Earlier this month WNIJ started a new segment. Poetry on the Page. This is a poetry conversation between art’s reporter Yvonne Boose and Northern Illinois University English professor Amy Newman. In this episode, the two discuss a poem that highlights the not so bright spots of motherhood.
Yvonne: Hello, Amy.
Amy: Hi, Yvonne, how are you?
Yvonne: I am good. Thank you so much for joining me again. Amy Newman is an English professor at Northern Illinois University.
Now Mother's Day just passed, and I know you sent me a couple of poems that talk about the relationships with, with mothers and a lot of times when you think about Mother's Day, you think about celebrations, but these poems as you put it aren't so rosy.
Can you tell me why you chose to focus on those types of poems?
Amy: Your listeners probably heard a lot of lovely poems this Mother's Day. And of course, being a mother is pretty complicated experience and I'm especially interested in poems that explore those complexities, the realities of motherhood.
So, for example, Jean Voneman Mikhail has written a poem about her son who struggled with anxiety and started to self-medicate with street drugs.
And I spoke to her about this, and she told me, quote, “addiction can happen to anyone and being the mother of an addict is a sad and lonely journey. So many women have had to face.”
Her poem is “Under Drifting Stars” and it begins with an epigraph by Judith E Martin: “I make quilts large enough to cover a whole family.”
There are two of you now
Like two full moons appearing in the same month.
One super blue, a second son born unexpectedly,
The one they call an addict is not you.
Just like the man in the moon, you too have far spaced and far away eyes.
The son I brought home was light in my folded arms and quilted under my skin.
I stitched your see-through eyelids with tiny blue capillaries.
I adore them.
I have kissed where the man in the half-moon hooked you with his fist.
For three months and a half you've sobered up in rehab.
Time gets measured in little sips of water and medication.
Right pill versus wrong pill
Stars snag on the curtain pulley in your room.
Outside the night becomes a gift of drifting stars.
They seem needled into place, perhaps fixed.
One errant stitch can bring the whole sky down.
You pull a blanket covered in, piling under your chin.
Suboxone and Seroquel numb you.
Black out curtains hide whatever light there is left of the night.
A fault line shudders beneath you.
The moon's a trembling circle drawn lopsided in a boy's scrawl
And a half moon's cinches in the middle with your lasso.
At least you sleep somewhere safe.
Isn't that better than walking the streets with puddles that seep up your pant legs into mountain chains around your ankles.
Yvonne: That poem was so full of imagery. And I know the one line that stood out to me is when she said stitch, “stitch your see-through eyelids.” What particular part of that poem stands out to you? And can you tell me why?
Amy: Well, OK, I agree that that's a beautiful line and the idea of the epigraph being a quilt, it sounds like the mother's trying to, you know, hold everything together.
When Voneman Mikhail says, "Suboxone and Seroquel numb you," that tells me that she's knowing that her child is getting the kind of medication and treatment that he might need. The child is still not necessarily whole, which is what she desires.
I feel like the voice in this poem loves the child even through this pain and is at least happy that the child is getting help.
Yvonne: Now, is this particular poem a part of a book?
Amy: At this point, you know, I know this poem is part of a series that Voneman Mikhail is writing about her child, and it's not collected in a book yet.
Yvonne: Is there anything else you want to share with our listeners about this particular poet today?
Amy: It was the first poem that came to mind among the many poems that we know about Mother's Day because it seems to me something that addresses the actual reality of what a lot of family members are facing now and she addresses it in such a way that's loving, tender and also frightened at the same time. It feels very real to me.
Yvonne: All right, Amy, thank you so much. Amy Newman, English professor at Northern Illinois University.
