Newsletter Issue #56 March, 2016

March: Madness, yes — although of a clinical nature, as considered in this month’s Editor’s Note — a too-long remembrance/birthday greeting to my brother, M. Still, inspired by this month’s cover art, “The Weiqui Players,” I found myself somewhat agog among the ghosts of that peculiar childhood of mine, a subject which I note there has not succumbed to my efforts to address in poetry, try as I might. And so this introductory note will be brief, in recompense for my long-windedness — futile, perhaps, too, but well-intentioned. Instead, let me fill this blank page with real news: refreshing, no? Lots to relay: information regarding the new print Plume Poetry V 4, readings in support of its launch at AWP, Plume Editions, our Featured Selection, and other adventures.

So let’s move on, shall we?
To, first, this month’s  “secret poem” from one Plume poet to another —  —  Linda Pasten’s “Why Are Your Poems So Dark?” introduced by Plumecontributor Kelli Russell Agadon — the essay beautiful itself, with an instantly relatable childhood memory (for the morose legions of poets) and insightful ruminations on this remarkable piece.

Falling in Love with the Shadows: 
Observations on Linda Pastan’s Poem, “Why Are Your Poems So Dark?” 

For years as a poet, people asked me why I wrote so much about death. And for years, I didn’t have an answer. I have always been drawn to darker subjects. Just as some people ache for the buzz of morning or the stretch of sunlight, I have always been thankful for the silent moon and the dead of night.

Even as a child, when other girls were dressing in pink dresses and satin jackets, I’d ask my mother if we could stop at 7-11 for slurpees, then to drive to the old cemetery with the wrought-iron fence to spend a few moments to look inside. Together in her car, we’d sit in front of the locked gate with arm-sized chain–my mum sipping her coffee and me with my slurpee almost spilling on my lap as I tried to read the names on the cracked headstones. Finally, when her coffee was done and she couldn’t spend another moment doing nothing, she’d say, “Did you get enough ghosts for the afternoon?” And I’d answer, “Almost.” And together off we’d drive into the afternoon.

When I began reading and writing poems, it wasn’t a surprise that I was drawn to the darker subjects. Sylvia Plath pulled me in with her Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well, Anne Sexton whispered her suicides have a special language in my ear, while Emily Dickinson spoke loudest to me when she said, If I should die,/And you should live. Even now, if you ask what’s my favorite image from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” I will tell you it’s the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

As much as these poets gave me permission to write about the darker elements in life, I never felt I had a good answer when people asked about the darkness in my work. But I have learned many times, it takes another poet to help a poet, so when I stumbled upon Linda Pastan’s poem, “Why Are Your Poems So Dark?” I realized someone else had been questioned too, and she had written my answer.

In this sixteen-line poem, Pastan answers the question with beauty, the question I’ve been trying to answer all my writing life:

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

Here, darkness is celebrated–in the radiance of ebony and crows, that small mole / on your left cheekbone. In this sparse poem, Pastan confronts the questioner with what most people are really asking the poet: Why are you sad so often? Or perhaps, “Are you sad?”

It is easy to confuse the narrator in any poem for the poet, but as Marvin Bell has said, “The speaker isn’t the poet, just someone who knows a lot about her.” Lucille Clifton once told Pastan she thought her poems do “have an edge of darkness.” And Pastan herself has admitted she was a “gloomy adolescent…a gloomy child.” But as poets, this is how our lives, our obsessions, our passions spill over into our work. Maybe it’s an internal darkness, a temperament, maybe it’s curiosity–seeing how close we can get to the darkness without losing our light. As poets, it’s our job to write what we need to write, even if what we write about makes others uncomfortable.

I believe many of us read (and write) poetry to remind ourselves we are not alone in the world. Some of us carry sorrow, some darkness, some anxiety, some a mix of all of the above. I have learned poetry is meant to explore all the places in our minds we’re not supposed to talk about. And when we hold a light to anything, some of us will fall in love with what’s been illuminated, but many of us still fall in the love with the shadow, and that’s okay too.

In this country, happiness has always been viewed as a destination, something we should want to achieve–the pursuit of happiness–but sometimes we need a reminder that we can see the sacred in the darkness. And sometimes, we need a poet like Pastan to write our answer for us, to remind the questioners when they ask about darkness in our work to ask the moon, and let us be.

–Kelli Russel Agadon, February 2016