Episode 131: Catching Waves

Slushies, waves abound in this lively discussion of a poem by Martha Silano and two more by Jane Hilberry. The way stream of consciousness can crest and fall, sound waves, the missed and caught waves in real life (including runs of luck or the lack of it), not to mention the different ways in which we experience poetry– the gang rides wave after wave. We regularly find that our process of reading poetry aloud causes one or more of us to experience a poem anew. Sometimes it provides clarity that wasn’t there when it was confined to the silence of the page. Sometimes it brings up questions. As always, we were grateful to have the trust of two amazing poets willing to share our discussion of their work. (We were going to call this episode “In Bed with Marion & Kathy” and we’ll let you find out why by having a listen!)

 

At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Angelique Massey, Lisa Zerkle, Dagne Forrest, Vivian Liu (sound engineer)

Martha Silano’s six books include This One We Call Ours, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Poetry Prize, and available from Lynx House Press. She is also the author of Gravity Assist, Reckless Lovely, and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, all from Saturnalia Books. Martha’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She enjoys birdwatching, botanizing, and hanging out with her kids and cats. Learn more about her work at marthasilano.net.

 

The Luck of It

 

What counts is that my car, when it gets broken into, what’s gone 

is replaceable, like that leather jacket my friend Alison threw at me 

when she left for California. Please take it! (I got a new one for Christmas).

 

Once, when I left it unlocked, someone spent the night in my Hyundai. 

All in all, I was happy to offer a place of refuge, especially on account 

of nothing stolen, not the extra pair of socks, not my maroon hat or hand sani, 

 

the only tip off being the empty bottle of Sprite. Sprite!

I mean, you’re kidding me. My husband jokes how I get so excited 

about the crumb that drops on my plate from that giant chocolate croissant 

 

in the sky, tells me I’m like a housefly with a tiny chunk of pizza 

it can’t believe it’s had the good fortune to land on. And look! It’s even got a little dab 

 

of pepperoni juice! It seems I set the bar low, 

and maybe he’s right, though when I ran track, 

the field part kind of scared me. In tenth grade, when Suzanne Glester 

 

broke the state record in the high jump, 

I could barely keep myself from looking away 

as her contorted body landed in a heap on a thick mat 

 

that never seemed thick enough. Honestly, 

I’m just glad I’m not the guy on Next Door 

who posted about the lonely chicken: I see her wandering around. 

 

Seems like she need another little hen. 

Do any of you have one you’d like to re-home? 

Or the woman who shared someone’s been racing their car 

 

up Juneau. making a hair pin turn onto Seward Park Avenue. 

It literally rattles our windows. I’m tempted to respond I feel your pain, 

but having rattling windows means you live in a home? I guess what I’m trying to say 

 

is that when two guys were about to kick in 

our basement window, I happened to stroll by with a bag 

of dirty Huggies for the bin. Yep, a load of dirty diapers saved us. 

Jane Hilberry is just weeks into retirement after a happy 35-year teaching career at Colorado College that began with Medieval and Renaissance literature and ended up in Creativity & Innovation. So far retirement involves mostly sleeping and swimming, but she aspires to write poems, paint, and make small objects for sheer delight. Her books of poems include Still the Animals Enter and Body Painting (Red Hen Press) and a chapbook co-authored with her father, Conrad Hilberry, titled This Awkward Art:  Poems by a Father and Daughter (Mayapple Press). Paintings and small objects can be found on Instagram @jhilberry.

I might have planned badly

 

My friends are ga-ga over their grandkids, over the moon!  

Pictures on their phones of the toddler pushing the vacuum, 

the dog sleeping wrapped around the child.  

 

My god, I was driven.  I translated every word of Beowulf, 

working out each noun’s case ending, nominative, accusative, genitive, 

dative, or a vestigial instrumental.  I spent my twenties 

 

in a library carrel until 2 a.m. closing. I could regret it now, 

but there was no stopping that one, whoever she was. 

Baby, I’m going to be seventy soon, and eighty.   

Coastal Cali

 

At the intersection, a stream of newly washed 

Benzes and Bentleys.  A man in a camel coat surveys 

a café patio:  "I'm dressed inappropriately,” he says.

He’s crew for Hollywood Medium.  Against the roar 

of leaf blowers, Que tiempo hace hoy plays on someone’s radio. 

It's breezy, seventy-five. 

   Meanwhile, at the water, 

surfers lift and fall, surge and sink.  The dark triangles 

of their heads and shoulders move like fins 

in undulating circles, till one rises, twists and vees, 

rides the wave into a bloom of foam.  

 

What is this world?  wrote Chaucer, What asketh man to have? 

Xanax for the rough days.  I can't identify the flora—

Yarrow?  Ice plant? —or remember the gods of the sea.

Zephyr? Poseidon?  No one here calls it the sea.