Ever since my interview with January Gill O’Neil, I have been thinking about the question of truth in poetry, especially in confessional and autobiographical poetry. So, a few weeks ago, I had the honor of joining two of Nicole Santalucia’s creative writing classes by Skype, and I talked a bit about this topic. I confessed that I was not a particular fan of confessional poetry, and the students (such amazing and inspired students!) had so many interesting comments and questions. Nicole, herself asked, Do you think I have fallen too deeply into the confessional well?
I love that term, the confessional well. I decided I wanted to ask Nicole questions about her sense of herself as a confessional poet and her new book, Spoiled Meat, the winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize.
NA: First, I want to continue our conversation that began with your class. Can you elaborate on that term, confessional well? I think that should be the title of a poem!
NS: I must confess my concern about being self-centered, yet I am unapologetic that my poems bear a precise relationship to my personal life. The confessional well is the capital P Private, the place in the psyche where secrets harbor, the place where only the “I” can retrieve what’s inside. This designated well for confessions is also a dumping zone and a workspace, a mode of self-reflection and personal inventory.
A confessional well is comparable to a fountain of truth, I guess. Wells and fountains are both structures that contain water. Confessions and truths are accessed similarly and create a sense of agency during the process.
My confessional well is occupied by more than personal experiences—my failures, successes, pains, traumas, etc.—because its foundation is permeable. It’s like a hydraulic fracking site with a drilling team injecting chemicals, sand, and water. What I mean is that there are pollutants and pressures—environmental and societal—that infiltrate my well of truth.
A confessional is also an enclosed stall in a church that scares the shit out of me, and, well….
NA: I love what you are saying here. But I am somewhat surprised that you consider yourself a confessional poet. Do you think that the opening poem, “The Chicken with a Broken Beak,” in your wonderful new poetry collection, is a confessional poem?
The Chicken with a Broken Beak
I want to be the chicken in the front seat of that Cadillac
driving down Route 11. The chicken that reaches
for the steering wheel when there’s another chicken
in the road. The chicken that changes a flat tire
and the chicken that doesn’t get beat up for loving
other chickens. I want to be the red feathered chicken
with white feathered chicks. The chicken with big breasts
that doesn’t wear a bra. The chicken that can actually fly;
I’d soar over Pennsylvania, over cornfields,
and over the prison. I’d free caged chickens
and dig graves for dead chickens.
I’d tie a dollar to a string and catch the guards
who guard jailed chickens. I’d wear my human costume,
patrol the highways, and pull over chicken trucks.
Maybe I want to be a chicken because a chicken’s
life is short; a chicken’s panic is usually caged.
Maybe I am chicken when I don’t hold my wife’s hand
at the movies or on a walk through town. I’m chicken
when I pull my arm off her shoulder after someone
whispers, eww, homos. Chicken feathers have taken over
my face and skin and courage. I’m the chicken
craning my neck through bars and the chicken
with a broken beak.
NS: My mode for writing is often rooted in the confessional, but my poems don’t always confess. What I admit in a poem sometimes reveals a vulnerability, but it doesn’t cause shame or embarrassment. Besides, there’s less to be embarrassed about these days. God forbid the G, L, A, or P words: Gay, Lesbian, Alcoholic, and Period. Okay, when I was 10 years old I was embarrassed of all of these words. I was embarrassed to be myself for many years. Now, a large part of my identity and volunteer work is very much connected to being a lesbian and recovering alcoholic.
I’ve seen poets wince at the word confessional as if it’s a dirtyword or a weakness. I am not weakened as a poet or a person when I reveal personal truths in my work.
Yes, “The Chicken with a Broken Beak,” is confessional. I am the scared chicken and clearly indicate this in the poem. The poem confesses fear and a disturbing incident from the personal “I” – this is not a persona. Deanna is my wife. I yearn and dream to be the chicken that can fly, but I am a cowered when ridiculed for being who I am/who we are as a couple and the scar/broken beak reveals a truth: that I feel embarrassed at times for not having enough courage to stick up for myself and my relationship.
NA: I think it’s your sense of humor, often a dark humor, that makes me think of you as something other than confessional. Humor and confessional poetry don’t usually go hand-in-hand. I had to laugh out loud at your poem, “Business Men.” Was this inspired by our pussy-grabbing president? You don’t think this is a confessional poem, do you?
Business Men
I heard about how good the pussy is on the market these days.
Men go door to door selling pussy from their briefcases.
Just the other day Dick and his wife, Jane,
started to seriously consider an investment in pussy.
Jane told Dick he’s nuts, that pussy loses value,
how it is no different than the depreciation of a car.
She told him that buying into pussy is like buying a coffin
to lay down and take a nap in; Jane’s been lying
in her pussy coffin for years.
Sometimes pussy is like a giant hairy taco
that will swallow you whole if your face gets too close.
The pussy truck parks next to the taco truck
at the farmer’s market. Jane recommends the pussy
with the white gills, red stem, the one that wears a skirt
and has a bulbous sack. There are men who forage
for pussy in broad day light. They dig their hands
into the soil and pluck whole pussies from the earth in one grab.
The pussy beneath the soil is not calling to a man
as if he were a thing from the dirt like a tuber.
The pussy that grows at the edge of the woods
is usually on state owned land.
Trespassers walk through the woods,
fill their briefcases, then head straight
to town to ring your doorbell.
NS: Yes, this is a response to our pussy-grabbing president. Less of a confessional, but there’s a personal I in the first line who hears about how good the pussy is on the market these days…This is certainly an angry lesbian—a persona that aligns with everything about me right now.
NA: I also wondered about the poems about the Normal School. What inspired these poems? I’ll post one here so people can get a sense of them.
The Normal School Lesson Plans
Shippensburg, Pennsylvania
Lesson Plan: So, unless the man was willing to take a whole ox-worth of fishhooks,
he must have something else besides cattle for money; that is, he must
give something else in exchange for the half-dozen fishhooks which he wanted.
(Learning Outcome: This is male prostitution.)
Lesson Plan: Most mothers like children to have company,
but the children must realize a mother has housekeeping problems.
(Learning Outcome: This is in-the-closet lesbianism.)
Lesson Plan: If a man owning a goat wanted a tent, he sold a couple of them for twenty
pieces of iron and bought his tent for fifteen pieces. What might he do in the tent?
(Learning Outcome: get a blowjob and pay for it with the profit of five pieces of
iron.)
Lesson Plan: In 1868 two Swedish cabinet makers came from Sweden to Philadelphia
and started a business. Mr. Brown and Mr. White sold Mrs. Howe a cabinet.
What does Mrs. Howe keep in her cabinet and why?
(Learning Outcome: Mrs. Howe keeps a lemon and vinegar solution in her cabinet.
It is most likely used to clean her vagina.)
Lesson Plan: “How many logs does it take to build a dam?” Asked Fred.
“Ah! That depends on the size of the dam,” said Aunt Kate.
(Learning Outcome: Fred and Kate are not talking about logs and dams.
This is a metaphor for incest.)
Lesson Plan: Just then a hawk came flying over the pond.
“Stop, Stop!” said the frog. “Let me go. It’s the mouse you want.”
“I flew down for the mouse, it is true,” said the hawk,
“but I like frog much better, so I shall eat you first.”
(Learning Outcome: men are like hawks; they want to eat you.)
NS: I work at Shippensburg University, which was founded in 1871 as the Cumberland Valley State Normal School. It is a teaching college and a wonderful institution. I did some research a couple of summers ago and spent time in a rural, one-room schoolhouse that was in use from 1865 to 1954. The Normal School poems reflect language found in old lesson plans and lists of rules for female teachers during the 1890's to 1930's.
NA: Now that you are talking about Shippensburg University, I thought I’d return to your amazing class! Especially because, much to my delight, three of your students wrote defenses of confessional poetry! As well as poems titled “My Confessional Well.” I want to include just a few excerpts of what they wrote here, and I have to say—what a joy to receive their comments and poems! One student, Erika Mundock wrote: “Confessional poetry, to me, is a way to talk about the things I never knew how to talk about before.” Another, Taylor Caudill, wrote, “I only started writing a few months ago and I am slowly realizing the power of the confessional. It’s not a way to solve issues but to help cope/understand them . . . " And Emily Mitchell explained: “I draw a lot of inspiration from the confessional poets I mentioned earlier (Plath, Sexton, Lowell), but I think their brutal honesty influences all of contemporary poetry. All poetry comes from a place deep inside of the poet, the individuals we regard as confessional poets simply paved the way for us to do that without hesitation or fear.”
I love how engaged your students are! I also love that they composed poems on the topic. I am pasting below excerpts from their poems--or rather a blend because I think their poems work so well together. The first stanza is by Taylor Claudill, the second stanzas, by Emily Mitchell, and the third, by Erika Mundock.
My Confessional Well
1.
I think the soil drew me here, to this field –
This loose, crumbling dirt, surrounded
By cornstalks reaching their green arms
Up to the sun and clouds that feed them.
But this empty circle of earth waited
For me to arrive.
Even the cornstalks knew I was coming.
They told me to take my shoes off
And sink my feet into the cool, damp soil.
So I listened and felt my purpose.
The Earth told me to build my well here.
She said, Build the confessional well –
The one that I wanted.
The one that I shamed myself for wanting.
The one that I didn’t deserve.
The one I had no right to.
The one with no blueprints.
2.
Instead, I scoop up my addiction,
my self-hatred, my #MeToo,
and pour them out on parchment.
I decorate the black ink with
sunflowers and bee boxes
with my shoes and my fingernails
with white houses and white clouds
until the parchment is soaked
wet with ink of every color, of every hue.
I hang it up to dry on the clothesline
strung between trees
behind my dead grandmother’s house.
3.
Sometimes I find myself at the bottom
of the confessional well, where red brick walls
crumble at my touch and my vain attempts
of escape always end with my fingernails
peeling back from their beds and blood
dripping into the dirty, ankle-deep water below.
Without fail, I wake from this nightmare,
bruises around my neck.
Figures of the dead once again whisper
their misery upon me.
Still I go to sleep every night hoping to return
to the well, where
unspeakable dread and I find solace.
NA: I thought we might close with one more poem from you. How about one of your poems about Pennsylvania?
NS: Sounds good. Let’s end on thumpthumpthump, which is pretty much the sound of fear and truth hitting the bottom of the confessional well.
Thumping in Central Pennsylvania
The cows and apple trees and tractor trailers
thump between the prison yard and the university.
Sometimes I chase a herd of cows out of my classroom
and the earth thumps. The word of the lord thumps.
The word thump breaks my ribs. Brown battery operated
cows thump through traffic. Factories thump and farmers
thump. The warehouses are full of thumps. The sky thumps
to the ground when I get home from work and kiss my wife.
When two women fall asleep in the same bed
the stars thumpthumpthumpthumpthump
like bullets hovering over our heads.
Nicole Santalucia is the author of Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press). She is a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Prize, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, and the Ruby Irene Poetry Prize. Her non-fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, Out Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Bayou Magazine, Gertrude, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, The Boiler, as well as numerous other journals. She teaches at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and has taught poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, Shippensburg Public Library, Boys & Girls Club, and nursing homes.
Excellent post. -- DL
Posted by: The Best American Poetry | December 06, 2018 at 12:07 AM