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***This is the thirty-second in a never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote
that specific poem. All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end
of this piece.
“Astral”
by Melissa Studdard
Can you go through the
step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first
conceived in your brain until final form?
I wrote “Astral” in a
flash, just a few hours. Poet/editor Sarah Cortez (Right Fair Use) (https://www.poetacortez.com) contacted me because I hadn’t answered a call for
submissions for an anthology, and she was going
to press soon and wanted to include a poem by me. Everything I’d written on her
subject, Mexico, was already taken by other publishers, so I decided to write a
new poem for her. 
I sat briefly considering ways to narrow the
topic. Since I had to turn the poem out quickly, I decided to use ekphrasis. I
knew if I looked at a painting, the images would inspire me. I don’t know how
much you know about Leonora Carrington (Left Public Domain)
(http://www.leocarrington.com),
the painter the poem is about, but she was strange and brilliant and feral. She
grew up in a rigid environment in England and later immigrated to Mexico after
having had traumatic experiences in other European countries during World War
II.
So, I decided to intertwine thoughts about her
life with images from her paintings. I didn’t know how it would go or how it
would end, but I started looking at her work and reading about her and making
notes. I knew her life and paintings well already because I love her and I love
her work, and I have for a long time. But I wanted to refresh myself and
meditate on the images and concepts. (Right: Leonora Carrington's The Conjurer in 1960- Fair Use)
After that, it happened rapidly—I started with
details from her life; then I wove in visuals from the paintings. Periodically
I went back to tighten description and language or rearrange syntax. I wrote
and revised at the same time—every two lines or so I would stop and revise. As
I moved along, it became clear to me that I wanted to approach her immigration
to Mexico as a healing of the damage done to her from having grown up in such a
sterile environment. She belonged in England as much as a hyena belongs in a
zoo cage or a horse belongs in a stable. (Left: Leonora Carrington's Neighborly Advice in 1947. Fair Use)
(Above Right: Melissa Studdard laying on her grandmother's bed. Copyright permission granted by Melissa Studdard for this CRC Blog Post Only)
(Above Left: Melissa Studdard with her nieces on the trampoline. Copyright permission granted by Melissa Studdard for this CRC Blog Post Only)
What month and year did
you start writing this poem? I’m not sure of the month, but it was written in
2014 or 2015. (Right: Melissa Studdard in August 2014. Attributed to Darren Weatherly Trentacosta. Copyright permission granted by Melissa Studdard for this CRC Blog Post Only)
Meta language
interdependence overcoming limitations of space and timeSailboat, "physical locomotion and changing worlds" (Above Left: Leonora Carrington's Adieu Ammen in 1960. Fair Use)
Tequila
Items found by her and Varo in markets and transformed into magical images of
spiritual ritual
Beliefs that mirrored her own interest in occult (Above Right: Leonora Carrington's The Last Fish in 1974. Fair Use)
Beliefs that mirrored her own interest in occult (Above Right: Leonora Carrington's The Last Fish in 1974. Fair Use)
traveling to Mexico in
a fish
"Combine themes of transit and transformation"
not a muse: n Mexico
defined a relationship w ancient healing arts that was different from the
surrealist belief in “childlike sourceresses to liberate male creativity” (Above Left: Leonora Carrington's Operation Wednesday 1969. Fair Use)
she and varo--stones,
shells, quartz crystals to transform kitchen into a laboratory and stew pot
into "alchemical alembic"
Food creations: White
hens, strong roots, heads of garlic, corsets with stays
fake caviar
mixing: cooking,
alchemy, paints
ovoid vessels
painting with egg
tempura
painting of the lerma,
the jug
"conscious of the
power of space and the things that reside therein" (Above Left: Leonora Carrington's Untitled 1960. Fair Use)
garlic important
kitchen as oppression,
reclaim
grinding corn by hand
comal for peppers
combination of magical
and mundane
believed in the 4th
dimension, life of spirit as real
witches
write the landscape wither
backwards hands (Above Right: Portrait of Max Ernst in 1939. Fair Use)
Were there any lines in
any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And
can you share them with us? A lot of the notes and ideas listed above never
made it into the poem, but they inspired other ideas that did go in. I’m going
to write another poem that uses the cooking and kitchen imagery. Carrington and
another painter, Remedios Varo (Left: Fair Use) sought to reclaim the kitchen from domestic
servitude by creating their own alchemy there. That’s rich fodder for another
poem.
What do you want readers
of this poem to take from this poem? Your spirit is yours. When safe and possible,
resist conforming in ways that limit it. Find the place, the people, the art,
and the activities that make you come alive. And if you can’t find them, live
alone and dance barefoot in the grass at midnight, and talk to the frogs and
all the little scuttling creatures beneath the moon. They will keep you company.
And if you are not free to live alone and dance beneath the moon at midnight,
develop a rich inner life. Your imagination, like Carrington’s (Above Right. Fair Use) can provide you
with beauty when your outer world is lacking.
Which part of the poem
was the most emotional for you to write and why? “as she removed the sutures of logic / and unbound the lyrics of her
being,” Like Carrington, I’ve
been impaired by societal conventions and expectations. I’ve felt trapped,
controlled, hampered. I’ve been made to feel crazy for being creative, and I’ve
seen my light flicker off and almost out.
Unlike Carrington, I’ve contributed to my own mental imprisonment, which
is a double death. Deader than dead. I am trying and trying to unbind the
lyrics of my being. (Above Left: Melissa Studdard in June of 2013. Copyright permission granted by Melissa Studdard for this CRC Blog Post Only)
Has this poem been published
before? And if so where? Goodbye, Mexico: Poems of Remembrance
(Texas Review Press, 2015)
Edited by Sarah Cortez
(Texas Review Press, 2015)
Edited by Sarah Cortez
Anything you would like
to add? Nope. Thanks for the great questions! I love your
blog.
Astral
—for Leonora Carrington
Her soul was folklore
and her body was the
shadow of alphabet
written backwards in
secret code.
I will try to tell you a
story:
how the lamp of her
arrived before she did, a
ghost
among the masks and
tapestries at market—
invisible tongue of
quartz, hands like jellyfish,
mouth of inner shell. And
how delicate the silver thread
that led back to the
flesh-protected skull.
When she first showed up,
they were
pouring the Lerma from a
big jug
into cuts of land. They
were stitching cities
on an old loom. She’d
always known it
would take a country to
decode her,
and as she removed the
sutures of logic
and unbound the lyrics of
her being,
she remembered it: Mexico,
the word she’d been
dreaming all along.
Melissa Studdard (Right in January of 2017. Copyright permission granted by Melissa Studdard for this CRC Blog Post Only) is the author of the poetry collection I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and the young adult novel Six Weeks to Yehidah.
Her short writings have appeared in a wide variety of journals,
magazines, blogs, and anthologies, such as The Guardian, The New York Times, Psychology Today, Harvard Review, New
Ohio Review, Bettering American Poetry, and Poets & Writers. In addition to writing, she
serves as executive producer and host of VIDA Voices &
Views for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, president of the
Women’s Caucus for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference, and an
editor for American Microreviews and Interviews. Her awards include
the Forward National Literature Award, the International Book Award,
the Readers’ Favorite Award, and others. To learn more, visit www.melissastuddard.com
(Above Left: Melissa Studdard in January of 2014. Attributed to Jennifer Ayers. Copyright granted by Melissa Studdard fro this CRC Blog Post Only.
Above Right: Melissa Studdard. Copyright granted by Melissa Studdard for this CRC Blo Post Only)
(Above Left: Melissa Studdard in January of 2014. Attributed to Jennifer Ayers. Copyright granted by Melissa Studdard fro this CRC Blog Post Only.
Above Right: Melissa Studdard. Copyright granted by Melissa Studdard for this CRC Blo Post Only)
BACKSTORY OF THE POEM
LINKS
001 December 29, 2017
Margo
Berdeshevksy’s “12-24”
002 January 08, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “82 Miles From the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake
Café”
003 January 12, 2018
Barbara
Crooker’s “Orange”
004 January 22, 2018
Sonia
Saikaley’s “Modern Matsushima”
005 January 29, 2018
Ellen
Foos’s “Side Yard”
006 February 03, 2018
Susan
Sundwall’s “The Ringmaster”
007 February 09, 2018
Leslea
Newman’s “That Night”
008 February 17, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher “June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”
009 February 24, 2018
Charles
Clifford Brooks III “The Gift of the Year With Granny”
010 March 03, 2018
Scott
Thomas Outlar’s “The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”
011 March 10, 2018
Anya
Francesca Jenkins’s “After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”
012 March 17, 2018
Angela
Narciso Torres’s “What I Learned This Week”
013 March 24, 2018
Jan
Steckel’s “Holiday On ICE”
014 March 31, 2018
Ibrahim
Honjo’s “Colors”
015 April 14, 2018
Marilyn
Kallett’s “Ode to Disappointment”
016 April 27, 2018
Beth
Copeland’s “Reliquary”
017 May 12, 2018
Marlon
L Fick’s “The Swallows of Barcelona”
018 May 25, 2018
Juliet
Cook’s “ARTERIAL DISCOMBOBULATION”
019 June 09, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “Stiletto Killer. . . A Surmise”
020 June 16, 2018
Charles
Rammelkamp’s “At Last I Can Start Suffering”
021 July 05, 2018
Marla
Shaw O’Neill’s “Wind Chimes”
022 July 13, 2018
Julia Gordon-Bramer’s
“Studying Ariel”
023 July 20, 2018
Bill Yarrow’s “Jesus
Zombie”
024 July 27, 2018
Telaina Eriksen’s “Brag
2016”
025 August 01, 2018
Seth Berg’s “It is only
Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”
026 August 07, 2018
David Herrle’s “Devil In
the Details”
027 August 13, 2018
Gloria Mindock’s “Carmen
Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”
028 August 21, 2018
Connie Post’s “Two
Deaths”
029 August 30, 2018
Mary Harwell Sayler’s
“Faces in a Crowd”
030 September 16, 2018
Larry Jaffe’s “The
Risking Point”
031 September 24,
2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After
We Drove”
032 October 04, 2018
Melissa Studdard’s “Astral”
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/10/32-backstory-of-poem-astral-by-melissa.html
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/10/32-backstory-of-poem-astral-by-melissa.html
