Interview with Lisa Dordal on Water Lessons — February 11, 2022
Lisa Dordal holds a Master of Divinity and a Master of Fine Arts (in poetry), both from Vanderbilt University, and teaches in the English Department at Vanderbilt. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Mosaic of the Dark, was a finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, the Robert Watson Poetry Prize, and the Betty Gabehart Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets, New Ohio Review, The Sun, Narrative, RHINO, Ninth Letter, CALYX, The Greensboro Review, and Vinyl Poetry.
Christopher Nelson: "Primer" is one of my favorite poems about childhood and innocence. Perfectly drawn is the girl enjoying the petite powers of childhood, ignorant still of larger social realities. What is your compass? How do you orient yourself when writing about the past?
Lisa Dordal: Great question. I guess I’d start by saying that I don’t really see myself as the one with the compass; rather I see the past as the one with the compass as it tries to find an opening or a way back in, a way to get someone’s attention so that it—the past—can say what needs to be said. The inspiration for “Primer” was a news story I heard on NPR about racism and white supremacy. One of the interviewees for the story was a Black scholar (I don’t remember his name) who mentioned how racist the Pippi Longstocking books are. He didn’t go into detail—it was more of a parenthetical comment—but I was shocked by his statement. Pippi was one of my childhood heroes! However, as a white person trying (finally) to understand how mainstream white supremacy operates in our society, I knew I needed to take his comments seriously. So, as soon as I got back home (I was out doing errands at the time), I retrieved my copy of Pippi Goes Abroad from my bedside bookshelf and quickly read through the entire book. I was, of course, horrified by what I read—the comments scattered throughout the book that do the work, in a way that is both completely casual and deeply sinister, of “othering” Black people, of making Black people seem inferior to white people, and of making white people seem superior to Black people. That experience—of re-reading the Pippi book—got me thinking more deeply about the ways that problematic narratives about race operate on young minds. I grew up in a politically liberal family and in a largely interracial neighborhood. I certainly had heard about structural racism while growing up—in high school, college, and beyond—but I’d always understood it to be something that was limited in scope, something that lived inside particular structures that had discernible boundaries. I had never thought of it as something that exists throughout our society as a whole, something that is as pervasive as the air we breathe and the water we drink.
So, when I write about the past, I do my best to get out of the way and let whatever needs to be said have its say. Whatever the initial “plea” or impulse was on the part of the past, I let that guide me.
Nelson: And is writing about the past an act of discovery—or recovery—for you? I'm thinking about your seven-part sequence "Postcards from the 70s." I really enjoy how you are able to convey the spirit of that time through these brief experiences, these "snapshots," as if by examining the minutia we can see the whole.
Dordal: It’s definitely both—recovery and discovery. Any poem I write (or any poem I write that makes it out into the world) emerges, in part, through an act of discovery. Sometimes whatever I discover—whatever “aha” moment I experience—is only subtly present, but it’s definitely there. In the postcard series, I had certain moments that I wanted to capture but then, in the writing process, I went somewhere I didn't anticipate with each moment. Sometimes the “aha” moment is as simple—and as revelatory—as an image that I had never connected before to that particular experience. For example, in the poem in which the speaker is next door at her best friend’s house, and the friend's mother appears in the doorway to ask a question—that moment has stuck with me for over forty years, but I’d never written about it before. When I finally sat down to write about it, the biblical image of the angel appearing to Mary came to me as a way of connecting religious and cultural expectations of women to the narrative scene of the poem. I hadn’t planned to connect that memory with that particular religious text. So, that's where the discovery came in for that poem.
In the final poem of the postcard series—the poem about Jeanette—I knew I wanted to wrestle with the part that is conveyed in the middle of the poem—the part about the speaker’s mother knowing but not openly acknowledging, "as if to be polite,” that it was Jeanette on the phone. This issue/idea is key to the poem as it addresses the way so many white people are/were socialized to think that any open awareness or acknowledgement of race is somehow impolite. But that idea wasn’t my moment of discovery, it was something I carried into the poem when I began the writing process. Rather, it’s the last line of the poem—when the speaker says “as if that was something”—that was my “aha” moment because this line implicates me, too, not just my (the speaker’s) mother. I.e., this last line points to the idea that I (the speaker) thought it was “something”—something important or valuable—to be able to pop in and out of a Black neighborhood for lunch, as if this behavior on my part was somehow heroic. This idea of white heroism and self-importance is what I’m pushing back against in that last line, but I didn't know until I wrote the poem that this is what I needed to wrestle with.
Nelson: Some of the poems of Water Lessons are a haunting and candid look at aging and cognitive decline. And true to life, those experiences are woven together with other experiences: love and reflections on childhood and the social dynamics of race. What did you consider when sequencing the book? How did you arrive at the arrangement?
Dordal: There is a loose narrative or chronological arc to the book in the sense that the bulk of the poems about my mother’s death (in 2001) come first, and the poems about my father’s decline (which began four years ago), as well as those about the failed adoption my wife and I experienced (also more recent than my mother’s death), come later in the book. Then there are the poems which focus on the dynamics of race. Even though these poems are reflecting on a much earlier period in my life, they came to the surface only recently as I began to do the hard and necessary work of examining my white privilege and the ways in which I have always participated in white supremacy without even knowing it.
I knew I didn’t want to group all the poems which address one topic together—all the poems about race together, all the poems about childlessness together, all the poems about my mother together, etc.—because this isn’t how life happens. Life is much more fluid than that. The past bubbles up at unexpected times in our lives and in ways that make the past present to us, which completely disrupts any sense of life happening in a linear fashion. I knew I wanted to begin with poems about my mother but not with all the poems about my mother. My mother is still very present to me, and, consequently, the book, in a certain sense, requires her to appear again and again. I was very intentional, for example, about ending the first section of the book with the poem “My Mother, Arriving” because this title paves the way for future appearances, as does the last line of the poem: “My mother, not going away.”
I also knew that the postcard poems (“Postcards from the 70s”)—which explore the larger societal messages I received about race, gender, etc.—needed to come relatively early in the book because these poems describe the world I grew up in just as much as the poems about my mother’s drinking do. Thus, the first two sections serve as the foundational and chronological beginning in the narrative arc, while the rest of the book moves forward in time to the present—a present that is still deeply infused by the past.
Nelson: I'm moved by your juxtaposing poems about your mother's passing and your father's decline with "Broken Arm" and "Daughter Poem," both about the possibility or impossibility of your own children. You've brilliantly created "a third space," an implied poem about family, the passage of time, love, and loss. And thank you for the candor and bravery in your work. Was it difficult to write those poems, or was it cathartic?
Dordal: I love the idea of a third space! Thank you for that image. I wouldn’t say that the poems about not having children were any more difficult to write than any of the other poems I’ve written about hard losses—my mother’s death, my father’s dementia, etc. The experience itself was difficult, of course, but the poems were not any more difficult to write than other poems. It did take me a long time to actually start writing them though. It was back in 2005 that my wife and I experienced the failed adoption that started the whole process of us slowly letting go of that dream (because that particular experience was so devastating). But it has only been in the last four or five years that I’ve started to write about my own childlessness. So, maybe that is an indication that I needed to do a lot more internal processing before wrestling with this particular topic. I will say that I find the poems themselves—“Broken Arm” and “Daughter Poem,” as well as “Sheltering in Place” and “The Life I Live”—oddly comforting to read. It’s as if by creating these artistic expressions of an imaginary child that I’ve finally been able to experience some degree of healing. The pain will never disappear completely, but these poems have provided me with a presence I didn’t have before writing them. Not the physical presence of an actual child but definitely a presence of some kind, and for that I’m deeply grateful.
Nelson: Your poem "The Life I Live" so beautifully unifies the themes of the book: childlessness, aging and decline, and the power and limits of love. One frequently reads poems about the poet's past—nothing wrong with that—, but here you imagine yourself at ninety. Share if you will your thoughts on poetry's relationship to the future. Does it have any prophetic potential? The imagination looking into the oncoming as well as the gone—what does it do for you to turn your gaze in that direction?
Dordal: So, I think there are two ways to look at this question—or two ways to look at the word prophetic. In the biblical tradition, the primary role of a prophet was to respond critically to the present; i.e., to call attention to societal issues that, in the mind of the prophet, needed to be addressed. The prophetic tradition in this sense, then, is not about predicting the future but about trying to turn people—and society—around so that the future could be better. Using this understanding of the word, I think poetry has a lot to say about the future. The explosion of politically-engaged poetry in the last fifteen years or so is a testament to this. There are so many poets using their gifts to raise awareness about any number of societal ills and, I would argue, this kind of poetry is very much in line with the prophetic voice of the biblical tradition.
But, of course, there is also the other meaning of the word—to predict or to see into the future— which is, as you point out, one of the things I’m doing in my poem “The Life I Live.” For me, one benefit of writing poetry is that it (the act of writing) allows me to turn my gaze towards emotionally painful topics or experiences in a way that facilitates some measure of healing. In this particular poem, I’m turning my attention toward the possibility that my own life might end in a fairly lonely and depressing way: with my mind nearly gone and my only “descendant” a plastic doll. As depressing as this image might be, it was/is also very comforting to picture myself this way, just as it was comforting (in the poem and in real life) to look at the photo of George, the last Hawaiian Tree Snail. As I say in the poem, “looking is a kind of love.” In other words, to look at another living being in a way that fully takes them in—in a way that fully “sees” them—is a kind of love, and it is love such as this that can, in turn, bring peace into our hearts (and ultimately our world). My initial reluctance to even look at the photo of George (and to read the accompanying article) stemmed in part from a sense of helplessness on my part, as if it was futile to read about George’s fate knowing that it was already too late to “fix” the situation. But, of course, we can’t always fix things in the world, and the fix-it mindset is problematic for so many reasons. When I finally read the article about George—and when I experienced a deep sense of peace in doing so—I was reminded of what meditation teachers often encourage us to do when a negative thought arises, which is to just observe it. In the poem, this is exactly what I’m trying to do with the image I have of myself at ninety.
Your question also makes me think about how important it is for us as a society to view our present-day actions in light of the future—to ask how our present-day behavior will impact future generations. In some ways, the reference to George the Hawaiian Tree Snail is an example of what happens when we—as a society—fail to take the future seriously, when we fail to consider the kind of impact our present-day behavior might have on the future. In this way, the poem is not only offering a look into the future but is also offering a look at what happens when we fail to look into the future. I hadn’t considered the poem quite this way before, and I’m thankful to your question for sparking this line of thought!
Nelson: The many states and qualities of water—liquid, fog, ice—and its necessity for the living. Will you reflect on the title of the collection? How do you see these poems as lessons, and what, one wonders, does or did the teaching?
Dordal: It’s funny because I included a similar question in a teaching guide that I created for Water Lessons and, as I typed up the question, I remember thinking: Gosh, I’d love to hear how readers would respond to this question. It didn’t occur to me that I might need to respond to my own question!
I would say that one “lesson” of the book—maybe even the main lesson—concerns the fluidity of self in the way the book wrestles with the idea that who we understand ourselves and others to be is never completely fixed. In the book, my father’s dementia and my mother’s alcoholism speak directly to this sense of fluidity. My mother became a different person when she drank—and, likewise, with respect to my father’s dementia. My father is both present and absent now just as my mother was both present and absent. And, I would add, just as my imaginary child is both present and absent. And the divine as well! So, I would say that the book title definitely speaks to this idea of fluidity.
This idea of fluidity also relates to how I have responded to these various losses. For example, as distressing as Alzheimer’s is, I have found some definite silver linings related to the way my father has softened—become kinder—in his demented state. This is not everyone’s experience, of course, but it certainly has been my own. Similarly, as sad as I once was about not having children (and still can be at times), the presence of an imaginary child gives me great comfort. In other words, imagination is what has allowed me to be fluid in the most beneficial of ways.
Another kind of fluidity appears in the way water is presented both positively and negatively throughout the book, which points to the idea that, for most of us, life is a mixture of good and bad experiences, a mixture of joy and despair, celebration and grief, etc. In the book, then, water becomes a metaphor for this mixture. Water is the place that the divine is present but also hidden (“like dissolved in water”); water is the beautiful ocean of Pippi Longstocking’s world as well as the agony of the Middle Passage; water is the lake my mother loved as well as the ice she used to cool her alcoholic drinks. Thus, as necessary as water is to life (and to our brains!), water can also cause illness, death, agony, etc.
As to who or what does the teaching, I would say that life itself does the teaching. We are always (hopefully) learning from our life experiences—learning to recognize the profound way that none of us is entirely good or entirely bad and that none of us is permanently fixed in one state—change is possible! Sometimes these changes are for the worse, sometimes for the better.
I feel like I could go on and on. It’s such a great question!
