Michael T. Young: Thank you, Djelloul, for agreeing to an interview.
You were a journalist for many years.
Your first collection of poetry came out in 2008. How do you think your many
years as a journalist influenced your efforts as a poet?
Djelloul Marbrook: I started
out at The Providence Journal-Bulletin as a reporter-photographer, so it
heightened my perception of place and circumstance. I had to notice people and
their circumstances more closely, not as a matter of survival, in the manner of
a battered child, but as a professional observer whose work depended on
noticing what others missed. For example, there came a time when a wealthy
blue-blood WASP decided to contest our Irish-American governor in a primary. The
newspaper was hostile to the governor, as it was to most Democrats, but in my
personal encounters with the governor I noticed that he took notice of the
ordinary circumstances of ordinary people and interrupted his schedule to
engage them, while the patrician noticed only the most important hands extended
to him. On another occasion I came late to a horrendous house fire. It was
raining. The headlights of the emergency vehicles made each raindrop a kind of
candlelight. Under the circumstances a decent photo was almost impossible. But
I walked around and saw a man in a bathrobe holding a cat and consoling it. It
was the owner of the house. Using the police headlights I photographed him from
his starboard stern quarter. The photo ran six columns in the next evening
paper and it won an Associated Press prize. So yes, my experiences as a
journalist have had a profound influence on me as a poet. But there was more to
come. When I went to work as a metro editor for The Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette,a
heavily unionized newspaper, the composing room people knew I was a sympathizer
and they allowed me to hold sticks of type in my hand. There I was among these
fellow unionists holding words—words!—in my hand. It was an alchemical
experience. By then I was writing headlines and thinking about Walt Whitman
working at The Brooklyn Eagle. Headline-writing had a profound effect on
me. You need terse, muscular words to convey ideas. You intuitively understand
the nature of line break. And you know, if you’re any good, that a good headline
has a certain meter. You whisper it to yourself as you compose it. How does it
sound? “Yale’s Viking Map Knocks / Wind Out of Columbus’ Sails”—I wrote that
two-column 24-point headline for The Baltimore Sun. It won a prize. Or
consider this banner headline: “Fleet steams, Qadaffi Fumes.” But there was a
downside to journalism that I would have avoided had I remained a sailor. The
press composes the authorized version of everything and is insufferably smug
and uninquiring where it should be inquiring. The press is a prime conveyor of the dread
received idea. Only in old age have I been able to make this understanding work
for me as a poet.
Michael T. Young: Brushstrokes
and glances opens with the
poem “Shabtis,” the Egyptian figurines in funerary rites. Throughout the
collection, the dead and ghosts appear. What do you see as the significance of
the dead in the collection? What are they to bring our attention to?
Djelloul Marbrook: Death is in
some ways incomprehensible to a child. Having said that, let me go back to my
infancy. My mother’s story was that my father had been fatally shot in a
hunting accident while she was pregnant in Algeria. She later embellished the
story to say a cousin may have shot him and called it an accident. But in truth
he lived until 1978. So I had to deal with this death myth. When my mother took
me to Brooklyn via London in my infancy she left me with her younger sister,
Dorothy, and her mother, Hilda. Understandably I bonded with them. Dorothy was
my idol. I was crazy about her. She used to take me skating. She made an
orange-crate scooter for me. At age five my mother took me away from Dorothy
and Hilda, away from my nanny, Peggy O’Connor, whom I also loved dearly, and
sent me to boarding school. Nobody explained why. Several years later I was told Dorothy had died. So now I had two
deaths to fathom, and I couldn’t.
As for the shabtis, we lived near the Brooklyn Museum,
which has a famously good Egyptology department. That’s where I encountered the
shabtis. I drove Peggy to distraction with questions about the shabtis. How
were they? Did they have enough to eat? Where did they sleep? She and her
brother Junior took me again and again to see the shabtis. I dreamed about
them. I think in a certain way the people I lost, the people my mother was
always separating me from, became shabtis. They guarded me, they accompanied me
into the netherworld. As I grew up the list of shabtis became quite long. But I
was afraid to go back and visit them because I felt somehow I had betrayed
them, I had abandoned them. They had been everything to me and I had failed
them. So I was always failing as I grew up. Poems consoled me. I could see loss
in them, betrayal, courage.
Michael T. Young: The poem
“Francisco de Zurbarán” says, “I mourn for what the dead give up;/they mourn
for what I fail to see.” Do you think this failure to see could be corrected?
Do you think non-artists could benefit from a basic artistic course in how to
see with the focus and precision of an artist? If so, in what way would it
help?
Djelloul Marbrook: I’m hot
for this question, Michael, because I’m in the midst of a project of learning
about poetry from my camera, just as I’ve spent a lifetime learning from
paintings. My mother was an artist, and so was my Aunt Irene (I. Rice Pereira,
the geometric abstractionist whose painting is on the cover of Brushstrokes
and glances). The Navy taught me photography, although it wasn’t my rating.
I was first a boatswain’s mate and then a journalist. Recently I bought a compact
camera capable of taking RAW images. The RAW image contains thousands of
details the photographer doesn’t see in his viewing lens when he clicks. They
can be introduced to the final image in computer software. This, for me, is a
powerful metaphor. We always take in more than we’re capable of processing at
the moment. That’s true of the painter, too. And it’s true of us when we view
the painting. There are thousands of recognitions awaiting us. But as we enter
into these recognitions, as we engage them, we must also engage the artist, not
what we know about him but what we intuit from the work we behold. Did Jan
Vermeer love the maid with the pearl earring? Almost certainly, but that
over-the-shoulder glance at him, what about it? Is it the very moment at which
the girl herself recognizes the artist’s love? Or is it, as someone has
suggested, the moment Jan’s wife enters the room? We don’t know. We don’t have
to know. But we do have to know something, something we choose to inspire us,
to enlighten us, to amuse us. I have always talked to paintings, and they talk
to me—some of them, anyway. Some remain mute, perhaps knowing I don’t get them.
Historically, especially in the Francophone world, there is a long tradition of
artists and poets interacting. But I think poets would benefit incalculably
from more contact with musicians, scientists, athletes and others. This was one
of the splendors of the Convivencia in Arab Spain. So many of its Arab, Berber
and Jewish poets were also astronomers, doctors, mathematicians, because the
Arabs tended not to pigeonhole the disciplines the way we do. They saw no
reason, for example, to parse alchemy from chemistry; alchemy is merely an
adaptation of their word al-khemya for chemistry (khemya) with
its article (al). This is why they were able to discover that surgery
requires perfect antisepsis—their most brilliant minds spoke with one another,
and their most advanced disciplines were often married to poetry in one skull.
Michael T. Young: The poem
“Picasso’s bull,” opens with “We need a museum to show us/we can unbind our
captive lives.” What do you see as the source of our captivity, what’s its
nature and what is the means of our release?
Djelloul Marbrook: I think we
live in a world of authorized versions, of Flaubert’s received ideas. No Child
Left Behind is a perfect example. We tell the child what to learn, not how to
learn. But museums are about how to learn. They open vistas. They’re hospitable
laboratories for our own wildest speculations. At least that’s what the best of
them are. What is Gauguin doing in Tahiti? Why does Corot return over and over
to Ville d’Avray? Is Caravaggio angry, is he mad? Museums are in many ways what
our schools ought to be, like the Montessori and Waldorf schools. They guide
us. They suggest meanings. They give us history. But we’re on our own when it
comes to arranging what we have recognized in our own minds. Increasingly we go
to schools to have the furniture bolted to the floor, to have the windows
barred. But in museums we rearrange the furniture of our minds. Perhaps more
importantly, we are reassured that beauty and the individual’s way of
perceiving it is crucial to life. Nothing is dying in a museum—everything is
coming to life. But that is not what our pedagogical ideas of education are
about. The press and the politicos and the corporados are our captors. They’re
invested in our seeing things in certain ways. The museums are invested only in
our seeing things. They’re helping us, not pummeling us, not bending us. That’s
overstatement, of course. The Museum of Modern Art has often been accused, for
example, of diktat.
Michael T. Young: The poems
“Manhattan Reef,” and “By the pool of The Frick,” suggest an apocalyptic
outcome, such as rising sea levels, if we don’t face what art confronts us
with. What do you see as that confrontation? What connects the problems of
climate change to the insights of art?
Djelloul Marbrook: I think
I’m saying that our greatest treasures must not be taken for granted. They can
be swept away; they can be drowned. The earth is always shaking off our ill
effects, always trying to repair the damage we have inflicted. I don’t see
apocalypse in the end-time context that fundamentalists do. To the Romans their
fall to the barbarians was apocalyptic. To the Byzantine and Amazigh cultures
the arrival of the Arabs was apocalyptic. To the Arabs the advent of the
Mongols was apocalyptic. I see an ongoing alchemical process in which the
cosmos tries to ennoble the elements, the species, over and against our childish
notions about religion and significance. I look for the elixir, and in that
poem, “Manhattan Reef,” I mean like Magritte or, more aptly, de Chirico, to
transform the world by turning it on its head and inside out. I don’t mean it
as a doomsayer. I don’t mean it as warning. I mean only to say, It happens; how
will we be ennobled by it? “We” in this instance becomes a problematical word,
because “we” may not survive in our present form. I believe, for example,
that “we” are evolving towards androgyny.
Michael T. Young: The poem “Distraction,”
in the first section and the poem “A naming spree,” in the second section both
address naming as a vital, although perhaps ambiguous act. What do you see as
its importance in the collection and how does it relate to art?
Djelloul Marbrook: It was my
experience as a journalist that heightened my awareness of naming things. And
perhaps it was my own difficult experience of bearing my “foreign” name in our
society; it was certainly a trial, and not the trial of a boy named Sue either.
It was a standing invitation to be disinvited. I think our culture not only
names things, it pigeonholes them, and once a thing is named and pigeonholed
it’s as if it had become unimpeachable, inarguable. For example, terrorists
belong to Al Qaeda, never mind the Arab meaning of the word (the base) or the
fact that reputable intelligence people doubt its existence. The same is true
of the national debt; it’s a disgrace, a threat to our peace and security, even
if it has been cut in half, even if we did have this debate at our inception
and decided we must carry a debt. We are a society that does not choose to
revisit what it has decided, what it has named. Americans should look like the
Marlboro Man or Marilyn Monroe, and that’s that. That’s what our childish
ethnocentrism is about: we have decided how Americans should be named, how they
should look and behave. Naming is dangerous business, serious business. We
ought to be at least as careful and mindful as the good poet in choosing words.
But we have chosen instead Emerson’s bugbear, foolish consistency. That’s why
we have entertained the stupid flip-flop debate. Dwight Eisenhower is famous
for changing his mind about the military-industrial complex, but we have chosen
to forget that in our zeal to label the inquiring mind a threat to society.
As
for the place of this consideration in the collection, we’re influenced by the
titles of paintings and sculptures, and we’re influenced by the names given by
critics, curators and historians. Clement Greenberg says, This is Abstract
Expressionism, so it’s no longer allowed to be anything else. Even worse, if
the Clement Greenbergs of the world are thwarted in their efforts to categorize
a work of art or an oeuvre and it may languish in neglect simply because the hot shot
of the moment couldn’t pin it down, like a captured butterfly. We’re reckless
namers and categorizers, and we’re always tripping over our own handiwork.
“A
naming spree” consists of only three couplets, but it’s an important poem to
me. I spend a great deal of time contemplating classical and Islamic containers
in museums. The idea of containment is crucial to civilization, and predictably
it has a dark side. Without amphorae the Greeks, Romans and others were unable
to transport things. The unique shape of the amphora conforms to the curvature
of their galleys. The Arabs, whose ship designs foreshadowed modern ships, had
to rethink the idea of the container. The Arabs were concerned with elixirs and
alchemy, so their containers began to take on strange new shapes. I deal with
this at some length in Guest Boy, the first novel in my trilogy, Light
Piercing Water.The dark side of containment in metaphorical terms is that
it seeks to limit and therefore readily becomes a received and suspect idea.
For example, the church may be perceived as the container of religion. It
limits, defines and controls, the message on its own being considered volatile
and dangerous. This is my view of many Christian churches.
So
the idea of containment is crucial to understanding civilization, and the way
we look at containers is crucial to the way we allow civilization to develop.
The Arab view was wholly different from the classical view. The Arabs sought to
ennoble what was contained. It would be facile but tempting to say the Greeks
and Romans had a more practical view, but the Arabs were great merchants,
travelers and seafarers, so they can hardly be accused of being impractical.
My
poetry is rather obsessed with the contemplation of this issue.
Michael T. Young: You are
quite politically conscious and I think this shows in the collection. What do
you think is the poet’s responsibility to society? Do poets have a political
responsibility? If so, what is it?
Djelloul Marbrook: I am
politically conscious, but I certainly wouldn’t require that of other poets. I
see a lot of writers deploring the lack of political and social engagement
among poets and other artists. I think the complaint is as bogus as the many
obituaries of poetry I’m always seeing. A poet does what it’s in his or her
nature to do. A poet uses the resources he or she chooses to use. It’s a matter
of respecting the gift as it was given. To require this or that of a poet or
any artist is an ostentatious display of egocentrism on the part of the person
requiring it. It’s also intellectual slovenliness. It says, in effect, I will
not inquire into the nature of your work unless it conforms to my ideas. It’s
akin to No Child Left Behind— intellectual regression. I think growing up in a
boarding school and having a badly fractured family made me aware of politics
at an early age. I’ve never been politically adept myself, but I am a keen
observer. I found much to admire in small-town politics when I was a reporter.
I grew up thinking I would be a great traveler. But the truth is I have not
traveled well since leaving the Navy, and I find life-sustaining beauty
wherever I am, most recently in reflections in manhole covers after
storms.
Michael T. Young: What is
your favorite poem in the collection? Why is it significant for
you?
Djelloul Marbrook: My
favorite is “The Fountains,” the last poem. Not because it’s the best, but
because it best expresses my sentiments about museums. I’m haunted by what goes
on when they close. It would be easy to say “Basquiat,” because then I could
talk about how amusing I find it that the New York Police Department formed an
entire squad to suppress his work. But “The Fountains” expresses my conviction
that nothing is what it seems to be and all settled notions about art are
suspect: nothing is settled or ever should be. That’s why the determinism in so
much of our art and literary criticism turns me off. The hubris of the critics
gives criticism a bad odor. They put on pageants of referential knowledge to
make a point that arrogates to them more importance than the art they’re
discussing. That isn’t true of all critics, of course. But it’s common enough.
“The Fountains” also expresses my whimsical view of life. I like to think of
the beasties partying at the urinals and bidets. I like to think of the artists
making notes and sketches.
Michael T. Young: Are there
any prose works that have noticeably influenced your work as a poet? What are
they? Can you say in what way you feel this work or works influenced your
poetry?
Djelloul Marbrook: Yes, Mark
Helprin’s Winter’s Tale, for one. As you know, it has recently been
filmed. A.S. Byatt, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Glenway
Wescott, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster—all are big influences.
I should mention Mary Renault’s Fire From Heaven. I’m something of an
amateur Alexander scholar, and I find his life haunting in many ways. As a
child I suffered from an Alexandrian mindset. I was always asking, Why not?
That, and my difficult name, got me in a lot of trouble. I love the story of
the Gordian Knot, whether apocryphal or not, because it reflects my own
characteristic response to education, which has never served me well in the
presence of big egos.
Michael T. Young: What do you
like to do that has nothing to do with poetry or writing?
Djelloul Marbrook:
Photography, walking, bird-watching, gardening, reading, chatting with my wife,
Marilyn. We both used to sail and lived on a sailboat for ten years, but we
can’t handle the sail bags anymore.
Michael T. Young: Thanks for
your time, Djelloul. Let’s close with your favorite poem from Brushstrokes
and glances.
The Fountains
What of the urinals at night,
the demons that slurp
at these Alhambras?
What of the books and mannikins,
Spanish dukes and Polish riders,
are we a sub-species annoyance
after their revels and secret rites?
The race of janitors is mute,
as befitting acolytes.
In every painting a green-eyed wolf
whose keen night vision arrests
ghosts we leave behind.
Into the sun we go diminished,
having left behind a self
that chose four legs.
In every painting a twitching snout
parsing our most elusive scent
where we do not doubt.
I dream of beasts and otherlings
cavorting around bidets;
I envy them.
I would highly recommend Djelloul Marbrook's website: http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com/. And following him on FaceBook. He will keep you well informed not only of poetry but give you many alternative perspectives on current political, social and economic events reported in the mass media.
