Who Was Your First Hero, Leah Umansky?

My first hero is actually a heroine. Two heroines, to be exact: Charlotte and Emily Brontë (Sorry, Anne, didn’t read you until college). What struck me the most was the power of the female voice at a time where women were still very much repressed, restricted and, well—unheard of as artists. It was probably the intrigue that surrounded the Brontë Sisters that I enjoyed the most, as it created a life-long dream inside me, of going to the Parsonage. What were these moors they lived on?  How did they write about such passions and desires? How did these women write such compelling fiction, when they hardly left their homes?

With Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, I learned from Jane about confidence and power, but I also learned about independence. Jane was her own woman in the end, despite the fact that she, well, ends up with Rochester.

But with Emily’s Wuthering Heights, I learned from both Catherine and Heathcliff.

Catherine taught me that the heart goes on no matter what. Love, goes on. I was drawn to the fact that despite marrying Linton and making that wrong choice, she knew her heart belonged to Heathcliff and, in her death, she recognized that love.

I think Heathcliff is my hero, despite the fact that he’s a misanthrope, and that some see him as a gothic, psycho-villain. To me, he is a tortured soul. He is heartbroken and alone. No one understands him, and he needs. He wants. He  taught me that everything we do in life is a choice, and we have to be wise.  And though he loses Catherine, he gains her in the end in the afterlife. Yes, I’m a romantic, but the Brontës were, too. Clearly. They both have made me into my own heroine.

Leah Umansky’s first book of poems, Domestic Uncertainties, is out now by BlazeVOX [Books.] Her Mad-Men inspired chapbook, Don Dreams and I Dream is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press in early 2014.  She has been a contributing writer for BOMB Magazine’s BOMBLOG and Tin House, a poetry reviewer for The Rumpus and a live twitterer for the Best American Poetry Blog. She also hosts and curates the COUPLET Reading Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Thrush Poetry Journal, and The Brooklyn Rail. Read more at: http://iammyownheroine.com

See Leah present her work at The Project Room on February 27th in Transforming Text- free!

“How Are We Remembered?” in three, fifty-word poems

Barrens (2009)

I walk the remains
of my village,
each step gasping memory from ash.
For six years
I have stalked the dry barrens,
plush comfort stark against
these black echoes.
I bend at a glint
and resurrect
a flattened silver perfume cap.
I know this smell:
desert, naked sun, relentless wind.

Relics

You promised me
the shabby gods
would show me the relics of me.
Squirrel pointed out the scars in trees.
Mouse showed me the orphaned diaries.
Sol, the opportunities lost.
And Shiva
showed me the bones of promises
along the trails I have walked.
See? You’re not at all a fraud.

Requiem

Hiked up the steep rock
to the cairn at the top.
Sat at the base
and to the wind said, ‘Hello, again.’
I was there
when the last rock was stacked
and the priests walked away.
I remember their song sadly fading,
a Latin requiem
mourning, for all time, immortality.

-(2013, pmcgann)

The above poems were written in response to TPR’s big question, “How Are We Remembered?” by Patrick McGann of Twisp, WA. Patrick is a poet, reformed journalist, privatized whiskey peddler and co-founder of Methow Asylum for Writers.

What’s the First Thing You Ever Made, Hannah Stephenson?

I have strong memories of making tapes in my childhood home on Hope Avenue. We had a large stereo/record player/tape player in our living room, and shelves of records. I remember looking through the records — The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and Joni Mitchell were my favorites (For the Roses had a beautiful cover, so serene, and I was shocked when I opened it to find an image of Joni, naked, shot from behind).

My mom or dad would get me set up by plugging in the microphone and giving me a blank tape. I would have a list of ideas for songs (usually the titles, which I’d sometimes brainstorm beforehand with my dad). I’d announce the name of each song, and then “sing” it. My “technique” was usually to repeat the title of the song over and over, with a little variation here and there. “White Swan” is the most memorable song (and the title track, apparently) of the tape that still remains. I must have been about five or six. The song goes a little something like this: “White swan……..white swannnnnnn…..white swan white swan white swan whiteswanwhiteswanwhiteswanwhiteswan…….white swan swimming in the pool. With a duck.”

I loved making the percussion noises (usually imitating a drum set — “pssshew psssshhhew pssssh ting!”). I remember thinking I sounded just like the drums.

In the background of this tape, you can hear my sister, Mara, running through the room and making airplane noises, and then you hear me yelling at her: “MARA, I’m recording!!! GO AWAY! MOMMM!!!!” I seemed to take it very seriously (sorry, Mara!).

Other hits from that tape include “Blue Mermaids in the Sea,” “Cute Little Baby Puppy,” “Anything You Want,” “Some People Come From Hawaii” (the lyrics of this one explain that “Some people come from Hawaii…..some people come from New York…..some people come from Tahiti……some people come from Ohio”).

I’ve always loved music, and remember drawing pictures of some of the singers I liked (which, oddly, included Bette Midler and Weird Al, who I invited to my seventh birthday party). We had family friends who would make us mix tapes, which I thought were the most incredible inventions.

It’s strange (and slightly embarrassing) to know that I’m still so enthralled with using technology to record my voice. I don’t consider myself a musician or songwriter, but experimenting with sound and music is still a strong interest for me. I love making songs using Garageband, and last year, my husband walked in the bedroom to find me shaking a pepper mill over my laptop–not so different from my preferred White Swan setup! As a poet, I am constantly recording my process, voice, and video (and footage of other poets reading, too).

I’m always asking my writing students to be specific, and move their observations toward analysis by asking, “So what? What does this detail suggest/imply/reveal?” In order to be fair, I’ll ask myself that question now. I think my desire to record comes from the same place as the impulse to keep journals and write poems—I want to store up a feeling or image, and be able to share it or come back to it later. Even if I just end up laughing at my mouth-drum solo.

Hannah Stephenson is a poet, editor, and instructor based in Columbus, Ohio. Her favorite palindrome is either “Yo, banana boy!” or “Ah, a Mayan on a Yamaha!” To read her poems (or say hello), visit her online at www.thestorialist.com.