The 'process note’ pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. This process note and poems by Jan Conn are part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and poetry classes at the University of San Francisco, Dominican University, and Saint Mary’s College of California. Thank you for reading.
“AUTUMN ELBOWS THE WINDOWS/LEAVING A RUSSET SMUDGE”
Autumn in a rural setting in western Massachusetts is visually stunning and suffused with the sadness of a season pitching downhill toward winter. Not quite transitional, but preparing for a colder, darker, quieter time. Working from home rather than in my biology laboratory and office in Albany, NY, I had more time in the presence of woods, fields, family, and gardens. Michael Dickman’s spare, dynamic, propulsive-yet-allusive “Lakes Rivers Streams” in Days & Days (2019) adroitly captures the ebb and flow of contemporary living, and this combined with my work on Japanese-inspired haiku and renga as one of Yoko’s Dogs, allowed me to focus more deeply and intuitively on my immediate exterior and interior landscapes.
The result was several long poems—fragmentary and ecstatic—written in a sort of frenzied rush the summer before the manuscript was due in the fall of 2023. What propelled them, exactly, remains a mystery, but a trip to France in 2022 that centered on the Lascaux caves, combined with a sudden flourishing of myself as a visual artist may have propelled the poem “Lascaux”, and a longer-than-expected stay in a tiny Peruvian Amazon village for mosquito research provided tangential perspective on aspects of my childhood in southeastern Quebec and gave me a small window into the Peruvian families we lived among (“A Roller Coaster, A Hit, A Pint-Sized Devil Machine, Some Dark Chocolate”). My long-term links to Mexico through many visits (starting alone, age 25) influenced “After-Image”. As for “Part Star, Part Venom, Part Bone, Part Microplastic” I can only say that meditation on the current human condition may have prompted parts of this. “Early November” and the final poem, “Late Summer”, were written back-to-back, finally allowing me to sense the profound connection to the Mohican land where I live, and together with those mentioned above, form the backbone of Peony Vertigo.
Early November
-excerpt
+++
A late firefly flashes in the ironwood, the motherboard takes a coffee break
Wind picking up, track lights humming, here comes the solstice
Right when there’s an overload of wasp nests in the canopy
A party of voles celebrating their discovery of Tulipa and Crocus
Galanthus and Allium bulbs
After a slight hitch in the space-time continuum
An effervescence between the indoor palm
and the red-chili-pepper lights
The afternoon reappears in a tube of cadmium yellow
Accompanying hillside hums continuously where it meets the skyline
Borders of evergreens and flickering shadows
To whom shall I reveal my horoscope?
What are my options now that permafrost is not a thing?
Are there more decades to be found?
To whom shall I address my questions?
The poems in Peony Vertigo are image-driven; many are lyrical and associative, and others use a narrative framework to convey memories and dream sequences. Poems in earlier books (e.g., Tomorrow’s Bright White Light, Tightrope Books, 2016; Edge Effects, Brick Books, 2012) have been rooted in anxiety about eco-environmental damage and climate change, but in Peony Vertigo there was, in addition, the felt urgency of a major socio-political crisis, perceived through the stuttering, soul-eating lens of a global pandemic and a long term opioid epidemic.
As I biologist I have always been connected to both the non-human and human worlds, and I have a particular fondness for amphibians (my spirit animal is a frog), whose absorbent skin and complex life cycle make them vulnerable to ecological disturbance and pollution in water sources.
Depth Model of the Self as Eft
An eft, incandescent orange with darker orange spots,
indescribably itself, crawls across the forest path
toward the sheltering leaves and flowers of a woodland violet.
It enters the Camino del Sueño—or is this me, a member
of the species that has carelessly contributed to the near-extinction
of newts and their erstwhile friends and relatives
long before a marvellous and monstrous black donut hole
re-envelops the foreseeable and beyond.
Among the violets I find moisture and shade¾
there is iNaturalist and my photo now added to the cloud,
distribution of myself and kin where once there
were pristine water bodies and native insects. As my CNS
is now deranged, incapable of envisioning the self
as adult newt with the attendant responsibilities of
aquatic mating, offspring production and the like,
I note in my journal we need to create a pool immediately
because after leaving the shelter of the violets
we are bound to seek the aquatic over the terrestrial
as our life cycle requires, and no newt on earth
can survive without its divine pool, vernal or otherwise,
preferably surrounded by beech, maples, oaks,
and ash, unless you deem essential the addition
of certain microscopic organisms, dear amphibious spirit,
with which to succor your acolytes—
+++
Our Camino del Sueño is now a tectonic fault. As we awaken
in the west having fallen asleep in the east, continental drift
is triggered. Before the delicate instruments invented to measure
such large-scale motion, we were the ones who most longed for
a pathway to the water. Now with the shimmering moon
heretofore thought to be solely a Hollywood invention
beneath which untold numbers of persons, and my friend,
are calmly shooting their bodies full of fentanyl
and other horrific substances, I awake a full-bodied
if slightly careworn human without substance or solution,
aghast, overlooking a vast corrupted inland sea,
nowhere on earth to lay my or my beloved friend’s heads.
UNEXPECTEDLY
One striking motif across Peony Vertigo I would never have imagined myself incorporating is floral. The appearance of various species (goldenrod, iris, violet, morning glory, dandelion, devil’s paintbrush, and, of course, peonies, among other species) throughout gave me pause. Why flowers? Many responses are possible – symbolism, beauty, seasonality, visual art, texture, color, scent, uniqueness – perhaps all of these in differing proportions influenced me. Also, travel – my biological research takes me frequently to landscapes, both anthropogenic and wild, in Central and South America, to conduct fieldwork. I always seek botanical gardens, wild places, and unusual environments that might harbor odd or surprising plants – their very ephemeral nature draws me in.
Marriage to an evolutionary biologist who researches plants and is an avid gardener, is undoubtedly another factor. And yet – peonies – I had forgotten that my mother loved to garden, and in a different section of “Late November” I incorporated a dream sequence of her “kneeling in the garden, shears/in hand, delirious pink of peonies”. I’ve discussed the importance of this poem in Peony Vertigo in an interview - “A Peony to Pique the Senses: Chloe Hogan-Weihmann in Conversation with Jan Conn” in the literary journal The Malahat Review, see https://www.malahatreview.ca/interviews/conn_interview2.html
Peony
There is too much orange—
the eft I cradle, salmon on whole wheat,
the sitter’s nail polish
This morning my brain is programmed
to unfold its peony
I turn off the house lights
recite my self-help list
how the scent disrupts the brand newness
of mid-May air
petals in my vesicles, vaulting the synaptic
clefts
So quiet in the house
the sound of a fox swishing through grass on black toes
is amplified
Sharp snap could be a twig
but later I discover
a vole’s velveteen jacket
flung into the undergrowth
bright lantern of the delicate face
snuffed
neurotransmitters
texting from the peony seeds
Another strong influence on the continued evolution of my poetry has been incorporation of the lessons learned (constraints new to me) in composing renga (linked haiku) with the three other members of Yoko’s Dogs: Mary Di Michele, Susan Gillis, and Jane Munro. Most fundamental to me have been 1) economy of language; 2) unpredictability; 3) seasonality; and 4) attunement to and incorporation of all five senses. Metaphor and simile are not generally part of a haiku/renga tradition. Another fascinating aspect is the non-narrative linking between verses in renga that form a zigzag of associations.
In ordering poems in sections of a manuscript, I frequently use this form of connectedness for its flexibility. A link can be subtle or direct, an image, an inferred seasonal object, a shape, a scent, a sound, time, touch or cadence. It’s intense and challenging. It can provide a distinctive subterranean context for individual sections or a complete manuscript. As an example, the poem immediately following “Peony” above, is “The Archive of Liminal Rhetorical Thought”, seen below. There are, to me, two primary links (lines) that connect these poems and happen to occur at the end of “The Archive…”: I disappear into graffiti, outside chronology. and Moving like the force that opens morning glories. The initial line above, in italics, refers (I think) to the narrator in “Peony” who experiences too much orange and recites a self-help list—this narrator might be inclined to disappear to a place, situation or emotional space outside chronology. In the italicized second line, I associate both the force and the morning glories with neurotransmitters and the peony.
The Archive of Liminal Rhetorical Thought
My clothes are compilations of vinyl records. Many are 78’s; several
still spin.
Underexploited, the metaphysics of garments: an occasion for weeping.
Among petals of clouds, tapioca, hospital sheets, I cannot locate my commodities.
At intervals there is a tenderness in my condition.
Which is more like a chandelier, a dog or a daydream?
Every banality has an edge; concrete is both brutal and serene.
An urban planner dictates gravel here, sidewalk there, and the voluptuous shade of a downtown tree vanishes.
With it, the former sky. The sky does not perceive its formerness. It beats the sidewalk blue. Clouds imagine their future as water drops.
I disappear into graffiti, outside chronology.
Moving like the force that opens morning glories.
As an aside, I used to sew many of my own clothes until I began graduate school in Vancouver, British Columbia, after which, aside from science, there was only time for poetry, which was portable (a lined notebook, a mechanical pencil, and a few books of poems to get started), and could be undertaken in small bouts of time on buses, airplanes, trains. And a confession: I have never taken a creative writing class and I don’t belong to a writing group (with the exception of Yoko’s Dogs). I find my support in individual poets and visual artist friends, family, and I read.
TRANSFORMATION(S)
In addition to becoming an eft (above), I discovered that my sense of empathy and interest in other life forms aside from humans readily lends itself to imaginative transformation, possibly transference. In Peony Vertigo, I become a prehistoric horse (the poem Lascaux), an eft (Depth Model…), fog (One Morning in the Life of Fog), a bronze rat (Ai Weiwei’s Rat), a fish (Autumn Trout), and a snowdrop (First to Flower). Transformation is magical, complex, and intuitive. Fog itself is a form of water that I have found, since childhood, to be eerie, delicious, chilly, and mysterious. I love to walk in its swirls and near-clouds, to be inside its moist muffledness. So much remains unknown in science: one may find evidence in support of a hypothesis, but this is never the whole story. One Morning in the Life of Fog is after Alice Oswald’s “A Rushed Account of the Dew” in Falling Awake (2016).
One Morning in the Life of Fog
I who have often imagined myself as an irrational number
I who can disappear by closing my eyes
I would like to know the absolute value of anything
in case I am asked
In the curious hour before daylight breaks open
I walk into a bank of fog
where I can practice being a decimal point
a fraction of
I would like to know how a falling cloud
feels, on descent, briefly touching down
onto the back of a swan asleep on a pond
beading on her feather gown, temporary
suspended between water and air
oxygen discarding then calling back its hydrogens
now lifting away, leaving below feathers, swan, pond
curve
of
blue
METAPHORICAL
Alongside more elliptical, fragmentary poems, I love to try my hand at metaphor, and am immersed currently in further exploration of this, under the influences of poets such as Frank Bidart and Sylvia Plath, to name a few. Such poems are challenging to me and thus I have only a single one in Peony Vertigo, called “Ironweed” but I am always drawn to read it when the occasion arises. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it focuses on a plant, a very tall one, that is uncommon in the Northeast.
Ironweed
There is something in you of an iron-sided steamship
an architecture of unpliable stems, toothed
leaves, a crow’s nest of disk flowers
a pile of deep violet slippers
uplifted on junkyard stilts
stiff-kneed, towering overhead
as though dredged from some scrap iron seabed
and winched roots-first into place
overrunning meadows and pastures
obdurate perennials, late-summer bloomers
witnesses to nightlong astonishment
as the Perseids brilliantine their long hair and flare
and the stars stutter, waking from a long dream
of falling
A final note, this process piece would not be complete without mention of the poem “To Remember What Never Existed: Lament and Lyric for Clarice Lispector”, located near the middle of Peony Vertigo. Lispector was a brilliant Brazilian writer who captured my imagination the first time I traveled to Brazil (1987). After reading and rereading her books and working in Brazil for many years, I finally found a voice that enabled me to write, in the context of environmental depredations in Brazil, about her visionary and difficult life, profound love of Portuguese, and playful surrealism.
Jan Conn, visual artist, poet and biologist, is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Peony Vertigo (Brick Books, 2023), and, as a member of the collaborative writing group, Yoko’s Dogs, of four books, most recently Lunchbox Poems (Turret House Press, 2025). Her poetry has been supported by a Canada Council travel grant to Japan and a senior writing grant to conduct research in Brazil and at Kew Gardens on the British botanical artist Margaret Mee. Conn has received a Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) Literary Prize, the inaugural P.K. Page Founder’s Award, and was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award. She has been represented by Lauren Clark Fine Arts Gallery in Great Barrington MA since 2022. Her visual art has appeared on the covers of “Planetary health approaches to understand and control vector-borne diseases”, Vol. 8, Series: Ecology and Control of Vector-borne Diseases, Wageningen Press, The Netherlands; The Maynard and Geist, literary journals, and together with a poem, in the UK-based journal The Prose Poem. She has exhibited paintings in Toronto, New England, and Cederedge CO. As a biologist, Conn has published >150 scientific articles, mainly on the vector biology of mosquitoes in Latin America that transmit the malaria parasite. She grew up in southeastern Quebec and lives in western Massachusetts. Visit her Instagram: artistatplay001or check out her paintings here https://laurenclarkfineart.com/collections/jan-conn
Maw Shein Win’s most recent full-length poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) which was shortlisted for the 2025 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) was longlisted for the PEN America 2021 Open Book Award, and shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA, the recipient of the 2026 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature, 2025 Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2025 Nomadic/SF Foundation Literary Award for Non-fiction. She is a member of The Writers Grotto and a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse. She teaches poetry in the MFA Programs at the University of San Francisco, Dominican University, and Saint Mary’s College of California. mawsheinwin.com