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JOAN HOULIHAN ON LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO AND “THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME”

The Girl I Left Behind Me

                  For Lucie Brock-Broido, 1956-2018

The wind, being motherless, wraps the tree,
troubles the window a little.

My kittens circle, crouch, leap
couch to counter and back,

and in the detritus of me,
box to box to tiniest box, I

unpack the single pussy willow—
one paw tissued—

in that velvet-dark I moved through
lit low in spite of others, heat

enough for me, enough
for others to refrain from,

I rub the amber leaf light
from my last Christmas tree,

take to the tub and marble surround
to worship the waters, take

to the bed heaped high and deep,
my appetite caged and cruelly tamed.

Who will make me safe, conspire in the lie
of beauty, the lie of my body

unbreached? In the rush of tissue, new
boots laced to my pace, cincture of suede

at my waist, and my hair—
my god, the waves of shook

copper shining a girl’s will—
how far I’ve come!

And how do you like your hyacinth girl,
the gone-as-smoke of me, now.


The Girl I Left Behind Me is the title of the painting by Eastman Johnson, circa 1872, that Lucie intended as the cover for her next book, now unfinished.

I have been a huge fan of Joan Houlihan’s poetry since I read Hand-Held Executions: Poems and Essays (2004) many years ago. It was the first poem, “Biological Imperative,” that captured me with its strange defamiliarization and attention to sound, particularly the first few lines: “The wings suffer most. They stop shining. / A tilt of nest, a backyard birch / black-sutured, half-dying—for this // we are bound to prepare.” I felt caught in a pleasurable ache; I felt in a singular world, different from most contemporary poetry—and I’ve continued to feel this way with each of Houlihan’s subsequent books.

I had the pleasure to talk with Joan about her friendship with Lucie Brock-Broido and about her poem, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” featured in the tenth-anniversary edition of the Ocean State Review, alongside two additional poems, which are included in a new collection, It Isn’t a Ghost if it Lives in Your Chest, coming in the fall of 2021 from Four Way books.

Charles Kell: Thanks so much, Joan, for taking time to talk about Lucie Brock-Broido and your magical poem. First, I want to talk about the painting that interacts with this poem and that Lucie intended for the cover of her next book, now unfinished (as your note relates), Eastman Johnson’s The Girl I Left Behind Me (circa 1872). Can you touch upon the painting a bit, how it both works as an ekphrastic interaction and/or encounter? And also how the painting (and your poem) is doing so much more than this—how it is “thinking” and “reflecting” not only on Lucie’s work and plans, but on Lucie as well?

Joan Houlihan: Charles, thank you for this opportunity to talk about my poem and about Lucie. She first showed me the Johnson painting online, then as a print, during the last months of her life. It had so many correspondences and resonances for her—starting with the title. The use of “girl” was of course one of her signature moves in poems; see, for example, “A Girl Ago,” and she used it to designate a self that wouldn’t age or die, that was preserved in a state of wonder and innocence, but always on the verge of destruction. It reminds me of Dickinson’s use of “boy” to refer to herself in some poems; both poets needing a way to refer to the child alive inside; Dickinson’s being boyish in its daring, while Lucie’s girl connected to the always nascent, and endangered, feminine. The rest of the title, the reference to leaving the girl behind me, is a natural extension of her last book, Stay, Illusion, where there is knowledge of this particular formulation of the self, of girlhood—of the illusion of never aging, of immortality— leaving her. The context of the painting’s title—an Irish ballad of betrayal and abandonment—is also fitting, as Lucie’s deep fear of both betrayal and abandonment haunted her life and work. Finally, the painting itself, its portrayal of the wind-swept young woman waiting for her beloved to return, is so very Lucie in all aspects—the period clothing, the long hair, the standing alone in threatening, windy weather—that it struck me, as it must have struck her, that here was an embodiment of her “girl.”

CK: I am equally captivated by the swift movements of the poem, the movements in the poem, and also the attention to physical detail throughout. I am drawn toward the beginning: “The wind, being motherless, wraps the tree, / troubles the window a little.” There seems to be a push-pull of sorts at work in the first parts of the poem. An ominous outside brushing up and troubling—“a little”—the inside. I am struck by the physical actions of the speaker throughout: “I / unpack”; “I moved”; “I rub”; “take to the tub”; “take to the bed”; I find the phrase “take to” fascinating. Can you talk about the balance of the physical movements in the poem with the physical details? Also, how these two practices relate to the form of the poem in any way?

JH: Taking on the persona of Lucie (itself a tribute to her own use of persona in both A Hunger and The Master Letters), included honoring aspects of her life, such as the loss of her mother (an adored and complicated figure). Lucie’s motherlessness—both as a grown child with no mother and as a woman with no child—and her subsequent rootlessness, like the wind, were in my mind for this opening. That the poem begins outside a window (one I could easily picture in Lucie’s home in Cambridge) is meant to suggest that the outer world, especially the reality of grief, haunts the inner world and “troubles” (with the wind’s rattling of the window built into that word) the boundary between them. A window, though unopened, can be seen through. Again, that word choice (“troubles”) is straight out of Lucie’s lexicon and meant to establish her world immediately.

As for the physical actions in the poem, when I think of Lucie, I think of her in motion. Always. If not physically, then emotionally, creatively and intellectually. Quick-witted, mercurial, and on the move, or, as she would put it, only half-jokingly, “I’ve never had a moment’s peace.” Unlike me, or other poets I know, she did not enjoy solitude. Her solitude was haunted. And yet, she spent her life living alone, and as a night owl, up in the hours when most others were asleep. Getting a call from Lucie late at night was a regular occurrence (though I drew the line at 1am, it still meant often talking long into the morning hours). Solitude—being alone with her thoughts—was a state Lucie tried to escape. Fortunately for her readers, she mostly accomplished that escape through writing. Her drive—and this includes her ambition—was enacted, you might say exacerbated, by her shuttling between New York (for the school year) and Cambridge (for summer and semester breaks), the packing and unpacking, the re-settling, the never settling. So, your observation is interesting—and apt—that the poem contains so many physical movements. The phrase “take to” here does not mean to have a quick affinity for, but rather go to a place to escape danger or an enemy (“they took to the hills”). Danger, for Lucie, was ever-present even, maybe especially, in her solitude. Long luxurious baths and then entering a bed heaped high with expensive bed linens were two notable escapes and pleasures for her.

The couplet form is, first, a tribute to Lucie’s use of couplets and second, a way to enact motion on the page through multiple and obvious enjambments. Lucie referred to her style as a series of violent concisions and I tried to adopt that here. As you notice, the couplets also act as exhibits for physical objects, giving them space—and prominence—in the line. 

CK: A good way into the poem the speaker raises a few questions: “Who will make me safe, conspire in the lie / of beauty, the lie of the body / unbreached? In the rush of tissue, new / boots laced to my pace, cincture of suede / at my waist, and my hair—”; I love how these questions are raised yet they seem to be asked in a way in which the speaker either knows the answers in some form or knows there is no one to answer them. They are questions asked to the wind. The speaker appears hovering in some in-between space where there is possession of knowledge, or philosophy, that hints at knowing in some ways the answer to these questions, specifically with the single line: “How far I’ve come!” I’m drawn to the use of “far” as well, in the way it means both physical and emotional distances; the way it relates to thinking. In what ways does the poem—and these moments—relate to a physical journey? How does this poem work as a physical and emotional journey? Does this journey break free from the poem (is this possible?) and relate to everything the poem encompasses?

JH: The speaker wishes, as Lucie often wished, for a way to feel “safe,” a word she used to describe a state of peace, a state of not feeling endangered. I chose unbreached to describe this wished-for state as it reflects the physical (a girl is physically still unviolated, for example, and also unmarked by age) as well as the emotional (some of Lucie’s early experiences in relationships were betrayals she never recovered from). I also like the sense of unbreached as if in a war or struggle. Her war was with time itself wherein there is the wish to remain physically attractive, to stay young, intact, hopeful, unbreached by age or disease. This is the “lie” those close to her were expected to conspire in—that such a thing was possible. The question is rhetorical—yes, thrown to the wind—and helpless. The answer is known even if struggled against.

 “How far I’ve come!” is meant to encompass physical, emotional and creative distance. It is also, of course, ironic in its seemingly celebratory tone. Built into that phrase is my memory of Lucie saying sadly, “Only what I wished for,” a reflection on her unhappiness in spite of the “big” job at Columbia, publications, accolades and successes in the poetry world. She got what she wished for—and it didn’t make her happy. Her flight toward a life as poet was set early and she was, in so many ways, unstoppable. But the far-ness meant always being unsettled—and unsatisfied. 

The physical journey of the poem is enacted outside, looking through the window, going inside the home, to the beloved cats (which she called her “kittens”), living space, unpacking of Christmas lights, and then upstairs to the bath, the bed. So, I used the physical layout of her home, but the journey is also an emotional one, yes. For example, the line “in that velvet-dark I moved through,” the physical journey is literally though the speaker’s velvet-covered living room that was kept so dim visitors could be confused about what was what (“lit low in spite of others”). Sometimes, like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Lucie would place a scarf over a lamp to dim it further. The speaker’s living space is thus kept “safe” and, as with Blanche, protected from glaring realities—including what bright light might reveal—her age and the passing of time. I would say the journey enacted in the poem is, as the real journey off the page, a tragic one, inevitably leading to the “breach of the body” that’s been denied. 

CK: The final couplet extends the physical, emotional, and philosophical that I mention above while also performing a beautiful legerdemain: “And how do you like your hyacinth girl, / the gone-as-smoke of me, now.” What an ending! The speaker, the “hyacinth girl,” who earlier had been positing questions ends with what starts as a question, but there is no question mark; these lines work as a swift, declarative moment; on one hand, a defiant statement, on the other hand, a hint at transience. The speaker has arrived at this position and this moment yet, in some ways, it feels ephemeral, the “gone-as-smoke of me”—what a fantastic phrase! This ending, as well, makes me think of the equally concrete yet ephemeral nature and being of poetry; that poetry works as this brief expression, a momentary interlude that practices a way of thinking, feeling, and being about and with objects, places, and people.

JH: I love that you use the word “legerdemain” as Lucie was so fond of creating—and experiencing—magic. From her two homes—in Cambridge and NYC—with their almost mirror-like settings of antiques, velvets and oriental rugs, to her elusive self on the page (she used to refer to “covering her tracks” in a poem), she was engaged in a kind of illusion/reality hide and seek. The hyacinth girl is of course, a reference to The Waste Land: “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;/They called me the hyacinth girl” which itself is another reference to a ballad of betrayal. Hyacinth is also a reference to a scent Lucie often wore. I’m glad you noticed that there is no question mark on the question.  Such a Lucie move, and one I often pass along in my workshops—a question without the mark is still a question, but can be so much more, and in this case, as you’ve observed, there’s defiance, and the “gone-as-smoke” adds transience and ruefulness—how do you like me, now that I’m gone (dead). This phrase also enacts, in my mind, not only her real life smoking habit, but also the “smoke and mirrors” quality of her encounters with the world. 

CK: Today in my introduction to poetry class at the Community College of Rhode Island, we veered from what was on the syllabus and read a few Adam Zagajewski poems. None of the students heard of him; so, in one way it was quite wonderful to be able to introduce them to this legendary poet. In another way, though, it was strange in that the day the students first hear of Adam Zagajewski and encounter his stunning work, I inform them that he died a day ago. Rereading Zagajewski’s work, and working on these questions with you, Joan, I am reminded of when I first read Lucie Brock-Broido’s A Hunger (1988), back when I was living in Warren, Ohio, such a long time ago, and how that book and those poems had such a profound impact on me, and how I carried those poems and that experience around, and still do. I guess all of my thoughts and questions about the physical are leading toward questions and thoughts about death, and how this poem is also a specific encounter with Lucie’s brilliance. And this final question circles back to relate and touch upon some of the same ground as the first question.

In what ways, Joan, does this poem, balance some of these transient, ephemeral encounters? How does poetry try and do this? How does the poem practice thinking and experiencing these things? How are you thinking of and encountering Lucie’s poetry now? What stays? What is forever there?  

JH: There was no friend closer to me than Lucie, no one whose friendship spanned nearly three decades, no one I talked to as much, laughed with as much, had fallings-out and comings-together as much, no one, outside of my husband who died in 2011, I now miss as much. However, the realness, the solidity, of our connection—that trust and our shared love of the imagination, of language, of poetry—balanced our differences, and continues, for me, to balance her loss in the real world.

I chose to write in persona to honor Lucie’s love of that form, but also because a persona poem can re-viviy someone through the imagination and is, therefore, a way to steal someone back from death, if only briefly. Of course, so much about Lucie that’s singular is too ephemeral to be contained in any poem—her wit, for example, and her ability to see through, see into, and see past, and forgive, this world.  A genius in every sense of the word and especially the original sense of ‘a spirit attendant on a person.’ Anyone who knew her, even briefly, could feel that she was “touched” in that old-fashioned sense. My poem is an attempt to conjure (another favorite Lucie word) some of her magical strangeness and physicality, hold them together in one place again. 

Like you, Charles, Lucie’s first book, A Hunger, had a profound impact on me and led me to her in 1990. For several summers I studied with her in Cambridge, then, to my delight and good fortune, after beginning my own poetry career, we re-connected and become fast friends. It was A Hunger I returned to for a poem to read at her funeral, three years ago in March (the 6th). The clarity and spell cast by her voice in that poem, “Domestic Mysticism,” was irresistible. It begins:

In thrice 10,000 seasons, I will come back to this world
In a white cotton dress. Kingdom of After My Own Heart.
Kingdom of Fragile. Kingdom of Dwarves. When I come home,
Teacups will quiver in their Dresden saucers, pentatonic chimes
Will move in wind. A covey of alley cats will swarm on the side
Porch & perch there, portents with quickened heartbeats
You will feel against your ankles as you pass through.

About Lucie’s poetry and what stays forever—she asked me toward the end if I thought her work would last. Of course I said yes. 

Joan Houlihan is the author of six books of poetry, including Shadow-feast (Four Way Books, 2018) and the forthcoming It Isn’t a Ghost if it Lives in Your Chest (Four Way Books, 2021). She is part-time Professor of Practice at Clark University in Worchester, MA and serves on the faculty of Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative. Writing Program in Cambridge, MA. Houlihan founded and directs the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.

More work can be found at joanhoulihan.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Below is Lucie Brock-Broido at her clock.