Poetry for All
Transcript for Episode 38: Laura Van Prooyen, ÒElegy for My MotherÕs MindÓ

Joanne:

Hello, IÕm Joanne Diaz.Ê

Abram:Ê

And IÕm Abram Van Engen.

Joanne:

And this is Poetry for All.Ê

Abram:

In this podcast, we read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.Ê

Joanne:

Today, we are delighted to be joined by special guest Laura Van Prooyen. Laura is the author of three collections of poetry, _Our House Was on Fire_, _Inkblot and Altar_, and most recently, _Frances of the Wider Field_. She is also the co-author with Gretchen Bernabei of _Text Structures from Poetry_, a book of writing lessons for educators. Laura serves as managing editor of The Cortland Review, and she is the founder of Next Page Press, and I am also delighted to say that she is one of my favorite all-time poets and friends. We have been in a writing group together since, I believe, ooh, maybe 2002 or 2003, Laura, do you remember when we met?

Laura:

Right around then, yep.

Joanne: Oh my goodness.

Abram:Ê

ThatÕs awesome.Ê

Joanne:

Yeah, we met in a small poetry workshop at the Poetry Center of Chicago and I am pretty certain that I would not be writing 99% of my poems if it were not for Laura. [Laughs]
Laura:

Aww.

Abram:

[Laughs]

Laura:

Well, I feel exactly the same way, Joanne. I donÕt know what my work would be doing without your help and insight and your friendship in poetry, so thanks.Ê

Abram:

ItÕs great to have you on this podcast, thank you so much for joining us. Would you be willing to read this poem, ÒElegy for My MotherÕs Mind?Ó

Laura:

Of course.Ê

Elegy for My MotherÕs Mind

WeÕre walking inside your mind where itÕs just beginning to snow,
and no matter how quickly I shovel, the path will go blank.

Where youÕll lose the child who picked every last tulip
you waited a solid Chicago winter to watch bloom. Lose the girl

Who pedaled her Schwinn up and back the driveway while you
Fried bacon behind the evergreens in an electric pan so the house
WouldnÕt smell. But this night, grackles above us blacken the tree
and you hold on to me as you get into the car. Together, we go

to the store where you try on every clearance-marked blouse
and buy nothing. YouÕre forgetting sadness, too. That pool

where you used to swim with an armload of bricks,
where no slow tug of a rope could pull you from the bottom.

YouÕre forgetting about anyone but you, when before dawn
on the piano you pound _Great Balls of Fire_ and _The Old Rugged Cross_

and whistle in searing vibrato. You gift Dollar Store Kleenex,
pour beans into wine bottles. You lift my chin and say, IÕm so glad

you were bornÑthen your pupils widen and tunnel back to before
I was here, before my brothers or sister, before you lost your father,

a time of buses and rain, of radio static, and for a minute
youÕre far from me, so I reach for your trembling hand.

Joanne:

Wow.

Abram:

Thank you so much for that, thatÕs so powerful. Maybe, Joanne, it would be great to hear a bit from you about the kind of tradition of elegy that this situates itself in.Ê

Joanne:

So when we say Òelegy,Ó we are commemorating a loss, and weÕre commemorating grief and death, and so, often itÕs the physical death of someone we love. But, it isnÕt just a eulogy. ÒElegyÓ is not the same as Òeulogy,Ó right? So when we offer a eulogy for someone who has died, itÕs often coming along with funerary rituals and rights, right? And itÕs often in praise of someone. But the elegy is so much bigger than that, because itÕs about grief, but it can also be about anger and struggle, and resistance to the fact of this loss. And the other thing that makes ÒelegyÓ interesting is that it doesnÕt just have to be for the death of a person, as in the case of this poem, what an amazing title, ÒElegy for My MotherÕs Mind.Ó So, itÕs the loss of the mind and of memory thatÕs being commemorated here. But it can be the loss of a place that a person can no longer return to, right, it can be an emotion. And so I feel like itÕs a really broad category of poetic expression, and I just love reading elegies to see how each poet innovates within that mode in a new way.

Laura:

It may be interesting to know that one of the previous versions of this poem was actually called ÒPre-Elegy for My MotherÕs Mind,Ó thinking about it as, you know, the elegy waiting to happen, because she still had capabilities, and frankly still does. But I was speaking about that with someone and they said Òwhy do you have it as a Ôpre-elegy,Õ why not just a straight-up Ôelegy?ÕÓ And I made that change. This isnÕt a pre-elegy, itÕs not just an anticipatory poem waiting for this loss to happen, it is active, itÕs an active loss. That was a decision I was glad that I made and also, that somebody pointed out to me to consider, because this feels much more true.

Abram:

Can I ask you how you think about what ought to come as the first line of a poem? WhatÕs the effect youÕre going for, how do you know when youÕve got the right opening line?

Laura:Ê

ThatÕs a great question, Abram. One answer to that question is, for this poem, starting sort of with action, ÒweÕre walking inside your mindÓ - like, from the outset, the situation feels pretty clear. Another answer is a nod to the poet Jenny Browne who, IÕve thanked her through the years for saying, ÒLaura, you should lop off the first seven lines and lop off the last seven lines and see whatÕs really happening in there.Ó That advice sometimes rings to me in my own, you know, private process, where I donÕt need someone else to tell me to do that anymore, where I may really look at Òwhere does this poem really begin?Ó And so, it felt to me that the revisions that I made got to the essence of this beginning with a little more immediacy.Ê

Abram:

Yeah. And IÕm curious, too, then, to think as well about endings, thereÕs a slightly different ending that used to come in the earlier draft. I think itÕs great that we can talk about drafts and how a poet goes through the process, we donÕt often get that opportunity. And the draft that came before, at least at some point before, ended with the motherÕs knowledge, with all that she knew from the past. And the trembling led to the knowledge, and here we end with the trembling hand itself. So IÕm curious to know how you tweaked that end and what you were thinking about as you did so.Ê

Laura:Ê

Sometimes we overwrite, thinking we need to lead a reader to, you know, Òsomeone was thinking about this,Ó where the trembling hand was really what the conclusion was. Reaching for someoneÕs trembling hand, that knowledge is passed through that action of the daughter holding the hand of the mother thatÕs trembling, quite clearly with all of the reverberations of the past that were just spoken about in the previous lines. So, the thinking got in the way, I thought.

Abram:

Yeah.

Laura:

And the action and the tangibility of the image of the hand felt truer to the poem.Ê

Abram:

The trembling hand, as an image, brings out all of the tension of the poem, of all this knowledge, and how does it pass on, and all of these memories and what happens to them, and reaching for them even as theyÕre trembling.Ê

Joanne:Ê

Just to step back a moment, I love what you just said about Jenny BrowneÕs advice, and how often a poem begins in one place and feels more complete in another. And I feel like thatÕs an amazing choice here, because it means that the poem now begins in metaphor, and I think the reason thatÕs so striking is because the metaphor then reaches out to me as a reader, so that even if the ÒyouÓ of the poem is the speakerÕs mother, I feel like that metaphor teaches me about how many times IÕve wanted to change somebodyÕs mind about something and canÕt, right? [Laughs]

Laura:

[Laughs]

Abram:

[Laughs]

Joanne:

How many times IÕve wanted to walk into someoneÕs mind and sweep away the snow, whatever that snow might be, and I simply canÕt, and what a, you know, what a failed enterprise that is. And in a way, the poem begins in failure - I donÕt mean to suggest itÕs a failed poem. I mean that it is already pointing to the limits of whatÕs possible, and I admire that so much, I think thatÕs what makes this poem so memorable for me, is in large part the metaphors, you know? I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you achieve by addressing this poem to the Òyou,Ó to the mother?

Laura:

Having a mother whoÕs experiencing dementia, I think I felt compelled to address the ÒyouÓ because I really wanted to be able to say these things, possibly, to her? You know, the speaker of this poem addressing the mother in particular or the motherÕs mind in particular, it sort of is what we canÕt actually say to the person themselves, this isnÕt a conversation that can really happen. I canÕt say this to her, the speaker of this poem canÕt address this to the mother in particular. So it felt like a way of grappling at a very close distance, whereas a ÒsheÓ wouldÕve distanced this even further, where I feel like the impulse of this speaker is wanting to hang onto those things, really wanting that closeness and the intimacy of a Òyou,Ó this is an address from ÒmeÓ to Òyou,Ó and a real close expression of the loss that is known, these things are coming, which in some way make them even worse. [Laughs]

Joanne:

Yeah.Ê

Laura:

Because theyÕre coming, theyÕre anticipated.Ê

Abram:

Yeah, and usually I think of elegy as a response to a loss that has occurred, as a way of grappling with it. But whatÕs particularly interesting about the sort of twist of this poem is that itÕs both enduring that loss and anticipating it further. ItÕs in the process of the losing that we get the elegy itself, and one of the things I find really wonderful about this poem, I think itÕs a really excellent sort of account of the experience of the gradual loss, because memories are lost at such a different rate, I was listening to my friendÕs podcast _The Brain Made Plain_, Jonathan Peelle, my friend, is a neuroscientist, has this podcast, and the first episode is talking about the different ways that memories are stored. ItÕs mentioned at one point, you know, where short-term memories are in one place, and they can be effective very differently than long-term memories, and so you begin to lose the ability to have conversations with people in the immediate, and yet, they can remember things like how to play piano songs from their youth, or even, their own youth, going so far back, and so itÕs a very strange process of loss where deep knowledge and deep memories remain even as new memories are lost and never retained. And I feel like the experience of the poem is walking through this very odd experience of time overlapping and enfolding itself into the present and the past in very strange ways.Ê

Laura:

What you said, Abram, about the podcast and memory, the short-term to the long-term, in this poem, where the ÒyouÓ is playing the piano, and pounding these songs, it is fascinating to me because - also, this poem was written some time ago. Actually, this poem was probably written about six or so years ago, which was really at the beginning of dementia for our family, but my mother is still alive and I had occasion to visit recently, and she may forget that IÕm visiting because I live out-of-state, so when I go there, itÕs like a surprise every time she walks in the room and sees me. However, she still will sit at the piano and sheÕs playing these old hymns and still remembering the words and playing - sheÕll read the music but I know she doesnÕt need it. And, it is fascinating to me how the short-term is not accessible, but the deep, deep memory, and thatÕs one of the things that, when writing this poem, I was thinking about, was the speaker losing the ÒyouÓ to those deep, deep, deep memories and wondering where the speaker even fits in those memories.

Abram:

So my own Oma, she lived well into her nineties, one of the very last things she could remember was the hymns that she grew up with. She could forget that I had a conversation with her, but she could sit down and play ÒJesus Loves MeÓ on the piano. And my grandma on the other side, who spoke Dutch until she was five, and then spoke English for ninety years, when she was ninety-five, started to forget the English words for things and remember only the Dutch words.

Joanne:Ê

Wow!

Abram:

And I feel like this poem is such a wonderful and heart-wrenching account of Òwhat are the memories that really lie at the core of things, and where do I, the speaker, fit in those memories? At what point will I be lost but youÕll still be playing _The Old Rugged Cross_?Ó

Joanne:

You know, what I love about the poem, too, is how many directions it pulls me in as a reader in order to understand the complexity of this experience, and I love that you do it through image and through metaphor, so, look at some of whatÕs happening in the middle of the poem, right, even the word ÒloseÓ is used multiple times in the poem - ÒLose the girl / Who pedaled her Schwinn up and back the driveway while you / Fried bacon behind the evergreens in an electric pan so the house / WouldnÕt smell.Ó And then, so there are all kinds of details from the past that may be vanishing, but, some of the things that are vanishing may not be entirely bad, so I love this sentence: ÒYouÕre forgetting sadness, too. That pool / where you used to swim with an armload of bricks, / where no slow tug of a rope could pull you from the bottom.Ó ThatÕs an amazing metaphor for the intensity of the sadness that the mother once felt, but doesnÕt have to feel anymore, right? And then that, juxtaposed against - if IÕm being honest, I find the next sentence quite humorous: ÒYouÕre forgetting about anyone but you,Ó I kind of love that. ÒWhen before dawn,Ó [Laughs]

Laura:

[Laughs]

Abram:

[Laughs]

Joanne:

ThatÕs important! That these songs - Òwhen before dawn / on the piano you pound _Great Balls of Fire_ and _The Old Rugged Cross_ / and whistle in searing vibrato.Ó [Laughs] ItÕs before dawn! [Laughs]

Laura:

[Laughs]

Joanne:

And, I love that because thereÕs a beautiful lack of interest in what anybody else is doing in the house, you know, and I appreciate how varied the tones of the poem are.

Laura:

Yeah, you know, the loss of memory, first off, itÕs not linear.Ê

Joanne:

Yeah.

Laura:

It is this jumbled - and the emotional responses around the loss of memory are very complex, where there are small gifts in this too, when someone is living wholly in the present, thereÕs not room for the kind of daily, at least in our experience, the ÒyouÓ is generally happy. ThereÕs not a whole world of conflict around it. ThereÕs definitely moments, where, you know, in real life, where the ÒyouÓ is aware of the problem and then it becomes difficult, but then generally, it is this kind of, like, earned place to think only of yourself without regard!

Joanne:

Yeah.Ê

Laura:

Of these things, you know, itÕs not a neat path to follow. ThereÕs a lot of complexity along the way.

Joanne:

But I think thatÕs why the poem is such an achievement, because, as I say, it does pull me in all those directions so that even if I am not present to the lived experience of the individuals in this poem, I feel like IÕve been in that experience, I feel like the poem emulates some of that nonlinear movement.Ê

Abram:

And, yeah, I think part of the way it does that is through its structure, and the ÒyouÕre forgetting sadness tooÓ is a kind of a sudden turn, but itÕs also a kind of a sudden short sentence after very long sentences and long thoughts that come before, and so the suddenness of that turn, which is like the suddenness of the turns that we experience in this mother, is kind of brought out by the shortness of a sentence that is in the middle of a line, and we donÕt quite expect it. And so, I feel like structure is doing a lot of work here. Can you say a word - so what we have, and listeners will not see this in front of them, but this poem is written in couplets. Can you talk a little bit about how and why you structured the poem that way, what was the couplet doing for you as a way to think through this poem?

Laura:

I canÕt remember if I tried it in all different ways, I probably did. But, in the end, the couplet felt to me like the right amount of time to pause to absorb what was written there. So, also, these are longer lines than I often use, than IÕm often writing in, and so, when I compose a poem IÕm also composing aloud, so I read in my process, especially revision, IÕm always reading aloud. And it was really about the momentum and the pauses, so it felt like the information in each of those couplets, in some way, needed to be next to each other, needed to be paired up, but yet, if I had one, big block of lines, there wasnÕt enough space to let this poem breathe. To really, I mean I suppose, to give the mind a little rest between, kind of these - I also felt like the couplets made possible the shifts we had just been talking about, where thereÕs unity in the couplets, itÕs a very controlled, uniform form, but it allowed for multiple turns in that space that also was important to have pause in between each of those as the sudden turns were happening.

Joanne:

I love what you said about how you read your work aloud as youÕre developing the poem - thatÕs true in general for all of your work?

Laura:

Yeah, my husband knows when IÕm working, Ôcause you can hear me, and he knows not to come in, you know, if it sounds like IÕm talking to myself in there.

Joanne:

Well, thatÕs amazing. And then, so that must help you think about the lineation within the couplets as well. And, I do this all the time, when I read any poem, which is even before I read for the sense of a poem, I look at the ends of the lines to see if thereÕs something the poem can teach me even before IÕm reading for sense. And so if I look at the ends of your lines, look at what they do, look at the story that they already tell even before we read the whole poem, right? ÒSnow,Ó Òblank,Ó Òtulip,Ó Ògirl,Ó Òyou,Ó Òhouse,Ó Òtree,Ó Ògo,Ó Òblouse,Ó Òpool,Ó Òbricks,Ó Òbottom,Ó dawn,Ó ÒCross,Ó ÒKleenex,Ó Òglad,Ó Òbefore,Ó Òfather,Ó Òminute,Ó Òhand.Ó IÊ feel like those words point to whatÕs inside the lines in a really powerful way and create surprise and emphasize things that I then look for in the body of the poem, which I just love.

Laura:

It also made me see how noun-heavy.

Joanne:

Yeah!

Laura:

ItÕs really just nouns and pronoun and verb, which are the building blocks of most of our writing, anyway.

Abram:

The details chosen, also I think, really matter, and when youÕre thinking about the construction of a poem, itÕs not just that she goes to the store, she goes to the dollar store for Kleenex, itÕs not just that she plays songs on the piano, she pounds two very different kinds of songs.

Joanne:

[Laughs]

Abram:

_Great Balls of Fire_ and _The Old Rugged Cross_ - what I think makes this a particularly good poem is that the experiences being described are often brought through by the sounds being used to describe them, so one particularly good example of that to me is this incredible metaphor of sadness, and the power that this sadness had over this mother and how hard it was to get beyond it: ÒThat pool / where you used to swim with an armload of bricks, / where no slow tug of a rope could pull you from the bottom.Ó The slow tugging of the rope is in the words themselves, and the bottom just feels so heavy by the sounds of the words being used to describe it.Ê

Laura:

Well, as I said, I do compose aloud, and I am very interested in sonic association and the sonic landscape that a poem can build. So, a lot of that comes into play in my revision process, where it may be choosing a different word than I had originally based on its sonic quality, to create, for instance, that repeated Òno slow,Ó - and, you know, the monosyllabics there that really simplify and slow down the reading. So, having those sonic associations will often drive the ultimate choices that come into the poem, and honestly, in the generative process, because as IÕm generating, sometimes the next word, or a word in close proximity to whatever it is that IÕve just written, might spring up because of some sonic similarity - the assonance is really, I think, what pulls me into those associative places more than anything else.

Abram:

Well, there are sounds in the poem itself too, which is, I think, particularly powerful - that is, we can hear these songs being played on the piano but the last sound of the poem is radio static, and the last image of the poem is a soundless trembling hand. And so, the noise of the poem is going out, even as the poem comes to an end.

Laura:

ThatÕs a beautiful observation, Abram. Thank you for noticing that, because the truth is, I didnÕt think of that consciously in the composition. The Òradio static,Ó certainly, you know, kind of the hum of what that means isnÕt so different than the Òbeginning to snowÓ at the beginning, I think of, you know, radio static, like, back in the day with televisions when it had the static we used to call that Òthe snowÓ on the screen.

Joanne:

ThatÕs right.Ê

Laura:

So, you know, there was some conscious association there, but the thought of it really being muffled out to a kind of silence, IÕm enjoying that read, thank you.Ê

Joanne:

So, Laura, with all that youÕve taught us about this poem, all that weÕve learned, would you be willing to read this poem again?

Laura:

I would love to.Ê

Elegy for My MotherÕs Mind

WeÕre walking inside your mind where itÕs just beginning to snow,
and no matter how quickly I shovel, the path will go blank.

Where youÕll lose the child who picked every last tulip
you waited a solid Chicago winter to watch bloom. Lose the girl

Who pedaled her Schwinn up and back the driveway while you
Fried bacon behind the evergreens in an electric pan so the house

WouldnÕt smell. But this night, grackles above us blacken the tree
and you hold on to me as you get into the car. Together, we go

to the store where you try on every clearance-marked blouse
and buy nothing. YouÕre forgetting sadness, too. That pool

where you used to swim with an armload of bricks,
where no slow tug of a rope could pull you from the bottom.

YouÕre forgetting about anyone but you, when before dawn
on the piano you pound _Great Balls of Fire_ and _The Old Rugged Cross_

and whistle in searing vibrato. You gift Dollar Store Kleenex,
pour beans into wine bottles. You lift my chin and say, IÕm so glad

you were bornÑthen your pupils widen and tunnel back to before
I was here, before my brothers or sister, before you lost your father,

a time of buses and rain, of radio static, and for a minute
youÕre far from me, so I reach for your trembling hand.

Abram:

That was so great! Thank you so much for reading that.

Laura:

It is my great pleasure, thank you, Joanne and Abram, for having me, and thank you for all you do for poetry.Ê

Abram:

To learn more about LauraÕs poetry, please visit her website at lauravanprooyen.com. To learn more about this podcast, please visit poetryforall.fireside.fm. If you donÕt already subscribe, please do, and please give us a rating as well and help us to spread the good news about this podcast.

Joanne:

Thank you for listening.