Rebecca Irene’s work is published, or forthcoming, in Juked, Atlanta Review, Typehouse, & elsewhere. She received residencies from Norton Island, SAFTA, & Hewnoaks. Poetry Editor for The Maine Review, she supports her word-addiction by waitressing.
Rebecca’s poem “Cattails” appears in the Fall 2019 issue of Carve. Order your copy here.
I love the way you've written this poem—but are you poet or cattail? What are your thoughts on perspective?
This poem originated from a workshop prompt: write from an alternate point of view. So the voice in “Cattails” is definitely a cattail, albeit a sort of oracle-cattail. I’m kind of obsessed with cattails, cicadas, and moths; they show up in a lot of my work. Recently, my mother gave me a journal of poems that I wrote when I was nine. The first poem is from the perspective of a Manx cat. I can still remember wondering what it might feel like to be a cat with no tail, so I’ve evidently always had a strong pull towards personification and anthropomorphism in my writing.
For me, perspective is another means for the writer to create imagery and mood. If I am having trouble revising a poem, I often change the narrator. Even if I return to the original viewpoint, this voice shift unlocks new directions for the poem.
I am so moved by the colors and emotion in this poem I have to wonder: how rooted are you in nature? Are you all metaphor?
When I was growing up, my family moved about every three years, but we always summered in Maine. In this case, “summered in Maine” does not imply white linen and ocean strolls. Instead, my parents bought a massive, off-grid, derelict camp on Moosehead Lake that was sold “as-is.” My sister and I helped paint, weed, and shingle. Of course, we also swam for hours and searched endlessly for moose.
My first poems were written during those forest quests, so nature has been, and continues to be, a major influence on my life, and my writing. You’re right, though—I tend to write few nature poems without significant metaphor. The origin of metaphor derives from the Greek “metapherein,” to transfer, and my favorite poets always strive to transfer emotion and empathy through their words.
Small moments of alliteration and repetition receive lovely emphasis through couplets. Talk to me about form and syntax.
Thank you! It’s always such a thrill when a poem finds its preferred form, when how it appears on the page just feels right. The final revision of a poem seems inevitable when you finally get there, but the journey often takes years. This was the case with “Cattails.” After many drafts (no stanzas, tercets, quatrains, etc.), “Cattails” rested with couplets.
The form and syntax playground is one of my favorite playgrounds; it’s where the magic so often happens. Almost all of my poems go through some rendition of strict meter and rhyme—a result of being a third-generation poet, with a long legacy of formalism in my blood. Even though the classical form is usually broken apart by the final revision, this process hopefully allows some of the musicality and echo to remain. Many contemporary poets inspire me, but I always return to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti, Lucille Clifton, and Emily Dickinson.
What are your core colors? What do you find unbreakable?
Like the cattails, we are all a partial sum of our experiences and environment. My core colors are the perpetual new girl at school, Paris cafes, NYC black-box theatres, moleskines, Viarco pencils, and salt-water spray.
I have thin skin; the world breaks me in a multitude of ways. During these dark political times, in an era of global warming, hate speech, and intolerance, reading the news can seem like a lesson in endurance. Art mends me. My husband and sons mend me. My writing community mends me. This cycle of breaking and restoring allows us to hold pain in one hand, and love in the other. And I believe love always triumphs in the end.