ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

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MARIANNE SZLYK

The Song Is…—Reflections on a Blog-zine

Just over two years ago I began my poetry (and flash fiction) blog-zine, The Song Is… Since then, it has served many purposes. It has honored jazz musicians, both classic and contemporary figures. I am especially pleased by the work that poets Felino A. Soriano and Bryn Fortey have done, drawing readers’ attention to a wide range of musicians from Marian MacPartland to Charlie Haden to Lil Hardin (Louis Armstrong’s second wife) to British saxophonist Kenny Graham. Kerfe Roig has united words and images to honor Sonny Rollins and other greats. I have also met many poets and expanded my own poetry through this blog. Angelee Deodhar has encouraged me to explore the haiku and haibun, and she has turned some of my poems into haiga.   Will Mayo has noticed some trends in my work, which I will talk about in my reflections on environmental poetry. Reading Felino A. Soriano’s work has given me enormous respect for his tremendous work ethic and a broader idea of what is possible in poetry. Finally, I must mention my epistolary friendship with the inspiring Mary Jo Balistreri and with Catfish McDaris who has judged a number of my blog-zine’s contests.

However, I am also proud to say that I have provided a venue for a variety of poets, including emerging poets, some of who were my students and some who live outside the United States. As an educator, I recognize that we have to support and encourage emerging writers. Without support and encouragement, there will be no next generation of poets. Moreover, the support that I have received over the years has shaped my ideas of what I could do, as well as what I actually did do.

Even if I weren’t an educator, I realize that I have reached the time in my life when I must also be a mentor. Belonging to the D.C. Poetry Project and the D.C. Poetry Spot encouraged me to create a heterogeneous community of poets.   Both of these poetry groups bring together expert and novice poets for writing, performance, and fellowship. Inspired by these groups, I seek to curate a blog-zine that is welcoming to a wide variety of poets. Sometimes this is a struggle as I worry about the balance of poems, but overall I like to think of my site as an online version of an open mic.   Moreover, I believe that novice poets can learn from the expert poets among them.

Fairly early on in my blog-zine’s history, I invited—probably urged or even begged—my former student Eric Lloyd to submit a poem. When Eric was in my creative writing class, his stylish poetry impressed me. I was particularly excited by one poem set on a treadmill as he ran to the electronic music of Swedish House Mafia. As a result, I let him know that I had started a blog-zine and was looking for poems.   He sent me this wonderful poem—“Jazz Most Elusive”.

Amber Smithers and Alex Conrad, also former students, have appeared frequently at The Song Is… Amber, in fact, began on a high note with “A Lullaby to My Son,” an entry in a contest for political poetry mourning the death of Michael Brown. (By the way, Amber’s poem won).

A Lullaby to My Son

Hush little baby,
Don’t you cry.
Mommy’s not gonna let you die.
Don’t let those demons
Take your light.
I’m sorry I wasn’t there that night.
But now mommy’s gonna win this fight.
Mommy’s gonna love you through the night.
Hush little baby,
Don’t you cry.
Mommy’s gonna make sure you survive.

— Amber Smithers

Since then, she has submitted poems on a variety of topics. Fellow poet Rita Marie Recine remarked that she could truly relate to Amber’s “I use to want to be a siren…”:

I use to want to be a siren.
Bringing men to their knees.
I wanted to be Mother Nature,
Giving men a high they could not deny.
I thought I could be Eve.
Made by Adam’s rib,
Making him do anything I willed.
Now I wish to be me.
Not just a complex,
Trying to find adoration in his eyes.
But a woman with a mind.
—Amber Smithers

Amber continues to grow as a poet. Among her most recent poems at The Song Is… was a very personal piece about bulimia.   She is also beginning to submit to other magazines, a necessary next step in her development as a poet, even if she meets with occasional rejection.

Alex has also contributed to the blog-zine, reviewing Valeri Beers’ chapbook details… and submitting much striking poetry. His first entry brought together several of his best poems from our poetry class:  “Self-Portraiture as a Rain-Soaked Weeping Willow” and the bilingual “Within the Darkness of Dusk” especially impressed me both in class and at the blog-zine. In his most recent entry, Alex augmented his wise, searching poetry with arresting images. It is true that his is a very visual generation, but his approach fits in well with The Song Is….

Blogspot allows me to include not only links to music but also images. Several entries have been more visual than verbal. The collaboration by former student Jerry A. Scuderi and photographer Juan Tituana comes to mind here. A mature student, Jerry himself displays a distinct style in his poetry.  (Jerry, by the way, is also a winemaker.)

My blog-zine has become a teaching tool, not only for my former students but also for novice writers. Recently, poet and educator Avis D. Matthews sent me some powerful poems by a former student of hers, which I will be publishing later in September.  I also published the poetry of Gabriel Eziorobo, a high school student from Nigeria.  Initially, at times, I had thought of my blog-zine as being separate from my work as an educator, but now I have come to view it as very much a part of my profession. Sometimes I have been disappointed that promising students did not submit work. Over time I have realized that my “students” online and at the blog-zine will be different from my students offline and in the classroom, but education is not limited to a select group. It must be available widely.

Images by Juan Tituana

The poems below are my teaching poems.  The first, “The Poet Charlotte Drives Away,” imagines the British author Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806) as a 21st-century adjunct instructor, writer, and single parent in the Washington, DC area.  One could also say that this poem is a tip of the hat to my life as a student of 18th and 19th-century British literature, a time that seems very far away now.   The second, “When Addison Road Was the End of the Line,” reflects on my own days as an adjunct instructor, a “subway flyer” teaching at various colleges, including Prince George’s Community College, a bus ride away from the Addison Road Metro.  The last, “Writing with an Empty Mind,” was inspired by reading an anthology of poems by LGBTQ teachers, This Assignment is So Gay, ed. Megan Wolpert, in particular Nathan Daniel Terry’s “A Student Says She Hates Nature Poetry.” Terry showed such grace in responding to his student that I wanted to emulate it.

The Poet Charlotte Drives Away

Her brain buzzing with botany,
backpack crammed with ungraded papers,
Charlotte wants to create a found poem,
transmuting the latest scientific research
from Memoirs of the New York Botanical Gardens
into poetry about lichen and peat mosses.

She crosses the quad,
contemplating the students
amongst the bricks and roses.
A girl in a sari tries
to sell her a samosa.
A grad student in a burkha
retreats to the library.
Charlotte holds her head high
and buys nothing.

She wants to write free verse
arguing against hiding
in cloth & custom
from the sunlit life.
There will be neither
lichen nor roses
nor research
in this poem.

Unburdened
by sari or burkha or skirt,
Charlotte in capri pants
hops into the driver’s seat
and peels herself away.

She imagines writing
a poem for children
from the perspective
of a girl in a hijab.

A driver in a wig and micro mini
honks at her for traveling too slowly,
too thoughtfully on the highway.
Charlotte puts her sandaled foot down
and rockets towards home.

Somewhere further along,
past the clot of malls,
she merges into traffic,
and her mind returns to a sonnet
about a man shouting
at waves crashing
on an empty English shore.

She will write this one down
in her house like a beekeeper’s hive,
one of many in a row
on the site of a fallow farm.
Her children will buzz around her
as bill collectors call.

When Addison Road Was the End of the Line

Beyond there were only buses
the C29 down the highway
past strip malls, past farm stands,
past the DMV and the gas station,
to the front door of the college.
Then she was a moon-faced girl
in black among the masked faces,
the stout security guards,
and the boys to men
with blank white shirts
and shorts past their knees.

That was nearly ten years ago.
She looks like her mother now,
tightening a gunmetal belt
over a navy cardigan.
She walks to work.

Someday she might come back
to see what Addison Road has become:
the new town center, the stores,
the station
a village green with
Kenny the mayor on Foursquare;
it’s no longer the end of the line.

Writing with an Empty Mind

Writing with an empty mind,
I wonder what words will come up
to fill this emptier page.

Reading, I find
phrases to build on
in the new fashion. Poets to quote.

I stop at one poem
to a student in Carolina
who would rather write about the body
than about nature.

I am reminded

Of my students who are tired
of trees in poems

Of others who argue
against birds
when we talk about wind farms

Of myself once
pretending that the wood
behind the house was a city
and then walking every inch of it.