I Call, You Respond

 

I Call, You Respond: A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender

 

I asked a group of 12 poets, fiction writers, photographers, visual artists and musicians to respond back quickly and viscerally to poem “calls” I sent them – with a poem, prose, a photograph, music or art and explain briefly why the poem elicited that response. Michèle Foster defines call and response as “spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the statements (‘calls’) are punctuated by expressions (‘responses’) from the listener.” Call and response has a long history, documented in sub-Saharan Africa as a working way for groups to govern themselves democratically and participate in religious rituals; this tradition survived on slave ships over into the New World, where it has come through centuries in gospel music, folk music, military cadences, rock and roll (consider The Who’s “My Generation,” call: “I hope I die before I get old; response: “Talkin’ ‘bout my generation”) Cuban music, rumba and more. As artists, we’re calling to readers and viewers with our work, so in this “I Call, You Respond” project, I wanted to see, over a few weeks, what responses four different poems would evoke in three artists. The results are stunning, thought-provoking and diverse.–NR

 

Call and Response: “Metempsychosis”

CALL:

El Salvadoran poet Claribel Alegria, who has written nine books of poetry and prose, has long been a voice for self-determination in her homeland, even though she lived in self-imposed exile in North Africa with her family for a time. Alegria’s long relationship with her husband, Darwin “Bud” Flakoll – spiritual, extremely intimate, devoted to art and dedicated to humanitarian and social justice activities – started as a three-month fiery courtship and a quick marriage and grew into a rich, collaborative life of testimonio. Shortly before Alegria and Flakoll were to go on a trip to southern Asia in 1995, Flakoll passed away. Alegria traveled to Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta with her husband’s soul, as she has said, and wrote her poetry collection, Sorrow, about that trip – and her posthumous dialogue with her husband.

For this call-and-response, I chose the poem “Metempsychosis,” which captures Alegria’s dual emotions of grief/wanting to die with her husband and acceptance/wanting to continue living, in such spare, short poems that offer wide, open spaces as the point of departure for reader response:

 

Metempsychosis

If there is a return
my wait has been long
and if there is not
it has been barely
a sudden lightning flash.

—From Sorrow, by Claribel Alegria

 

RESPONSE #1: by Jake Krolick

This is an excerpt from a recent Rolling Stone interview with Laurie Anderson (she’s Lou Reed’s widow):

“…And so the next day, we met in Boulder, Colorado, and got married in a friend’s backyard on a Saturday, wearing our old Saturday clothes, and when I had to do a show right after the ceremony, it was OK with Lou. (Musicians being married is sort of like lawyers being married. When you say, ‘Gee, I have to work in the studio till three tonight’ – or cancel all your plans to finish the case – you pretty much know what that means and you don’t necessarily hit the ceiling.)

I guess there are lots of ways to get married. Some people marry someone they hardly know – which can work out, too. When you marry your best friend of many years, there should be another name for it. But the thing that surprised me about getting married was the way it altered time. And also the way it added a tenderness that was somehow completely new. To paraphrase the great Willie Nelson: ‘Ninety percent of the people in the world end up with the wrong person. And that’s what makes the jukebox spin.’ Lou’s jukebox spun for love and many other things, too – beauty, pain, history, courage, mystery.”

The interview offered some really touching insight into their relationship and it made me reflect upon my own marriage. I think what struck me most was how deep their friendship was and what that friendship meant to them.  In relation to Alegria’s poem, “Metempsychosis,” I think it’s amazing to find people who you can connect with on deeper levels, whether that’s a husband, wife, spouse, parent, child, or friend. What’s even more notable is the emotion that’s released when one loses that closely connected person after many years. In horrible times, sometimes the release of emotion is done in really beautiful ways.

The lyrics below are from Lou Reed’s 1984 album New Sensations. This emotional track “Turn To Me” is a reflection on friendship and mortality that ranks as one of his best:

When your teeth are ground down to the bone
And there’s nothing between your legs
And some friend died of something
That you can’t pronounce

Remember, I’m the one who loves you
Hey baby, you can always give me a call
Turn to me, turn to me
Turn to me, turn to me
Turn to me

***

Nicole Rollender is an editor and poet, and she loves to walk in Civil War battlefields and cemeteries, just listening.

Philadelphia creative director by day and music journalist/photographer by night, Jake Krolick can be found hiking, skiing or having adventures with his wife when he isn’t behind a computer, a camera or at a rock show.