If My Memory Serves Me Well // Risa Denenberg

Risa Denenberg writes about the accuracy of memory, and using poetry versus prose to unwrap memory, as part of Lauren Davis’ guest curated month “Writing About the Living.”

Recently I was talking to my brother and mentioned “the green couch.” He said, “What green couch?” It was a vivid forest green couch in the family room that held important memories for me, one that I’ve used it as a placemark in more than one poem. He (of the better memory) doubted its existence. In an instance like this, who owns the memory? If he doesn’t even remember the couch, but I do, then in my view, it belongs to me. I could check with cousins who often slept on that couch (which was also a sofa bed) in our childhoods, but as no one else has claimed the couch, I believe it is mine to describe, to make use of, to make metaphor with, as I please. The question of “Whose memory is it?” confounds the calculation when we write about the living. Certainly a couch does not present the same anxiety as a memory that includes a living person. In fact, my very much alive brother makes an appearance in a number of my poems, but since I know he will never read them, it feels harmless enough to publish them. In the poem, “In which my brother goes to her grave and I shed a tear,” I say: My brother goes to the grave/site and says farewell/to the engraving on the rock. /I live far away and today/the buttress crumbles and I miss my mother/for the first time./I don’t know why he does it/knowing and not knowing him so well/is all I have to go on. Here, we see that it can be equally fraught to write about the dead, as there are always living people who will remember them and may wish to defend their memory. My brother would not like to know that I feel the coldness expressed above towards my mother. In some situations, it may even be considered more of an offence, possibly cowardly, to write about the dead, who can’t defend themselves. My parents are long dead, so I don’t face the dilemma of them reading about themselves in my poetry, but other family members have their own memories, and might be disturbed by this poem. Poetry makes very different claims than fiction. A close friend has included a character modeled after me in her novel, fully with my permission, so I know what it feels like to be recognizable in a work of fiction, and I admit to feeling a bit anxious about it. I’ve had quite an interesting life, but I’ve resisted writing memoir in prose, or sneaking it into fiction, because I don’t really trust my memory. Even in therapy, I wasn’t sure if my memories were whole or fragmentary, although I felt they were true. So I’d rather say I trust my truth. And it is much less bewildering for me to fold my memories into poetry where figurative language is accepted as the norm. Even when writing poems that include family members, which I do frequently, I try to think through the same experience through their eyes and compare it with my own memory, not to be fair (an impossible gesture) but to more fully interpret the complexity of relationship. And I honestly don’t wish to embarrass anyone or do anyone an injustice. I have written poems that I eventually decided not to send out into the world, based on who I thought might actually read them.Often I will embed a memory in an imagined situation. In the lines below, I invent a situation to frame an actual assault:& when he tried to touch me again, this time more insistently,I said, “I think all men are endlessly shallow.” & that was when he slammed me across the room.Would my abuser, or people who know him (such as our mutual son) know he is the man in this poem? Did I even know this when I wrote these words? Or was I discovering a true thing? Unlike my brother, my son does read my poems. These lines of poetry feel much less laden than writing narratively about my son’s father. They are freed from any single or necessary interpretation. Probably the most difficult dilemma I have faced regarding invading another’s privacy was the decision to read my best friend’s journals. Jon died of AIDS in 1993. Because I knew he wouldn’t have wanted anyone in his family to read his journals, I took possession of them for safekeeping. I struggled with whether to read them for several years, partly out of respect for his privacy, and partly because I knew they would be devastating. Since that time, I’ve written and published a series of connected poems, the chapbook what we owe each other, and a dozen or so more recent poems about Jon, despite the unknown effect they could have on his brother, also a friend. Not surprisingly, there are contradictions in my ethical stance. In my current manuscript, in the poem “What it’s like now (without you),” I wrote: I met your parents, after./They cannibalized your apartment./I read your journals, after./Where you described (turning tricks in Naples/snorting cocaine, drinking Remy Martin/and) how they cannibalized you. I am a nurse practitioner, so I should say something about writing about patients. Having worked in the cracks of the healthcare system most of my life, I’ve encountered a lot of suffering and shame. Of course, I protect any patient’s privacy with anonymity. My second chapbook, In My Exam Room, uses vignettes of unnamed persons I’ve known as their medical provider. In some poems I make changes to disguise further the identity of the person I am writing about, other times not. In the poem “In Exam Room 5” I wrote about this confrontation with a patient, pretty much exactly as I recall it happening: After he/storms past, fists/near my face, slams/the door gunshot loud enough/to bring a crowd to my exam room/I go on with my day, ignoring/my gnawing core. There is always the question, in creative writing, that the writer must ask herself: Why am I writing this? Sometimes I recognize that an experience is too fresh or still too wounding to feel everything I need to feel about its complexity. That’s what journaling is for. As I mentioned, Jon’s journals were devastating for me to read. Still, I know that he used journaling to write about longings, failures and rejections, not the successes and joys he also found in life. My journals are equally weighted with chaotic, angry, hurt feelings. That is why I intend to burn them before I die. I suggest you do the same. 

Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state where she works as a nurse practitioner. She is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, publisher of lesbian/bi/trans poetry. She reviews books of poetry for The Rumpus and has published three full-length collections of poetry: Mean Distance from the Sun (Aldrich Press, 2013), Whirlwind @ Lesbos (Headmistress Press, 2016) and slight faith (MoonPath Press, 2018).