Alina Stefanescu, My Heresies

 

My Father Explains Why They Left Me Behind When Defecting

            in Hoa Nguyen’s unrelated future tense

You are the same to me.
The baby in the photo you were, dark
curls we kissed before fleeing.
Your mom was pregnant with
the one she birthed in america.
Your eyes didn’t match.
One was yellower.
And no leaves on the lindens then
we didn’t know if we’d see you again.
We didn’t know if we’d see you again
and know leaves on the linden, then.
One was yellower.
Your eyes didn’t match
the one she birthed in america.
Your mom was pregnant with
curls we kissed before fleeing.
The baby in the photo you were, dark
you are. The same to me.

The latest from Birmingham, Alabama-based poet, fiction writer and editor Alina Stefanescu, and the first collection I’ve properly gone through of hers, is the remarkable My Heresies (Louisville KY: Sarabande Books, 2025), a lyric exploration of being and becoming, of family histories and geographic shifts. “The first word wasn’t love, was it?” she writes, within the first poem of the two-part “Cosmologies,” “It was this once that sat upon a time we can’t locate / in physics. It was the science of bread / being broken and eaten. // I am still terrible at division.” My Heresies is a collection of big, complicated emotions, cultural collision and a fierce intelligence, composed with such a delicate and careful ease of the line. “I, too, would appreciate / being courted at the leveling / of the sacred.” she writes, as part of the short poem “Little Things: A Ring,” “If I can’t partake of the trifecta, / I will settle for that flaming / thing in the angel’s right hand.” The poems are expansive and intimate, containing the whole world and the author’s entire life in the smallest moment, the most contained set of sentences. Back in 2020 via the Spotlight series, she wrote of her paired elements of Romanian and Alabaman as opposed to Romanian and American, a duality that is very much at the heart of this collection:

I’ve been trying to reconcile the self with the borders of multiple identities. Perhaps parenting forces these thoughts to the surface somehow — for example, why I identify as Romanian-Alabamian rather than Romanian-American; and how the word “unamerican” has been used to describe (and shame) me so often that pinning “American” to myself feels like a moving target. Alabamian is easier if only because saying unalababamian is phonetically clunky and awkward and therefore most humans don’t invite it to their tongues.

If I write about the South and was socialized in the South, am I Southern? This is a question which depends on how I write the South. Every tough word I use is a wall I build in defense against the walls that I blame others for building and I have no self-defense against the irony and uselessness of that apart from my culpabilities.

With opening poem and five carved, numbered sections, there is an element of My Heresies of being constructed as a long sentence, a book-length suite of poems seamlessly stitched into a single, ongoing conversational thread. The poems are propelled by hush and halt, a tempo of thoughtful measure, articulation, excavation and archaeological play, but one that loops and reels and revels in repetition, managing to find new elements across familiar stories, familiar lines and phrases. “Failure to absorb the verb / and modify the actor accordingly.” begins the poem “Indictment for Failure to Conjugate,” “To sit and / play dumb.” There is also an interesting thread contained within this collection of the moments and lyrics of the late German-speaking Romanian poet Paul Celan (1920-1970), a poet with whom Stefanescu feels both cultural and poetic affinity. “Paul Celan begins with an act of self-naming.” begins the poem “Sonnet at the Ghost Commune,” “The poem claims the invention of self / on a Bucharest windowsill. Poets put // the moon in its place / at the horn of the table / on the shoe of the satyr folding laundry into bohemian ballet.”

There is such a detailed intimacy to this collection, and a sharp and open intelligence at play, one that invites the reader in as an equal, unafraid of what these lines might reveal. “My mother and I flit between French and Romanian / when sharing a bottle of wine.” the second part of “Cosmologies” begins. “In hindsight, the past tense overrides / the presence.” As the poem continues:

             My mother numbered her conquests but left them
nameless because sex is a comet that begins in a memory of longing.
The mother is a creature who teaches us to seduce it. “Sweetie,
you must do everything once,” she says. “Refuse to repent,
and don’t ever forget…”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Sarah Jane Sloat

Sarah J. Sloat is a visual poet who splits her time between Frankfurt and Barcelona, where she works in news. Her collage, poetry and prose have appeared in Diagram, Shenandoah and Sixth Finch, among other publications. Sarah’s book of visual poetry, Classic Crimes, is due in 2025 from Sarabande Books, which also published her previous book, Hotel Almighty.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Writing poetry changed my life, but I’m not sure publishing poetry has. My first chapbook came out about 15 years ago and I’ve since published four more. Soon after the last chapbook I got into visual poetry. It was a complete refresh for me, and at first seemed a diversion. But I got attached to bringing a visual element to my work, it adds layers, associations and new possibilities. After I published a number of poems using the novel Misery, Sarabande approached me with the idea of a collection, which became Hotel Almighty. I’m grateful and still astounded. I’ll publish a second book with Sarabande next year, sourced from William Roughead’s Classic Crimes, one of the first books of true crime.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Suffering delivered me directly to poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Not until I started erasure poetry did I ever start out with a larger project in mind. It was always poem by poem with me. Even now when I focus on a particular source text for erasure I like to approach every poem as its own entity and put the others out of my head. How many moods and tenses and forms and attitudes can spring from one source? Thousands. I don’t go in with a hammer.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Can I be both? If not, I’m more a writer of short pieces that either begin to cohere with others, or don’t.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

This is a hard one because I live in two countries, neither of which has English as a native language, so I can count my public readings on two hands even if you include Zoom. As a visual poet, I am trepidatious about readings mostly because of technology — I need a beamer/projector and screen or surface, etc. I fret about slides not working, batteries dying. This clobbers me with worry, but takes my focus off my person, which is what most public readers worry about!

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

My work has a lot to do with making the most of restrictions. My poems are sometimes trying to sort out a problem, if not explicitly. I want my poems to be beautiful and/or fun and/or haunting but also to be pragmatic in a way, since in each case I am trying to work myself out of a box that puts constraints on what I can do.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Different writers can have different roles, but we all reflect the times we live in. Each writer passes along a way of looking at the world, of being within it.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I’ve never really experienced a meddlesome editor. At Sarabande, I love(d) my editor, Kristen Miller. She is so smart and insightful and she helps me make better decisions.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

As a woman, it’s to make yourself a priority.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual work)? What do you see as the appeal?

With text I am able to focus on words without visual considerations butting in. If I am doing collage alone it’s usually just to help me get away from myself.

In terms of having moved from writing poetry of words & white space to poetry that is text+visual, I travelled over in the blink of an eye.

I had been writing poetry for years when it struck me to combine found poetry with collage and multimedia. I love the associations the visual elements conjure, even without being deliberately connected to the text. I also love collage in and of itself. Being confined to the small canvas of the page, with the arrangement of text I’ve wound up with, is a deeply pleasurable challenge.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

My day job and travel obligations mean I don’t have a routine. I snatch at time in the evening when I can, and on the weekends or a day off. There’s no daily plan.

But in terms of the overarching routine of how I work, I spend time with the text first and foremost, and the visuals follow. Very rarely do I have any visual image in mind at the outset, even if collages I’ve done independently of any poem wheedle their way into a piece.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I go to my favorite poets: Charles Wright, Vasko Popa, Emily Kendal Frey, Lesle Lewis, Mary Ann Samyn, Alfred Starr Hamilton, Victoria Chang. Too many to name. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

My husband’s cologne.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Visual art is a big influence, of course. There are so many great collage artists, but I also love painting and textile work. I wish life were longer and I could find time to learn to paint and to become better at sewing.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Let me go with non-poetry here: Edouard Leve’s Autoportrait, Proust’s Swann’s Way, Lydia Davis, David Markson, Fleur Jaeggy, Lichtenberg’s The Waste Books, Kathryn Scanlan’s Aug 9 - Fog. I love short, enigmatic writing. I also love the rhapsodic.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Not get sick on a boat on the sea.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I’d love to design book covers. But I don’t think I would have taken that path as a younger person because I wasn’t in an environment where such a possibility would have occurred to me. I’ve been a reporter, a NOW canvasser, a professor, a temp secretary, a dog sitter and cold caller. If I could become something else it might be an ecoterrorist or the space shuttle or a bottle of scotch.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Writing was the highest good in my childhood household. My parents read and talked about books, my father was a writer. If I’d grown up among shepherds or glass blowers it might have been different.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

If I may, I’ll bundle the books I’ve read over the past four years by Annie Ernaux into one — The Years, I Remain in Darkness, Happening, A Woman’s Story, A Man’s Place, Shame, Simple Passion. Ernaux’s recollections are close yet distant, scant on outright emotion. She tells the human story plain, without the attitude and posing that plague so much memoir.

As for film, I feel I see movies a lot less frequently now than before the pandemic. Whether it was great or not I don’t know but I loved Toni Erdmann. I loved Sandra Hüller’s performance, how she captured something about the German personality. It was funny and sad. I’ve watched it a number of times.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’ve got a new project going with an American classic that suffuses me with secret pleasure! It’s erasure/collage like my previous work, but feels different, simpler.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

CJ Evans, LIVES

 

CJ Evans’s beautiful book, Lives, explores and circles around, into, and out of what it means to be free and alive in a world where humans insist on war and environmental destruction. Evans’s speaker is constantly trying to remain present in the world through deep perception and seeing, unable to free himself from his past (having served time in literal prison and the metaphorical prison of addiction). In the process, he gifts the reader with his keen perception and awakens the reader. Evans writes in “Now That the Time for Lives Getting Better is Done”: “And what else could my heart be for it not to try?” The collection renders through language a gorgeous natural and domestic landscape within a landscape that is dying—one war, one shooting, one plastic bottle at a time. Lives maps the apocalypse while simultaneously trying to resist it through language and life. (Victoria Chang, “INTRODUCTION”)

It is hard to know what to say about California poet and Two Lines Press’ Editorial Director [see my interview with him on such here] CJ Evans’ second full-length collection, LIVES (Louisville KY: Sarabande Books, 2022), given the lengthy introduction by Victoria Chang, judge of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry that provided this book’s publication. Following his full-length debut, A Penance (Kalamazoo MI: New Issues Press, 2012), LIVES crafts lyric narratives of connection and disconnection; of being alone, as every other part of America might be: singular, and untethered. He writes a cadence of descriptive meditation and thoughtfulness akin to that of Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell [see my review of Brockwell’s latest here], although one that manages a particular flow closer to that of water, flowing and connecting well beyond the boundaries of each standalone poem. Evans writes of seeking connection, even redemption, writing extensively of standing alone in the dark, only to discover that someone, there, has possibly been there the whole time, reaching out. “This shamed, this used,” he writes, as part of “IN THIS POEM WITHOUT YOU / I’M ALONE AS URANIUM ORE,” “this american body of mine / is near-done. Or I’m done with all it has become, / being american.”

Writing from underneath a shadow of environmental disaster and wildfires, school shootings and suicides, American political and cultural failures large and small, Evans writes of swirling storms and trying to find and even reach the calm centre. The poems, as Michael Ondaatje once paraphrased Jack Spicer, can live on their own no better than can we, and this book as a whole feels less a collection than a kind of metaphysical lyric suite, held together through a common tone, and a variety of intricately-woven threads across a great distance. “Panoramic,” the cover copy uses to describe the work, and his poems maintain a wide scope and deep attention, often returning back to particular tethers, to hold himself in place. He writes unapologetically of life, and a faith in living, almost as though believing in such because he has to; he needs to. “Just for today,” as the poem “INQUIRY INTO STORM” begins, “let’s erupt / the reverie with a plosive, // play in the halation, / the emblazoned, the significant // spiral of our specific / tornado.”

AN ORCHARD IS A FOREST WE BROKE

Walk with me the rows and whir: poor trees poor trees
poor wilderness clipped, fruit plucked, ugly branches robbed
of the weight of little animals. Pears rot around the roots,
blind black eyes in yellow skin infolding, eaten from inside

by neglect and wet. Along down the row and earth bends
away from them toward naked dirt between, and here,
in the cold cradle of winter, we wear high vulcanized boots,
and I work hard each day to remain in the world with you.

The poems in LIVES are grouped into four sections, three of which are built out of assemblages of shorter poems, but the second section holds but a single, extended poem that seems to anchor the collection as a whole, the poem “TRYING TO HEAR A HYMN TO LIFE.” Subtitled “after Donnelly & Schuyler,” the poem, as Evans offers in his acknowledgments, “is after poems called ‘Hymn to Life’ by Timothy Donnelly and James Schuyler, and also nods to poems of the same title by Lou Andreas-Salomé and Nazim Hikmet.” It is almost as though the entire collection swirls around this poem as a central core, akin to how Manitoba poet Di Brandt’s collection Now You Care (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2003) was structured around the central core of a longer sequence as well (my review of such seems to have fallen offline, formerly up via The Antigonish Review).

The narrative Evans writes across the seventy stanzas, each five lines in length, of “TRYING TO HEAR A HYMN TO LIFE” loop and swirl around a variety of images of wetlands and Lake Merritt, resting in the centre of Oakland, California, the Simon and Garfunkle song “America,” the memory of Sandy Hook, his daughter’s imaginary sabertooth, “Toothy,” and other family moments, connections, memories, dislocations and trauma, all wrapped up and around not only a belief in life itself, but the very act of that particular brand of faith. “I can’t see the lake from here,” he writes, early on in the poem, “but I believe / it still is. Just as I believe in the shellmounds / I’ll never see, the sabertooth, that the flat moon / is actually a sphere. I believe as I do / in this tabletop you can’t touch: wood pulp crushed // in a hydraulic press with glue.” Or later on in the same poem, offering: “I believe in this as much as god / or biology, which is to say, a bit less // than to make a bet with it against a bullet, / but enough. I call it belief, but it’s purposefully, / wondrously unexamined.” There is such a stunning beauty to this collection, one that shows itself as open-hearted while playing rather close to what might suggest a deeply-wounded chest. This is what one might call a darkly optimistic book; one filled with as much beauty as one can muster, and everything one can see after having been in the dark.