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MAUREEN SEATON
1947-2023 photographed during one of the READING QUEER: POETRY IN A TIME OF CHAOS book launch events Videos below with Neil de la Flor & with Denise Duhamel |
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Poems by and in collaboration with Maureen below:
SoFloPoJo Issue 3 NOVEMBER 2016 DON BURNS, EDITOR
SoFloPoJo Issue 3 NOVEMBER 2016 DON BURNS, EDITOR
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The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces
Twelve sisters hoofing it up nightly in the Otherworld: Who wouldn’t want to be their shoemaker? Insoles waltzed into a fine gold dust. Twenty-four strappy stilettos two-stepped to splinters – twelve would-be spinsters limping home. It’s a fine day when someone tails them, catches the entire sister act on his cell phone and reports them to Pop. Royal threads, invisible cloaks, and promises of treasure ensue. Whose wine is sleepier? Youngest to eldest, the princess dozen, the lone prince greedy as a mouse at a smorgasbord. Tell me: how will eleven dance without their sister? Where three twigs and a goblet can secure a Princess and her kingdom, eleven rapturous hoofers must resort to contortion, confection, and cant. When they glide in sequined slippers past sleeping guards we sweep away their pirouettes, pliés, and glissades. --Maureen Seaton & Mia Leonin Vertical Divider
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Apple in Retrograde
Now, Dolly, my iBoots are leaking as if I'd gone and stepped on a rivet or a bolt, which I have done. I've gone and stepped on three tiny rivets and a microbolt, and my iShorts are bunching, my iGlasses are cracked, so I walk about the factory as if my actuators are misbehaving, which they are, for which the shift boss would have me excommunicated, which isn't the only reason I called. I wanted to tell you about this and everything, but the buttons don't work right, the microphone swallows all I mean to say to you, and I'm increasingly convinced my obsolescence is inevitable. Truth is, what used to be intuitive is currently unavailable, those sincerely-wrought gingersnaps du jour since gone (or at least appearing so). Help, Dolly, my iPillow is hard as my iGlock. Do you copy anything I’m possibly blind to? Shall I unplug again for a frisson of adrenaline, one jolt of blue juice into my lost ouija board? Did someone whisper terminator? I’m still elegant. I’m modern art. Wouldst thou hackest a da Vinci to make room for a van Gogh? Meet me in the iSolarium before I’m completely undone, Dolly. I will limp there if I can at crack of dawn. --Maureen Seaton & Jaswinder Bolina |
excerpts from SoFloPoJo Interview with a Poet Interview: October 2016 published: December 2016
Lenny DellaRocca: Name the most important poet writing today and why?
Maureen Seaton: At an outdoor festival in Santa Fe one May, a young man stood at the mic and said: “Each and every one of you has the power to save my life.” Although I’ve forgotten his name (if I ever knew it), I would say that line is the most important poem I have ever heard. So if he’s still alive, I say him.
Lenny DellaRocca: Choose one of the following that best fits your personality:
A Lyrical poem
B Narrative poem
C Formal poem
D Prose-poem
E Flash fiction
F Performance/spoken word
Maureen Seaton: When asking a Libra to choose (especially something that fits her personality) (especially in the realm of poetry) (especially in the very week of her birthday), one should understand that the disappointment one might feel as a result of the impossibility of such a task, is a fraction of the unsettledness that plagues a poet born under the sign of justice, beauty, love, caprice, uncertainty, and perfectionism. So: all of the above. Okay, all except F. Maybe.
Maureen Seaton: At an outdoor festival in Santa Fe one May, a young man stood at the mic and said: “Each and every one of you has the power to save my life.” Although I’ve forgotten his name (if I ever knew it), I would say that line is the most important poem I have ever heard. So if he’s still alive, I say him.
Lenny DellaRocca: Choose one of the following that best fits your personality:
A Lyrical poem
B Narrative poem
C Formal poem
D Prose-poem
E Flash fiction
F Performance/spoken word
Maureen Seaton: When asking a Libra to choose (especially something that fits her personality) (especially in the realm of poetry) (especially in the very week of her birthday), one should understand that the disappointment one might feel as a result of the impossibility of such a task, is a fraction of the unsettledness that plagues a poet born under the sign of justice, beauty, love, caprice, uncertainty, and perfectionism. So: all of the above. Okay, all except F. Maybe.
SoFloPoJo Issue 10 AUGUST 2018 MERYL STRATFORD, EDITOR
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Resurrection Sonnets
"It's not really death if you can return." John Steppling My father comes back as a red cardinal. And my freckled friend, in her last poem, offers to haunt me after her so-called untimely death. Why not, I say. Zombies are scary, but my friend will be more like Casper. Remember that “friendly ghost?” Now my mother comes back as a suicide bomber, complete with trigger and child welfare services tracking her every move. My dream book says I am trying to kill any chance of a long life, choosing whatever boasts a skull and crossbones-- my bandana, my necklace. My ring tone: Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” I spy the Reaper once as I turn blue from lack of O2. He scythes everything, including my jeans which he tears at the knee. A nurse stabs an EpiPen in my thigh, and I come back as Banksy’s flower bomber in Jerusalem or Amarillo, my first stop Publix where I buy carnations and Mylar balloons to chuck at harassers who come back as an entire rainforest. Dream book says: Death in the Afternoon is trying to make me see I am both bull and matador, hoof and cape, ole! Drink three to five of these slowly, it bubbles and soothes. By nightfall I come back to life. Nightfall I come back to life—so soothing the vampire’s kiss seconds before the fangs sink silky with their myth of immortal life. Now my cat comes back as a poet, prickly pear jelly on her toast. See that bicyclist over there? He was once my caged hamster. And here is my great grandmother, her re- fashioned face the face of a manatee. What about the extinct passenger pigeon? Can she come back as herself, her species survive, after all, to upstage texting? Men feign themselves dead and endure mock funerals. A new Emerson peeks through the blinds-- all the honking below, God in the exhaust. It’s exhausting to believe in God. So many hard won death scenarios. Andrea Dworkin says God is the ultimate pornographer—our suffering turns Him on. But I think he’s a fractal, an evolving symmetry, and death is impossible, like squaring a circle. Irrational numbers like pi promise eternity. Complex numbers with a zero can be purely imaginary, like heaven. I wish I’d learned to play the harp, the angel sleeves on my gauzy white dress inspiring politicians to come back as super- humble heroes and/or Justice Leaguers. Some beleaguered heroes humbly seek justice in the afterlife. But what if heaven’s a scam? Or what if it’s half-finished and it’s our job to lay the joists and lift the drywall? The man who installed my kitchen backsplash died of a heart attack before I could hire him to fix my soggy walls after Irma. I wonder if he’ll come back to Florida as a green (his favorite color) parrot or a Bismarck palm at Tree World Wholesale. He better hurry if he plans to make landfall in our sorrowful sinking state. Miami, built on landfill, now in hospice, hears the red dirge of American songbirds. How many times will we get to try again? Who will we be when the last sun rises? --Maureen Seaton & Denise Duhamel Stages Sestina
Many of the “stages” of the dying described in the book have been subsequently simplified and publicly caricatured beyond recognition. —Elizabeth Kübler Ross Although a fat kid, I was in denial that each sweet bite of cake soothed my anger. Plus, who would listen to a weakly bargaining 7-year-old with an almost sacred depression and love of the sacraments? Accepting the host, I swallowed Christ, the altar a stage for saints and martyrs in gruesome stages of self-sacrifice and earthly denial, like fasting. I wanted pancakes, acceptance on the playground where my doppelgänger flitted and flew among the less depressed with their free and easy flare for making bargains— trading seeded grapes for an orange. Bargaining with God was harder. Death always upstaged depression, although at seven, depression resembled gruesome fairy tales where Denial and Projection arm-wrestled for Danger-- poor granny eaten by the wolf. I accepted her feral fate and my own hooded acceptance propelled me further through the forest, bargaining not for eternal life, but for a life where strangers weren’t always going to take me hostage or, if they did manage to paw me, I’d not deny the bold innocence of a girl child pressed like a flower in a book. Depression is “anger turned inward” say shrinks who accept so much more than we’re willing to reveal. Denial may be a river in Egypt, but a smart bargain hunter will kayak down River Styx, upstaging others newly dead, handing Charon her groupon. Anger expressed isn’t the only way for a species to endanger itself. We could stuff the gall down, repress each slight like an understudy seething backstage as the star bows, all that clapping an acceptance or a slap. Of all the stages of death, bargaining seems most likely to fail, whereas denial can whisk you away in a stage-coach, an accepted vehicle for escaping depression. Sly bargainers, don’t be too pissed off when your passport says denied. --Maureen Seaton & Denise Duhamel |
Howl
for America, after AG America! I’m with you in “Allergy Valley” (PA) where my husband locks me out of the apartment and I’m so angry I throw a lawn chair at the door I’m with you in Aurora (CO) where my oncologist and I go outside to view the eclipse I’m with you in the Bronx where I get into trouble performing a poem about racism and the patriarchy I’m with you in the Berkshires where I step out a movie theater to see a bear and her cub on the sidewalk I’m with you in Cleveland where Tamir holds a toy gun and is killed with a real one I’m with you in Croton-on-Hudson where I find Hansberry’s grave in the pouring rain I’m with you in Dollywood where I have my picture taken with Dolly’s cousin who looks just like I imagine Dolly would if she hadn’t had plastic surgery I’m with you in Denny’s where Julie and I contemplate ordering from the “baconalia” menu (i.e. a caramel sundae topped with bacon) I’m with you on the East Side (Lower) where I sleep in a loft bed with a desk and typewriter underneath, and wake to shower in a stall in the kitchen I’m with you on Eubank Blvd. (ABQ) where six lanes of traffic come to a complete stop for a scared Chihuahua I’m with you on Fullerton (CHI) where Our Lady of the Underpass appears below I-95 and Tanya Saracho writes a play about her I’m with you in Flint where toxic water flows from the faucet I’m with you in the Grand Hyatt Hotel (NYC) where Richard McDonald is served the ceremonial 50 billionth McDonald’s hamburger in 1984 I’m with you in Greenwich Village (NYC) where I buy my first vibrator at the Pink Pussycat Boutique I’m with you in Harvey where a hawk seeks refuge in William Bruso’s cab and nine trillion gallons of rain fall on Houston I’m with you in Harvey where a disturbing creature (a fangtooth snake-eel?) washes up on a beach in Texas City I’m with you in Irma where I spy you with my enormous eye (September 6, 2017) I’m with you in Irma where I evacuate with John and Cindy, where we wait in gas lines one hundred cars long, where we are not sure we’ll have homes to which we can return (September 9, 2017) I’m with you in Jensen Beach (FL) where I find a dead baby loggerhead and bury it deep in the sand I’m with you in Jersey where Ginsberg is born and so am I I'm with you in Kansas City (both Kansas and Missouri) where I break my vegetarian diet with BBQ twice I’m with you in Kivalina (AK) where the city is melting I'm with you in LA where I eat a fig off a tree I’m with you in Lincoln Square (CHI) where Cobalt gives me my first tattoo and hers: a 3-hour sunflower I’m with you in Mingo Park (OH) where I listen to Prince on my iPod I’m with you in Memphis where Martin Luther King is shot in the Lorraine Hotel as ducks roam the lobby of the Peabody I’m with you in Nebraska where Malcolm X is born, and where the largest porch swing in the world holds twenty-five Nebraskans I’m with you in Newport where tourists visit the mansions and Cliff Walk I’m with you in Oklahoma where the earth is red I’m with you in Orange County where all good Republicans go to die—or so thinks Ronald Reagan I’m with you in the Panhandle where meth labs flourish and sometimes explode I’m with you in Providence where I buy medical marijuana for my mother I’m with you in Quest Diagnostics where I get my blood work done year after year I’m with you in Queens where I write this line: “Only Olive owned ostentatious orgasms; the puerile position of pomp belonged to Popeye.” I’m with you in Riverdale where I live in a studio with my daughter and my lover builds a loft for her and we all feel rich I’m with you in Revere Beach (MA) where my boyfriend tells me he is gay and I try to convince him he’s not I’m with you in Seattle where I ride the “Great Wheel” with Jay and Kristine I’m with you in St. Louis where my sister leaves their Christianity for her own I’m with you in Tucson where I learn to make sun tea I’m with you in TGIF where my Cobb salad is so huge my friend from England is sure it is for the whole table to share I’m with you in Utah where I contemplate a leap from the Tower of Babel I’m with you in Uxbridge (MA) where, at the Southwick Zoo, my sister is accosted by a goat who puts his hooves on her tiny shoulders when she freezes, afraid to feed him a paper cup of goat food I’m with you in Venice (FL) where the sand is black from crushed bones of the Pleistocene I’m with you in Venice (CA) where Tom gets sober and rides across country on his putt putt motorcycle and we fly down the West Side Highway at midnight I’m with you Woonsocket where I spend a summer working in the Coby Glass factory making Christmas ornaments I’m with you in Wrigleyville where I watch a Cubs game from a beloved poet’s porch I’m with you in the XXX movie theater the Roxy where my friend sells tickets, where I only go as far as the lobby to return the sweater I borrowed I’m with you in Xanadu (the American movie) where we eat popcorn as Olivia Newton John transforms into an ‘80’s Terpsichore, one of the nine muses, on rollerskates I’m with you in Yellowstone where bear where moose where wolverine and lynx I’m with you in Youngstown where, in a hotel halfway between Chicago and New York, we hear the Rodney King verdict and cry ourselves to sleep I’m with you in Zion National Park where the name, Mukuntuweap, is changed in 1918 because the NPS thinks visitors won’t visit the park if they can’t pronounce it I’m with you in the Zuni Pueblo (NM) where the world is divided into six directions: north, west, south, east, above, and below --Maureen Seaton & Denise Duhamel Vertical Divider
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SoFloPoJo Issue 11 NOVEMBER 2018 MARY GALVIN, GUEST EDITOR
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A Pod of Whales
for L A person can die of night terrors—right there in the middle of sleep, their hearts might stop, you say, as if I don’t believe you. Sometimes you dream so loud your life flashes before my eyes, your screams raise ghost stories. Against my will, I am your wide-eyed witness. It’s been years since we slept spooned and cozy, and I’ve almost forgotten I miss you. Still, I would go back to your race-betrayed American past and keep you safe from all the things a child should never have to see. You’d snore like any tired soul wrapped warm beside me, wake up yawning. Now a pod of pilot whales is stranded in shallows off the coast of Florida. They’ll die together, it’s true, as the pod will never abandon its wounded. Who can reconcile this cuspy hold on life, who sleep through the crescendo of hearts stopping? --Maureen Seaton Vertical Divider
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Jesus on the Beach
Because I lived on the beach in what some folks call old Florida, there were a fair number of ponytailed guys in the neighborhood who resembled Jesus. One, in particular, drove a pick-up and loved animals, even beach cats. I don’t know if my neighbor, Pete, was a poet or not. He looked like a middle-aged, hard-drugging Jesus to me, so he could have been. We said hi to each other most evenings, and if a hurricane came along, I knew he’d share his canned chili and Easy Cheese with me. One weekend he parked his truck crooked to keep tourists out of our little lot and he blocked my space by accident. When I politely tapped on his door to ask him to move his truck, he yelled from the shower: Park on the goddamn grass, asshole. His wife found him dead the next day on the bathroom floor. He was shaving, she said, and he just keeled over. Jesus, I said to myself. --Maureen Seaton |
SoFloPoJo Issue 13 MAY 2019 DAVID COLODNEY, EDITOR
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14 Lines about Water
Brooke Shields and a monster hail from lagoons while Bridget Fonda rows anything but placid on a lake searching for a croc. In the lead pipes of Flint water dies in kids' cups and bubbles of stagnant pre-bedtime routines. A girl who's never seen the sea gets caught in a rip and curls inside its weedy womb, its House of Secrets, where the Swamp Thing swamps and the Goddess of Sunken Ships reveals her briny anchor. She wears a necklace of shells, a choppy grin that glows phosphorescent in cans of seltzer. We never believed there could be so much rain, but the way the world is drowning at low tide makes us rash—diving into strangers’ swimming pools, dumping jugs of H2O as our children cross the desert. --Maureen Seaton & Denise Duhamel Vertical Divider
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12 Lines about Gender
She told me I was an Alpha Female. I agreed and told her I was happy as a Male kangaroo—no pouch or purse. A gender (or Agender), I said, is the mighty tip of the Androgynous-- think Annie Lenox. Bigender (or bye, gender) reflux, on the one hand (or the other), can cause Cisgender reflex, the impulse to label "boy" or "girl." Gender-fluid is so lovely it loves every living liquid, and Genderqueer fashion is so fashionable in its sequins. Intersex stands at a crossroads of Royal Palms, and Transgender blows a farewell kiss to the past, while Two-Spirits abide in the everlasting now beside a yet-to-be Gender. --Maureen Seaton & Denise Duhamel |
SoFloPoJo Issue 20 FEBRUARY 2021 GARY KAY , EDITOR
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Praying in a Foreign Language
When I was six I died and came back to life as seven. At first I was disappointed, but then I realized I would be eight in October and a gypsy after that and I began to think in another language entirely. Lingua mulieribus. If I had known when I was in college that calculus meant small stone I might have embraced the infinitesimal and tuned in to sacred equations. Still, I grew spirally with a soft shell around me, alive to the sea. Like a logarithm. r=aeθ cot b The reason I was “non-forcibly” raped at thirty-three wasn’t only because my children were asleep down the hall. “I’m that woman,” I thought, “the one in six, oh shit shit shit.” So I played dead as if he were a grizzly. Una palabra es una elegía. Translations: The language of women, from the Latin The golden spiral, from the language of calculus A word is an elegy, from the Spanish (with thanks to R. Hass) Vertical Divider
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I Write Because I’m Scared of Writing
--Gloria E. Anzaldúa (A Cento) Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest Our skins sing in complementary keys Sing with splinters in your tongue Once I was asked to write down all the ways to use a stone The word flies away...and does not come back It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud But I'm more scared of not writing Staccato heels hammering the skin of the floor God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God Rearrange the Caribbean. Turn off the television To know the body from the inside Write with a feather, on a strip of azure parchment Heresy was dangerous but silence worse From time to time, she hauled herself ashore to shed scales Quoted writers, in order of appearance: Muriel Rukeyser, Audre Lorde, Jennifer L. Knox, Rachel Bennet, Dulce María Loynaz, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Brenda Cárdenas, Annie Dillard, Nicole Hospital-Medina, Kimiko Hahn, Lynda Hull, Holly Iglesias, Carolina Hospital |
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I prefer to remain unforgiven.
—Nicole Hospital-Medina It’s been a few days since I lived anything to be forgiven or wrote something for which someone might forgive me. Maybe all this poking around in my brain isn’t healthy. I heard recently that in some cultures the brain is simply residue, that the heart is where intelligence lies and makes the invisible visible. I wonder what the fuck that means but I’m willing to forego my brain for my heart. Go ahead, feel the heat over my fourth chakra. Now put your hands on my head—nothing, right? Locked down in the middle of Colorado with cancer during Covid hasn’t been the carnival it’s cracked up to be. Neither has it all been hell. Still, I pre- fer to remain unforgiven if it means I get to smash things or drive my car off a cliff (without me in it, of course). Sure, you can worry about me a little, but don’t not order curbside on my account or hide my car keys. To the men in charge: don’t you dare try to forgive me. I’ve barely begun to die. Beautiful
Once there was a poem called “Beautiful.” But before I could think of anything beautiful I had to confess what it was that gleamed along my bones, radioactive and redolent of snow, the way it fills the nose with the perfume of cold, my spine a length of rope or a branch of dead leaves or a fountain of blood. Cancer has crept to the place below my vertebrae, the place that looks like a saddle, the sacrum, where the body is...beautiful. There. Did I mention I have three angels? All two-spirit, non-binary. When I was on the operating table, they were beside me, guarding me, accompanying me. They whispered: You know this procedure’s not going to work. Do you still want to go through with it? Yes, I said. I said yes. Vertical Divider
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Muddled Blackberries
Poets love picking blackberries and tucking them into their poems. blackberries big as thumbs...shining/in the shade (Mary Oliver) I’d say it’s the Chosen Fruit of the Collective Unconscious rather than a disregard for other berries or the fact I am unpoetically allergic to all blackberries, scratching my way on the L.I.R.R. to midtown Manhattan to work as a mail girl my 18th summer. I knew little of poetry then, although my grandmother would recite terrifying lines by Anonymous whenever I begged her. She was an Irishwoman trying for American in Elizabethport, New Jersey. Lace Curtain; Old Sod; Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. ~ Grandson (age 7): “How did your grandmother get here from Ireland? Airplane?” Me (age 70): “Uh, no.” Grandson: “Catapult?” Irish Blackberry Cobbler Cocktail Ingredients for two cocktails 16 ripe blackberries 3 oz or 90ml Irish whiskey 3 oz or 90ml simple syrup Ground cinnamon or nutmeg Crushed ice for two glasses Method Divide the blackberries between two short cocktail glasses and muddle until you have a lovely mush of blackberries and juice at the bottom. Add crushed ice to fill both glasses, right on top of the muddled berries. Shake vigorously in a cocktail shaker. Pour over crushed ice. Mix well. --Maureen Seaton |
SoFloPoJo Special Section - Surfside - Summer 2021
Maureen's response to our call for poetry
in the wake of the Champlain Towers South
collapse in Surfside, Florida
SoFloPoJo Issue 23 NOVEMBER 2021 INTERVIEWS
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED
TO KNOW ABOUT MAUREEN SEATON
BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK
By Denise Duhamel
DD: Emily Dickinson famously wrote “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” What is the first poem you read that made you feel that way?
MS: I love how Emily expressed her visceral reaction to poetry, but the top of my head has never blown off. Maybe if the poem had an orchestra behind it, or at least some great percussion. I have felt, however, a sensation where I describe a poem as filling my mouth with flowers. I remember reading Marilyn Hacker’s “Rune of the Finland Woman” for the first time, or it could have been Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas” or Ntozake Shange’s “I Live in Music.” Finding these poems long ago in a Manhattan bookstore, my mouth filled with flowers for the first time, and I knew what poetry was to me.
DD: Fuck Marry or Kill. (Or just Fuck and Marry, since I know you are a peaceful poet.) Gertrude Stein, Phillis Wheatley, Sappho.
MS: Denise, I know you did not make this up. Do people actually ask this question? Okay, well, I would love to be in a long-standing poetry group with all three. I know that might sound dull in comparison—but I’m all about alternatives, and no way would it be boring, right?
DD: Why Carl Jung?
MS: Because he doesn’t insist I want to sleep with my mother (or father). Plus, he invented the soul.
DD: If you could be reincarnated as anyone or anything, what would that be?
MS: A gingko tree in the East Village.
DD: How many Maureen Seatons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
MS: See, instead, Aaron Smith’s poem, “God Is Not Mocked” in the inaugural issue of the new and fabulous Allium, in which Smith writes:
How many Gods does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One, because I Am the Great and Powerful Oz!
DD: What is your secret to writing poems that just get better and better with each book?
MS: If that is, indeed, true, it may be because I keep getting closer and closer to death, and therefore soul. (See Jung.)
DD: Any advice to young poets who didn’t have the honor of studying with you?
MS: First of all, the honor is mine. Not to mention the joy and inspiration. Best advice I have: trust yourself, your muse, your own rhythm.
DD: What do you think your legacy will be?
MS: I’m not sure what a legacy is. Maybe mine will be that I never gave up on poetry.
DD: Is this interview more like a poem?
MS: Bigger than a haiku, smaller than a sonnet, daft as an exquisite corpse, and definitely a collaboration. Thanks, Denise. I love you.
TO KNOW ABOUT MAUREEN SEATON
BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK
By Denise Duhamel
DD: Emily Dickinson famously wrote “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” What is the first poem you read that made you feel that way?
MS: I love how Emily expressed her visceral reaction to poetry, but the top of my head has never blown off. Maybe if the poem had an orchestra behind it, or at least some great percussion. I have felt, however, a sensation where I describe a poem as filling my mouth with flowers. I remember reading Marilyn Hacker’s “Rune of the Finland Woman” for the first time, or it could have been Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas” or Ntozake Shange’s “I Live in Music.” Finding these poems long ago in a Manhattan bookstore, my mouth filled with flowers for the first time, and I knew what poetry was to me.
DD: Fuck Marry or Kill. (Or just Fuck and Marry, since I know you are a peaceful poet.) Gertrude Stein, Phillis Wheatley, Sappho.
MS: Denise, I know you did not make this up. Do people actually ask this question? Okay, well, I would love to be in a long-standing poetry group with all three. I know that might sound dull in comparison—but I’m all about alternatives, and no way would it be boring, right?
DD: Why Carl Jung?
MS: Because he doesn’t insist I want to sleep with my mother (or father). Plus, he invented the soul.
DD: If you could be reincarnated as anyone or anything, what would that be?
MS: A gingko tree in the East Village.
DD: How many Maureen Seatons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
MS: See, instead, Aaron Smith’s poem, “God Is Not Mocked” in the inaugural issue of the new and fabulous Allium, in which Smith writes:
How many Gods does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One, because I Am the Great and Powerful Oz!
DD: What is your secret to writing poems that just get better and better with each book?
MS: If that is, indeed, true, it may be because I keep getting closer and closer to death, and therefore soul. (See Jung.)
DD: Any advice to young poets who didn’t have the honor of studying with you?
MS: First of all, the honor is mine. Not to mention the joy and inspiration. Best advice I have: trust yourself, your muse, your own rhythm.
DD: What do you think your legacy will be?
MS: I’m not sure what a legacy is. Maybe mine will be that I never gave up on poetry.
DD: Is this interview more like a poem?
MS: Bigger than a haiku, smaller than a sonnet, daft as an exquisite corpse, and definitely a collaboration. Thanks, Denise. I love you.
from Chameleon Chimera
An Anthology of Florida Poets
An Anthology of Florida Poets
Maureen Seaton
Sweet World
I never had a nemesis before. I kinda like it.
~Felicity Smoak, The Flash
Wonder what I’d be today if I was still married to my Wall Street husband
besides married to a Wall Street husband and puking gin in a silk sheath
at Delmonico’s. I might be a blond size 4. I might be a secret Democrat
or a weekend lesbian. This morning five planes flew over the yard in a V
as I was about to dig into a pile of lavender pancakes al fresco. The V
flew low and slow. It flew loud and ominous. It alarmed me, sounding
a lot like the war movies of my fifties’ childhood. My cranky Chihuahua
was proverbially biting at flies and I was sitting there not thinking about hate.
Recently, I experienced life with cancer. An intoxicating time, richly infused
with the liquor of death, but good too because no one expected much of me
and I was left to my own mind, which is what I’m missing most these days.
Unless that’s it over there, screeching on two wheels around the racetrack.
Today I typed gnos instead of song and I wondered if it was some new app
designed to mess with me. I’ve never thought to call the world sweet before.
A nemesis can do that for you, make things taste different. Suddenly you’re
a hero/ine. All this devastation—and you’re still standing in the middle of it.
Sweet World
I never had a nemesis before. I kinda like it.
~Felicity Smoak, The Flash
Wonder what I’d be today if I was still married to my Wall Street husband
besides married to a Wall Street husband and puking gin in a silk sheath
at Delmonico’s. I might be a blond size 4. I might be a secret Democrat
or a weekend lesbian. This morning five planes flew over the yard in a V
as I was about to dig into a pile of lavender pancakes al fresco. The V
flew low and slow. It flew loud and ominous. It alarmed me, sounding
a lot like the war movies of my fifties’ childhood. My cranky Chihuahua
was proverbially biting at flies and I was sitting there not thinking about hate.
Recently, I experienced life with cancer. An intoxicating time, richly infused
with the liquor of death, but good too because no one expected much of me
and I was left to my own mind, which is what I’m missing most these days.
Unless that’s it over there, screeching on two wheels around the racetrack.
Today I typed gnos instead of song and I wondered if it was some new app
designed to mess with me. I’ve never thought to call the world sweet before.
A nemesis can do that for you, make things taste different. Suddenly you’re
a hero/ine. All this devastation—and you’re still standing in the middle of it.