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In our first anniversary issue of Pirene’s Fountain we are delighted and privileged to feature popular Los Angeles poet Michelle Bitting.
Michelle is certainly a poet whose star is on the rise. Her recently released, eagerly anticipated debut full length collection “Good Friday Kiss” received wide approbation in literary circles, building on the reputation gained from her excellent chapbook “Blue Laws”, published in December 2007.
Born in Los Angeles, she studied theatre at U.C. Berkley, and enjoyed careers as a dancer and chef before marrying actor, Phil Abrams, with whom she has two children, Elijah and Vera Rose. Although she has written since her college days, she began to pen poetry in earnest in 2001, balancing her writing with the demands of motherhood. Remarkably, she also finds time to contribute to her local community, working with toddlers and pre-schoolers and through charitable and outreach projects involving performing arts and dance.
In addition to “Good Friday Kiss” and “Blue Laws”, Michelle has work forthcoming or published in Glimmer Train, Swink, Prairie Schooner, Clackamas Literary Review, The Southeast Review, Gargoyle, Pearl, Rattle, Slipstream, Dogwood, Phoebe, and others. Michelle has won both the Glimmer Train and Poet’s On Parnassus poetry contests. She was a finalist in the 2003 Writers at Work Fellowship Competition, semi-finalist for the Julia Peterkin Award and won Honorable Mention in the Art In The Air/Inventing The Invisible Contest. She has also attended the Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference. For more information visit her website.
So what of the poetry? Thematically broad, though retaining the essence of who the writer is and has been – mother, sister, wife, daughter – her poems achieve the holy grail of remaining personal whilst achieving universality of meaning and resonance.
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Good Friday Kiss
The choir door left open, we slithered in.
Moving through the musky stacks
of bibles and unlaundered cassocks,
we lay down behind the altar—
our bodies an awkward tangle,
a snake with clothes on,
when he pulled me close, whispering his love.
Still, it wasn’t the airless sanctuary
or the dead I could hear humming
inside the church’s empty pews.
No, it was Adam’s hands made me cringe
the first time his lips touched mine—
twelve years old and asthma sickly,
the dry, scabbed flesh and little cloth gloves
he wore to cover pink ointments
that oozed in a line down his wrists.
I looked up and saw the cross floating overhead,
draped in black chiffon for Good Friday
like a negligee or widow’s grieving veil,
and suddenly revolted by the cotton-coated touch,
I rolled away from him, forever.
What did I know of suffering? The flesh
pulled taut and stapled, the human canvas
rubbed to transparency?
How my taunts would come to crucify this boy,
my young heart shifting in gusts—
the art of betrayal I was already learning to perfect.
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Michelle does not shrink away from the difficult or the painful – indeed she embraces tragedy and joy in equal measure, wringing blood and tears from these stones which form the foundation of every life.
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The Sacrifice
I think about how you stayed up nights, Mother,
drinking coffee at your sewing machine,
finishing my Isadora Duncan costume—
diaphanous number cut from a swell of black crepe
for the mad-grief dance after her children accidentally drowned.
Remember waking to find the garment realized—
dark offering you draped across the ironing board,
fastidiously stitched seams that stroked
my just-coming curves so I’d be beautiful,
drunk in the lights of my junior high stage,
and you out there in the hushed cool of your reserved seat,
hands folded, resting now, the little bobbin of your heart
spinning inside its quiet nook while you watched me
do the hard, privileged work of feeling for both of us. |
Stylistically “verse libre” suggest a looseness of structure. Michelle manages the remarkable feat of imposing order whilst retaining a natural flow and freedom. For me, her poetry reads in a natural, unforced way, like a conversation with a well loved friend. The difference is that there is always something more profound being said, something lasting and significant, which subtly changes our perception of life’s events, great and small.
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Sacrament
—for David
Sometimes when I lift the chalice
to a brother’s tongue,
and tip the gleaming cup so just enough
wine flows in, the sweet red sea parting
two lip-lands like an Exodus in reverse,
my hand might accidentally brush
the other’s cheek, our skins kissing briefly;
and the moment is so raw,
so vulnerable between us, anything rough
or unclean suddenly melts, passes away—
as if we have no skin,
and we are naked and new all over again,
and shame is a fruit left dangling on the vine. |
Michelle names amongst her literary influences, Dylan Thomas, Sharon Olds, Dorianne Laux, Kim Addonizio, Tony Hoagland, Anne Sexton and Kevin Young. However, her work is anything but derivative. This is a unique voice.
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That Summer
Even in the dog days, August’s hot broth
spooned late into evening,
I knew we’d always refer to it
like this: as in “that summer”
our boy went to camp
for the first time—nine years young,
emotions of a six year-old, went
with his knapsack and tie dye
to build forts, weave lanyards,
play “peaceball” like the others.
That summer our daughter’s toes
stretched two sizes beyond
the brink of her sandals, her legs’
burnished candelabra blinding us
in the noon-day heat. That summer
you grew a beard and the jasmine
bloomed longer, its blunt
vanilla balm stealing through
the blinds when we weren’t looking,
surprising us like the church ladies
with their flowers
and condolence cards: we’re so sorry
for your trouble…Summer
of sand and nautilus shells
gleaned from swollen beaches,
the black coins of tar you tracked home,
scraped from your heels
as you squatted on the patio,
Brillo in one hand,
the other up my skirt
as I bent to water the ferns. That summer
we got word of a lymphocyte
botanicum growing haywire in me,
the exotic pharmacology
about to color my path. Summer
we stayed by the sea until dusk
while our boy tumbled
in the gold-green surf, waves
kneading him like a beached seal
all the way to the berms
and our daughter there
in silhouette,
the sun’s blood orange
sinking down behind her,
illuminating everything so much
longer than we’d ever thought possible. |
R.S. Thomas stated that poetry is “that which reaches the intellect by way of the heart”. I’m sure that all readers of Pirene’s Fountain will agree that Michelle’s work qualifies handsomely on that score.
Oliver Lodge
January, 2009
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“Michelle’s favorite hat- She often wanders, ponders, and writes in it.” |
Pirene’s Fountain interviews Michelle Bitting
With Oliver Lodge
Can you describe the process of your writing? Does a poem come all in a rush? Do you edit much?
There's a delirious pleasure to be had when a poem comes "all in a rush" as you put it. Much of the time this is not the way it goes. We live for those moments and hope to have in hand a scrap to write on and something inky to write with handy (other than skin and blood) to record some snippet capable of jarring the epiphanic moment later when maybe there's more time and space to actually write it out. Sometimes the first line comes to me and that's the key in, the voice that sets the tone and rhythm and then it goes from there. Many times it's a mild kind of slavery grunting out each word and you just go with it and trust the editing process later. Editing is your friend. First drafts can be a horror show but are not to be feared, just not shared with a wide audience.
What is your experience of “the muse”? How do you overcome “blocks”?
Oh the muse! That tough-talking, mysterious, ever-elusive, merciless, maker-of-miracles savior you'd pretty much jump naked out of a cake for if she asked you.
I think you do everything you can to invite her in and at the same time resign yourself to the fact she might pass your party by. You just never know when she'll beam you up so you work like a dog throwing down line after line and then suddenly something happens. I do believe that cultivating poetic awareness in the world, becoming a really excellent listener and watcher, performing the daily push-ups of consciousness is vital and helps prepare the way for synchronicity and visitation. So you have to do the work it takes to stay in shape. And it's a better way to live in the world anyway--very freeing, enlivening. As far as blocks go, you have to write through them, write badly for a while if necessary. It's the only way to get to the good stuff.
Do you write exclusively on a keyboard, or scribble with a pen/pencil on paper? Where and when do you find the space and time to create poems?
I rarely write poetry directly into the keyboard. I need the tactile experience of feeling the pen in my hand, the pressure going through me down onto the paper. I can get kind of ritualistic about the type of paper, notebook, pen, I'm using though I try not to be too obsessive or superstitious. I remember Sharon Olds talking about how important it is for her to write by hand--the neurological and muscular connections between brain, spine, arm, hand etc....how fundamentally important the physical system is to her writing process. It's not surprising to hear her say that knowing how profoundly her work is connected to the body.
I used to have to write at stoplights and in parking lots because my kids were small, and often, I was driving my son around to his therapies. I would get up early, before the family was awake and write or force myself to stay up late. Fortunately, I have larger blocks of time with the kids in school a greater portion of the day. But there are still many scheduling challenges I'm hoping to work out, though for all I know it could get worse!
Is poetry still as relevant? Some seem to consider it anachronism in this digital age.
I think it's more relevant than ever though there are forces working triple time to depersonalize, dehumanize us. Maybe the bigger collective self intuits this and longs to feed it's soul. But I think it happens in little disjointed, disparate increments, this desire to embrace poetry. It's not a mainstream pastime, in other words, and we're not nor will we ever get paid the big bucks. People aren't always ready to admit what's good for them, what they need, until they crash or burn out in a major way. It's terrific that Obama has signed on a poet (Elizabeth Alexander) to speak at his inauguration. Bravo to that!
Do you feel it is important to communicate through poetry. Do you see your writing as “for others” or is it more a cathartic impulse?
Nothing surpasses a comment from a fellow reader like "Your poem really moved me. I read it several times and couldn't get it out of my head." I mean, THAT is what it's all about! Publication is great, but if I don't inspire or move anyone, then I don't feel like I've done my job. Yes, art is therapeutic and cathartic, but it can't be exclusively so, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with straight narrative, confession or the welding of abstract, fragmented slivers of perception, the sheer creative act of that is good. It is productive. But the cross-over into the realm of art requires something more universally felt.
(Pirene’s Fountain thanks Ms. Bitting for permission to use all materials for her feature, and for sharing her exceptional poetry and insights on the poetical process.)
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