Marvyne Jenoff talks to Sharon Berg about her latest poetry collection.
1. Your poetry mixes pure fantasy with stark reality in Climbing the Rain. For instance, in ‘January 2021, Atonement’ a storm wind blows off your face mask and propels various children’s toys down the sidewalk, later propelling a branch containing a rat through your 12th floor window while you make new masks for yourself and your neighbours. One may think the rat visually animates the pandemic. But in ‘January, Green’ and ‘October 2020, Walk to the Park’ you move slowly, walking with a cane. Can we read between the lines to discover that this is how you are approaching life as you age, mixing fantasy and reality? It suggests that one’s age does not limit either the ability to project an alternative future for ourselves and that imagination assists us in creating positivity in our lived lives and in forming our relationships.
I have always mixed fantasy and reality in my writing and have always known which is which in my lived life. Yes, using and enjoying one’s imagination — writing or reading — is essential for a full life at any age.
“January 2021, Atonement” began in reality: I had started out for a walk along my street, but the wind was so strong I felt unsafe and returned home. The rest is fantasy, with the wind carrying the items I saw along the sidewalk, including discarded masks (not mine). The rat, which I once saw leap over a park bench, I used here because I felt it strengthened the terror in the poem, as was suggested in the question. Exaggeration is part of my craft: the guilt at not wearing the mask properly is exaggerated, as is the futile attempt at atonement by embroidering masks. (Reality: my thumbs are stiff now; I didn’t sew any masks.) The cane is real and often appears in my recent poems. I walk slowly because I’m careful to avoid falls.
2. In ‘Midsummer Gift of Waking’ –– and actually most of your poems in Climbing the Rain –– you pay attention to the little details, things many ordinary people seem to overlook. These are the things that make up the daily decisions which propel us through our lives. Can you comment on how this connects to the art of crafting a poem for you? Are poets people who notice the details and the multitude of our choices more?’
Your question reminds me of this quotation by William Blake, “To see a world in a grain of sand…” I feel that awareness of details, being mindful, makes for a rich life. My focus on details may also have to do with old habit. I got glasses at age ten, but until then I could only see clearly what was close at hand. And, having grown up in modest circumstances, I decided that what I had access to, whatever was nearby, was sufficient. You mentioned “Midsummer Gift of Waking.” I like one reader’s comment, that it was both humble and positive at the same time.
I like the challenge of making a poem out of almost nothing. Though many poets take their themes from the larger world, the craft of writing itself entails paying attention to details — word choices, form, arrangement of the ideas. If I have a definition of poetry, it is Music and Implication. I am very aware of each sound in a poem, even how it feels in the mouth when I say it. And the essence of poetry, for me, is that it suggests more than is stated on the surface.
3. In ‘Scattering’ and ‘You x 10’ and so many other poems in Climbing the Rain, it seems that your interactions (or lack of them) with people are what spur you to write. Do other people actually spur your writing? Is your interaction with other people a necessary situation/stimulation for your writing? Or are you someone who ruminates about issues and would do well shut away in a cabin in the woods for a month to focus on your poetry?
The need for interaction with others varies from person to person. Meaningful interactions for me include helping others by taking on responsibility or caring in a more personal way. Or just getting together for pleasure. There are groups of people among whom I feel welcomed and appreciated. I have friends and close friends. And people who are not fond of me. Much of this is apparent in “You x 10.”
Being with people in a healthy way nourishes me and allows me to feel deeply at peace. That’s the relaxed, meditative state that writing comes from. Real people are often the subject of my poems, certainly the love poems.
A cabin in the woods doesn’t appeal to me at all. In my daily life I have made the time and space I need for writing, and no one bothers me. “Bothers” is the right term. I live alone. I don’t answer the door unless I am expecting someone. I answer my phone at my convenience. I schedule my social activities so that I have plenty of quiet, private time for reflection and writing. No need or inclination to get away in order to write.
4. What you intend for the readers to be left with after the final page?
In terms of the effects of the poetry: a feeling of well-being, delight, chuckling over details, a desire to read the poems again and enjoy them. In terms of content: a positive view of life, that joy can come out of difficulties. An appreciation that one can continue to create and change into old age. In practical terms: a desire to tell their friends about the book, perhaps buy the book to give as gifts.
5. How would you characterize the stance taken by this work in relation to the most immediate socio-cultural concerns of the readers it is intended for?
In my poetry there is a sense of delight. My stance is that the mental processes that enable the reading and writing of poetry are essential for personal balance. We should make space in our lives to experience the arts for a sense of wonder. It is easy to get overwhelmed with immediate socio-cultural concerns. Ubiquitous news broadcasts bombard us with negativity and hopelessness if we let them. We can get caught up and forget to take care of our own emotional well-being. Surely our first responsibility is to ourselves. Do what you can to help in the larger picture, but the rest of the time is yours.
6. How did you arrive at the title? What was your intention for the title to do?
“Climbing the Rain” is an idea I’ve hung onto for a long time. It may have come to me when riding in an elevator with a neighbour who mentioned the wet weather. It finally became a short poem, which became the title poem of the book. It suggests, impossibility, effort, softness, and freshness.
Being a visual artist as well, I designed the cover to reflect the book title. The image, from my series of watermedia paintings based on text, is called “Hush, the Sibilant Rain.” The text repeats variations of this phrase. I chose the font to complement the image and fit with the font in the rest of the book.
7. How did you arrive at the form/structure of the work? Did you have a form/ structure in mind when you started? What other forms/structures or shapes did you consider? What was driving the choices of form/structure – efficiency or something else …style, urge for innovation, compulsions of the genre, compulsions of a literary movement it aspires to connect with?
The original manuscript of Climbing the Rain had two time divisions, Then and Now. The poems in each were divided into sections with related themes, for example, “Embracing Union Station” (love poems, including lost love from earlier days) and “It’s a Fish! It’s a Plane” (nonsense poems). My publisher suggested I move the section “Sky Blue Umbrellas” (poems of age) to the beginning. In the final book there are three time divisions, Now, Then, and Now.
It wasn’t just a matter of moving the one section. “Sky Blue Umbrellas” ends with a lullaby, originally meant to be the last poem in the book. I had to restructure some of the rest of the book so that there was a flow. For example, the section “Bone’s Business” (recovering from a complicated fracture) is chronological and ends with a love poem on returning home. I wanted to make sure that poem led into the section of poems of love and age, “The Octave Difference in Our Voices.” I’m very happy with how the structure turned out.
8. Are any aspects of the book that is autobiographical? How did you consciously deal with your intimate material (i.e., experiences – emotional and physical) in a way that avoids the dangers of straight autobiography?
I think of autobiography as a factual account, telling all, naming names. There is usually some autobiographical basis to my poems — for example, the love poems, positive and otherwise. But poems are creative constructs. For example, in “Public Transit” I only imagine what it would be like to run into this person on the bus. We had once been intimate but, the way things turned out, I would pretend not to know him. The details are imaginary — I’ve never carried negligees in a briefcase and he was never fat.
The fantasy extends to the use of “I” in some of the poems. Out of playfulness I imagine different personas. In “QE II is the Ocean Liner” the “I” is waif-like; In “Choices” the “I” is a slug-a-bed who neglects cats — not the real me! In “Elder Sleepover” the structure is real. That’s how it happened: I lay there in thought, teasing the visit into a poem. The timing of the pills is factual but I wanted to emphasize the preposterousness of the situation for humour. So I added the other preparations for bed, which were real at other times in my life but not now.
Are there poems/ideas that were originally intended by ultimately not included in the collection? How did you determine what to keep and what not to keep in the collection?
I omitted a few poems I didn’t think were my best or that I felt were obscure. I can’t really say how I made these decisions — by intuition, or what a younger friend calls “spidey-sense.” I now wish I had worked with an editor to help make my choices. I have second thoughts about some of those poems, which may never see the light of day.
My next book will likely be theme specific. The poems I am writing now are meditations on age, on turning eighty — it’s like a new land. Or, like dessert, it’s the last course but it’s sweet.
9. What was the most satisfying aspect about writing this book (other than perhaps the satisfaction of finishing it)? The joy of writing, developing each poem. No, letting each poem develop and guiding it. Elation. The poems in this book were written over a 60-year period — I started to publish in literary magazines as a university student. The joy of rereading each poem — how good this one is! Or that one! Satisfying to see how the sections fit together. Satisfying to learn that Silver Bow Publishing accepted the manuscript: I could then switch from seeking a home for it to knowing the book would be published and to editing it. I am very happy with the look and feel of the book itself. And that Climbing the Rain has finally come to fruition.
Marvyne Jenoff’s fifth book, a poetry collection, came out in March, 2022 with Silver Bow Publishing. Called Climbing the Rain, it includes poems that span her 60-year literary career as well as her recent poems of love and age. Marvyne Jenoff was born in Winnipeg and began publishing poetry in literary journals as a student at the University of Manitoba. Since the early 1960s she has lived in the Toronto area, where she has also been involved in the visual arts. She has served on boards and committees, including the TWUC National Council for one year. Her poetry and fiction books have been published by Canadian small presses; her poetry has appeared in publications internationally. From 2006 to 2019 she has published chapbooks of her fiction and essays under her own imprint, Twoffish Press.