An Interview with Grace Cavalieri [by Nin Andrews]

NA: As you know, I’m a huge fan of your work—your poems, paintings, interviews, memoir, plays. Sometimes, when I can’t remember how to write or what to ask in an interview, I will google your name. Or if I am just feeling blue—moseying along like a lost soul on a dark street. Your poems are like lit houses I can look inside, their glow spilling into the night.  Like "Reversal" from your collection, Owning the Not So Distant World.  
 

Reversal

This poem can do whatever it wants—
It can change the past and make it new—
It can make hollyhocks bloom again
in my mother’s yard,
pink and white against the wall where I sit
in the safety of summer mornings.
These words can take away the scarlet stab of blood
that entered my mother’s brain
as she slept.                               Here,
take this porcelain cup, blue and white,
And stir some memories for faces no longer seen,
then wander with me to pines that never grew,
to the cottage that was not there because this poem can
leap over any cold moon rising, over any landscape looming
to make this the happiest day of our lives. 

The book, like this poem, is mystical and instructive.  I am wondering if you could say a few words about it. 

GC:  You know Nin, as you are a poet, that the imagination is a safe back yard. No stress lives there—no shame— We can go into memory or make believe and create such safety. We are magicians, poets are magicians, who can make flowers grow in the snow just by making the  image. We can bring people back to life!! What power. Aren’t we lucky.

NA: You have written many poetry books over the years, and from beginning until now, your poems are consistently lyrical, smart, narrative, heart-felt, and, like your name, full of grace. When I don’t have your books on hand, I will sometimes google and reread your three poems on the Poetry Foundation website. Those poems take me back to my girlhood and an era of great optimism and promise. Of course, it’s easy to idealize the past. But I noticed in your poem, “The Shakedown,” from your book, The Not So Distant World, you are not romanticizing about those days.

The Shakedown

With
this silver spoon
I tell the truth
I came
from a land
where love
was spare
parent better
off not paired
affection
stripped 
to its essentials
a film I run
and can turn off
because
from a sea
of pure abundance
comes the trumpet 
of happiness
sweeping me
into this place
more golden
than birth.

Could you talk about that poem? About the “sea of pure abundance”? 

GC: Well, there was discord in my home, A beautiful mother who was not well, a father who had just love enough for my sister. But the invisible world held everything I needed…‘the sea of abundance.’ I could envision other worlds, enter other books, become characters on stage. Everything I needed was in consciousness. All I had to do (have to do even now) is pull it through me. It is all out there. Everything we need to be happy, to create a state of Being. Some people call it God. Some energy. Some light.  I know we walk in it, and it animates us, and we can pull it through us.

NA: Now, I understand the tentative opening to your older poem, “Angelo,” which is a lovely homage to your father. You begin, “If I were to ask what you’d like, it might be to say something/kind about you.” And so, you do. I can relate! Having had a difficult father myself, I have often felt his ghost looking over my shoulder, asking me to write only nice things about him, which became complicated when I was writing my forthcoming memoir. Did you write more poems about your family dynamics? 

GC: Yes in every book. I carry on the struggle. I teach my students that they cannot write poetry that matters until they find the wound. Then we will write that story again and again

NA: Tell me how it all began! Who first encouraged you? Who were your role models were?  

GC: My college professor approved of my bad poetry and that gave me the space to write long enough to find who I was. I started copying FROST, then I realized I was not a farmer from New England but an Italian (then)-Catholic from Trenton, so maybe I should go with that.

I was writing in the 50’s and the only published women of consequence were Kumin, Sexton, very few...

When I was sitting on the little chairs at the Hermitage Library , the only poetry on the shelf was by Kipling, or the romantics, all men. white. English.

I guess my first love was Edna St Vincent Millay (much under-appreciated). I have all her first editions.

NA: And then there was Ken, your husband, whom I adore, not only because he was the love of your life and a sculptor and a Navy pilot, but also because he encouraged/supported you and your writing career. You say that he told you to write plays? And to write a memoir? 

GC: Ken was my muse. He said, “YOU CAN WRITE A PLAY.” So I did–then 10 more–in one decade (terrible plays by today’s standards but this was the cultural revolution and we had stages in lofts and above dentists’ offices…) Ellen Stewart ( NYC’s CAFE LA MAMA) came to Baltimore and opened The Corner Theater Cafe which allowed the new and experimental. I premiered all one-acts there.

NA: I so love your plays! It’s as if you were able to enter the souls of your characters! They are plays and poetry and magic all in one.  I especially enjoyed Hyena Play about Mary Wollstonecraft, whom you describe as the mother of feminism. She reminds me of you—an unstoppable force and someone who emerges from a world that might have held others back. How do these plays occur to you? And how does writing and performing a play compare to writing/giving readings of poetry? 

GC: Writing a play takes a long time and dedicated focus. I can only write in a pink cotton nightgown in Key West. So with Ken gone, I doubt I’ll write another– I collect images for a long long time before writing. I collect sayings and thoughts like finding a piece of string and adding to it till I have a whole ball, then I write. Every play I write has once been a book of poems . . .  so I have the characters already hanging around the house.

Watching  a play on stage is very magical. It is never quite the one I wrote. It is always better or worse. And teaches me the art of surrender.

NA: Another of my favorite Grace poems is “Work Is My Secret Lover,” in which you describe work as “the friend who will never leave.” I suppose it’s no secret that to do all that you have done, you must work tirelessly. Can you give me a glimpse of a day in the life of Grace Cavalieri? 

I always have to set the alarm as I have an event each day, even SUNDAY- (SUNDAY IS SANGHA, Mindfulness meditation)

I write something every morning.

Mondays and Tuesdays and Fridays are group meditations till noon on zoom

All week, I meet with one of 5 groups: 1) “The Song In The Room Women;” 2)Students I had from ANTIOCH where I taught 1970-75 -still with me– once 20years  now in their 70’s, studying the canon;  3) Haiku; 4) Play reading; 5)  Creative Writing with Antioch poets.

I host a monthly SATURDAY series at St John's College so managing that

I schedule poets for my radio /podcast/youtube show 

3x a month I record/ broadcast, sometimes in LOC studio, sometimes zoom, then distribute on e-serv, apple podcasts and public radio.

I have a small poetry press that produces one book every 2 months so that takes attention, editing, production etc

I am always writing grants for St Johns College, and radio…I am not an item on anyone’s budget so it is a constant process.

I check in with my kids every day

Several of my groups I cook for -when we meet- as that is my hobby

I try to swim every day but the wheel of time has me doing 3x a week lately

At 6pm I SHUT THE SHUTTERS and go to bed with books, papers and TV and watch MSNBC and CNN, reading during commercials

Tuesday night is MARRIED AT FIRST SIGHT on TV and SUNDAY night is 90 DAY FIANCE

I gave up LOVE AFTER LOCKUP.

Today I went to Baltimore to work with my composer of 40 years, she has dementia but can still write music. We have just finished “Ken’s Song” about how he healed himself from Viet Nam by sculpting. And she is working on REVERSAL, the poem on the back of DISTANT WORLD book.

NA: Okay, so you do more in a week than I do in a year. And we poets have you to thank for your tireless work on our behalf!! 

Maybe we can end with one a haiku from your latest book?

Here’s the first Haiku in I HAIKU TOO

                                                           on the autumn branch
                                                           one leaf hanging
                                                           dances anyway

Comments

[Emily Fragos]

Thank you for this wonderful interview with the one-and-only Grace Cavalieri, former Poet Laureate of Maryland, inimitable supporter of poetry and poets. I love her with all my heart and soul and am grateful for her great kindness.

[William Palmer]

Oh, I love this interview. Thank you. Grace has nourished my poetry, teaching, and spirit in ways I cannot explain.

[Mel Edden]

A great interview. I can't believe Grace's schedule! I do like the idea of going to bed at 6pm with TV and books. I shall have to try that one day!

[Terence Winch]

Grace is a force for good in the world!