As it happens, that quarter century spanned our country’s time “between the wars” — marked, certainly, with many smaller foreign depredations, but with no sustained and public commitment, and no rhetoric of being at war. Our attack on Afghanistan, and, even more so, our invasion of Iraq, felt eerily like a return to normal for our nation. In the shocked aftermath of my husband’s death, this made my life with him seem like a privileged interlude enjoyed between the acts of a greater and more vicious drama. As the years of these wars grind on, my thoughts turn more and more to the veterans — of whatever nation — and to their families. I know what they are in for, in the next twenty years or so. That’s why grief is the subject of Gallowglass — not grief and recovery, but grief as a state of consciousness, both private and collective. A line from one of my recent poems, “An Old Scat Full of Red Fur,” asks, “How old is the song called ‘The Wars Are Not Over’?” Older than any of the wars I write of.

In addressing loss, trauma and war via a disjunctive style towards prosody, how much of “meaning” are you willing to compromise or foreground to “language”?

I would say, rather, that disjunction and foregrounded prosody create meaning by different means. I am especially interested in the way sound can form a bridge between two apparently separate streams of content or experience. People do this all the time, via rhyme or pun, though most are more comfortable when the result is funny. Another way to create comfort is to explain your transitions of thought — as when a writer describes how the sight of a purple skirt makes her think of an iris, which triggers a memory of Dürer, and via Dürer an image of her father’s desk. Poems take place in language, and I want an active reader, unafraid of that fact. The meaning of the poem includes that openness to difference, even error. But the effort to contain experience, whether immediate or remembered, within a narrative unity is as artificial as any other writerly tactic. I am more interested in triggering open associations than in recounting the exact path of my own thoughts; in misting the glass we peer through toward the world, rather than inviting readers to pretend the glass is not there. Poems take place in language, and I want an active reader, unafraid of that fact. The meaning of the poem includes that openness to difference, even error. In poems with open syntax and heavy reliance on rhythm and sound, reading aloud requires a reader to make choices among possible syntactic resolutions and, thus, among available meanings. A different choice might be made by a different reader, or by the same reader on a different day. It is not far off, in effect or intent, from poems with un-policed juxtapositions of content. Readers build bridges, follow swerves, arrive someplace they had not been led to expect. I don’t know what to call that experience, if it’s not part of meaning.

Who is your ideal reader? Who would you like to reach out to in terms of readership for both Bone Pagoda and Gallowglass?

Susan Tichy
BY Verna Wefald

As I’ve said, an active reader unafraid to take part in the poem. A reader not rendered insecure by the absence of overt direction toward thesis or catharsis. A reader who does not consider history dead, or nature the opposite of the human. The subjects of my books sometimes attract readers who otherwise would shun what they see as “difficult” poetry, and for them I hope the poems expand their definitions.

Do you fear that your work will be conveniently categorized as “war poetry” or “political poetry”?

Certain subjects are considered, by some, to be off-limits for poetry — or, as you suggest, admitted only in special categories. This is especially true in the U.S., where poetry is still widely regarded as belonging to a private realm, too fragile for exposure to civic discourse. Just as we insist on political innocence — no matter how many times we are forced to lose it — so we insist that poetry flourishes best in a political vacuum. This rejection of the actual history of poetry, both Western and Asian, has always puzzled me, but I don’t lose any sleep about where my work will be placed. I have survived an early mentor who called my work journalism, and several editors who pleaded with me to stop wasting my talent on these subjects. Some even suggested other subjects, as if alternatives might never have occurred to me! But in fact, all my books are extremely personal, growing from my own experience or from family history. And the recent books are far too dense and oblique to engage most readers of political poetry. In activist events, I am included only when organizers are consciously trying to expand the aesthetic range of the program.

My work is also deeply engaged with the natural world, the early poems also with outdoor labor. I’m currently working on poems about mountains and walking, bringing that experience into the foreground, relegating war and politics to the role of backdrop — a reversal, I think, from the poems in Gallowglass. I doubt these poems will fit into the political pigeon-hole.

Beyond poetry, how would you like to contribute to humanity at large?

Susan Tichy
BY Gushikawa

The idea of contributing to humanity at large strikes me as hubristic, except, perhaps, for those among us who invent vaccines. I will rephrase the question as “what else do you do that is useful?” To which I can reply that I have taught for more than twenty years, and try to be a good mentor; and, at various times in my life, I have worked with Amnesty International, with community clinics and women’s groups, and with a land trust preserving open space and wildlife habitat near my Colorado home. I designed, helped build, and still live in that home — a solar-heated cabin that consumes little power. I feed the birds.