Laugh, Laughter & Poetry

Maria Nazos


​Dear Maria,

What do you do to #BeatTheBlues, to rise from the depths of darkness and keep going with all your might?

What a great question! I am a relentlessly, annoyingly optimistic person, so my list of activities is long.

First, anytime I'm feeling down I try to help someone who actually needs and wants my assistance. Helping others usually gets me out of my own head, where it's easy to obsess and dwell on the dark and downsides of life. I also realize, when I am paying attention to others, how minuscule my own pain and problems are. On a more selfish level, I simply feel better when I am able to help someone else move farther along in their spiritual, professional, or personal life.

The second way I beat the blues is simple and controversial, but I'll say it anyway. I refuse to pay attention to the news and sidestep political discussions, except for now because I feel I owe an explanation. After the 2016 election, I realized that I needed to be informed, but not inundated; proactive, not reactive. I knew my mental and emotional health would suffer if I focused on those powerful, loud, and negative events and people. Although I am a passionate liberal, political leanings aside and objectively speaking, Donald Trump is a mentally unstable and dangerous human. He is a demagogue and a bully. His thought processes and speech patterns are indicative of a severely mentally-ill person. He is, however, a human—albeit a flawed one—who, ironically, countless people whom I adore throughout my life idolize for reasons I will never understand.

Photo: courtesy of the artist
I realized that if I want to maintain these loving relationships and my emotional health, I needed to not pay attention to this insanity. As someone who has dealt with a generous amount of mentally-unfit people throughout my life, I refuse to give them any more airtime. Each month I donate to those causes which make sense to me, (Planned Parenthood, Black Lives Matter, etc.). I volunteer my time and efforts towards workplace diversity and inclusion, and then I go about my life. I have #beaten the blues this way.
 
Do you prefer to dwell in as many projects as possible or do you keep a tempo that is manageable and not overwhelming?

I do both. Sometimes there is a time to race ahead at full-throttle; other times, I need to hit cruise control. As a poet, I have long made peace with my own process, which constitutes waiting for things to happen, both within and without myself.
​
I wait to revise. I wait to think. I wait for editors' responses. In between those endless pockets, I will sit down, at least a few times a week, and work on that ONE poem under my nose. Other times, I'll attend a writing retreat and go buck-wild, cranking out poems at a manic pace. Overall, setting reasonable and small goals has kept me going. For example, my current goal is to send 2-4 submissions per month. Easy. That said, if I attend a residency, I just may have another collection which is gestating! 
 
What are some of the publications you subscribe to or read constantly? 

Once a year, I attend the AWP Writers' Conference without any budget. I then load up on books, chapbooks, and journals of new writers.
 
I LOVE supporting new writers and exciting presses, though I don't subscribe to any one journal. I LOVE Iliana Rocha, Vincent Guerra, Tiana Clark, Emily Yoon, Jamaal May, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, and countless other writers who are changing the face of American poetry. 
 

* * *

Independence Day
​The woman's sadly handsome neighbor
sits alone on his porch, drinking a glass
of Beefeater gin. He calls to her
to come over for a drink. His stout, tired wife
and three sweet-faced children are out of town.
The woman sits on his stoop as the sweaty sun descends,
and feels for the first time, how alone she is.
What's it like, she asks, to wake up and know
that someone won't go? He insists that it's golden
handcuffs. He admits that he watches her
long skirts catch around her sandaled ankles,
as she lugs a suitcase down her front steps, late
for a red-eye while he makes breakfast
for the kids. He admits being envious of how she comes
and goes. He leads her inside, silences
her half-protest of but your wife and do you still love her?
The smell of lilacs, the faint thump of rap
pulsing through someone's parked car window,
the steady bang of a fireworks, all of it, set loose
into the world, then gone. When she slips
through his back door at dawn, she realizes, sadly,
how American their actions were: pledging
allegiance to pleasure, not consequence.
Now she sits at her kitchen table and tries
not to stare at the carpet-imprint of her six-year
lover's suitcase. She wonders if now that she's free
to do what she pleases, she'll turn loose
those who love her, while mooring herself
to those who never can. That night, she looks to the sky, 
filled with white stars encrusted against blue,
like the flag she lives beneath, in a body
brimming with desire and emptiness, and she sees
that she can't escape. So she promises
that tomorrow, she'll stay inside of herself,
​in her house, and learn what it means to be alone. 

​

* * *

Who are your favorite contemporary authors and poets? 

See above. I also love established writers, including the late and amazing Joe Bolton, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Plath, as well as my predecessors, Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, Martìn Espada, and A.E. Stallings.

​You’ve said that people are your passions and helping others is your forte. That’s amazing. The world needs more people like you. What are some pivotal moments from your life that have steered you in the right direction? 

You are very kind. One pivotal moment in my life is an unlikely one. About a decade ago, I was living on Cape Cod. My life was, by choice and design, tumultuous. There is a saying that one comes to Provincetown (A Cape Cod town) to heal or die. I was toeing that fine line between healing and dying in a very real sense, by drinking far too much, forging dysfunctional relationships, and undertaking many odd and aimless jobs. One night, I was riding in a car with some friends after an evening of drinking. The driver was intentionally speeding and swerving through a residential neighborhood, and we couldn't get him to stop. I remember digging my fingernails into my palm and thinking this is it. The driver kept saying he didn't care if we lived or died. Finally, he stopped and pulled over. I turned the corner, hailed a cab back to the Cape, and never saw those people again.
 
As terrible as that moment was, I too was responsible for my own near-demise. I liked to push boundaries and live and fast and hard. I still do so I need to keep those impulses in check.
 
On that awful night, I realized that if I continued living that way, that I would die. From there on, my life gradually changed.
 
Who are some of the people in your life or even public figures who are or seem to be passionate about a life of equality and fairness for all? 

Ah, the list is long. MLK, Barack Obama, Gale Madyun (my friend and spiritual mother), my husband, Andy Liss, who is the toughest and kindest motherfucker I've ever met, Joan Jett, Walt Whitman, Ted Kooser. 
 

* * *

Hurricane Blues
 
                                                                             -dedicated to my sister, Joanna
One came tearing through the islands,
another went hurdling through the coasts.
The Caribbean's drowned so now it's filled with ghosts.
The Caribbean, it's drowning; it's an island full of ghosts.

The radio show host said those winds were just a lie.
Limbaugh, he laughed, and said she was a lie.
Then he hopped a private jet, because rich folks, they don't die.
I said he hopped a jet out of Florida, because rich folks never die.

Now poor folks are hungry and they can't get food that's canned.
Folks are hungry and they can't get food that's canned.
And our president treats them like they're from a distant land.
Yes: he turns a blind eye, because baby, they're from a distant land.

The islands off our shores, they're drowned and half-wrecked.
Those islands off shore are drowned; Barbuda's a wreck.
Lives erased like initials in sand. Flooded like a ship's deck.
Life: washed away like initials; flooded like a ship's deck.

My little sister was on an island when the waters came.
My sister, she was in Puerto Rico, when the waters came
She jumped in her car and drove in the drizzling rain.
Thank god, she drove, while it was just drizzling rain.


My little sister, she reached San Juan right before the hurricane.
She was lucky; she got to the city before the hurricane.
The hurricane blew through, took lives, and it had my name.
The hurricane that blew through: it took lives it and had my name.

Now trouble keeps on, and folks can barely stand.
As trouble keeps on, folks, we still can't stand.
Our president, he sits there like we've got eternal hourglass sand.
I said, President: your time's up. Your hourglass is out of sand.

They came sweeping through the islands.
They came hurtling up our coasts.
Half the Caribbean's drowned; the islands full of ghosts.
Lord, the Caribbean's flooded. The islands are filling with ghosts. 
​

* * *


​Can you share with us a rejection story that helped you gather all your strength and move forward with all your might? 

Yep. During my fourth year of graduate school I was complaining to my writing bestie and kick-ass poet, T.J. Jarett, about how my work kept getting rejected. While I'm on the phone, whining away, blah and blah and blah, poor me, etc., T.J. responded, in her usual no-bullshit manner, "Have you sent to The New Yorker and The Atlantic?" I recall thinking (or saying), why the hell would I do that? That's like getting turned down for a quarter and grasping for a million dollars.

She told me to quit bitching and to just do it, so I did. I stuck a bunch of poems into a PDF and sent to The New Yorker. A few months later, I received an email from Paul Muldoon, asking me if my poem, "Cape Cod Pantoum," was available for publication in the magazine. He said, "it is very difficult to write a successful pantoum." I almost fell out of my chair. I then called Ted Kooser, my mentor and friend and screamed into the phone for about twenty minutes. From that time forward, my life changed. Needless to say, that publication put my name on the map.    
 
What are you currently working on?

I am finishing up my second full-length collection, "Giving Up the Ghost." This collection is based upon my experience backpacking alone through Belize, then crossing the border into Guatemala, again, by myself. On an abstract level, the collection deals with how we push past metaphorical boundaries and become better humans.

Can you tell us the most relevant story you’ve heard or experienced recently?

Yeah. So, this drunk guy in Florida drank so much he blacked out and brought an alligator into a liquor store. He was holding the alligator (its mouth was taped shut) and chasing customers around saying, "You all got beer here? Who took the last beer? Did you take the last beer?" The other customers were cracking up and taking pictures with him and his pet.
​
Naturally, those antics didn't go over well with the police, but I personally laughed until my sides ached. That story to me is beautiful because it's ugly and hilarious and messy. Throughout this world, where there is so much inevitable pain, laughter is a necessity. At the end of the day, we are all such human, flawed, strange creatures, yet we deserve as much love and laughter as we can find. I eternally thank that guy for making my year.

What is the most beautiful word you would like to use more?

Mellifluous. 

Thank You.
Maria Nazos' poetry, translations, and lyrical essays are published in The New Yorker, The Tampa Review, The Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of A Hymn That Meanders, (2011 Wising Up Press) and the chapbook Still Life, (2016 Dancing Girl Press). Her work has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and scholarships from The Sewanee Writers' Conference. A recent graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's English Ph.D. program, she can be found at www.marianazos.com