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Comments (1)Altars Will Alter Your View
BookIt!
Published: January 1, 2006by Eve Quesnel
As I begin interviewing June Saraceno, local author of a new book of poems, I tell her that I believe quality literature occurs when a reader pauses after reading a passage and says, either aloud or silently in one’s mind, “wow.” This outright expression that emerges spontaneously is telling of the author’s aptitude. While reading “Altars of Ordinary Light,” I had many “wow” moments, which stemmed from my reaction to June’s word choice and the precise and exquisite arrangement of words, phrases, and sentences. Clearly, June has talent. On a beautiful fall day, a gentle breeze stirring, the sun streaming between Aspen leaves, we talk about poetry, literature, and June’s life.
Eve Quesnel: You grew up in N. Carolina. Do you think there’s something poetic about the South?
June Saraceno: Yes, I believe the South gets in your blood. There’s something about the landscape that is in you, on a cellular level. I still see pictures in my mind of the South.
EQ: When did you start writing poetry?
JS: In junior high, but the kind of poetry you might expect an adolescent would write. I wrote either comic angst or scattered flippant type of poetry. My poems were either depressing or what I felt was shocking, but of course they weren’t shocking at all. At that time in the South, Elizabeth City had just completed new school buildings for its implementation of integration, so I switched from the country school I’d always attended to a city school that later grouped all junior and high school students together as well as black and white students; there, my world opened. Plus, like most adolescents, I simply started looking around at the bigger picture.
EQ: What inspired you when you first started writing poetry?
JS: My high school English teachers; they took me seriously. When I read Erica Jong’s book “Fear of Flying,” a book filled with sex and other topics I had never been exposed to, I realized there was another world out there. I was raised under the domain of a fundamentalist Christian preacher and the teachings of the Bible and the fire-and-brimstone ethics pervaded my upbringing. We attended church three times a week and “healing” meetings where parts of the congregation spoke in ‘tongues’ as preachers placed their hands on church members as part of the healing process.
EQ: And your mother?
JS: My mother was a devout Christian as well. She and my aunt would talk for hours about Revelations, the final book of the New Testament, and who would be left behind and what would happen. I listened with great interest, completely frightened yet intrigued.
EQ: What are your beliefs now?
JS: A ragtag mixture. I think Buddhism is interesting. I still pray to God, however. I pray as a means to express gratitude because I am thankful for so many things: living in this beautiful place, my family and friends. I continue to read the Bible too, but not like I did as a child, literally. I read it because I love the stories and the language.
EQ: As an English professor and author, how do you perceive the written word? What does it teach you?
JS: As a writer, it’s only when I ‘say it,’ write my ideas and feelings, that I can fully understand what I’m trying to work out in my mind. As a reader, literature shows me a possibility of other worlds to live in. Literature is a ‘ticket out’ if one is trapped and stifled. The beauty of literature is its simplicity; there’s no utilitarian purpose. Reading enables us to sit and think and consider the life of the mind.
EQ: What are some of your favorite pieces of literature? And which poets do you highly esteem?
JS: I love Shakespeare and the Bible. Reading the stories in the Bible is comforting, like rubbing a blanket against your cheek. I think it’s fascinating how Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible share such a close resemblance, how the rhythm and cadence is similar. My favorite poets are Denise Duhamel, Sharon Olds, Pablo Neruda, Zen Haiku poet Basho, and classic poets such as Matthew Arnold and Yeats.
EQ: What is your process of writing?
JS: I keep a journal, but I don’t always write in it. The best writers write every day. When I do write, I write everything in a stream of consciousness style, into a bulky mass. Then I chisel at the mass and finally discover the kernel. Basically, I layer on and layer off.
EQ: What’s your next writing project?
JS: I’m considering a book of short stories. I have some short stories published in a Southern magazine, “The Village Rambler” out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and would like to assemble a book with those pieces and add new stories.
~ Find “Altars of Ordinary Light” at Truckee Book and Bean and Bookshelf at Hooligan Rocks.
Making Peace
For my father Dwight Sylvester 1928-2002
(From “Altars of Ordinary Light”)
The angry years spun by,
the distance grew loud between us
until your disease left you stricken into silence,
immobile on the impoverished hospital bed
in your living room.
I returned as your life waned.
Between us, I was the sole voice.
This reversal, an empty irony,
leaves me mute and staring
at your gray face on the pillow.
Your old black bible between us on the nightstand
offers its own weight of words.
Familiar and heavy, I lift it
knowing any bitter taunt you might have made
will stay dried on your tongue, unvoiced.
I silently call a truce and leaf through the thin onion skin pages
searching for Psalms to slake your thirst.
You’ve highlighted every page yellow.
I glance over the passages randomly and begin to read
about old battles, wrathful words, a plea
to God to smite the enemy.
These are not the words I have searched for.
I remember Psalm 23 and turn the pages back,
speak the words,
until I can hear myself reciting at the dinner table,
a thin sing-song of memorization,
an echo of the child you once had.
What is left unsaid between us
will remain unsaid.
The heart has its own language
and blood will tell its story.
But for now, the wheel has turned
in the shadows of your death.
Even old enemies can lie down.
in green pastures
and fear no evil.
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