By Lisa Hase-Jackson
Because Sandra Beasley’s newest collection of poetry, Count
the Waves, arrived within the
slim period of time between the end of the spring semester teaching and the beginning
of my summer graduating residency, I had to relegate it to a stack of books for
later reading. Before doing so, though, I glanced over the dust jacket notes to
get a sense of the book’s focus. I was struck by a line in the third paragraph
suggesting that the poems in Count the Waves “illuminate how intimacy is lost
and gained during our travels.” Since my own travels these past ten years have
led me from the Midwest to the Southeast United States by way of New Mexico and
South Korea, both gaining and losing friends with each move, I felt certain I
would find resonance within the collection’s pages. At least, I reasoned, I had
something good to read when I returned home. When Leslie Pietrzyk later
approached me about interviewing Beasley, I was happy for the opportunity to
get to know the poet behind the poems knowing that the encounter would also
enrich my reading of the book.
As is often the case for writers in the summer, Beasley and
I had a number of obligations to juggle, but she was eventually able to carve
out time to graciously answer my interview questions. I found her responses
insightful and enlightening and am happy to share our exchange here.
1. Titles are often tricky for
writers, especially when it comes to entire books or collections. Can you
speak to the significance of the title “Let Me Count the Waves” and what
connection it has to the Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet quoted at
the book’s beginning?
The phrase, "Let me count the waves," first
appears in I
WAS THE JUKEBOX in "Love Poem for Oxidation." In that
incarnation, the "waves" literally denote the movement of water. As a
child, when I was out bodysurfing with my dad in Florida or North Carolina, you
had to "count the waves" in order to catch one big enough to carry
your body to shore. By the time the phrase was re-appropriated as a poem
title, I was paying attention to secondary connotations: the iterative patterns
of "counting" required by a sestina's repetitions, and the
"waves" of third- and fourth-wave feminism. That poem is very much
about struggling to position myself as a poet versus being a "woman"
poet. I was trying to figure out whether that demarcation is trivializing, or
productive.
In choosing what would provide the collection's title, I
wanted something with bravado, and in the imperative tone. I also got back to
questioning why the phrase "Let me count the waves" had lodged so
firmly in my head in the first place: the answer being, a ghost-memory of
reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet, "How do I love thee? Let me
count the ways…." back in high school, and perhaps mishearing it to suit
my own purposes. When I looked a little more deeply into Browning's life--in
which a long-distance love inspired an overturning of everything, flight from
an oppressive household, and eventual happiness--I knew I'd found my
inspiration point.
2. Many of the poems in this
collection are titled after specific lines in The Travelers Vade Mecum, which is an important influence in
this collection. So many, in fact, that it is a little surprising to
find poems that are not overtly related to that compendium. Can
you provide some insight into how you decided which poems to include and
your method for ordering them? Are the “non-numbered” poems related
to those which are numbered?
The Traveler's Vade
Mecum series began as the solicitation for a single poem, for an anthology
that will be published in 2017 by Red Hen Press. I usually hate prompts, but I
loved the exercise as a way of thinking about intimacy over long distances, so
I just kept going and ended up with over two dozen poems, most of which are in
COUNT THE WAVES. The inspiring book exists, so my titles are a straightforward
representation of A. C. Baldwin's lines and the numbers assigned to them. But I
didn't want those indexing numbers to control my sequence, so the challenge
became to find an internal "order" that respected the individual
poems. It's not as simple as saying that the TVM poems are of one world, and
the non-TVM poems are of another. About half the poems in the collection speak
to a discernible, personal--I stop short of saying
"confessional"--narrative, and that category that cuts through both
groupings.
3. Though they do not announce
themselves, there are six varieties of sestina in your collection. Besides
an organizing pattern, they share inventive language and common themes,
almost as if they are part of a larger organization. What attracts
you to the sestina, and what other elements of form are at play in
this collection?
The sestinas aren't so much different varieties as different
stanza arrangements; I've kept the pattern of end words entirely intact, with
an approximately ten-syllable line, and always opted to include the envoi. At
one point, they were all formatted in the traditional sestets. But my early readers
were experiencing visual fatigue. They'd spot the shape of the poem on the
page, know "Oh, a sestina," and it would temper their subsequent
engagement. I understand the phenomenon, because I do the same thing; you start
looking for the tricks of the form, instead of absorbing the content. I changed
the stanza breaks as a way of tricking the eye.
I love sestinas because they channel the energies of two
modes I am also drawn to, parallel structure and anaphora, and lexical
repetition that approximates rhyme. The "Valentines" build upon the
interest in dramatis personae that I raised in I WAS THE
JUKEBOX. The best examples of the form, with Miller Williams' "The
Shrinking Lonesome Sestina" coming to mind, feel playful and absurdist
right up until the moment they break your heart.
4. Like many of your poems, “The Wake” incorporates really wonderful details, like “dovebelly brown,” “caress the bend of waists slendered by work,” and (my favorite) “still the silk jutting from his pocket matches / the band on his hat,” all of which lend a sense of authenticity and verisimilitude to this reimagining of Whistler’s life. Each line contributes to the poem’s dimensionality yet maintains a very satisfying pace that leads the reader to the poem’s conclusion. It made me feel as if I gained some insight into Whistler’s experience of the world and especially made me wonder how you were able to create that impression. Do you have a background in art history, or does Whistler hold particular importance for you?
I'm thrilled to have you focus on "The Wake,"
which is probably the oldest poem in the manuscript, though I did revise before
adding it in. The text takes many cues from a Washington, D.C. exhibit on
"Whistler and His Circle in Venice," which resulted in a 2003
book of the same name curated by Eric Denker. I had recently been to Venice
when I saw the show at the Freer Collection, and the delicate pastels and works
on paper made an indelible impression. Whistler is an interesting figure
because of his ego, his personal life, and his eye for the possibilities of
mass reproduction and distribution; he was the Charles Dickens of the art
world. I have always been drawn to ekphrasis and the visual arts. My mother is
a painter and a collagist, and my husband is a painter and photographer. In
another life, I could have happily worked in a museum to the end of my
days.
5. The title poem, “Let me Count
the Waves,” includes the epigraph “We must not look for poetry in poems”
from Donald Revell. While there is more than one way to interpret this
aphorism, can you talk a little bit more about where, for you, poems
come from?
In fairness to Revell, his suggestion is reasonable: Poems
should not be overly self-referential. They should not be smug in their own
performance. A poem should not reach for the low-hanging fruit of what has
already been deemed "poetic." Read in that light, I can agree with
him. But at the other end of the spectrum, and historically, one way upstart
voices have tempered the privilege and power of others is through enacting
verbal fireworks. So there has to be a place for a showy and brazen. There has
to be a place for that which will not be denied.
For me, most poems begin in the struggle to identify
something. I operate from an emotional or philosophical perception, an
instinct, without quite knowing what I'm trying to say. The irony is, once I
decide what I am trying to say--and the poem is not a mature work until that
happens--my craft is to articulate as thoroughly as possible. I thread a needle
with what I refer to as the bright particulars of the situation. Bonus points
if there is an opportunity for humor.
6. This is your third full-length
collection of poetry. How did your approach to this book of poetry differ
from your approach to your first book?
In assembling a third book, I was aware from the outset that
the pile of pages could be a manuscript. That is both a strength and weakness.
On one hand, I knew to avoid repeating the same images or stylistic moves,
because what provides satisfying closure in one standalone poem will fail when
you attempt to use it on three poems in a row. On the other hand, I may have
prematurely curtailed some ideas of drafts because they felt too far outside
the growing body of work. But overall, this is the biggest and rangiest
collection I've ever done. Though the theme of adult love is unapologetically
singular, that still leaves a lot of ground to cover.
7. What projects are you working
on now?
Well, to be fair--an author isn't "done" with a
book once it is out in the world! I'll be pursuing whatever combination of
readings, classroom visits, and other opportunities that I can find to get the
word out about COUNT THE WAVES.
But in terms of new directions, I have a proposal for a nonfiction
project, which I'll convert to a long essay if it does not find a publisher. I
am writing poems commissioned by the Southern Foodways Alliance, in
anticipation of an October gathering in my beloved town of Oxford, Mississippi.
I'm also in my second year of teaching with the University of Tampa's
low-residency MFA program, and I am really appreciating the opportunity to
mentor in both poetry and memoir, not to mention the appeal of getting to know
a new town with visits twice a year. And meanwhile, I'm settling into a new
neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with my husband. Life is busy, but it is the
best kind of busy.
~Buy Count the Waves
on Amazon
or through an
independent bookseller.
*****
ABOUT LISA
HASE-JACKSON
Lisa Hase-Jackson holds an MFA from the Converse College Low-Residency program and teaches
poetry and English Composition at the College of Charleston in Charleston, S.C. Her current
projects include an anthology of poems celebrating New Mexico’s
2012 centennial and a manuscript of her own poetry. Her work has
appeared in Midwest Quarterly, Kansas City Voices, Pilgrimage,
Jasper/Fall Lines and elsewhere. She is the Review Editor for South
85 Journal and keeps a poetry blog at ZingaraPoet.net.
