Poetry Exchange by Jan Seale and Katie Hoerth
January 4, 2022
About the Poets
Jan Seale, the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate, lives in Texas on the U.S.-Mexican border. She has held a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and has served as a Humanities Scholar for Humanities Texas. Her latest book of poetry is PARTICULARS: poems of smallness, published by Lamar University Literary Press.
Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry collections, including Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots, which won the Helen C. Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2015. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Lamar University and Editor-in-Chief of Lamar University Literary Press. Her next poetry collection, Borderland Mujeres, will be released by SFAU Press in 2021.
Family Portrait by Jan Seale
Certainly the white-haired grandparents
with their naturally rounded bellies
will have dropped out of the picture
but what of the father on the left
who sired the four almost-tall teenagers?
He is absent by way of a troubled heart
and his daughter in short-shorts
as befitting the summer day this picture
was taken now gone to some heaven
the rest of us are not. Another father
far right, contributing the three sprouting lads?
A ghost, only his music remaining.
Two sisters, who started it all, smile giddy,
hold hands in the success of the outing.
The six who are left have long been stretched out
of their teenage skins, stretched to a day’s work
and incurable conditions, to poor plumbing
and trips to the vet and the hardware store,
to the band hall and the football game. But
look at them here in their matching striped shirts,
one boy on his knees (so as to get everyone
in the picture) who doesn’t know that he’s kneeling
in prayer for the falling away of the principals
and for his car-wrecked big sister, for the
eventual falling away of everyone here to make room
on the photographic paper for the next batch
to come cheerfully, innocently, to occupy
the frame, which is in fine condition even
after so many years and can be refilled again
and again on this pale blue dot sailing the sky.
The Recipe for Fudge by Katie Hoerth
Because I have a sweet tooth just like hers,
my mother says she’ll teach me how to make
grandma’s secret fudge. Let it be known
I love the taste, the memories it brings,
the scent of chocolate wafting through the kitchen,
the grit of sugar sticking to my teeth.
I crave, I long for one more taste of her—
the way she knew to love, a wooden spoon,
no need for a thermometer, she read
the sheen of chocolate like an open palm
and knew exactly when to beat the batter
and when to let it cool. Her fudge was love
in bitesize squares. I always left her house
with armfuls of the fudge, an aching belly
and a face stained umber. Love like this
can rot the teeth, can spoil the appetite,
can poison blood, a river full of sugar
flowing through the tired pancreas.
So when my mother tells me that she’ll teach
me how to make this fudge, I hesitate.
I think of grandma, knee-deep in her sickness,
making batches for the ones she loves
and sneaking little nibbles for herself.
She loved until it hurt, and when she died,
my mother soon became the queen of fudge
slinging batches in her kitchen, keeping
memories of grandma on the tongue,
or in the belly, flowing through the blood
of her, of me. Sugar of her sugar,
blood of blood, a batch of fudge atop the table
cooling in afternoon’s long laze,
my mother grins with grains of sugar grit
between her teeth. I have no choice, I’ll learn
to love like this, to love with sweetness hard
until it hurts, until it kills—embrace
of cocoa, kiss of candy, nourishment
of full-fat milk, a couple pats of butter,
the plundered center of vanilla beans,
heaps of joy. The hardest part is waiting
for the fudge to cool. My mother watches
with the glinted simper of her mother,
of me, our blood a muddy river flooded
with sugar, saccharine and love that flows
through the veins, into the heart, the glucose
inundating, rising, falling, ebbing.
I take a piece of candy from the dish,
remember grandma as it starts to melt
atop my tongue. I take the recipe
into myself, the recipe for love
all the women in my family know by heart.
Katie’s Response to “Family Portrait” by Jan Seale
I love this poem. The title, “Family Portrait,” hints of ekphrasis, and sure, the poem describes a family portrait, but it moves beyond that muse about life’s biggest questions. In other words, it’s deceptively simple. It’s about the permanence and the impermanence of life—how we leave a legacy, and how that legacy carries on without us. It makes me think about the immortality wrapped within our mortality—if that makes any sense.
At the start of the poem, we’re introduced to a family through a single photograph, perhaps taken at a joyous family reunion. The speaker tells us all the wonderful details about the people that feel so full of life. We have grandparents with “naturally rounded bellies,” “almost-tall teenagers,” and sisters who “smile giddy, / hold hands.” There are people absent from the photograph as well, and the speaker speculates about them—one father “absent by way of a troubled heart,” another “a ghost, only his music remaining.” They also remark that one of the young girls in the photograph is “now gone to some heaven.” This adds a shade of darkness and complexity in the piece, warding off any hint of sentimentality. It also makes the family feel more real and relatable. Who among us hasn’t lost someone? I think of my own family and extended family—my brothers, parents, and a brand-new baby niece, and also my grandparents who have exited the metaphoric frame.
So we get all of these delicious details as the poem unfolds. I appreciate the imagery of each person in the photograph that makes me feel as though I’m beside the speaker, examining it, learning about this family as though it were my own. However, the poem turns in stanza eight with the final, winding sentence: “But” it begins, signaling a shift in tone. The speaker directs us to examine two brothers kneeling in the photograph as if “in prayer for the “eventual falling away of everyone here to make room for the next batch” of youngsters, parents, and grandparents, to occupy this simple picture frame, this moment in time, this earth. The final stanza simply takes my breath. The speaker expands the lens to the cosmic level, making me feel connected to this family and my own too, both grand and small at once. The photograph’s frame becomes a metaphor for the present, for life, which “can be refilled again / and again on this pale blue dot sailing in the sky.” The last line is my favorite part of this poem—such profundity!
The poet chose to write in tercets, which feels exactly right to me, as this creates pattern that goes hand-in-hand with the patterns of life, the poem’s theme. Each of the lines is roughly the same length, and there’s some lovely enjambment throughout that creates suspense, pulling the poem’s argument forward. For instance, poet chose to break stanza two at “troubled heart” and pulls the reader’s attention forward. Where there’s more aggressive enjambment, there’s also more tension in the narrative. Thus, form meets function. It’s simply masterful.
QUESTIONS:
What was your writing process like for this piece? It reads as though it flowed from you so naturally!
What advice do you have for someone wanting to write about family? 😊 I know you have much wisdom on this topic!
Jan’s Response to Katie’s Questions
1. Writing process for this poem:
I had been thinking about my family, going over and over (a pastime in the middle of the night) how my extended family had shrunk in recent years. When I looked at the photo of this family outing, I both mourned the loss of some key members, but also celebrated the paths that the young people in particular had chosen. They are middle-aged now and have their own sets of teenagers.
The picture virtually freezes time, and I wanted the poem to reflect that. So I chose to describe the family members as if I was showing the photo to someone. At the end, I wanted it to seem as though this tiny band of family would go on and on, except there would be descendants in the used frame, and this process of re-picturing the frame would be natural and destined, though miniscule in terms of the universe.
2. Advice for a poet wanting to write about family:
It can be done in a number of ways: focusing on one particular member, or commenting, as I did in this poem, on generativity. Also, it might be a moving narrative, with events out of family life, or a still, like my family frozen in the frame.
A few cautions: Family members will be much more real to the poet, so a poem needs to be very selective in details in order for the audience to identify with the figure without being bored or overwhelmed with all that the poet knows and has experienced with the individuals.
Keep in mind that the heirs of the family figure may be reading the poem years hence. What do you want them to understand about their parent, uncle, aunt? It would be a kindness to err on the side of understanding and generosity for a subject that is difficult and not particularly winsome at the time the poet is writing.
And try for some commentary about the family, not just a description. There needs to be a reason for writing the poem, a conclusion that assures the poem audience that the poet has thought about the implications of his/her particular family in common with other families.
A poem I wrote many years ago, a mini-biography of my pioneering maternal grandmother ( “Pearl Bell Pittman 1888-1976”) has been a surprisingly popular poem through the years. I think it touched a nerve in people. So many have come up to me after a reading to say how it made them think deeply about their own grandparent, and I was cheered by that response, because that’s what we poets want, isn’t it?—to touch someone with our words so that they take them into their lives and hearts and apply the meaning to their own existence. As Maya Angelou said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Jan’s Response to “The Recipe for Fudge” by Katie Hoerth
The title stands like the heading on a recipe card, slyly belying the theme of the poem, which turns out to be a celebration of female family love. The fudge is the—pardon the expression—glue that sticks the basically narrative idea together.
The components of the recipe itself come rather late in the poem, after the stage is set for the grandmother-mother-daughter lesson and especially by a worried enumeration of all the bad effects of this super-sweet treat. The stalling adds suspense—What’s in fudge anyway?? And will the hesitant “I” cave in and learn how to make the recipe?
There are satisfying dichotomies in the poem: sugar good vs. sugar bad; the grandmother cooking a treat while “knee-deep in her sickness”; hot bubbling fudge vs. cool fudge ready to savor “atop my tongue.”
The precise language in this poem raises the subject from ordinary to exceptional. (Isn’t that true of any good poem?) The use of phrases and terms like “grit of sugar,” “one more taste of her,” “the sheen of chocolate,” “afternoon’s long laze,” “face stained umber” and “glinted simper” makes us realize that the poet is taking care in how she presents her story; thus we can trust her with our attention. The easy swing of the long sentences, divided as they are into unrhymed couplets, gives heft to the basic idea, as well as keeps us reading.
The ending is effective and appropriate, with a dash of surprise.
The thing I liked best about this poem is how Hoerth used an ordinary activity to illustrate a deep connection, all the while avoiding the sentimentality that would have been so easy to fall into.
QUESTIONS:
Why did you choose unrhymed couplets to tell your story?
[Question 2: When will I get some of this fudge????]
Katie’s Response to Jan’s Questions
Hey Jan,
The couplets were actually a last-minute decision. I wrote the poem originally in two stanzas—one long one, and then one short one at the end of just five lines. My idea was to have the beginning, long stanza kind of flow and tangle into itself, like the speaker’s train of thought, only to be interrupted when she herself exercises agency and takes a piece of candy. However, when I returned to the poem some months later, I felt overwhelmed with that long block of text and the syntax got confusing. It was suffocating, and while that was my intent, it was just a little much. I then tried couplets, which opened the poem and I think make it more inviting to the reader to reminisce with the speaker. The poem was an even number of lines, so it worked out. Deciding on a stanza length and arrangement is often one of the last things I do when writing a poem, though I will confess I’m still fussing with it here.
As for unrhymed, this poem was just born unrhymed. That’s the way it wanted to be! I do write rhyme occasionally, but I usually reserve it for sonnets. This poem is written in blank verse, which works with the narrative elements of this piece. Blank verse is probably my default form to write in!
And to answer your next question, the next time I visit for tea! 😊
