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I think both of Susan's poems featured today demonstrate this empathy and humility, fortified with an uncurrent of gentle humor. The poems are: "Transcendence" and "Sexing the Terza-Rima." Here's what Susan says about the poems:
I wrote "Transcendence" after visiting a translation workshop at Centrum Writers Conference in Port Townsend, WA. I had to leave early that day just as my poet-friend was passing out an assignment. I felt guilty sneaking out and jotted down some notes on how prescient everything had felt in that room – even the curtains.
The original title was "Translating Afternoon," but in the end, that felt too prescriptive. I tried to conjure a little bit of the way poetry brings us out of ourselves, always trying to say the unsayable.
It was actually published in a special issue of Bellevue Literary Review that focused on death and dying. And actually, that works too. Who knew death and translation resembled each other so?
"Sexing the Terza-Rima" (published in Words + Images) is a much older poem. It began as a graduate school assignment: write in terza-rima. I think one terza-rima is enough for me for a lifetime – although I like the odd turns it takes – desperate to keep those rhymes going while alternately weaving in a new one. I have new respect for Dante after this. Of course, in Italian this form makes a great deal more sense.
Sexing the Terza-rima
The End flashes on the screen all curlicues.
It's a film we've seen a dozen times before.
The lovers kiss, their bodies fall from view
All dilemmas solved, forgotten, or ignored,
It left me craving husbands with suede shoes
And I went with one who opened fine trap-doors
To rescue captains when their ships were wrecked
And usher fortunes from old cobbled floors.
My man adored all things that time neglects —
Old gramophones and girls dressed-up as bears.
But soon the sex was stale: more angst than artistry.
I left him for a chef with pastry shears
Who sang to me from under a blue gum tree
And whispered, I've something to confess!
How quaint it seemed: a man of integrity.
What Carl retold I never would have guessed.
He'd fallen for my scarves and lace-up boots.
To wear alone — he pressed, when I cross-dress.
What feelings in me did this news produce?
Was I repulsed, amused, or simply charmed?
He passed me homemade tarts with cheese and fruit
Our relationship continued on unharmed.
With custard cups and chocolate pinafores
We saved each other and bought a dairy farm.
Now late at night along long corridors,
I hear the hurried kicks of commodores
And know it’s not the end at all, just the man that I adore.
* * *
Transcendence
A summer wind clicks through the room
plastic curtains ecstatic as castanets.
Standing outside the rim of the body
you inhabit other lives –
Russian horses and red pigeon feathers –
weathered to beach glass, to scrim.
And this afternoon, as other Jews before,
you call out green syllables
nearly sing them:
incantation of salt air, ripened plum.
Anna Akhmatova wanders the halls
offering peppermints with dented spoons –
Under a different house of sky …
Praise humans that blunder us
into the great unknowing –
translate sea to transalpine
an epic fable to jazz-filled tulip field.
* * *
About Susan Rich and her influences: Susan is the author of two poetry collections, both from White Pine Press: Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer's
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The books she takes with her on trips include The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems by Charles Wright, and Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee. Elizabeth Bishop has traveled with Susan through South Africa, Bosnia and an airport stay in Frankfurt.
Bishop--whom Susan calls her "dead mentor"--was the first poet Susan ever found that shared her obsessions with maps and travel. Reading Charles Wright always makes Susan want to write – and inspires her to reach further into the disjunctive line or lyrical leap-froging than she might otherwise try. Li-Young Lee allows her to think about why she writes poetry and to not be embarassed to claim it as a kind of spiritual practice.
Susan's poems are forthcoming in translation in the Slovenian journal Dialogi, translated by Veronika Dintinjana. Her awards include a PEN USA Award for Poetry, Artist Trust Fellowship, and Fulbright Fellowship to South Africa. She has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger and an Electoral Supervisor in Bosnia. She lives in Seattle with her cats Sarajevo and Otis Travnic. Click here for Susan's website.
3 comments:
Another great selection! "Transcendence" is bursting with fabulous images.
Transcendence takes you on a high! Thanks!
Enjoyed Rich's poems. Thanks for posting them. Bishop and Wright have impacted me as reader and as writer.
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