TALK TO THE POETS

Prompt Against Anxiety #17 | from poet, arts administrator, and teacher Stacy Szymaszek, who worked at Woodland Pattern for over half a decade before going on to direct the Poetry Project at St. Mark's from 2007–2018. She is the author of five books, including A Year from Today (Nightboat Books, 2018) and Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals (Fence Books, 2016).

Self-Portrait, Tucson, AZ (2019)

Talking to other poets, both living and deceased, has been a significant element in my writing . . . not always, but since I started getting work published about 16 years ago.

Talking to other poets in real life and in poems broke my work out of a slump of the imagination, not only linguistically but in terms of what I could imagine for my own life as a poet. Of course, they are related. I don’t know if this would have happened if I hadn’t found Woodland Pattern. I worked there from 1999–2005, while gleefully and doggedly creating my own line of study that included any book or ephemera on their shelves and drawers that even looked a little interesting. 

The pandemic seems to have intensified this aspect of my writing. Having any concept of lineage that talking to poets affords has been, in general, a deterrent to feeling alone. It’s astonishing to me what solid company the dead can make. Sometimes I use quotes, more often it’s an allusion to another writer, a dedication, or a reference that I think a reader will either get or be able to discover if they are curious, or I’m thinking through an idea posed by another. The poet I’ve talked to in poems most consistently has been Pier Paolo Pasolini. I wrote a chapbook that was a riff on his Roman Poems (City Lights) in 2005 that I thought of as emotional translations. My current project is to rewrite my rewrites, as a middle-aged person, as a sort of diary of how I, and the world, have changed, and how Pasolini’s anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, and anti-institutional stance only becomes more crucial for us to understand as our country falls deeper into autocracy.

My prompt is simply to choose any writer or writers who are important to you and write a piece that engages with them in any manner. Think about what we might learn from those who come before us, who might have been misunderstood, obscured, not heard—and how they might influence conversations we are having now with the people in our lives.

Here is an example. I titled a poem ANTI-POETRY after a movement that Chilean poet Nicanor Parra was an early proponent of, and open with three lines from one of his poems. The piece also closes with a quote from a letter Petrarch sent to Boccaccio. I wanted to experiment with letting surrealism and satire into my work, more cultural critique without becoming too didactic—things Parra is known for. Writing this poem last year took my work in a new direction.

Prompts Against Anxiety is sponsored by Milwaukee Public Library, an anchor institution that helps patrons read, learn, and connect—to our resources and our community. Now more than ever, stay connected, stay home, and stay safe. 

Contact

Facebook

Instagram

We acknowledge that in Milwaukee we live and work on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee homelands along the southwest shores of Michigami, part of North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee, and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, and Mohican nations remain present. 

We further acknowledge the grave evil colonialism introduced to these lands ​through genocide as well as slavery, and also via racist and xenophobic ​beliefs, laws​, and practices that continue to inflict harm upon Black, brown, and Indigenous lives. We honor those who have lived—and do live, now—at these intersections of identity and experience, and are committed to the active dismantling of white supremacy.

Read our statement on racial justice

720 E. Locust Street
Milwaukee, WI 53212
Phone: 414 263 5001

Hours: Tues–Sun | 12-7 pm

Closed Mon

Building Accessibility: Despite the age of our physical location, and attendant limitations to access, Woodland Pattern is committed to making its programs and facilities available for as many as possible. Please call for more information.

Events Accessibility: Woodland Pattern is able to offer captioning services for its online events and with advanced notice can provide ASL interpretation for live events. Please contact us with accommodation requests and questions.

© Woodland Pattern 2024