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FOUR WAY REVIEW

Rosalie Moffett is the author of Nervous System (Ecco) which was chosen by Monica Youn for the National Poetry Series Prize, and listed by the New York Times as a New and Notable book. She is also the author of June in Eden (OSU Press). She has been awarded the "Discovery"/Boston Review prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University, and scholarships from the Tin House and Bread Loaf writing workshops. Her poems and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Believer, New England Review, Narrative, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor at the University of Southern Indiana. (Photo Credit: Jacob Sunderlin)

MONTHLY WITH Rosalie Moffett

Monday, 14 December 2020 by Rosalie Moffett

 


FOUR POEMS

INTERVIEW


Rosalie Moffett
is the author of Nervous System (Ecco) which was chosen by Monica Youn for the National Poetry Series Prize, and listed by the New York Times as a New and Notable book. She is also the author of June in Eden (OSU Press). She has been awarded the “Discovery”/Boston Review prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University, and scholarships from the Tin House and Bread Loaf writing workshops. Her poems and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Believer, New England Review, Narrative, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor at the University of Southern Indiana. 

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    FOUR POEMS by Rosalie Moffett

    Monday, 14 December 2020 by Rosalie Moffett

    READ THE PAIRED INTERVIEW WITH ROSALIE MOFFETT


     

    https://fourwayreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/In-Sound-Mind-2.m4a


    IN SOUND MIND


    A jet drags its noise 
       across my side of town, trawling 
    for something. Its shadow,
       a small black insect, crawls 
    across house after house. Up and up, over 
       and over, a lithe little dark thought. I, too 
    have had a weeviling-through, my sunny 
       sensibility bedeviled by a pest. Up there, sky-high, 
    do you, as you go, know the feeling
       you slough? Here, when you heft a sack 
    of flour and watch it cough 
       into the air one brown moth,
    is your knee-jerk reaction Finally!
        Some honesty! A thought can worm 
    and worm its own tangle of unseen tunnel 
        in the mind for years before things begin
    to collapse. Before a word is allowed 
       out, flapping towards a lamp. Those dummies, 
    given the rotten meat up-teeming
       with maggots, assumed spontaneous generation. 
    Now we know: flies. Humming thing aloft
       in the air. Something descending
    to seed a swarm of drear: what
       even is the point or so what or what 
    have you: ruinous little voice-over. I drown
       it out however I can. Once, I resorted 
    to a colander, accidentally fluffed
       up a cloud as I sifted mealworms
    from flour. Are you, like me, uneasy  
       with ruin? Do you feel a pity for the blue
    your jet plane rakes through, or for me,
       whose single-edition sky is getting striped 
    with white scrapes? Listen, I need to stop
       making up gods to talk to
    who can’t hear me. Sorry for conjuring you  
     too aloof, earmuffed and far— 
       I don’t know how else to be 
    authentic to my experience. Forgive 
       me my mind’s circumscribed  
    design of you, made quick in the shadow 
       of a small, harmless darkness. Sometimes
    one bleak thought breeds in the mind. 
       No one actually knows, I was shocked
    to learn, why moths spiral 
       towards artificial light—perhaps
    they are making 
        the same mistake as me, desiring
    just one moment to speak with
        what ruins them.

     

    https://fourwayreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Ode-to-Jessica-2.m4a


    ODE TO JESSICA 

             For Jessica Farquhar


    If you’re ever in trouble,
       find a mother, said Jessica
    to her child, refreshing   
       my predilection for animal videos
    where one is raising another’s young,
       e.g. the cat with kittens 
    plus a duckling & the voice 
       behind the camera announcing 
    in wonder: it arrived right as she gave birth, like, 
       get the timing right, a mother 
    will mother anything. Like, 
       flip the floodlight & everything 
    lit up is up for nurturing. Thousands of videos
       like this, I swear, exist, inadvertently or deliberately
    buttressing her advice in a world
       where it’s unwise
    to find a policeman or CEO or comedian
       or president. America’s 
    fertility rate is down, the daunt
       of saving enough to stave off 
    progeny-debt is enough 
       to stall even the reckless. 
    I’ve a dim view, but it’s true 
       my brain’s been re-routing frustration 
    and bungling through a process 
       that, magic-8-ball-like, produces 
    the solution: have a baby. Little wailing 
       thing. When feeling low, I scroll 
    through online lists of expenses 
       for the first year of life. It never fails
    to make everything worse. 
       Once, I read an article
    about a woman who joined
       a search party searching for her. For hours, 
    she looked for herself. 
       I am supposed to be finding a mother. 
    I’m staring at the blank in my bank balance. 
       God knows the best prayers 
    one can say in America are to the patron saints
       of student debt, of Ca$h for Gold,  
    of the lowest of the low
       deductibles. Oh, God knows 
    I know the last thing
       the world needs is more
    people, it’s so full up with policemen, 
       gun nuts, florists, pundits, artists,
    landfills, Jessica, kneeling
       face-level with her son, Jessicas
    ready to kneel face-level 
       with anyone’s son. 

     

    https://fourwayreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Taxes-Icecaps-Crocuses-2.m4a


    TAXES, ICECAPS, CROCUSES


    In the bank account, it is
       unseasonably mild. The businessmen
    who live there rarely break 
       a sweat, whereas it is, elsewhere, 
    unseasonably disastrous. Wildfire. 
       Flooding. Diseases unreasonably 
    rising up, little ghosties, from
       the permafrost melt. It is everything 
    anyone talks about, though the seasoned
       businessmen never go anywhere
    near the copier, the water-cooler, the arenas 
       of anyone. Meticulous, they maintain
    their distance and their coin
       -colored comb overs coiffed into hieroglyphs
    of I’ll be dead before any of this 
       shit hits the fan. By many accounts, an account
    is a story, and thus money is a moral
       available solely to an upper crust mostly 
    into fan fiction: Goodnight moon. Goodnight 
       congressman. Sayonara taxes, 
    icecaps, crocuses. The bank account can be 
       summoned by the right spell of two
    point authentication—presto: see the men
       gazing through the boardroom 
    window at the view, which is the mountainous
       horizon, which is a jagged line graph. 
    X-axis: months. Y-axis: the accrual 
       of funds. In the bank account, 
    there’s a potted plastic palm whose leaves
       shift in the manner of blades catching light
    in a knife-fight. The businessmen take
       solace in the view, they take
    turns watering the palm, they take money 
      and turn back to the window. They keep
    the money. They keep watering. Water outside keeps 
       rising. Inside there’s a weird black spot
    developing on the carpet. They were told it was there
       to give them a sense of the exterior world. 
    They were informed that it was, for their safety
       decorative. This was about the palm
    whose faux trunk pokes down into styrofoam. 
       But in the bank account, they don’t listen, which is
    corporate policy, which is for their safety
       and to maintain their equilibrium in case    
    a message weasels in from the gate
       intercom re: some faulty product, some leaky
    lifeboat in the polar ice cap
       melt. Despite that, and also though
    they were sure they’d made, as young men,
       strict provisions against such an act, 
    they were beguiled 
       by the idea that they might
    nurture one quiet thing. They keep
       watering. The mold loves the moisture, the micro-
    fiber playground, it throws its personal confetti
       of deadly spores. Even now, it advances 
    over the carpet, army-crawling 
       towards the loafers with the slit at the toe
    where, tucked, is a hundred dollar bill. Suppose
       this is a fable. Moreover, suppose there is a moral 
    to be made from the world 
       anyone can imagine, a lesson, a hinge
    between it and the inside
       of the mind. Suppose you entertain 
    this idea for your own comfort
       in the manner of tending
    to the kind of plant that, turns
       out, grows more and more 
    suspect the longer 
       it neither blooms nor fruits.

     

    https://fourwayreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Nest-Egg-2.m4a


    NEST EGG


    Logging in to check the pie graph 

       of one’s 401K: boring miserly pastime
    of the 21st century. No lovely clunk 
       of a gold doubloon, just Scrooge 
    and his TIAA CREFF password. 
       Just Scrooge McDuck and his new bird-body. 
    My first time in Georgia it was August
       & I was aghast at the snow 
    floating in the blue sky. (Hide your eyes,
       McDuck, each time we find ourselves
    driving in the wake of a chicken truck.)
       Point is, most miracles 
    can be pinned on other people 
       amassing money in offshore accounts. 
    Once, I saw rocks light up on the bank
       as the surf crashed in: true phenomenon 
    of phosphorescent plankton. Once, the power 
       went out in a packed stadium,
    and the ring of stands fired up with that exact
       blue-white plankton-light from flipped
    open flip phones. From above, there must’ve been
       one shining eye in the pitch black
    of the rest of Dakar. The pie graph 
       is a joke: it shows only what you have now
    as if that’s enough to illuminate enough 
       of a patch of the quiet dark
    of the future. Ah, Scrooge, I know
       the balm of a tall stack of coins. I, like you,
    have a nest of fear. I like you best
       as a bird. I read how domestic ducks
    neglect their eggs, which must be
       electrically incubated. Warm bulb which nursed
    current from the wall-socket to make you 
       take form, made you take all the currency & hold it
    to the light to see if it could be changed
       from coin to mirror, from mirror to periscope
    to peer into the unknown. Ah, Scrooge, it feels 
       like it works, doesn’t it? You were the first 
    duck to dip your spatz into an olympic pool 
       of money—even as you dove, even as the children 
    rubbed, in disbelief, their fists across the dollar signs 
       in their eyes, someone watched 
    the scales shift, felt the digits of the budget 
       loosen their chokehold. 

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    INTERVIEW WITH Rosalie Moffett

    Monday, 14 December 2020 by Rosalie Moffett

    READ THE POEMS PAIRED WITH THIS INTERVIEW

    FWR: In my first read of “In Sound Mind”, I was struck by how you play with sound throughout the poem (such as the lines “Up there, sky-high,/ do you, as you go, know the feeling/ you slough?”). Can you speak about the growth of this poem? How does consonance (and dissonance!) influence your process– if at all?

    Rosalie Moffett: I think I’ve been gravitating towards letting sound lead the way during this particular political period, and this pandemic—I’ve been angry, sad and with something overly simple to say stuck in my craw. Which makes a boring poem. A hallway you can see the end of from the beginning. But to let sound in as a guide gives that hallway some doors, some new avenues. There are then things behind doors that I have to shift in order to see. It opens rooms in my thoughts I didn’t know were there. Which certainly happened in this poem. 

    And (if you forgive me my wandering into some more conjectural territory) back in high school when I was obsessed with the weird experiments conducted in service of psychology and sociology, I remember learning about cognitive dissonance. In one study, participants were asked to either hold a pencil by pursing their lips, or in their teeth, like a rose. Rough approximations of a frown and a grin. They were then told jokes. Those with the pencil in their teeth found the jokes funnier. In short, the brain said “I must think these are funny, I’m smiling.” The brain likes to follow the body’s lead. Out loud, the mouth makes a rough smile in weeviling, feeling, bedeviled. Makes a rough frown when saying I don’t know, No one knows. I say all this not to claim my poems are smart enough to play these sounds like an emotional piano, but to offer that the sound of a poem might be working on our cognition in ways that are deeply layered and complex. I trust it to lead me through a poem.  

    FWR: There’s sly humor in these poems, particularly in “Nest Egg” with its addresses to Scrooge McDuck, that carves a new path to the emotional heart of each poem. It serves to buttress the associative leaps you make through the poems and expand on the emotional surprise. How do you see humor in your work?

    Moffett: Humor is the PPE gear my mind wears, the way I can make something dark harmless enough to look at. There’s that old chestnut: tragedy + time = comedy. Often, when you’re too close to something, you can’t see the humor in it. If you train yourself to see the comedy, it’s like instant distance. (Instadistance™) You can see how humor could serve as a survival tactic, a jetpack out of actually facing something–and I think there’s a danger of that to be aware of in writing poems. But it’s also, I think, a useful way to gain perspective. Make something funny, and you can look down at it as if from a great height. What is also true is that this training (if you’ll let me call it that) makes a 2-way street. You can zoom in and see the tragic in something that, at first, seems funny. Scrooge McDuck? A duck obsessed with something he can’t eat? Swimming in coins? Oh, honey. What have we made. 

    Some of my zooming-in involves digging into granular and aspects of things populating my poems. Little of my “research” ends up in the poem (and I defy any algorithm to make sense of my internet searches). For this poem, I did a lot of reading about the character of Scrooge McDuck (yes, his was the first depiction of a swimming pool of money) and got to feel kind of close to him, a kinship. At some point in his history, he changed–someone took pity and shifted him from a miser (clinging to what he couldn’t even make use of) into a philanthropist. I wish that same hand would take pity on me. 

    FWR: I love your last images, whether Jessica kneeling with “anyone’s son” or the plant that neither “blooms nor fruits”. How do you know when you’ve ‘stuck the landing’ in a poem? Are there poems that you admire for their endings?

    Moffett: If only, like in gymnastics, one could look up and see the score from judges!

    I think what I look for is that feeling that my mind is standing, so to speak, on a new patch of land. A new vantage point. A poem, uniquely, is a negotiation with white space, with absence. Each line and stanza break are little perches from which to consider that absence. And that last line is where the reader stops, as if at the edge of a cliff, to look out. If there’s something still ringing, something hovering in the mind’s eye, demanding attention, OK. Good. 

    The cliff came up suddenly in Carrie Fountain’s poem “The Jungle” and then there I was, looking over the edge, ringing.

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