Mary Szybist’s poems like religion for nonbelievers
Shortly after winning the 2013 National Book Award for her second collection of poems, “Incarnadine,” Portland’s Mary Szybist told the Paris Review that she started writing poetry when she was young, after losing her ability to pray.
Szybist was raised Catholic, and “Incarnadine” focuses on the Annunciation, approaching it through many forms and perspectives in an attempt, as she said in that interview, “to take the iconography of the Annunciation out of the realm of symbol, where its meaning is predetermined, and into the realm of contemplation — a realm with room for doubt, investigation, imagination, play.”
The National Book Award judges called it “a religious book for nonbelievers.”
While I still don’t think these are interchangeable terms, I feel increasingly open to what both poetry and prayer can be.
Can a poem be a poem without traditional markers of poetry such as line, meter and rhyme? I think so.
If prayer is sometimes about trying to connect to presences beyond the self by giving voice to desires, struggles and bewilderments, poems are sometimes about that too.
Szybist is in residence at UC Berkeley this semester, teaching a course called Verse as the Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics.
The following are the closing lines from “Happy Ideas,” a poem in “Incarnadine” inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s statement “I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a stool and watch it turn.”
Apogee Press presents readings by three of its authors, Pattie McCarthy (“Quiet Book”), Denise Newman (“Wild Goods”) and Laura Walker (“Story”).
Snack Bar Collective releases issue 2, “Gross,” with readings by contributing authors Amy Berkowitz, Tom Comitta, Carrie Hunter, Claire Moshenberg, Matthew Monte, George Pfau and Sable Sullivan. 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St., S.F., free. www.facebook.com/events/1764395033834887
Local poets and artists pay homage to poet and art writer Bill Berkson with readings, stories and farewells. 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24, McRoskey Mattress Co., 1687 Market St., S.F., free. http://poetry.sfsu.edu/events/29009-bill-berkson-memorial-tribute