mark, one with veins popping through. Getting old Doc, I think.

This light overwhelms! “Look,” I say. But no one hears. The doctor is pensive. Mary’s face dissolves, “Its okay,” I say.

The stretched lips are an ugly mask; there is a blemish on the chin. Two work on the body. Fat and skin re-cover haphazard ribs before the sheet is pulled for cover. I can’t believe it’s me. I can’t believe I’m dead.

A cardboard box next to the bed holds reams of heart monitor paper. I imagine someone closing it for storage in a basement vault, the marks of a human heart. Keepsakes will be signed away. My phone directory sits on the wheeled-away nightstand. I’ll trade that old life for this new one.

And then there is a fly’s drone, a blue-uncertain-stumbling-buzz. It comes between the light and me. I hesitate. The windows fail.  I can no longer see to see.



Erasure No. Two

Here is the link to Numèro Cinq

When you have for some time used yourself to push and parry at the Wall, according to the Rules that I have laid down, you must, (tho’ ’tis not the Rule of Schools, especially when you push with Strangers,) you must I  say, when you push with a Scholar of your own Master, push and parry a Thrust alternately, disengaging, and then do the same Feinting, and sometime after you shou’d make the other Thrusts, telling one another your design, which makes you execute and parry them by Rule, especially if you reflect on the Motions and Postures of the Lunges and Parades. Being a little formed to this method, you may, being warned of the Thrust, parry it, telling the Adversary where you intend your Riposte, which puts him in a condition to avoid it, and gives him room to redouble after his Parade, either strait or by a Feint, at which you are not surprised, expecting by being forewarned the Thrust he is to make, which puts you easily on your Defence and Offence: by this manner of Exercise, you may not only improve faster, but with more art, the Eye and Parts being insensibly disposed to follow the Rule, whereas without this Method, the difference that there is between a lesson of assaulting a Man who forewarns you, helps you, and lets you hit him, and another who endeavours to defend himself and hit you, is, that except the Practice of Lessons be very well taught by long exercise, you fall into a Disorder which is often owing to the want of Art more than to any Defect in Nature. The taking a Lesson well, and the Manner of Pushing and Parrying which I have just described, may be attained to by Practice only, but some other things are necessary to make an Assault well; for besides the Turn of the Body, the Lightness, Suppleness and Vigour which compose the exteriour Part, you must be stout and prudent, qualities so essential, that without them you cannot act with a good Grace, nor to the purpose. If you are apprehensive, besides, that you don’t push home, or justly, fear making you keep back your Thrust, or follow the Blade, the least Motion of the Enemy disorders you, and puts you out of a Condition to hit him, and to avoid his Thrusts. Without Prudence, you cannot take the advantage of the situation, motions designs of the enemy, which changing very often, according to his Capacity and to the Measure, demonstrates that an ill concerted Enterprise exposes more to Danger than it procures Advantage: in order to turn this Quality to an advantage, you are to observe the Enemy’s fort and feeble,whether he attack or defend; if he attack it will be either by plain Thrusts strait, or disengaged, or by Feints or Engagements, which may be opposed by Time, or Ripostes: if he keeps on his Defence, it is either to take the Time or  to Riposte. In case of the first; you shou’d, by half Thrusts, oblige him to push in order to take a Counter to his Time, and if he sticks to his Parade you must serve in what Manner, in order to disorder him by Feints, and push where he gives Light.

The Adventures of Ghost Paula

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. 

Anaïs Nin

Ghost Fargo by Paula Cisewski, $14.95, Nightboat Books

 Paula Cisewski’ s second collection, Ghost Fargo, was selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize and published in 2010. She is also the author of Upon Arrival (Black Ocean, 2006) and of three chapbooks: How Birds Work (Fuori Editions, 2002), Or Else What Asked the Flame (w/Mathias Svalina, Scantily Clad e-chap, 2008), and Two Museums (MaCaHu Press 2009). She lives in Minneapolis

            Perhaps this book appeals to me because of its story. Ghost Fargo has movement. It begins with the principal characters, a lost brother and ‘Ghost Paula’ the shadowy sister left behind.  She is the voice of the poem, ‘This very world, in which my brother holds up//a cardboard sign at the freeway exit ramp and I,/ distracted, drive right past’ (4).          

            Ghost Fargo is a travelogue. The reader shares trekker ‘Ghost Paula’s’ view of a cross country journey from “Cape Disappointment, WA;”

                                                This shore shall be named

                                                after my disappointment so that

                                                my disappointment can jut out

                                                into the vast ocean.

to “Hell, MI,”

                                                ...

                                                That the ocean is endless, yet I will

                                                still be thirsty when I’m dead,

                                                buzzed on the miniscule reflections of stars,

                                                and the moon—that shovel with a face.     

                                               

            Ghost Fargo challenges the reader to note the appearance of ghosts and other visages. Throughout we follow ghost Paula on her journey from crisis and grief, ‘For nobody’s gestures need be inelegant,/resembling a landscape overcome//then abandoned by sea. (17),’ to a kind of redemption (but not really) as the closing poem, “A Wide Open Field” tells:

                                                It’s no use: Ghost Fargo

                                                follows me around.

                                                to a new city, to

                                                an old country:

                                                it lives on scraps

                                                and cast-offs…

            Redemption comes later in the poem in the form of acceptance, ‘I permit Ghost Fargo/to follow me around…’  Exacting the human process of grief, Cisewski illustrates that there isn't recovery, only the tacit acceptance of a perpetual haunting.

Themes converge in the layers of Ghost Fargo (winner of Nightboat’s Poetry Prize for 2008) loss, ghosts, death, remembrance; family, psyche, travel and absence are among them. The way these poems tell and interweave and how they bounce and echo from the singular voice of Cisewski’s ghost Paula is likely what appealed to contest judge Franz Wright, Paula Cisewski speaks…with great poignancy and ravishing technical skill.

            Cisewski uses device; repetition ‘…I like patterns and/and repetition and winning and punishment…/’ (49) lines and/or words repeat (sparingly) within a single poem, ‘hello? hello?’(10.) Used throughout the text are; Ghost Fargo, no one, memory, death, light, burial and others. Cisewski’s gives voice to a chorus with her odes; this lends itself to the ghostly voice(s) heard in Ghost Fargo. Patterned images and inverted negatives convey the absence and permanence of loss ‘…My Fargo/ won’t admit it’s dead’ (19) ‘In the darkening I lie beside my love./ Steeped in separate pasts,//…’(13) ‘and what if your absence remains/the most interesting thing about me?’(16)/

There’s  more to note. I'll add that I followed ‘memory’ in the book; how the dead are embellished, what we forget or cannot forget. Speaking to loss, and in the beginning of Ghost Fargo, Cisewski  illustrates something of electro-shock's affect upon memory. It is both a curse and a blessing, ‘A needle/embroidering/the various/extinctions…’ (24.) One only knows what's been erased through things exterior.                                                                                                                                                                               

I hear folks actually

made stuff up.

Anything meant

anything. Even

all the clocks were

once imaginary clocks.

from “Ode to my Weltschmerz”

            In case you read this ghostly story, and you will. I’ve made a list of some things you might want to pack for the journey (below). Also, I had the opportunity to ask Paula Cisewski a few questions about the journey that Ghost Fargo is:

BluemoonNortheast:  What is a “Ghost Fargo?”

PC: It is the best re-creation I could manage of a personal landscape for those places to which a person impossibly wants to return: a childhood home or a lost relationship or a former version of one’s self. Maybe the speaker wants to return out of a sense of love, maybe out of a need for closure, but either way there is no return. Also, it’s just a curiously satisfying word pairing in my mind.

BluemoonNortheast:  How long was this book in the making?

PC: About four years between its first seed and its final printing. I was in a silence after my first book, Upon Arrival, came out in 2006; it seemed, as it frequently does, that I needed to relearn how to write… again. There were a set of topics that I didn’t necessarily want to write about around loss, and those things were standing like a blockade to any new possible relationship with poetry.  So I wrote them. I feel glad I did. 

BluemoonNortheast: Your book’s title comes from the poem, “Ghost Fargo” in these lines foretell the reader’s impending journey, ‘I have driven across the beautiful,/uncomfortable country many times//and have not seen him everywhere/” (3) What was your process and/or object in the way you compiled this collection? (which, by the way, works very well)

PC: Oh, thank you. I’m glad. The title poem was originally much nearer the end and was the last poem to find its place in the book. The choice to move it forward was, as you guessed, to ground a reader in a more solid voice before beginning the first section, “The Poor Choruses,” which uses the most fragmented language in the collection.

My first organizational idea for the book was to base it on Dante’s Purgatorio. Almost none of that first plan remains; however, the collection does represent a speaker in a purgatory-ish state; she needs to let go, to exit. I hope it feels like she accomplishes that to other readers besides me.

BluemoonNortheast: In your notes you reference your two recycled poems, one from Wallace Stevens the other Robert Creeley. Can you say a bit about the ‘conversations’ you have in your work with other poets? Who are your poetic heroes?

PC: I am such a fan; it’s difficult for me to pare down a list. It would be thirty people off the top of my head and then I’d lose sleep lamenting favorites I failed to name. 

BluemoonNortheast: What style or house of poetry is the most fitting for your work in Ghost Fargo?

PC: Maybe a Winnebago?

BluemoonNortheast: Am I wrong-headed in thinking this book is reminiscent of the confessional poets?

You are not wrong-headed. I love Berryman (Being from Minneapolis, I often cross the bridge where JB sadly ended his life) and then Sexton, and then to a lesser degree Plath and Lowell. I don’t consider myself a confessional poet. There are most definitely biographical elements in this book, and there is an “I,” though I hope that GF speaker is slightly more of a mythic character than the “I” who is writing this response. She’s definitely fictional at times, at least her travels and some of her bravado are.

BluemoonNortheast: Eleni Sikelianos said that, “these poems beautifully clarify that the past has no family, just a self standing on the horizon, surveying the territories.”  If poems ‘do’ things, what do you hope these poems will do?

PC: I told a poet friend who read an earlier draft that this book was a bit of an exorcism for me. He scoffed and asked, “How can it be an exorcism? It’s full of ghosts!” That’s true. Therefore, I hope Ghost Fargo is more like a peace offering… like putting an extra dinner plate out for the dead on Dia de las Muertos.

                   

What to pack for your trip to Ghost Fargo:

laugh box

dead folk

clown face

hospital johnnies

broken heart

memory

(the forgotten)

blood orange

comfy walking shoes

your shadow

idioms

a looking glass

From Ghost Fargo:

VINTAGE BLUE ANYWHERE

You think everyone knows

all about a thing so you don't

write it down, don't say.

Everybody does know

about it. It is difficult.

In the backs of our minds,

while several seperate

groups of humans try

to entertain one another,

to be novel or bright,

a similar thought spider crouches.

Consider: the artist who was famously ironic

about being ironic. By each show's end,

the whole audience felt stupid. We loved it!

But some of the crowd  was only pretending,

you find out much later. It's no wonder,

when even the family cat's on

Prozac, we're tired of emotion in art.

That antique sadness in the new

inside joke. It's irrevocable, like when driving home

one night, the stranger who pulls up to the red light

next to you is weeping, both your windows

rolled up. You just begin to have a human reaction,

and then the light's green.