How to Give Your Squalling Bundle to the World // Maura Snell

Maura Snell writes about three deeply personal collections as part of Lauren Davis' guest month, "Writing About the Living."

I am thinking of poetry collections like Lena by Cassie Pruyn, and Troubler by Elijah Burrell. I am thinking of Meaghan Quinn’s forthcoming Slow Dance, Bullets. Each of these collections are raw and honest and are full of the people in the poets’ lives, past and present. Each collection also takes a calculated risk, in that each leaves open one or many aspects of the writer’s life and in doing so exposes their muse. The poets mentioned write wildly different from each other, but even so, all three, without a doubt, have a strong common denominator that is an underlying current throughout. That common denominator is a deep and abiding reverence for the subject matter/muse and the self. And, as a result, each writer is asking us, as readers, to love and respect their muse as well. How does each author write of their muse with utmost honesty without compromising their muse or themselves? Arguably, we as writers, by the time we publish, are ready for that compromise of self—as it’s something we prepare for as we write. The process of writing and creating is a peeling-back of the layers that protect us, an opening of sorts, of our skin, in order to reveal our soft underbelly, our most tender self. And in doing this, we have to be okay with our audience reading and perceiving our work however they will. I once gave a reading and read a poem about a friend dying. I wrote the poem long before I became a parent, so, for me, it was definitely a poem about the loss of a close friend. But, after this reading an acquaintance came over to me and said, “Oh, that poem about your daughter was so sad, so beautiful.” At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then realized he was referring to the poem about my friend. I wanted to correct him. Then I realized that he was hearing the poem in relationship to himself. He was connecting with the work as a father, not as a friend. As we write, we open up with our very specific emotion, whether it be grief, joy, or fear—and we lay this out, in its true rawness in order to make connections. It is in that specificity that the truth becomes universal, as even in the most distinct of losses, there is a universal emotion. When I wrote of the death of my friend, I wrote of my own great and tragic grief. But in receiving the poem, my listener connected as father, which, I imagine would be the greatest and most tragic of griefs: to lose a child. As the writer in this, I have to trust my reader/listener: that they will engage with my work as they are meant to. I cannot steer their literary ship for them. I can only offer my story as honestly as possible and hope they can find a connection. But what of our Muse in all this? What onus do we have to protect those that have inspired us? Do we have an onus? In this digital age, our work is broadcast more widely and more quickly than ever before. Readers can access and share our work, study and interpret our writings, and in this can extrapolate what they will from our work about us as poet, and about our muse. We might be okay with this as the author, but what about the others we expose in our work? So much of today’s poetry is confessional. That is, so many writers are exploding with powerful stories, homages to roots, families, pasts, grappling with grief, loss, fear, and loneliness. Contemporary writers are coming out, screaming themselves wide open. It can be joyous, or defiant, rich with promise, or a terrible drowning. And they risk so much in doing so.For Pruyn in her collection, Lena, it may have been easier, as we learn quickly that “Lena” is dead. And while Pruyn’s poems weave a sad and beautiful narrative, there is evident a stunning and profound respect for the deceased and her family. Also, Pruyn maintains a certain anonymity, in that, even though the speaker is singing these gorgeous and sad love songs to and about her Lena, only those closest to the speaker might know the true identity of Lena. But Lena’s true identity is not important in this narrative. Rather, Pruyn has created a compelling collection of poems that, despite their acute directness in the details, overwhelm with their universal power. The grief here is a grief that is purely human and thus wholly connectable.

In Troubler, Burrell accomplishes much of the same, but from an entirely different perspective. His main “character” is Troubler, a ghost of a voice, who filters through the poems like mist. Burrell is Troubler, but Troubler is also us. Like Pruyn, Burrell has found a way to speak of the infinitely intimate while also remaining open to each of us readers and our association with what he is offering. Like Pruyn’s Lena, Burrell’s mother has died. And, like Pruyn, there is no overt specificity when speaking of the living. Burrell’s people are his people, but in this, he allows our people to be ours in the same kind of communion. In Quinn’s forthcoming book Slow Dance, Bullets, the author takes a turn away from this manner of dealing, in that she faces her demons head on, without compunction, and while her “people” remain nameless, and they face the speaker’s demons with her, all of the characters, in real life, are true, and alive, and well. In writing the book, and in deciding to publish these poems, Quinn is entrusting to us, her readers, her Muse. Yes, there is the same peeling-back, the same reverence, as there is in Lena and Troubler, but there is also a certain sense of untethered-ness, in that we, as readers, can feel the uncertainty of the writer. We can feel the writer’s unease. This is Quinn’s decisions: to keep all of her “people” nameless as her one layer of anonymity, but then everything and everyone else is right there on the page. It is as if Quinn has given birth and is now offering to us to hold her new born child, small, delicate, but oh-so weighty. There is no perfect answer. Each is a calculated risk. And each also involves our people, family, and friends. Each defines us, too, is some way, as a certain kind of writer. But, when all is said and done, this is what it comes to: as writers we must. We must give over our truth. We must be fierce. We must be honest. And then we must take all of these things in a squalling bundle, new and delicate, and, by the world’s standards, undefined, and hand it over. And then, we must trust our readers to take and to hold our bundle, fresh and fragile, with reverence and respect. And then we must step away. 

Maura Snell is co-founder and poetry editor at The Tishman Review and Route 7 Press. She has worked as a freelance editor on several book-length projects including the nationally acclaimed Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017). Her chapbook, Eating Cake, was a finalist in the Five Oaks Press chapbook contest in 2016, and her poems have appeared in several literary publications like MomEgg Review, Inside the Dome, Brain, Child Magazine, and Red Paint Hill Quarterly to name a few. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and splits her time between Massachusetts and Vermont.