April 6, 2022 Whiting Awards 2022 Claire Schwartz, Poetry By Claire Schwartz Claire Schwartz. Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan. Claire Schwartz is the author of the poetry collection Civil Service, forthcoming from Graywolf, and the culture editor of Jewish Currents. Claire’s writing has appeared in The Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. From 2018 to 2020, she wrote a column for The Paris Review called Poetry RX, with Kaveh Akbar and Sarah Kay. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and Yale’s Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize, and received her PhD from Yale University. Read More
January 11, 2021 At Work Ways to Open a Door: An Interview with Destiny Birdsong By Claire Schwartz The spectacular present-day emergencies have inspired calls for art that responds to the moment, that speaks to the now, that lays claim to a particular kind of relevance. Emergency authorizes presentism, even as a virulent strain of presentism has everything to do with the emergencies we are facing. In this way, emergency casts the solution in terms of the logic of the problem, which guarantees the problem’s endurance; there is no out from this place. It feels, then, like a vital recalibration when I encounter Destiny Birdsong’s poem “Pandemic,” which is definitely not about COVID-19, and remember that language holds a history—and that history enters the present whether I recognize it or not. Throughout her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, from Tin House, Birdsong reminds you that if you offer deep attention—if you are precise and specific and careful—you will end up exactly where you need to be, which is to say: you will learn something about where you already are. The poems in Negotiations attend to a series of concerns—sexual violence, autoimmune disease, anti-Blackness, artistic genealogies, the nourishments and injuries of kinship—but it would be more accurate to say that the poems in this collection expose the entanglements that have long existed, so that to name one site of encounter is necessarily to summon others. Birdsong’s poems reveal the ways that so many borders—nation, race, gender—are structured to maintain hierarchies of allegiance and care. In “400-Meter Heat,” which departs from the 2016 Olympic race where Bahamian sprinter Shaunae Miller-Uibo secured a narrow victory over American Allyson Felix, Birdsong writes: “I’m saddest whenever two black women are competing // because I never know who to root for, / and I’m arrogant enough to believe my split loyalty // fails them (which makes me more American again).” To notice is not only to reflect; it is also to register possibilities. The emergencies of the present are scored through with the fault lines of the past. Birdsong’s poems transform as they touch. From our respective quarantines, Destiny Birdsong and I spoke over FaceTime about the complications of metaphor, embodied histories in language, and the possibility of curses. INTERVIEWER Negotiations has two epigraphs. Terrance Hayes, “What moves between us has always moved as metaphor,” and TJ Jarrett, “The worst has already happened to us, she said. / What good is metaphor now?” Would you say a bit about your relationship to metaphor in the context of this project? BIRDSONG I grew up in an environment where metaphor worked very strongly. Because there were certain things that people just didn’t talk about outright, metaphor became a way to sustain relationships that were complicated, or very tender. Also, people said horrible things to me because I had albinism. Those lines from Terrance Hayes really spoke to the way I grew up—afraid of language in a way that made metaphor a safe space. I read TJ Jarrett’s poem, “At the Repast,” a little later, at a moment in my life when that aversion to transparency just wasn’t working. I had to come to terms with things that had happened to me. I realized how dangerous it can be to refuse to say a thing. I had to call things what they were. In the poems, I’m always toggling back and forth between those two worlds. Read More
March 12, 2020 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: Poems for Social Distancing By Claire Schwartz In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. It’s back after a short hiatus, with Claire Schwartz on the line. © Ellis Rosen Dear Poets, I feel overwhelmed by the ambient anxiety in the air right now. My hands are raw from washing, and I can’t stop refreshing the news. How do we continue to move through our lives when a virus is spreading, events keep getting canceled, and the only way to greet our loved ones is with an elbow bump? Are these the end-times we keep bracing for? I wonder if you might have a poem that reminds us how to stay close to one another while we’re all “practicing social distancing.” Or a poem that will be nice to read when we’re all quarantined? Thanks, Lonely COVID Read More
September 5, 2019 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: The Radiant Bodies of the Dead By Claire Schwartz In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This month, Claire Schwartz is on the line. Dear Poets, I lost my father suddenly on New Year’s Day. I have lived without him for over a year and a half now, and while I’ve found that my heart is more resilient than I imagined, I’ve started to fear the passing of time. The first of every new month feels like it’s stabbing me with the reminder that time will not slow down. I’m scared for this year to end, because right now I can still claim his death is recent, and it scares me that one day it will be in the distant past. I’m scared that I’ll start forgetting pieces of him, or that I’ll stop thinking about him as much, which would feel like letting him die again. I’m wondering if you can give me a poem about how to accept the passing of time and stop seeing it as the enemy. Sincerely, A Fearful Daughter Read More
May 23, 2019 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: Then the Letting Go By Claire Schwartz In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This column has run weekly for over a year, and now, our dear and busy poets must slow it down to once a month. Never fear — they’ll still be here, just a bit less often. This month, Claire Schwartz is on the line. ©ELLIS ROSEN Dear Poets, Two years ago, I came out of the closet to my family by introducing them to my girlfriend. They responded fairly negatively, expressing their disbelief (“we would have known if you were gay”) and disapproval (“it’s not something we believe in or support”). I have pushed back in many ways—bringing my girlfriend to family functions, being hypervisible online, and proclaiming the steadfastness and validity of my relationship in frequent and intense fights. In the wake of this, my relationship, which did not have a strong foundation to begin with and shouldered the normal fears and anxieties that accompany any romantic partnership, suffered greatly. The more unstable my relationship became, the more strongly I held on to it—I fought for her so hard in the public arena that I didn’t know how not to in the private one. At times, it was volatile and abrasive, yet I fought for it still. After two years of what felt like pushing the boulder of “us” up a mountain, we decided to call it quits. Now I am both heartbroken over losing her and losing myself. In her absence, I am struggling to find mooring. How do you mourn a relationship whose primary purpose was to validate your queerness, both to yourself and others? How do you maintain an identity in the absence of the person it was formed around? Perhaps most of all, can I keep her in my life without making her my compass? Sincerely, Broken Heart, Broken Self Read More
April 18, 2019 Poetry Rx Poetry Rx: Sometimes Sadness Is Just What Comes between the Dancing By Claire Schwartz In our column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match. This week, Claire Schwartz is on the line. ©ELLIS ROSEN Dear Poets, I’m in a stable tumultuous relationship. I love my partner dearly, and she returns my enthusiasm. Some of the time. There are days when I feel love radiating off her, and others when I could not buy a kind word or any showing of support. I realize all relationships have ups and downs, and I’ve come to accept and respect my partner’s moods. Still, I find it very difficult to cope with things when I am on her bad side, especially if I myself am suffering. I try my best to communicate this to her and not to be so sensitive. Despite knowing that things inevitably will revert to normal, I feel very abandoned and unloved in the moment. I’m not sure if I’m being unfair or overly needy or what. Kind regards, Confused in Love Read More