Author Note: Paola Ferrante
The Town Crier asks all of The Puritan’s contributors to answer one or several questions as part of our Author Notes series. Paola Ferrante took us up on the offer and answered several. Ferrante is the author of the poem “Laws in Motion” in Issue 40, Winter 2018.Does your poem have an interesting origin story/compositional history you’d like to share? This could include interesting factoids or bits of research that informed the work. What was it influenced by? (i.e., were you listening/watching something when you began to write? Were you in a meeting or class at the time? Was it after a film, art show, concert?)
This poem actually started with the title. I had been watching The Big Bang Theory, and I remember one of the characters talking about Newton’s Laws of Motion. As a woman and as a poet, I’ve been sitting with a lot of what’s happened over the past few years, the #MeToo movement, Jian Gomeshi’s trial, the “knees together” judge, and the daily newsfeed of yet another person in power being accused of sexual misconduct. I find that my poetry is where it all spills out. Anne Boyer’s Garments Against Women was a major influence on this piece, along with other poems in the collection on which I’ve been working. I love the coldness and the precision that results from the subversion of scientific or technical language in poetry, which I feel allows the reader to discover different nuances of one little word. Once I had the title, I started thinking about the different implications of the word “law.” In order to write this poem, I knew I needed to simultaneously remember high school physics and take another look at the heated holiday conversations I’d had about the current issues I've mentioned with my future brother-in-law, a lawyer.
Tell us the best thing you’ve read lately, or a poet/fiction writer you’re jealous of, or a story/short story collection you wish you wrote.
I love the coldness and the precision that results from the subversion of scientific or technical language in poetry ...
I remember listening to a radio segment by Kim Mitchell where he talked about songs and artists he admired called “Damn I Wish I Wrote That!” Every time I read something by Anne Boyer, I know exactly what he was talking about. She’s responsible for the best thing I’ve read lately, “What Resembles the Grave But Isn’t,” just for how effective her use of repetition is at identifying the speaker’s state of mind. As for poets I’m jealous of, I feel so grateful to be writing in a time where there are all these amazing contemporary women poets. Robin Richardson haunts me with her rawness and honesty, Canisia Lubrin with her syntax and her contrasts between the conversational and the mythological. I’m also a huge fan of Shannon Bramer’s Precious Energy, which explores subjects like postpartum depression and writing while being a mother and finds that balance between being devastating and also very funny. I’m always really jealous of poets who know how to use humour since I find it so hard to be silly on the page.
Because we are running various blog posts on music, we have a question on song lyrics. Did music lyrics have anything to do with the piece we’re publishing? Is there any recent lyricist you’ve been digging, and why?
While this particular piece didn’t have its origins in song lyrics, I’m fascinated by how women are often objects in lyrics, like the lady in red or the devil with a blue dress on, and some of my other poetry has explored that issue in some depth. When it comes to recent lyricists I’ve been loving, I’d have to say Laura Jane Grace from the punk band Against Me!, particularly the album Transgender Dysphoria Blues. This album coincided with the singer announcing her decision to transition and I admire the raw honesty and vulnerability present in those lyrics, because I find them to be a really powerful example of the “Unsympathetic Voice,” a term Robin Richardson coined to describe the process of telling uncomfortable truths to evoke deeper understanding and empathy from the reader. It’s something I try to do in my poetry, and the way it’s done on this particular album always gives me chills.
