[Mark Allinson]

Julian of Norwich, yes.

What did she say?

"'Tis sooth that sin is cause of all this pain"

P

Ah, yes, Philip.

But she also said that "Sin is behovable" - that is, it plays an essential part in God's plan.


"But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is needful to me,
answered by this word and said: It behoved that there should be sin;
but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of
thing shall be well."

[Petra Norr]

Hi Jill
I see that Maryann has posed a question to you, but maybe after answering hers you could get round to mine (if you like). First of all, I have to say that your poetry is new to me, and the poems of yours I've read now (the three posted here and eight or so I read on the Web) are brilliant and fun. I love your style! Now to my question...
What is your attitude to formal rhyme schemes? My impression so far is that you don't use them in a strict sense. When you do apply end-rhyme, it seems done, not because you're "forced" to rhyme, but because it sounds good and comes naturally just there. Do you get reactions to that? Do formalists object to your rhymes because they stray from a scheme or mingle slant and true? And how do non-formalists react to your rhymes?
Thank you, Jill, for coming to Eratosphere, and thank you, Jehanne, for a very good interview.

[W.F. Lantry]

Jill,

Lovely work, very nice interview. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen your work before, and I find it immediately fascinating.

I wonder if you can expand a little more on this part:

"look to the medieval woman saints, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard, Christina the Astonishing"

Julian is well-known, perhaps because of Eliot. But the others are less so. I'm interested in the idea of Hildegard being "enclosed" with Jutta, and all that implies. And this little phrase from her: "And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out therefore, and write thus!" And Beatrice of Nazareth: "I long to be dissolved and to be united..." and her seven ways of love.

I'm particularly interested in medieval women 'mystics' and marian apparitions, and was excited to see a reference in one of your poems. Would you care to expand a little more on all this?

Thanks,

Bill

[Jill Alexander Essbaum]

Thank you, Janet-- I appreciate that!

[Jill Alexander Essbaum]

Maryann--

For many years I wrote in form so tight you could bounce a quarter off its abs. I still write like that-- every collection I've published has at least one full-on traditionally formal piece, scanable, schemable, the whole shebang. More, usually. I think that it takes knowing how to do that and do it well in order to muss it up well. Not every poem WANTS to be wrangled out of perfect form-- not every poem should be. "To His Lost Lover" was a poem that rings exactly true to me in the form it which it's presented-- the rhymes are surprising, the repetition is obsessive, the turns in the poem are sinewy, quick, pulsed. Like blips on an EKG, and the heart beat (where it hurts) are erratic, in pain, wincing.

"How he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush/ through that style of hers..." Excepting the first dropped syllable, if the line was broken after 'hair' you'd have two practically perfect lines of iambic pentameter with a gloriously slanty rhyme of hair and hers. But-- you don't have that. Doesn't matter. You hear that. And the lines "And never fled the black mile back to his house/ before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse, / then another, / or knew her / favourite colour, / her taste, her flavour." Ok, so that's not _metrical_, but it's dang rhythmic, and the rhythm compels the poem forward. And how about that line "or knew her"? Oy. So, so, so good.

In Harlot thre are two poems that are direct inheritrixes of this very poem-- one called "The Assignation" where I take (I think I take, I try to take) the rhythm of this poem and put my spin on it. A second poem "Post--" is a reply to this poem, the response of the lost lover. I wrote it in rhymed unmetered tercets and it has either one line less or one line more, I can't remember.

I think a distinction is necessary between formal poetry and traditionally formal poetry. "To His Lost Lover" is entirely formal. It's rhymed or almost rhymed couplets. That's a form. And there are wisps and wafts of clearly traditional meters. Not, I might add, unlike Prufrock. My favorite poem written in the twentieth century.

I think a possible 'in' for you if you want to practice loosening the form-- and this need be nothing more than an academic exercise-- is to take a poem you already have written, maybe one that isn't ultimately as successful as you would like it to be. Read it aloud, aloud, aloud until you've bludgeoned your own ears bloody. Look and listen for the weaknesses in the structure. You'll hear them. Like knocking your fist against the wall looking for a stud to put a nail in. Don't sledgehammer where the studs are. In your poem, look to where the knocks ring hollow. Break the lines there, break them open, break them up. Put the strong rhymes in the center of the line, put the slant ones at the end. Enjamb things wildly. Make bold syntactic leaps. If, in the end, it ain't good-- well, then it was practice, right? I do think some poems and subjects lend themselves more to it. Also, I think it demands a more vernacular, conversant speech-- with all the blips and giggles that accompany it.

Thanks for your question, I hope this answers it!

[Jill Alexander Essbaum]

Petra-- thanks for your kind words and your question alike. Lemme see if I can answer it.

We should ever be wary of building false idols to anything-- in life, in poeming. I freaking love rhyme. Love it, love it, love it. I'm excited about the things it can do for a poem, and so what I work on in my writing is pushing the limits of it. I'm certainly NOT averse to traditional rhyme schemes-- again, you'll find them in my collections, dotted here and there. But rhyme is meant to move the poem along, not to stand out like a big sore distracted thumb. I have to check myself often, lest I get too flashy, self-satisfied. I guess that's something we all have to be aware of, tho.

I don't know how to answer what people think about them. I hope they like them-- but the problem of having a foot in two different camps is that perhaps neither camp knows you altogether well. I often call myself a "Formal-ish" poet. I think that suits the work I do, dorky though it may be.

[Jill Alexander Essbaum]

Bill--

You know, I wasn't even thinking about poetry when I was referencing our Medieval Ladies-- I was thinking solely in terms of spiritual beliefs and bents. Thank you for completing the circle! Why are they important to me? They loved the Lord and were shameless about the things they did, said, wrote, prayed for in a time where the society around them would have had them feel much and varied shame. Also, they were interminable (as were, of course, many writers throughout the ages, saint or no) in their preaching that the body simply cannot be left out of Christian spirituality. God damn the body? No! God bless the body! And all that it can do, all that can be done to it, with it.

[Mark Allinson]

Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
...But yet the body is his book.

I agree absolutely, Jill - the body has to be represented and affirmed by poetry.

The very worst poetry for me is the bloodless, abstracted and "spiritual" stuff that so much abounds today. Spectral or Gnostic poetry, I call it - thin, translucent and anti-life.

And you are right to attribute this to our Protestant inheritance, the Puritan denial of the body.

No danger of that in your stuff.

This is exactly what poetry is for me - that mode of literature which presents and affirms the body, through its formal body, its rhythms, and sensual imagery.

Do you have any favourite body-affirming poets?

[Jill Alexander Essbaum]

Mark--

I don't know if I've ever thought about it, my favorite body-affirming poets. But let me answer obliquely and tell you the poets I admire--living, dead, formal, experimental, blah blah and blah.

Other than Mistah Armitage, I dig the work of the following poets MUCHLY, in no particular order-- Vassar Miller, Roger McGough, Harryette Mullen, Marilyn Nelson, Harvey Hix, Alicia Stallings, Craig Arnold, ESV Millay, Ted Hughes, Ken Rumble, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Dorothy Parker, Sarah Hannah, Sylvia Plath, Jenny Factor, Paul Muldoon, Matthea Harvey, Reb Livingston, Jennifer Knox, Evie Shockley. For fiction, I turn hard to Joyce Carol Oates. I think she's a freaking genius, and more than a few of her books are damn near perfect (Foxfire and Black Water, I do believe, ARE perfect).

The poets I listed above are just the ones that have books available for purchase. There are scads of young poets whose work just freaking rings that don't have published manuscripts yet, including Jessica Piazza (whose work you might not know yet, but you will, oh you will), Fritz Ward, and Nic Sebastian, to name just three.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Hi Jill,
A big welcome to the Sphere! I liked your poems a lot--they definitely draw me back for more. I love the wordplay and sonics in them, and their boldness and intelligence.
Janine mentions hearing you read, and I can imagine these poems would be a trip to listen to. Is there anywhere on the internet where there’s a video or audio of you reading?
And one other question: with your work, do you have any notions of where you’d like it to go? Any subject matter you’d like to explore that you haven’t yet? On another thread here, Quincy’s I think, the long poem was discussed. Is that something you’re drawn to?
OK, that was more than one question. Answer what you will.
And thanks for the poems and interview.
Andrew