Mary Newell is the author of the new poetry collection Entwine. Her other books include the chapbook Tilt/Hover/Veer. She teaches at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, and she lives in New York's Hudson Highlands.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the poems in your new collection?
A: Many of the poems in Entwine were written during the past two years. A few are older, but all written at this location, described below, where I’ve lived for 12 years.
Q: The poet David Appelbaum said of the book, “Mary Newell, in her wondrous new work Entwine, does indeed gather, in a mood of ‘adoptive co-evolution,’ the symbols of nature, the murmurings of the heart, and the aspirations of the spirit.” What do you think of that description?
A: I am honored and grateful that David Applebaum was able to read between the written lines to the breath of inquiry that sustains the poems.
Poems such as “Co-vivance” are literally about adaptive co-evolution; others, such as the final poem, “While Stirring to Bloom,” reflect the yearning to reconnect with the whole of reality as a contingent being among others, to sound a full human note among the many frequencies of the living world. Perhaps spirit is the bloom that resonates when bodily engagement becomes harmonious.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Entwinement is an active form of relation where differing life forms or individuals can sustain one another. The tile poem “Entwine Alliance” gives some sense of these scales.
Charles Darwin used the phrase “tangled bank” to refer to the intermixture of life forms “dependent upon each other in so complex a manner” (On the Origin of Species). Many flowers cannot bloom without a pollinator’s touch. Many species find niches on different scales within the same locale.
Q: How did you choose the order in which the poems appear in the collection?
A: I tried several orderings and rejected those that seemed like mere mental constructions – like dividing among land, air, water focus – not that that couldn’t work in other situations. A writer must evaluate how far a reader is willing to go to seek out the fullness of their offering. The meta-commentary – prose writings – were the last, and offer a counterpoint in tone to the poems of full engagement.
Once in a while a person steps back to evaluate one’s involvement and its limitations – in this case my impulse to present the continuity of the creek as a symbol of continuity in the natural world, whereas we know that most continuities have been disrupted by human activities – as was the path of the creek.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: The current situation in the United States impels me to confront in myself and the world certain hard-to-digest anomalies in the species of which I am a member.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A:
This is a statement I wrote for a presentation at the University of Connecticut,
where I teach:
I live near the Hudson River, at the edge of a woods that extends up to the Appalachian Trail. Traditionally, women herbalists and healers lived in such spots; at one point in history – some say when medicine became a profession – many of these were disempowered and even accused of witchcraft.
Now there is interest in recovering knowledge sources linked to the natural world, from Native American and other traditions, as well as newer, more dynamic scientific paradigms.
Borderlines such as this are good locations for ecologically oriented creative artists – you can feel the influx of human civilization on one hand and on the other, the remainders of wildlife that subsist on human boundaries, often in tenuous conditions.
My recently published book Entwine is an ode to this environs, to both its vitality and its precarity, and a query into interspecies relations. I’m interested in seeing past the environmental degradation to what remains lively and sparks meaningful connection.
My preparation for writing includes deep inhabitation of a terrain – observing the animate life forms, both plant and animal, over time – as well as research, often scientific, primarily in botany, biology, and neuropsychology.
My studies in neuropsychology have enriched my interest in perception and cognition: how we experience reality and how that motivates and shapes our engagements in the living world.
Underlying the details in the poems is a plea to widen our focus toward the full spectrum of interconnected life and to broaden our motives away from personal gain toward considering the survivance, and even thriving, of the whole.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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