The Art of Living Dangerously
A talk with poet Stacy Dyson
“There were so many days when I was so angry and wasn’t good at channeling it... So I had to use my voice, my poetry and put it out there. I didn’t have a choice.” - Poet Stacy Dyson on her work in 2020.
In this issue:
Working without a net: some thoughts provoked by my recent interview with poet Stacy Dyson who could have chosen a safer path than earning a living through her art but, instead, has spent her career using her voice and helping others, especially women, find theirs. Trapped in lockdown during one of the toughest years she’s experienced as a Black woman, Stacy’s anger and grief had no place to go but into her work. Times like these are “what poetry is for,” she says. You can read the whole interview, the second in our Writers Journey Series, now by clicking HERE.
A moment of silence
Listening to Asian American voices through their art
Stacy Dyson and the Art of Living Dangerously
At one point during my conversation with Stacy Dyson a few weeks back, I suggested that she’d followed a path some might view as risky as it is generous. She’s spent most of her adult life writing and performing poetry and helping others to do it too. She hustles for poetry gigs, has innovated workshops that she has pitched and led in schools, for groups of women. She celebrates her birthdays not by sitting back and seeing what gifts roll in but by putting on shows that let artists she wants to support share the stage with her. Friends and family love her work but still offer their advice:
“They say to get a real job, why don’t you settle down, get married, have children. I used to get a lot of that sort of nonsense,” she says.
Emotional and financial security have always been important to me. It also worked as a way to postpone writing. When I was younger, I used to tell myself I’d write when I had built up some savings, when my son left home, when I had found the right relationship. Looking back, it is easy to see that I was simply afraid to fail. I am less afraid of that now but I am still working with a very strong net: a supportive family and a husband who told me to stop working earlier than we planned and go for it. And I am sometimes haunted by the time I wasted being afraid to write.
In one of her most powerful performances, Stacy tells a story about a single year in her life that would have broken me into a million pieces and nearly broke her. Gigs vanish, housing goes away, bank accounts drained dry, the death of her father. Every time conditions improved, they would crash down again. Through it all, she found a way to write, to perform, to pitch and run workshops. When she arrives at the end of this short story of a really long year, she makes no promises but finds the strength she needs to trust in a single moment. She is simply not ready to give up.
“I’m still unsure sometimes, I”m not sure when the next crash is going to come, right now in this moment, in this moment nothing else can happen, not in this moment, and I know I can’t break until I’m ready to be broken.”
There have been challenges since that time in her life -- damage to her eyes, financial ups and downs, jobs and homes that collapsed just as she was getting ready to move into them -- but she has not been “ready to be broken.” Instead she digs into herself and the world around her and turns what she is feeling and finding into poetry. This is what she did throughout 2020 when, trapped at home and unable to join the protests that followed the brutal deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and all the Black lives lost at the hands of police, she wrote what will be her next book, Lovely and Suffering. Deprived of the in-person audiences that she thrives on, she has found venues on line and created her own with her monthly concert series, The Aperitif Concerts.
She will be sharing her work from 2020 with other poems and songs in her online show tomorrow, March 28 at 4:30 PM Pacific Time 7:30 PM East Coast, 6:30 PM Central, 5:30 PM Mountain) on YouTube right here: The Aperitif Concerts. You can also catch the recording anytime after that. Click HERE to read our interview.
A moment of silence
A mother goes to work in Atlanta. A father stops at the store to pick up some groceries in Colorado. They never come home. When these things happen my first response is to write something here, to try to come up with something meaningful to say but this is one more time when my words don’t matter. My actions will. My phone calls to elected officials, the willingness to join those fighting for laws and policies that will keep us safer. That is work. That is opening myself to discomfort and interruption and frustration. I will need to constantly dig deep for the empathy that will be required to sustain action over the long haul.
That is why it feels very important right now to listen and read the stories of those who died, to let the horror and the grief of those families sink in, past my protective crust and my own personal grief until it hurts. I need to try to cross the distance between me, here, safe in my own home, and the many Asian Americans, Black Americans, Native Americans, all Americans who do not feel safe in theirs. If all else fails, I must remember our collective safety is all bound up together. Our entire country echoes with hate and gunshots. The targets can change in heartbeat. It could be any of us.
Please join me in a moment of silence right here, right now for the dead lost in the Atlanta and Boulder shootings and their families. Let’s think, too, of all the others lost to gun violence over the past year but never made the headlines. Thank you.
Newly added books to The Spark Community Recommendations Page
For me, reading is one way to stir empathy and keep it alive. A story allows us to slip inside the skin of another. This week, I’ve added books, old and new, fiction and nonfiction, by brilliant writers who also happen to be Asian American. Let me know if there are others you’ve read or would like to read and I’ll share them. All of these books can be found in the Spark Community Recommendations Page at bookshop.org.
By Celeste Ng: Everything I Never Told you and LIttle Fires Everywhere (you can watch the series based on this one on HBO). I’ve read both and loved them for the mystery, the language, and the way Ng handles the complex dynamics of families and race in a picture-perfect Ohio town.
All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung who was adopted as an infant from Korea and raised by a White family in a sheltered Oregon community.
By Lysley Tenorio: Monstress: Stories and his just-released novel The Son of Good Fortune. I read Monstress years ago and have been waiting for this novel. I have ordered it and look forward to reading this story about Exel, the undocumented son of a Filipina B-movie star with a questionable new career. It is the “story of a mother and son testing the strength of their bond to their country and to each other.”
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (not pictured above) - This was Lahiri’s first novel and when I read this years ago, I tumbled in and didn’t come out until I finished it. She writes with insight, humor, and great understanding about the generational and family dynamics that unfold over the years after a Calcutta couple moves to Boston where their son, christened Gogol, is born.
That’s it for this week. Thank for you reading and for your support. I’ve really loved how more and more folks are starting to join us. Whether you are new or a continuing subscriber, let me know how you are doing, what you are reading, or what you are thinking of reading. I love to hear from you by email or in the comments section. All the books mentioned in this newsletter are available at the Spark Community Recommendation Page at bookshop.org where every sale helps independent bookstores and can help us raise money for literacy programs.
It looks like those of us who have been waiting for our vaccines will start to get them in April. It’s incredible to think that we might finally be approaching something like normal life. Thoughts? Plans? Hopes? Dreams? I don’t know where to start, myself. Oh, before I sign off - please share and invite your friends to subscribe. The more the merrier. Here are two buttons that make both things easier:
Gratefully yours,
Betsy
P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…safe harbor
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
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Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.
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