Kirpal Gordon:
Congratulations on the publication of your first book of poetry, Bending to Beauty. As your neighbor on
Burton Street, I remember how back in your teenage years you were already
writing verse, taking photographs and winning awards at Bishop Reilly’s Robert
Frost contest. So, after retiring from a life as a reading teacher and elementary school
administrator, what inspired you to write a book of free verse at this point of your
life?
Dian Zirilli-Mares: I began writing this book at the
prompting of my sons, Justin and Jared. These last few years, as we watch their
ninety-four year old grandfather become forgetful, we began to realize how
precious and ephemeral the past truly is. We regret questions that have to go
unasked now; my dad no longer remembers the answers. It became another
cautionary tale. The boys knew I have been writing poetry since I was a young
girl and urged me to create a book that would preserve a piece of my life for
them to cherish when I---or my memory---was gone.
Kirpal Gordon: Justin and
Jared are both in the arts, yes? Your mom was something of a poet, too, no? I
remember both your mom and dad as open-minded people who in the early Seventies
had learned how to meditate. Your husband Ray is quite the rock ‘n’ roll
musician. You have been
around literature and music your whole life. You mention all five of these
people in your dedication.
Dian Zirilli-Mares: My dedication is to my beloved
five. My son Justin is a published author, aspiring television writer, and
entertainment journalist. Jared is a New York-based actor and singer who has
worked on Broadway as well as in television and film. My mom was a voracious
reader who dabbled in writing herself, long before it was fashionable to
self-publish. She and my father were always ahead of their time. At my father's
urging, they were among the first trained in Transcendental Meditation by its
founder, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. True to his garage band roots, Ray began
singing and playing again in a rock 'n' roll band six years ago. But from the
moment we began dating fifteen years ago, I was serenaded often, much to the
delight of my inner teenager. Literature and music have been my constant
backdrop. I can't imagine my life without them.
Kirpal Gordon: Why
did you title the book
Bending to Beauty?
Dian Zirilli-Mares: A few years ago, I became addicted to silver
fabrication. The role of the torch in
the ultimate beauty of a piece fascinated me. In the jeweler's world, fire
doesn't destroy. The flame is necessary for the smoothing, shaping, and
building of silver jewelry. As I examined my life and wrote my poems, it became
clear to me how perfect a metaphor the flaming torch would be. Life's "fiery
strokes" may bring pain, but they also forge strength---and strength can
bring the possibility of joy again. I have been blessed, no matter the
pain or loss in my life, to always be able to "bend to beauty."
Kirpal Gordon: What
was your writing process like for these thirty-eight poems?
Dian Zirilli-Mares: Athough I have written many poems over
the last fifty years, they mostly burst out of me onto the page. There was no
process involved at all. Whenever I felt something intensely, there was a good chance
it would eventually find its voice in a poem. I knew that this approach to a
book would never do if I wanted to finish it in my lifetime. On the other hand,
the sheer act of sitting all day and "waiting for lightning to
strike" was daunting. But it was all I could think of doing; I had never
tried to discipline my creativity before. It wasn't going well and I felt like
a college student writing a term paper. I was always finding "really
important" phone calls to make, bills to pay, and laundry to do instead of
courting my muse. Happily, I confessed my growing hatred of my writing prison,
to my son, Justin, who is a published writer himself. He suggested I begin my
early morning writing with a timer set for just 10 minutes. During that time I
was to write about anything that came to mind. I should not even attempt
to write a poem. When the timer went off, I would be free to move on to
something less excruciating. Unless, of course, I was happily writing. Every
week I was to add 10 minutes to my timer. Before long I was up to a half an hour and I didn't
want to stop writing. Many days I didn't. My daily musings often contained
seeds that eventually grew into strong poems. Some of them surprised me.
Although first drafts poured out of me quickly, it took many, many revisions
and edits to chisel each poem to where it needed to be. But the greatest gift
of these last two years is that when I had to change hats and proof formatted
first runs and final files, I realized how much I missed writing poems. Professional
writers tell me this is what happens. That maw of silence and lack of
creativity eventually seduce you back to the torturous and glorious writer's
chair. And mine is calling as we speak.
Kirpal Gordon: In
the book’s epigram, you quote Anne Lamott: All I
have to offer as a writer is my version of life. Every single thing that has
happened to me is mine…. If people wanted me to write more warmly about them,
they should have behaved better. Is this
a word to the wise or just good fun?
Dian Zirilli-Mares: A word to the wise.
Kirpal Gordon: Your book is
broken down into four sections. The first, "Hallowed Places," is rich
with memory.
Dian Zirilli-Mares: "Hallowed
Places" holds memoir poems. As I
grow older, and lose those I love, these sharp childhood memories become dearer
still. The poems in this section capture the past, and some of the people and
the times that are precious to me.
Kirpal Gordon: Marona mia, bella! These lines are also
incantatory and become universal when they invoke the sights, smells, joys,
mysteries, loves and uncertainties of a young girl: Halloween’s autumn alchemy
in Beechurst; your dad playing Italian love songs on his tape recorder; Aunt
Rose’s sweet tooth; laying under the balsam Christmas tree; watching wrestling
on TV with your grandma on your first sleep-over; your mom praying in the
living room. We share the innocence of childhood meeting the wonders and
terrors of this world. Perhaps “Waiting for Steve,“ in all its rhythms of
puberty and Godot-like comedy, reveals this quality best:
In the heat of summer dusk,
we sit on the curb in front of our house
waiting for the boys to come out.
Scraps of conversation billow up between us,
settle down again,
like brightly colored flags in a sudden August
breeze.
Staring straight ahead, eyes never meeting, we
tell secrets.
When I
grow up I want to be a torch singer. Or a cloistered nun.
You whisper a dream to dance in a cage
in those white go-go boots from Thom McAnn’s.
Jump up to twirl on one ice blue thong.
Sit down beside me again.
We float a leaf and a Wrigley’s wrapper
down the car wash stream at our feet.
Wonder – how much longer till Steve comes,
ringing his bells into the fireflied night.
We hope the boys will come out then.
Pat our damp pixie bangs in place.
What a tribute to an ice cream
man! What a tribute to teenhood!
Dian Zirilli-Mares: I loved going back to the memories of Burton
Street and my childhood. I craved the feeling of peace they brought me. These memories remain an antidote to the
darkness and fear I feel as I grow older and watch the world change.
Kirpal Gordon: "No
Surprises," the book‘s second section, is an abrupt shift.
Dian Zirill-Mares:
In "No Surprises" the poems highlight the everyday wisdom and
matter-of-fact learnings of a life fully lived. From the stance of my later
years, my poems illuminate what I now see as obvious truths about people, life,
and living.
Kirpal Gordon: Not only has the eye of experience
replaced the eye of innocence, but the tone of these poems is reflective,
rather than evocative. From the last line of your last poem in “Hallowed Places---“Welcome
her home,“ a rembrance of your deceased mom---comes “The Battlefield“‘s eight
lines:
Day 29 of meditation
and I cannot stanch the rage.
Past betrayals and pains are fresh, bleeding
again,
like wounds roughly stripped of their protective
gauze.
I survey the littered terrain, learn there are
no surprises.
What I do not honor,
what I tamp down and swallow,
does not die.
Dian Zirilli-Mares:
The hard work of this later part of my life seems to be to speak my truth no
matter the cost. I've spent too many
years framing and reframing the disloyalties of
people I trusted in order to carry on. My poem reflects what I have
learned about how effective that is in the long run. It is a Pyrrhic victory.
Kirpal Gordon: Throughout this section, but
especially in “The Choice,“ your Rumi-like reflections on motherhood are in
such sharp contrast to daughterhood and maidenhood in “Hallowed Places.“ In "Fiery Strokes" you also have
some exceptionally strong work. Again, the tone of these poems shift as well.
These poems summon the courage hard won of a lifetime learner. Not only do they
skillfully meditate on the art of aging, but they read like an Ars Poetica.
Like you say: “Driven to
gnaw at my life, I cut to the quick. / The tenderest meat is close to the
bone.”
Dian Zirilli-Mares:
"Fiery Strokes" contains poems of different kinds of loss and pain.
But, again, the title poem "Bending to Beauty" reminds that suffering
endured can bring strength and growth. Although the poems show no
happily-ever-after, the reader can assume the story has not ended.
Kirpal Gordon: I quote in full
your title poem:
Every loss I survive marks me.
Just as the torch takes solder and smooths it to
an unbroken stream,
I am made stronger with each fiery stroke.
If you work silver to follow your will too long,
it resists and hardens, soon becoming unmovable,
no longer able to bend to beauty.
Only the brush of flame softens, makes it malleable
again.
Yet silver holds the memory of all it has
withstood.
In the heat and light of the burning torch, it
forgives everything,
and everything becomes possible, once more.
Your metaphor of heat and
alchemy reminds me so much of India’s yoga poets singing of tapas (inner heat)
uncoiling the kundalini.
Dian Zirilli-Mares:
I love that! Although I have yet to read
the yoga poets, I am a lover of Kundalini yoga and have been practicing it for
the last three years. I was drawn to its emphasis on spirituality, the chanting
of mantras, and the focus on the chakras and meditation as gateways to
transformation. I have no doubt that Kundalini played a part in the evolution
that led to my being ready to write my
truth in Bending to Beauty.
Kirpal Gordon: Once again, your next section, “Vigil
Candles,“ shifts mood and tone dramatically from “Fiery Strokes.“
Dian Zirilli-Mares:
Like the votives flickering before the statues in a church, "Vigil
Candles" honors and marks special intentions, loved ones, and prayers
answered and unanswered. The stories behind these poems continue to keep a
silent vigil within me. I accept that they always will. It was my hope that
others might read them, and recognize something in their lives as well.
Kirpal Gordon: The section opens with these eleven lines:
This morning, a text from a friend –
I was cooking and thought
of your Mom,
her trick of bending
asparagus to break at its most tender spot.
My mother died at sixty-five.
Some days, she appears unexpectedly.
These endless years without her,
I spit-shine her memory,
parrot her wisdom,
understand her boundaries.
I am a vigil candle.
It’s hard to say where she ends and I begin.
Those last two lines, like the last section itself,
suggest an affirmation of lineage, continuity and love. Perhaps in love the
boundary between self and other can finally be erased. Certainly that’s the
celebration in this section, especially in the love poems to your husband Ray.
Dian Zirilli-Mares: Ray and I are testaments to the power of the
past and a love that never forgets. Our long and winding road back to one
another from Burton Street where we grew up, fell in teenage love, then went
our separate ways, took 35 years. But,
here we are, the lead singer in the rock“n“roll band and the poetess. Together
at last.
Kirpal Gordon: How
did it feel tapping into the past, the pain, the fear that comes out of these
poems?
Dian Zirilli-Mares: Since I was very young, my writing has
been the way I understand and navigate the feelings and choices in my life. I
write in order to discover what the truth of a situation is. It is as though
the act of struggling to find that perfect word in a poem or a story forces me
to see clearly what I am feeling. My writing has worked me through suffering.
It has helped me more fully celebrate my joys. Revisiting so many of my life's emotional moments while
writing Bending to Beauty was no different. "A Tiny Circle of
Light," an essay I wrote for my Master's thesis many years ago, speaks of
this. "Always my strongest thoughts surface as poetry. It is as if the
original experience is so painfully rich and deep, it grows roots and bears
fruit. That fruit is my poetry."
Kirpal Gordon: What's
next?
Dian Zirilli-Mares: I think I was unprepared for the
extent of withdrawal I would experience after two years of working on Bending
to Beauty. The daily discipline of facing my demons and angels while
wrestling them to paper became cathartic. However, the more I continued
to work at my craft, the more critical I became of each poem. I made a deal
with myself, especially in regards to those more complicated, emotional
poems---either I would be brutally honest or I would be silent. What is the
point of poetry that plays games or hides in artifice? That took care of the heart
of my poems. But the longer I worked on each one, the more I demanded of it technically.
In the end, at least 25 poems were cut from the original collection because
they were not ready to face the light of day.
Perhaps in another two years they will be. Meanwhile, I am sure there is a great deal
more agonizing ahead to be done over the exact word, the perfect
metaphor. I am looking forward to picking up my pen again to revisit these
first draft poems this winter. Spring.
Fall...
