The 'process notes' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. These poems and process note by Brian Ang is part of her curriculum for upcoming classes at the University of San Francisco in their MFA Program and for Poetry In Process: Creating Together, A Workshop.
When Your sky Runs Into Mine (Elixir Press, February 2023) grew out of my thesis project at Pacific University. The project was to write poems inspired by the art of my uncle, Bahman Mohassess (1931-2010), the prominent Iranian painter and sculptor often called The Persian Picasso. After the Iranian revolution of 1978 and a few years into the war that followed, Mohassess facilitated my emigration from the country and assumed the role of my guardian. Twenty-five years later, he passed away in exile, under difficult circumstances, and as an adult I have yet to understand the depth of grief and the resentment I feel for the political tides that sabotaged his brilliant artistic career and displaced my family. Knowing that I had some healing to do, I resolved, after decades of teaching, to finally carve out some me time and pursue an MFA in poetry.
I began to spend time with his work on a daily basis and allowed each piece, the colors, forms, lines of the collages and the associations they evoked to take me back to memories of my childhood before emigration, a period I barely had any recollection of. Leaving my deaf-mute parents behind at war time and the process of assimilating into Western culture had not come easy for the shy, introverted, partially indoctrinated young person I was then. Instinctively, I knew I was not whole. Writing poems enabled me to put the pieces of my personal history back together, give homage to my family, whose love had helped me survive the traumas of transplant, and to squarely recognize the very real harm a patriarchal system with narrow antiquated views of religion can wreak on young minds.
I was certain I did not want to write a memoir. Yet in the process of writing, I focused on removing inhibitions. I gave myself permission to write about anything that presented itself. I made no plans. Only the daily practice of studying the artwork and working to recover bits and pieces of the young person I was before and shortly after exile, when traumatic experiences had made me dissatisfied with myself. In his Meditatations, Marcus Aurelius says, “When the ruling faculty is discontented with anything that happens … it deserts its post”. Children are quick to assume blame for circumstances beyond their control, and often it takes years, therapy and distance to gain perspective.
With time I was pleasantly surprised to see how much of my past I actually did remember. The ekphrastic form was somehow therapeutic for me. I made sure the poems stood on their own, independent of the artwork. I did not set out to describe the art. I did not write for an audience. I only executed myself and my art, just as my uncle had done. I felt him very close during the four years I worked on the manuscript. Later, I realized he had been a muse of a sort, inspiring by the ease and effortlessness of his art, and in other emotional ways hard for me to describe.
For the most part, the poems ended up narrative in nature, and when the time came to compile them into a thesis manuscript, the most natural arrangement was chronological. Eventually, a friend pointed out that I had a verse-memoir in hand. I think of the collection as a coming-of-age narrative and I hope it will inspire poets to use another’s artform to tell their own stories. The visuals are not included in the collection though they are available on the gallery page of my website. Each artwork is indicated with the title of the poem and the page number that corresponds to it.
BELIEVERS
for fariba
When he
said
they’re deaf, dumb
and blind; so they will not return,
God
meant had we died
in her
arms,
my
mother would’ve carried on
spoon-feeding until certain
we were
safely enshrined,
our
halos on exhibit.
Nor did she
turn to salt—
even now
she looks back though unsure
of what exactly was looted the year the milk
of the
rubber tree on the back porch dried up.
She
couldn’t hear but they carried away
the
grating rattle of her pots,
giggles
that died
at
dinner. Hunger
stayed and reached with our thin manacled mouths
for
rationed wafers that perched
higher
on the shelf where nothing
wished
to be disturbed.
It wasn’t like an earthquake—
my
mother couldn’t hear the night sky
rip into
starry strips,
she felt
the warheads rumble,
listened
with her feet
she kept
flat under the table.
With two
gold bangles chiming
on each
of our wrists and the double-strand
of jasmine wilting on our chests
my mother had meant to say
we were
believers
though
she’d never read the Qur’an
nor
heard the azan.
Bahman Mohassess. Untitled. 1994. Assemblage.
THE ITALIAN CIVIL STATE OFFICE AND THE IRANIAN EMBASSY DENY YOUR REQUEST FOR CREMATION
For Amoo
For ten
years now I have found
comfort in the freshness of
the one droplet on your corpse,
clinging
like morning dew
to your right cheek, refusing
to roll. A tear
would
have—that much is certain. The mortician,
a public
servant of Rome, left the room
with his
tired eyes, your shirt and tie
neatly stacked,
and the
pressed suit. Your socks and briefs, I handed
to him on
his return. On the last trip he took the bouquet
from my hand, and your shoes.
I ask
myself, the
cut roses, were they not crisp
the next morning? They lay stiffly on the bed
of
baby’s breath when I returned
the next
morning. Stems caught
in your cuffs, they reached
with clean white faces for
your chin. I saw
well
enough, I spotted the single droplet
on your cheek, you see,
through the grease
of fingerprints at eye level.
The sweaty
plexiglass
pane stretched uninterrupted
from
cold stony floor
to
ceiling. My love, you were
seamlessly sealed
away for
good. Yes,
all is good, I tell myself, at museums too, a
thermostat
regulates the ambient temperature. I tell myself,
public morgues are kept
perpetually chilled, cold and clean as holy mountains. And
the high-pressured hose—
no doubt
he must have
circled you clockwise
or not,
no matter, three times
to be
sure, mercy raining
down hard, long
enough
to pool about the drain. I swear,
the dewdrop on your face
my
witness. Then the spray of baby’s breath, the roses
may rest
easy. Surely, he must have
rolled
you onto your side,
on the
stainless-steel
trolley, an assistant,
likely a
lean teenage lad had wielded
the
unruly hose.
Did the stream follow the
gnarled,
sinuous path through the
ravine years of care had cut into
the
blades of your back? I could have
assured
him
they were whittled
down in
love. I could have shown him where
to linger, let the water
linger
over varicosed calves,
over a gentle soul.
*
Does his
girlfriend now wear
the
knotted silver ring you never
once pulled off that baby finger?
In ten
days, you arrived at San Francisco
Airport,
barely embalmed, bloated,
foaming, putrid in the
coffin. My love, I signed
what
papers they put before me.
The next
morning a breeze
swept in across the bar. I
watched it lean
the white sails toward
starboard and lift your heavy ashes
into the
air. By Angel Island I scattered after you
my
armful of red
roses into blue.
Bahman Mohassess.Untitled. 1996. Mixed Media Assemblage.
Maw Shein Win’s most recent
poetry collection is Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) which
was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for
the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA’s Golden Poppy
Award for Poetry. Win’s previous collections include Invisible Gifts
(Manic D Press) and two chapbooks Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA) and
Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Win’s Process Note Series features poets
and their process. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA and teaches
poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. Win often
collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and was recently
selected as a 2023 YBCA 100 Honoree. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and
Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a new literary
community. mawsheinwin.com