Valerie Coulton : About still life with elegy

 

 

 

When rob invited me to put together a chapbook for above/ground press, I was delighted and a little worried, since I didn’t see myself in the midst of a project at the time. But I did have a big pile of work that had accumulated over the past year and beyond, so it seemed like a good opportunity to look through it. I found myself sorting pieces into smaller piles, and two of the most conspicuous piles turned into still life with elegy.

“Still life with orange Jell-o” was a potential title for the compilation, or at least for the “still life” section. It came out of a phone conversation with my mom, that epic cook, raconteur, political commentator, humorist, writer and arbiter of culture. Separated by COVID-19 since it began, we’ve been talking every week, and sometimes these talks spark a poem. Are the pieces in “still life” auto/biographical? Yes and no. They’re variations on the themes that keep coming up: food, memory, people we’ve lost, dreams, distance.

My father died in 2014. His death coincided with a mute period for me as a writer, which seemed to last a long time. Two or three years ago that muteness started giving way, and I found it easier to write again, and to write, occasionally, with my father in mind. I have a good deal of uncertainty about the “elegy” poems; there’s always the possibility that a blank page would do a better job. But it felt good to gather them and also to let them be in the same volume with “still life”. Somehow nice to reunite my parents, who parted such a long time ago and yet, when my father still lived, could often be found, miles apart, watching the same baseball game.

 

 

 

Valerie Coulton’s books include small bed & field guide (above/ground press), open book (Apogee Press), and The Cellar Dreamer (Apogee Press). With husband Edward Smallfield, she’s the co-author of lirio and anonymous, both from Dancing Girl Press. She lives in Barcelona and co-edits parentheses, an annual journal of international writing.