Dialogue:
Mary Beth Becker & Kameryn Alexa Carter
Mary Beth Becker on Kameryn Alexa Carter’s “Grace”
Dear Kameryn,
I’m not one for academic response. It’s not that I can’t do it, but so often the language of theory & critique draws a veil between us. A border between the reader and the read, bloody and false as all other borders. And I’m no longer interested in trying to touch each other through it. I want to be real with you, earnest.
Suffice to say: I loved this poem, and after reading it felt drawn to your whole body of work as a moth might be to a screen-porch bulb. It’s in that spirit–a desperate wing beating towards light–that I write you.
How do you tend your garden? Each day more gnats
in my drain, in the houseplants, the blue kettle I boil
for coffee, peopling my screens. I want them gone,
stick-paper and cinnamon and still they swarm
like clover buds on the lawn after rain. What survives this?
Asking my lover to mow, she says tomorrow, tomorrow until
it storms. Wet clover. Dry lover. You’re haunted by god as I am
by apocalypse, which maybe is another word for god. Do you dream
in the gilt edges of Lives of the Saints? As a child I wanted
to swallow them, O martyrdom, O dream of the body undying,
O sacrifice like clover to the blade, a long sigh interrupted, O
accident, a warren caught in the whirring so the mother
tries again. To try again. When I lost faith I didn’t claw my way
back to it, didn’t even try. I hadn't the will to be canonized,
the discipline to change my own small world. I had grass lengthening
despite myself, long as rapture, long as Esther’s last and iii. What I am
there’s not a word for yet, vile and loving as a tongue. Am I a tongue?
What canticle do I sing? More than anything, I want to be useful
as a seed in grace’s upturned palm. Sown & sang to, buried where
we all end up, that thunder which makes all things new.
Kameryn Alexa Carter on Mary Beth Becker’s “COMET”
This poem draws me in from the very first word. The poet addresses the comet directly, but also introduces another valence: due to the pronoun “you,” a doubling happens in which the poem is also an indirect address to the reader. This doubling creates both an intimacy and alienation in that the comet is so expansive by the end of the poem, it feels too all-encompassing for the human mind to hold. This dovetails well with the very last line of the poem—a request to be acknowledged in the face of very human and futile efforts.
There’s an omnipotence to the comet—a dangerous one, a looming one.
I love that this poem resonates in the most literal sense of resonance: the alliteration rings out, (“fourstory ferns” … “warp-and-weft” and “worlds”...) as well as the rhythmic repetition of “you.” I am particularly interested in the execution of litany; this aspect builds on energy with each line such that by the end of the poem the reader is left with an amplified intake of breath, followed by its release.
On pronouns again— the shift to “us” turns the comet’s gaze as well as the reader’s. It begs to be seen, draws out another angle, lets another set of eyes through the door. By the poem’s end, we are called also to look toward each other. To understand the ways we are all needing, begging, trying our best.
For each issue, ballast asks pairs of poets to read each other’s work and respond in some way. We hope these dialogues will sound the resonances contained within the issue as well as serve to foster a sense of interconnection and community among our authors.
If you’ve been published in a previous issue of ballast and would like to participate in a dialogue, please reach out to our editors at ballastjournal@gmail.com.