Emily Bludworth de Barrios, Rich Wife

 

*

At night on a beach nearby

A woman was walking

All around her the inhalation and the exhalation of the surf

The ocean heaving in a continuous soothing respiration

In this version of the story

I have altered the shape of society

At night on a beach nearby

A woman was walking

All around her the inhalation and the exhalation of the surf

The ocean heaving in a continuous soothing respiration

In this version of the story

A woman is walking at night on a beach nearby

And nothing happens to her

She’s fine (“Rich Wife”)

The third full-length collection by Emily Bludworth de Barrios, a poet simultaneously based in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia and Houston, Texas, is Rich Wife (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2025), following Splendor (H_NGM_N Books, 2015) and Shopping, or The End of Time (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022) [see my review of such here]. The book is self-described as “a collection of long poems whose structure echo the cluttered charm of a dresser adorned with hats and hairpins, vials and scarves. Traversing the interlaced landscapes of motherhood, marriage, wealth, and the unspoken contracts of domestic life, Emily Bludworth de Barrios folds personal experience into far-ranging meditations on beauty, nostalgia, power, and privilege.” Set as a quintet of five extended poem-sections—“Grandmother Worship,” “Collecting Sticks,” “Rich Wife,” “The Pelvic Bone” and “Hera”—the poems in Bludworth de Barrios’ latest offer a slow unfold and unfurl, as her narrative lyrics accumulate, surrounding and encompassing her subject matter through direct sentences held by the heart. “Of course,” she writes, as part of the title poem-sequence, “The rich wife writes a book everyone will hate // Everyone will hate // Hatred seethes in oozing glossy pools // Sweep your hatred into little piles // And what will you do with your hatred?”

There is something interesting in the elasticity of these extended poem-sections, offering a stretch and fragment, a back-and-forth of pulled-apart lines and small moments, all set across an extensive and accumulated canvas. “Of the woman I know,” she writes, further on, “something bad has happened to each // It isn’t my place to say what [.]” I find the physical scope of her poems, and her canvas, quite fascinating, structured down to the detail of the line, of the phrase. “I was born into a time when women were almost liberated,” she writes, “I was born into a time // We put chemicals on our hair to make it curl // Chemicals on our hair to make it straight // With metal clamps or tongs we made it crimp, or roll, or flat // Imagine a doll that has a person inside it // Imagine a human who wakes curled in the head of a doll / I open her eyelids like this // Like this I move her arm [.]” Through sentences that pull apart and re-stitch, Bludworth de Barrios writes of the rich wife, writes of women, writes of domestic help and domestic power; of excess, possibility and cultural, social and societal worth; of domestic power with a powerlessness and vise versa; with all the latent and blatant contradictions and presumptions and collisions brought to bear.

She lives in a neighborhood with a gate

In her front living room she is closing the curtains now

Or a woman who works for her is closing the curtains now

She herself remains missing from view

 

Emily Bludworth de Barrios, Shopping, or The End of Time

 

80 to 90 percent of my awareness
Is a delicate ear turned gently toward my son

Which means I ignore
What would have previously torn me asunder

You may imagine motherhood as a funnel of sand
Into which one is pulled

You may imagine a wrecked ship pulling the inhabitants down with her
Into the water

Except for this metaphor
You are willingly rinsing yourself in sand or heavy water

It is an ecstasy of familial love
Among the sand and water (“80 TO 90 PERCENT OF MY AWARENESS”)

The latest from poet Emily Bludworth de Barrios is the poetry collection Shopping, or The End of Time (Madison WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), a collection that works through the lyric of narrative monologue to examine personal space and interpersonal being, including new motherhood and ongoing parenting, as well as simply living as a human being in the world, with all the messy nonsense and possible beauty that goes along with existence. “With pleasure the young men,” she writes, to open the poem “WITH PLEASURE THE YOUNG MEN,” “dismantle the young women // With pleasure their sick slick grins drip over the wet idea // of humiliated flesh [.]” Raised in Houston, Cairo and Caracas and currently based in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, Bludworth de Barrios is the author of the full-length debut Splendor (H_NGM_N Books, 2015), as well as the chapbooks Extraordinary Power (Factory Hollow Press, 2014) and Women, Money, Children, Ghosts (Sixth Finch, 2016). Shopping, or The End of Time, her second full-length collection, is set, within an opening as well as closing poem, into four sections of narrative lyrics—“WOMEN,” “MONEY,” “CHILDREN” and “GHOSTS”—all of which are individually constructed as assemblages of short phrases and bursts; her narratives are less built as accumulations than as a cadence of narrative waves, rolling through rise and fall to either a final crescent, or a sweep up to the shore of the space beyond that final word.

My new blue kitchen cabinets painted blue
Black countertops, black granite flecked with dirty starlight
And Saltillo tile from Saltillo, Mexico, baked, glazed earth and still some little
imprints from the foot of a dog who passed probably 50 years ago
When the Earth had fewer dogs probably but more species, fewer people, but
more thick forest, more dark trees and the webs strung between the trees,
clumps of sticks pushed into nests with the vulnerable blue, white, or cream
eggs inside, speckled, warm, the squirrels’ nests that contain two entrances
that are also two exists, a burrow in the sky, warm and dry
A bird singing with its narrow throat, its voice a slender stem
The legs of the insects slander as stems
The stems numerous and dense moving in quick ticks
My thoughts numerous and dense
Thickly sprouting, dumb (“MY NEW BLUE KITCHEN CABINETS PAINTED BLUE”)

Throughout her poems, Bludworth de Barrios seems fond of the direct statement, whether set as a point from which her narrative can expand further, a counterpoint or even a side-step, depending, of course, on where the statement is set in those narrative waves of rise and fall, rise and fall. “To be a mother,” she writes, as part of the two-page poem “80 TO 90 PERCENT OF MY AWARENESS,” “Is to be a figure in a painting // Wrapped in a sacred blanket [.]” Later on in the collection, the poem “STATUES OR KNOTTED ROPES OR SCORED STONE” offers a slight variation, or even a continuation: “A person is a device / For storing information across time // The parent melts or dissolves / And up springs the child // A person // Is a phenomenal device / That assembles itself from dirt and air [.]”

In certain ways, this is very much a collection writing and exploring the trauma and beauty both large scale and small of parenting, children and interacting with and through the culture, the present, each other and the universe. It would be interesting to examine the ways through which her direct statements on self and being connect, and even conflict, to each other; evolving in the normal ways of human complication: we are never simply one thing, in one way or direction; often working multiple simultaneously. Note the poem, for example, “MY PREGNANCY WAS A LONG AND HAPPY NIGHTMARE,” a three-page extended lyric that opens: “My pregnancy / Was a long and happy nightmare // During which I ate / Pint-sized tubs of ice cream and walked around the block // Becoming more tubby and unwieldly / As if living in the skin of a drum // Wielding and propelling my belly / Feeling dreamy and druggy in the suburbs under the sun [.]” There is a swell and swoop of her narrative, but also a subtle music across that same lyric that itself fills and diminishes across such a lovely spectrum of her lines. One is nearly required to close one’s eyes to truly listen.

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Rob MacDonald on Sixth Finch

Rob MacDonald lives in Boston and is the editor of Sixth Finch. His poems can be found in Gulf Coast, jubilat, Washington Square, BOAAT, Birdfeast, H_NGM_N and other journals.  He is the author of Situation Normal (Rye House Press) and Resuscitation Party (Racing Form Press).

Sixth Finch is an online journal of poetry and art, founded in 2008 and updated quarterly.  Sixth Finch Books has published chapbooks by Gale Marie Thompson, Ryan Ridge, Dara Cerv, Jessica Poli, Chad Reynolds, Anne Cecelia Holmes, Ben Mirov, Cate Peebles and Emily Bludworth de Barrios.

1 – When did Sixth Finch Books first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
I started the online journal back in 2008, and once that was going smoothly, I decided that we ought to expand to chapbooks in 2013.  I'm not sure that the goals have changed significantly; we're always aiming to get great work into people's hands, and we try to do justice to that work by designing books well. 

2 – What first brought you to publishing?
After I finished my MFA at Emerson, I felt like I wanted a way to stay connected.  I also felt like conversations among creative people were too rare and too segregated.  Poets talk to poets.  Sculptors talk to sculptors.  Musicians talk to musicians.  I was hoping that I might be able to bring those people together or at least get them looking at what's happening outside of their own disciplines. 

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
Early on, I needed to rely on friends to contribute to Sixth Finch and get things rolling, so the first few issues were heavy on poems that struck a chord with me.  Then Roberto Montes served as poetry reader for a while, and now Dara Cerv is in that role; they've both stretched me to bring in a wider variety of voices.  I'm feeling an obligation to keep stretching, and I'm confident that we're getting stronger as a result.

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
Our commitment to visual art is serious, and we take pride in putting some of the top contemporary artists alongside our poets.  The art isn't decoration; it's content that's just as important as the writing.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?
I'm not sure.  I know that we've done very well by simply selling the chapbooks through our site, and we've also done well at AWP.  A handful of independent bookstores have asked to carry our chapbooks, too, and we're grateful to them.  Any time someone has a new suggestion about how to get the books to people, I'm open to it.  The truth is that I'm perfectly happy to break even on the whole operation, so when you say "effective," I measure that based on books, not dollars.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
I've let the poets set the tone.  Some people want a lot of help with the details, and I'm happy to offer my two cents about every comma and every line break.  Other people have already nailed down final drafts before submitting, so they don't need (or want) that sort of editing.  I'm fine either way.  The goal is for poets to feel great about the final product.

7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
We've generally started with 150 of each chapbook, and we've gone to a second run on everything except the brand new ones.  Based on how they're selling, I'm confident we'll need to do a second run of them, too.  Maybe we should start with more than 150, huh?

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
We're a small team right now: Dara Cerv, Jaime Zuckerman and Katie Hibner make up the rest of the team.  They're great, and I don't miss the days when I was doing it all myself.  It's clear that different perspectives lead to a better product.

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
I feel even more determined to write poems that stand out.  Being an editor helps me see how easily poems can slip into the familiar and helps me fully appreciate work that's offering something new.  I'm holding my own work to higher standards now because I'm used to being very selective as an editor. 

10– How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?
I wouldn't feel comfortable publishing my own writing, but I've got no strong feelings about what other editors do.  The etiquette around that stuff doesn't interest me at all.

11– How do you see Sixth Finch Books evolving?
Maybe we'll give full-length books a shot.  Maybe we'll put out some sort of "Best Of" collection when we hit our 10-year anniversary.  I'm not sure.  So far, we've grown in a very organic way, so we'll probably stick to that approach.

12– What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
I don't know about "proud," but when I look back at all the work we've put out over the years, I'm definitely grateful.  We're a small operation, and I'm not really sure how we got where we are, but I appreciate the fact that so many people continue to trust us with their work.

13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
I don't know that I thought of them as models, but I was excited to see places like Octopus, H_NGM_N and diode putting great poetry online, consistently publishing work that was more exciting to me than what I was finding in print journals.

18– Tell me about your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
This year, we put out four chapbooks, and they cover a pretty wide spectrum.  I asked all four poets to write a little bit about their books, and I think that their answers show how different their voices and styles are:

Anne Cecelia Holmes: The poems in DEAD YEAR are a gut-punch to living with trauma and grief—raw and unapologetic elegies to loss of self and an attempt to gain it back. The chapbook steps into the muck of abuse and violence and sends dispatches from the muck, all the while working to reconstruct hope and a way forward.

Ben Mirov (on A Few Ideas from My Blackbox): I wrote these poems pretty quickly. Most of the advice they contain is bad. Sorry.

Cate Peebles: I wrote The Woodlands after leaving Brooklyn and moving to Pittsburgh, a city that somehow still has wilderness bursting through its seams; the trees and animals are as much a part of the landscape as bridges and old factories turned into condos. This insistent, stubborn wildness made its way into my language and shaped these semi-punctuated bursts.

Emily Bludworth de Barrios: One image I had specifically, when imagining an audience for the poems of WOMEN, MONEY, CHILDREN, GHOSTS (and I did think "audience," as in an assembled group of listeners, as opposed to individual readers), was that hearing these poems would be like being both gently and forcefully pushed around by waves. Not an intellectual experience, but a physical one, being thrown against, tumbling through, the sounds repeated and mixed with the connotations flaring up and dying. (Like standing inside a building as opposed to looking at a photo of a building or studying its architectural plans.) So hearing or reading the poems could be like swimming in strong waves, or like being the tongue of a bell (making a helpless, inevitable, jarring, natural, intermittent, sensical noise).

12 or 20 (small press) questions;