Brian Czyzyk

Brian Czyzyk on “No Tongue Can Tell”

“No Tongue Can Tell” was partially inspired by Kevin Young’s “Ode to the Midwest.” The epigraph of that piece led me to the Bob Dylan song it’s taken from, from which I derived the title of this poem. Dylan also makes a brief appearance in the poem as a nod to that.

While this may seem like an indictment of the Midwest and small towns therein, my intention was to point out how multifaceted this region can be. While its social environments may not always be the most accepting, there is undoubtable beauty in the natural environs of the Midwest. It’s a place full of contradictions, and I love that. I want to challenge peoples’ preconceived notions of place and of others.

As a queer person growing up in small-town Northern Michigan, representation in my day-to-day life was limited. Representation still remains elusive, but I’m not talking about representation purely in terms of sexuality: how many other queer male poets from the rural Midwest can you name? Granted, the specificity of that definition does limit the potential scope of your findings, but I know I’m not the only one (the incomparable poet Michael Walsh comes to mind). I’ve recognized this as a niche that needs to be, not filled, but expanded. My life experience is not everyone’s life experience, but it contains echoes of shared truths. Someone, I can’t remember who, once said that poetry should be so personal it becomes universal. And that is my aim.

Kelly DuMar

Kelly DuMar on “The Trouble of Us” and “\ ˈfä-t͟hər \”

Photo © Kelly DuMar, Dec. 26, 2016

Often, before it’s a poem it’s a picture. This is where many of my poems, including “The Trouble of Us,” begin. I live on the banks of the Charles River where it runs through the woods in a suburb of Boston, and every day, in every weather, this is where I hike with my dogs and take pictures. On December 26, 2016, the brook on property had iced over, and a glassy oval looked as un-ruined as the impromptu skating ponds of my childhood. 

Later, in my notebook, unpacking my memories from the photo into the raw material for a poem, I wrote a rough draft I called, “January Skating,” which was about both my parents. In subsequent drafts, I narrowed the theme to focus on my mother and the extraordinary efforts she made as a 1960’s homemaker to take the five of us skating, in the absence of any help from my father, to the ponds that would form and freeze at the bottom of our neighbor’s field when the brook would overflow. In later years, my mother would often complain about how stressful it had been to manage raising five children while my father was working in the city dawn to dusk. Her tone became martyred and too often featured her misery. So, when this poem emerged as a kind of thank you to her, it was a pleasant surprise, because I felt I could move beyond her resentments to express my gratitude to her for choosing discomfort to ensure we experienced these transcendent moments.

It’s particularly satisfying to have one mother-inspired and one father-inspired poem in issue 11 of Split Rock Review. My poem, “\ˈfä-t͟hər \,” was written around the same time as “The Touble of Us,” but it was inspired by an experience rather than a photo. Eight months after my father’s death, my siblings and I gathered to bury his ashes next to those of my mother, just a few days before his birthday on November 9. It was a dreary, windy fall afternoon, so, the word “billow” came to mind as a source of emotional energy driving the poem. Wanting precision, I looked up the definition of billow in the dictionary, and through many revisions, “bil oh” remained the working title and central concern. Drafts were shared multiple times in critique groups before I was able to identify the definition of the role of “father” as the most central concern of the poem, and the idea that he was born and his ashes were buried on virtually the same day struck me as startlingly poignant and profound. The word, billow, no longer exists in the poem, but its still energizes it. 

Over the course of about ten years, my siblings and I cared for our parents as a committed pack – grown children, we became the caretakers in the day-to-day caregiving, both routine and in crisis. The burial was a final act of caregiving we shared. A poetry mentor helped me, finally, with a nod to Plath, express the emotionally complex, final imperative of the poem.

Rosemary Royston

Rosemary Royston on “Rumex acetosella”

“Rumex acetosella” is a poem that comes from a larger collection of work where several poems are titled with by the scientific Latinate name for what is being described. The impetus for this idea was an earlier poem I wrote, “On the Discovery of Aspirin,” where I pondered who ate the leaves from a willow tree (and why), which in turn led to the discovery of acetylsalicylic acid. Think of all those who lost their lives (or their lunch) eating plants, herbs, fungi, flowers in order to find either basic nourishment or relief from an ailment. Not only did this thought lead me to look more closely at my own surroundings (southern Appalachia) and its use of herbal remedies, but I also reflected on what I, as a young person, put into my mouth that did not come from the garden that my family planted each summer at whichever parsonage we happened to be living. And I remember, distinctly, the briny taste of sourgrass that my elementary school friend and I regularly pulled from the pasture on her dad’s dairy farm. We sucked on this salty perennial as we played outdoors, never thinking twice about whether it was poisonous or not. Luckily, we were fine.

I value accessibility in poems, and while Latinate names are not “user friendly,” I like to title some of my poems with the name that we are not accustomed to (at least not the layperson). This naming scheme asks the reader to engage in the poem in order to determine what, exactly, is being described. Having spent the majority of my life in rural places, there is no escaping nature. Nor is there a way to escape that things have more than one name. Whether it’s called sourgrassor Rumex acetosella, it’s still a weed that kids playing outdoors put in their mouths, it’s a weed that some folks put in their salad, and it’s also a nutrient for the American Copper butterfly.  

Pushcart Prize Nominations

Split Rock Review nominates contributors’ work for most major awards. We are thrilled to announce our nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Congratulations to these amazing writers!

Matt W. Miller — Echo Tourism — Issue 11, Fall 2018

Donelle Dreese — Maria Carson to Her Daughter, Rachel, Who Attends the Pennsylvania College for Women, 1925 — Issue 11, Fall 2018

Brian Czyzyk — No Tongue Can Tell — Issue 11, Fall 2018

Connor Yeck — The Die-Off, 1967 — Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Poetry Anthology, Winter 2018

D.A. Lockhart — Owashtanong Carries Namegos Overland — Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Poetry Anthology, Winter 2018

Wendy Oleson — Dirt — Issue 10, Spring 2018