Poetry Soup – Ep. 14 Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Have you ever been halfway between being awake and dreaming? If so, you’ll like “Dreamocracy,” by Matthew Rohrer. Matthew Rohrer was born in 1970, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His first book of poetry was “A Hummock in the Malookas,” which was chosen for the 1994 National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver (one of her poems was featured in this podcast). Among other poetry collections, Matthew Rohrer wrote “Nice Hat. Thanks.” with Joshua Beckman, another poet I enjoy, and the collection “Satellite,” from which I’ll be reading today. He is known as a surrealist poet. The most terrifying sound— an ice cream truck in the middle of the night. I’m perfectly flat feeling my fingerprints. It occurs to me that the answer to our childhood questions is: we’re being tortured. When I’m with my thoughts finally I’m someone else, I am driving an ice cream truck though the night with no lights, pulling on the string that rings the bell. I am the unwholesome whippoorwill trilling in the moonlight. I am awake late defending the campsite against elves. I am tortured in a sandbox at the army base. I am throwing sand in a little boy’s eyes. I am getting very sleepy. “Dreamocracy” explores the state between being awake and sleeping. This is a state where poems can come to us, where your subconscious produces the weirdest images in your mind that you are too sleepy not to believe but too awake to fully feel yourself in the dream. In an interview published in “The Adroit Journal,” Rohrer talks about the value of this state for the creation of poetry. He says, “I became fascinated by how you sort of lose control of your body and your mind, and begin to hear voices and you think, ‘What was that?’ I began paying attention to the voices and the phrases and sentences I heard, and realized they were weird—and not weird in a dreamy way or surreal; they were sort of boring. In fact, they were mostly boring.” In fact, this poem is a visual representation of falling into dreams. As the poem goes on, the stanzas get longer (the third being the longest and the first being the shortest). This shows the long metamorphosis that you undergo when you do fall asleep. Starting with a very New York image, of an ice cream truck driving in the middle of the night, the poem slowly moves into the feeling of falling asleep and beginning to dream. Throughout the poem, Rohrer undergoes many transformations and becomes many things, from the ice cream truck driver (or the “unwholesome whippoorwill”) to what could be a reference to the Sandman, a figure in Scandinavian mythology who throws sand in children’s eyes to make them fall asleep. In the second stanza of the poem, Rohrer writes, “…the answer to our childhood questions is:/we’re being tortured.” The word “questions” is plural, meaning that there are so many queries that could be answered this way, such as “why do we die?” and even “why do we sleep?” – why are we forced through this day and night routine every day? This realization, that we’re all being tortured, that it’s part of the core of every human being, is what allows Rohrer to become all of the different people in the poem, such as the one “defending the campsite against elves” and the boy tortured in the sandbox. By being all these people and embodying all these personalities, he is able to form a democracy, but of dreams – hence the title of the poem. In dreams, you might wonder who you are. Are you really you, or are you someone else? Are you two people, stuck in the same body? And do you even notice the details of that body or are you too busy being lost in your own head? When you finally really fall asleep, when you are no longer aware of what is happening, it is a relief. It is the assurance that there is only one final transformation before morning. “Dreamocracy” uses astonishing imagery to pull readers into the realm of dreams. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one!
Young Bloggers
Poetry Soup – Ep. 13: “There Was Earth Inside Them” by Paul Celan
Poetry Soup – Ep. 13: “There Was Earth Inside Them” by Paul Celan Transcript: Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’ll be reading the poem, “There was Earth Inside Them,” by Paul Celan. Paul Celan was born on November 23, 1920, in what was formerly Cernăuți, Kingdom of Romania, and is now Chernivtsi, Ukraine, into a Jewish family. Despite being born in Romania, Celan mainly spoke German. His father was adamant about Celan’s education in Hebrew and about Judaism in general. Around the time Celan graduated from preparatory school, he began writing poetry. Celan went to France in order to study medicine, but he went back home a year later to study language and literature. During World War II, while Celan was away from home, his parents were sent to a concentration camp, where they both died. This is the reason why so much of Celan’s poetry is about the Holocaust. In 1952, Celan married Gisèle Lestrange, who was a French graphic artist. Paul Celan drowned himself on April 20, 1970. Much of his work was later translated by Michael Hamburger, who translated the poem I will be reading today. There Was Earth Inside Them, and they dug. They dug and they dug, so their day went by for them, their night. And they did not praise God, who, so they heard, wanted all this, who, so they heard, knew all this. They dug and heard nothing more; they did not grow wise, invented no song, thought up for themselves no language. They dug. There came a stillness, and there came a storm, and all the oceans came. I dig, you dig, and the worm digs too, and that singing out there says: They dig. O one, o none, o no one, o you: Where did the way lead when it led nowhere? O you dig and I dig and I dig towards you, and on our finger the ring awakes. “They Had Earth Inside Them” is one of my favorite poems, and Paul Celan one of my favorite poets – all of his poetry has beautiful rhythm and metaphor. This poem is an extended metaphor, filled with beautiful language that paints images in the minds of the readers – such as a ring “awakening,” or shining on a finger. The poem is about trying to find meaning in existence. In the poem, a group of people referred to simply as “they,” dig to discover this meaning. As “they” dig, time passes by, and they invent no “song” or “language.” In this way, the first part of the poem seems to show the search for meaning as negative. The lines, “And they did not praise God,/ who, so they heard, wanted all this,/ who, so they heard, knew all this,” suggest that religion is a sort of search for meaning as well, God being a stand-in for the meaning of life. After the line, “there came a stillness and there came a storm,” everything changes. This line is the turn of the poem. All of a sudden, Celan breaks the parallelism, making it so not only “they” are digging, but also “I,” “you,” and, of course, the “worm,” a symbol of death, showing that life is short and that we are all trapped in the search for meaning. In the end of the poem, the ring “awakens” on a finger, almost as if it has been shined by the digging and scraping of the hands in the dirt. This line disperses all the negativity at the end of the poem – the ring symbolizes the little things that we live for, it symbolizes finding the “earth inside of them,” or the meaning that is in them, perched on their finger. The image of the poem does remain mixed, however – the ring shines, but it could also be covered in dirt from the repeated digging. Celan managed to create this beautiful poem in just four stanzas – the power of a short poem. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one!
Furyborn, Reviewed by Jeremy Lim, 10
“The world will fall. Two queens will rise.” These are the chilling words written on the cover of Furyborn. The first of the Empirium trilogy, written by Claire Legrand, this intense book will take your breath away. The words on the back cover perfectly sum it all up. “Two young women, living centuries apart, have the power to either save the world — or doom it.” Rielle, from the past, and Elaina, 1,020 years in the future. The two queens. Each shaping her own world. And separated by the impossible gap of a thousand years. Or are they really? This novel, set in the medieval age, stretches the limit of dual character connections with a narrative that switches perspectives between these two characters. It is impressive how the character developments are separate yet somehow linked in subtle ways. So as the book progresses, more connections are revealed between the characters. And the story ramps up, ending with surprising, climatic cliffhangers, which will lead you to crave more. A thing that I loved about this book is that romance is a huge part of the story, influencing each character, especially Rielle. There is an awkward love triangle between her, the prince of the Kingdom of Celedria, Audric, and the luring presence of the angel Corien, who Rielle doesn’t want to be, but is hopelessly attracted to. Audric and Corien are the two forces who determine which side Rielle is on, which future to believe in. For Elaina, her path is not determined by allegiances of love, but rather her own moral compass. As her perception of the world quickly changes as the story moves on, she finds herself struggling to choose between working for the empire she has served her entire life, or switching over to the resistance group, the Red Crown. As she struggles to decide, switching sides again and again, both sides bear the consequences of her actions. All in all, Furyborn is a book that older readers should enjoy, with the romantic moments making it a little unsuitable for younger readers. However, if you are up for it, you should definitely read it. It is a must read for ages 10 and above. If you like fantasy or realistic fiction, this is the book for you. I know it sounds weird putting both genres together, but its plot and descriptions are undeniably versatile. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and read it! Furyborn by Claire Legrand. Sourcebooks fire, 2019. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
