[Intro music]
Allison Arth: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Little Oracles podcast, an oracle for the everyday creative. I’m Allison Arth. Welcome back to Episode Six of the Divinations miniseries here on the Little Oracles podcast. If this is your first Divinations experience, I want to welcome you; Divinations is a very special seven-episode miniseries in which poet Sandra Yannone and I are engaging in an epistolary exchange of poetry. And we're sharing those poems with each other and with all of you as works in progress, and talking about the creative process behind them, and creative collaboration, and all of those things that influence us in the creative work that we do. If you're interested in why we're doing this, and what inspired us to do this, I'll link the first Divinations episode in the show notes, where you can find out more about the concept, and the work, and us, too. But before we really get into today's episode and today's poem, Sandy: hello, hello; welcome, welcome. Lovely to sit down with you, as always.
Sandra Yannone: Hello, hello, Allison. I am so looking forward to this lineage that we've been creating together over these past five episodes, and to see what manifests today in our sixth. Thank you so much.
AA: Yeah, thank you! It's so good to be here with you. So Sandy is going to share her poem, “By Years the Obstacles, at Night the Scars,” and then we're going to unpack it; but before you read, is there anything you want to share to set us up for your reading?
SLY: I really latched on to your word in “Articles of Incorporation,” the word “mystic.” It was rather instantaneous; when I first heard the poem, I had a strong gravitational pull and a knowing that that's what was going to be the leap. And the oracle that I chose was “bolt.”
By Years the Obstacles, at Night the Scars
So I turn into a mystic
seeking to be the metal key
that unlocks locks, or better
yet, never going near
physical ones, just prying
open any urge to wonder,
to shepherd that converse
with others. It can happen
in any dark-horse city at any time —
Vermillion, York,
Walla Walla, Kalamazoo —
at any underdog motel check-in
or eager roadside diner
over any unassuming meal. Watch.
You unbolt your mouth
to release a sound,
then close it before
you speak to create
a space for the voice
sitting next to you. You
confirm this method
when the hardware
store in your hometown
cannot make a duplicate
key to save anyone’s life,
or, more urgently put,
to your father’s stained glass studio.
You return three times
after three different clerks
make adaptations
to the previous key.
You never knew
making a replacement
required a kind of magic,
but now the Ace
Hardware on Main Street
has you reconsidering
why you have trusted
ground-down grooves
on a metal shaft
to grant you entry
into the unknown that exists
behind any door. And what
about those locks that can’t
possibly possess keys? I’ve seen them
lately on a drive to Providence.
I stop at the scenic
overlook, overgrown, off I-95
on the edge of Mystic.
Bolted to the rusting
chain-link fence that suggests
preventing anyone from jumping
to the train tracks below,
hundreds of padlocks dangling
in the salty, Mystic air.
The mystic in me seeks
a placard, a sign, an historical
marker, anything to reveal
what’s behind this random curtain
of padlocks occupying the chains
like bird shadows populate a wire.
Not even Houdini could hide
that many lock picks
inside his mouth to dare
escape. I can manifest
no logical or illogical
explanations for what I witness.
I drive away to Providence.
Weeks later, I still see a ghost
image of that scarred roadside
fence waiting for some
mythical smith to unbolt all
the locks from their Mystic burdens.
AA: Oh my gosh, this poem. This poem, Sandy. I– I am so intrigued by what is going on in this poem. There's something so incantatory about it, and it's not necessarily, like, a linguistic incantation, but it's– it's almost like the person in this poem, this narrator– it's almost like spellcasting in these various scenes that you've set up, right? You've got the diner, you've got the hardware store, you've got the glass studio, you've got the roadside in Mystic; maybe you're seeing through the veil. There's this– this whole cast of mysticism around this poem. And you've also got a lot of spiritualist suggestions and imagery throughout: the ghosts; you know, you talk about the unknown; Houdini, obviously interested in spiritualism; and this whole pall of mysticism. So my initial question is, what is it about that word “mystic” and that idea of mysticism, and applying that to the way that you interact with people and with things in the world? What drew you to that, to frame this poem in that way?
SLY: It's a great opening question for this poem, and it's a multi-layered answer that I'm going to give. I'm going to take us back, actually, to a poem in Boats for Women, my first collection, where, in one of the poems that's about the Titanic disaster of 1912, I'm also driving to Providence, and stop at Mystic. And I had no idea that re-driving that drive would drive me to revisit what I didn't know I was talking about in that poem.
AA: Mm; mm-hmm.
SLY: And that appears in this poem, because clearly back then — and that was more than 20 years ago that I wrote that poem — there's a thing from childhood; there are these cards, or there were often buttons: they're called Vari-View. And if you would tilt it one way, it would have an image, and you'd tilt it the other way and you'd see a different image. But I didn't know how to tilt the word “mystic” back then; it was very straight up: I was driving to Mystic, and that didn't have any allusion to mysticism, but I didn't have the portals at that time. We move many years later, through many experiences later, and I'm on this drive to Providence, and now Providence feels so large, and Mystic feels so large, and all the veils seem to wanting to be unveiled. And I had just come from a cross country drive; we've talked about this in other episodes, how I've recently moved from the West Coast to the East Coast, and on that drive, my friend and I found ourselves in all these different small towns or cities, just meeting people, and having some unbelievable conversation with strangers who felt as if we knew them.
AA: Mm.
SLY: And as if we were all in this fulcrum where we were seeking to heal each other in some way. And we would just lean into it. And as we drove further across the country, we knew more and more that that's what we were doing when we landed in any city: is that we were going to sit down with whomever we met, and we were going to try to pry something open and be of service to the moment. And that's where much of the backstory of this poem comes from.
AA: Mm-hmm; mm-hmm. Something else that really interests me in this poem as well — and I think this kind of plays into the mysticism, right? — is that you have a lot of, like, setups and payoffs in this poem. And I think that's kind of the nature of keys, right? Keys unlock things; keys unbolt things. And you start with this thesis, almost, “seeking to be the metal key that unlocks locks, or better yet,” and you kind of go on to– to this, uh, thing that you're alluding to, where you're sitting down with people and you are in service to the moment, and you're talking with them, and having these wonderful rich conversations. But you pay off this metal-key thesis in various ways. And, you know, like I said, in these conversations, you pay it off when you go to the ACE Hardware, and you get these keys replicated, and finally one works. And then there's this turn in this poem where the payoffs, I think, stop happening in that really, kind of, rudimentary, functional way. And it's when we get this abandoned lock, and the speaker wonders, “Why am I trusting keys at all? Because there's this thing that exists in the world that Houdini can't even unlock, even with all of his myriad lockpicks; that a locksmith, maybe, can’t unlock.” And I'm so interested in that shift that happens in this poem, where you've had this– all these opportunities to set up these payouts, where things work and keys work, and then suddenly it turns into, “Why am I even trying to unlock something in this way?” What drew you to that decision and what helped you figure out that that's kind of where you wanted this poem to spin?
SLY: I like the word “spin,” because I didn't entirely know where the poem was going to go. All I knew was there was “mystic,” there were keys, and suddenly the swirl of things just started to come together. And I found myself so surprised as I was getting to the first– early drafts, that Houdini appears in the poem because again, in Boats for Women, there's an entire series of poems in the voice of Bess Houdini. So when– when these– I'm going to call them friends–
AA: [chuckles]
SLY: –uh, of mine show up, that I've not been writing about for a long time, um, you know, I'm– I'm– I'm fascinated by that, when I write another Titanic poem; when I write another poem that has Houdini in it; when I write another poem that has the word “glass” in it.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: And for me, process-wise, underneath all of this poem, is I've come to the point myself as a poet where I'm not surprised anymore that the things that I seem to gravitate to, or have gravitated to: of course they're going to show up again. They're these specters, you know, and they've– they've never fully unlocked.
AA: Mm; mm-hmm.
SLY: And I can never fully pull the veil.
AA: Yeah; yeah.
SLY: And it's also what drives us — literally, on this journey that I took — to, town after town after town, continue to repeat that process. There are no keys; there are no locks; there's just humanity revealing itself at every turn, at every corner, at every stoplight, at every exit sign.
AA: I love that you're talking about surprise, too, because that is surprise manifest, right? That revelation of other people and of making connections and– and building relationships and all of that: I think that's so crucial. And you're kind of doing that in your work as well, when you say that you're bringing out these old friends, as it were; these things that keep coming up and there is that element of– of reliance, but also, like you said, you know, you're– you're surprised. When you sit down to write a poem, are you looking to surprise yourself every time you go in? Are you hoping to surprise yourself every time you sit down to write? Is it always that kind of questing mentality?
SLY: I believe it is. I– and I– I like that it's called a quest– that you've called it a quest, rather than a hunt. I think there's something qualitatively different between the two.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: And as you were talking about this journey of this poem, and where surprise takes me, or maybe I take myself by surprise as I'm writing, I'm reminded of my mentor, Bill Knott– one of my mentors — and we've talked a lot about mentors, and we've talked about lineage in many of the previous episodes.
AA: Mm; mm-hmm.
SLY: He once said, “You can always find what your poem is really about inside your poem. There's often a line or a few lines that reveal what the poem is about. You don't know it when you're writing it, but when you go back to look at it, you can find that door.”
AA: Mm-hmm.
SLY: And as you were just talking, I was like, “Here's the answer to that question: it's in the poem itself.” And that is: “Watch. / You unbolt your mouth / to release a sound, / then close it before / you speak. To create / a space for the voice / sitting next to you. You.” Now, the two “yous” sit next to each other on this particular line; the line is, “sitting next to you. (Period) You,” line break. You're sitting next to yourself; it's about listening to yourself.
AA: Mm.
SLY: It's saying: lean into the mysticism of being with others.
AA: Mm-hmm; mm-hmm.
SLY: But it is also a reference to listening to yourself as other.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: And that's always the grandest, grandest surprise.
AA: Yeah, that brings me to something that I did want to talk about: you're talking about listening to yourself as other, and almost this, like, split-ness within a– a single person. And something that stands out to me so much in this poem is that you use the “you,” and you also use the “I.” So, there is a first person and a second person that exist within this poem, and I feel like the– the “you” — kind of like we talked about in our last episode, the self-referential “you” — is there, but also the “you,” the– the other “you” is there. And then this “I” is there, too. I'm so curious why you wanted to have all of those individuals populate this poem and serve as narrators in some capacity in this poem, because it is a very surprising choice; you don't see it that often, this mixing of the “you” and the “I,” when the “you” does stand in for an “I” in some cases.
SLY: Well, I'm wondering about this as I'm looking forward to when I'm going to be reflecting back on our project together.
AA: Mm-hmm.
SLY: Because there's been a “you” and an “I”; an “Allison” and a “Sandy” that have been in conversation with each other. Because I don't typically do this in my poems, and yet, in this series, this seems to be how I am addressing.
AA: Yeah! Yeah; yeah.
SLY: And I'm a very narrative poet usually, and I name the people; I will say who it is; we will know it's my father, it's my sister, it's a beloved, it's Houdini, it's the captain of the Titanic. They are often named.
AA: Mm.
SLY: And through most of this series, the “I” and the “you” have not been named as those first and second persons. That's another surprise to me.
AA: Yeah, they're almost archetypal in that way. They can kind of stand in for anyone that needs them, in a sense. I really like that.
SLY: When I was in graduate school — this was before I came out as lesbian — I often wrote “I–you” poems. I, literally, I call them that now: “I–you” poems. But those were complete veils, because I could not reveal to myself, and I certainly could not reveal to anyone else, that I was writing a poem to another woman. And so I would use the “I” and the “you” to veil all of that. But this isn't that kind of “I–you.”
AA: What kind of “I–you” is it? [chuckles]
SLY: [laughs] Um, it's the “I” and the “you” that actually seeks to create union, and connection, and the space between two individuals that is about revelation.
AA: Mm.
SLY: And I think it also is that commingling. It's almost like when Mendel took those snow peas, or whatever they were, and had that matrix of cross-pollination. There's the “I–you,” and then there's the “I–you” that is standing in for the “I–I.” There's the “I–you” that's standing in for the “you–you”–
AA: [laughs] Yeah!
SLY: –and then there's the “I–you” that's standing in for the “you–I.” I don't know if this makes any sense! [laughs]
AA: [laughs] Well, you know, one of our first episodes, I think it was Episode Two, we talked a lot about the– the confluence of science and poetry.
SLY: Mm.
AA: And I feel like this is– this is a button on that for sure. [laughs]
SLY: [laughs]
AA: [chuckles] Um, something that I– I also wanted to– to talk about here is that these lines — I have the benefit of seeing this poem — there's a lot of lines in this poem, and they're all very short. And I was really curious about why you chose to structure the poem in that way: with these really, really short lines that normally suggest, like, something very, very punchy, or something super-repetitive. But that's not what I'm getting out of this poem: I'm not getting percussive lines; I'm not getting something that feels speedy, necessarily; I'm not being forced to read these short lines to suggest that element of rapidity. I– I feel like you capture this narrative in– in your characteristically beautiful and focused language, but you have these really short lines, which is– it's– it feels– it feels kind of uncommon for the poetry that you've certainly shared here, and for the poetry that I've read of yours elsewhere, too. So what– what drew you to those short lines?
SLY: I think it goes back to the mystic seeking to be the metal key.
AA: Mm.
SLY: It's interesting, and not surprising, because you're a very circumspect reader, and you're aware of what the short line usually is doing: It's, as you said, percussive; it creates pace — usually a faster pace. For me, this was about: I want you to pay attention to every word as we get to that line break, and I actually want you to slow the whole process down. And it's the exact opposite of how the short line usually functions. Now, I didn't know that as I was beginning it, but– but as I became to know– as I became– “As I became to know the poem.” That doesn't even syntactically make sense! [laughs]
AA:[laughs] I actually kind of like that; I feel like that's kind of poetic! [laughs]
SLY: “As I became to know the poem.” [chuckles]
AA: “As I became to know the poem.” [laughs]
SLY: “As I became to know the poem.” And actually there's an example of it right there. “As I became,” line break, “to know the poem.”
AA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think this is so interesting because that process of enjambment, which, you know, to use a poetry term–
SLY: Yes.
AA: –the line break, and running a sentence into the next line, is enjambment, right? You do that throughout this poem. And, so often, people say that enjambment is used to fluidly move from one line to the next, and it does create that pace, and it does create that speed. But there's something about the way that you have broken these lines and the way that they flow into each other, it does make me want to– to sit here and focus, and really experience, and slow down, and– and have that savoring of every word that you're including in this poem. And I think it's because these sentences are actually, when you look at them, pretty long. So you're enjambing these sentences in these tiny little short lines, but it becomes this– like I said, at the very top of the episode, incantatory in that way.
SLY: Mm.
AA: And it's almost like we are speaking some kind of — to reference our previous episode — liturgy, or some kind of litany. And my eye is asked, and my brain is asked, and my ear is asked to really focus in.
SLY: I'll share another thing that I learned from Lucie Brock-Broido. And Lucie Brock-Broido, certainly, would be in the category of a mystic poet, if you've not read her work. So, she, when I worked with her, was trying to teach me how to use line breaks for the very first time. I didn't really know what a line break was, and there was this one summer where this is what she focused with me on. The other thing that she said in one of our workshops one evening was, “Every line is also a unit of meaning.”
AA: Mm.
SLY: Even if, syntactically, it is not a unit of meaning. But whatever you have on that line: can it be read as its own unit of meaning? So for instance, “sitting next to you. You”: that “you” is the “you” that you're sitting next to. That's the line as a unit of meaning. Now when you get to the next line, that's not what it may appear to mean. And it is there on the page if you are looking at it. It's the Vari-View all over again.
AA: Exactly. Tilting meaning in that way.
SLY: Tilting. Uh, and the– and a line break is always an opportunity to tilt.
AA: [gasps] That is so beautifully said. A line break is always an opportunity to tilt. The turn of any poem is an opportunity to tilt. The beginning of a poem is an opportunity to tilt. There are so many opportunities packed into all of these chances that we get to make things. And that is just– that's– that's it right there. That's why we do this. [laughs] That's why we write. And that's why we make things. Because there's always an opportunity to tilt.
SLY: There's also one other thing as we were talking about the tilt that I want to reference, which is the word “disaster.”
AA: Mm.
SLY: I am very drawn to disasters in my work, um, typically man-made disasters. I did not say “person-made,” because “man-made” is the term of art, but the word disaster literally means “to turn away from the star,” which means to begin to move back to the light is the opposite of disaster. It's a tilt back to the light, which, for me, is about desire and hope. So in that tilting that we've talked about, which way are we tilting? Are we– are we tilting from destruction toward light, or are the die being cast, and we're being thrown into destruction away from the light? And I'm always aware of that literal pivotal movement, and it's a mystical movement. It's a mystical movement.
AA: Mm; mm-hmm.
SLY: And I'm thinking of another poem that is also in The Glass Studio, my forthcoming collection, called “The Next Open Space.” They almost, to me, feel like companion poems, in that they both have this reach toward revealing how we connect with one another, how we support one another. And I did not set out to– to write a poem that was an echo of another poem; in fact, this new poem is the last poem that's being put into the book.
AA: Wow.
SLY: I wasn't seeking a companion, but I now know they are companions to each other. So this is “The Next Open Space.”
We think it’s about
our footing, planting
the fleshy parts
solid to ground, taking
it one step at a time,
whatever it is.
I try to remember this
as I comfort my sisters
and brothers as they migrate
to spaces that feel
closed before reached.
I have been there, outside
in that stark that redefines
dark, without words,
raising my feet
or voice, impossible.
So, yes, it is
this dance that offers
to turn us toward
the next open space,
teaching us there is
so much more
than what we perceive
breathing under our feet,
the ground rising,
rising all around us
like immaculate glass
cities. Look up, look up,
always look up. Find
the bird inside you
and remember this
about the next
open space:
There is always
more than one.
There is always
more than one.
AA: Sandy. What you have gifted us with on this podcast! My god!
SLY: [laughs]
AA: That is stunning! We could have an entire series just about that poem.
SLY: I do love that poem. It often is a poem that, sometimes, I will meet one of those strangers on a street, and in the conversation, I will realize that they might need that poem to carry them through the rest of the day, or the week, or their life, and I will often read it to them. I sometimes use that as my final poem at a reading as well.
AA: Mm, I think that is a great choice.
SLY: An opening; an opening.
AA: Yeah. Yeah, a question at the end of a poem. And if you missed the last episode, you can hear us talk more about that [chuckles] in Episode Five. So as we like to do here on Divinations, we're going to tease our next episode's poem; this will be our final episode and it is my turn. So I'm going to share an excerpt from my response to the poem that we just discussed of Sandy's, and we'll dig into that in our next episode. And I kind of can't believe it's, uh– we're closing in on the end here. This has been just so incredible.
SLY: I'm a little sad.
AA: [chuckles] Yeah! Yeah, me too; me too. We could just do this forever.
Sortition
A woman opens her hand to reveal the key on her palm. A tattoo.
Sandy, thank you so much for joining me, as ever. This has been a treat and, uh, an illuminating experience. Before we go, what do you want to shout out and hype up, and where can we find you?
SLY: Well, I also want to say that today's conversation for me, and recognizing that this is the last poem of mine that we're going to talk about, of all the conversations, this crescendoed to such revelation, not just about this poem, but about my process. And so I am so grateful for you, Allison, holding for me that next open space to reveal so much for myself as I move forward as a writer and a poet. So thank you. Well, as always, I remind folks that I'm hosting this program, Cultivating Voices Live Poetry, many Sundays of most months of the year, and looking forward to what is truly going to be a revelatory 2024 season. A little teaser for that, in February, we're going to be hosting poets from the anthology called Black Joy Unbound, along with our many, many new book showcases, and, of course, the opportunities for all of our members and listeners to be on the open mic with us so that we can hear their voices.
AA: Fabulous. I love Cultivating Voices. You can join live; you can also watch the YouTube videos, so if you can't join live, you can always watch it later. Sandy, thank you for hosting that with your team, your amazing team, um, I can't recommend it highly enough. It's a great experience.
SLY: Thank you so much.
AA: You can follow Little Oracles on Instagram (at) littleoracles. Check us out on the blog at little oracles dot com. You can find all the poems that Sandy and I are sharing there, and you can also find all of the lexical fractals, the original Little Oracles digital installation in its entirety at little oracles dot com slash exhibit. So you can go ahead and check that out and maybe use it for your own poetry project. We'll see you in our next Divinations episode, and until then, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine.
[Outro music]
[Secret outtake]
SLY: And I felt that Gail Tremblay, she guides me through the process of making anything. A poem, a piece of toast– [laughs]
AA: [laughs]
SLY: [chuckles] I mean, you know, really anything, anything. Because anything, also, can become a poem.
AA: Mm-hmm.
SLY: We're always making.