Emily Sieu Liebowitz: I’m Emily Sieu Liebowitz, and this is PoetryNow. My poems are engaged with historical fact and myth, and where those things meet. In both a kind of cultural way, but also in a personal way. The first line came from a genuine question that I had written in my notebook that just said, “Is it true that Troy had no written language? Look up later.” You know, we don’t even know totally if the Trojan War happened, and in fact, most of the accounts we have of it are from poems. The horse itself could be a symbol for what happens when written language comes into a culture. It lends itself to this kind of collapse of history and myth. Myth can then be confused for historical fact, and historical fact for myth.

(READS POEM)

Goodbye 14
 
Is it true that Troy lived life without a
written form before the Greeks invaded
with their horse, or did I learn that from a poem?
Either way, is that not how affection
ends, married or devoted to motion?
 
The upper hand forgetting how it felt
to feed the token, the brass first held in
the fingers then dropped into the subway vestibule.
This daily verb and its prescription cost,
on the rise from root to roof, would have you
 
be an estimate of man, could convince
you to never love another or another as he goes.
& if my looks one day be gone, my mood
will excuse my bad behavior. O trophies
of action, between which occasions suffocate,
 
& which boil into vapor, I should have seen X coming.
Not that anything would change the case, or more
Closely approximate the correct answer, but with the lawn
exposed I would not have to wonder when
it is you enter and when it is you leave.

* * *

The letter X is one of the main characters in this series of poems, “The Goodbyes.”

(QUOTING FROM POEM)

O trophies / of action, between which occasions suffocate, // & which boil into vapor, I should have seen X coming.

Sometimes I’m like, I should’ve seen this coming. (LAUGHS) You know, like, I should’ve seen a lot of things coming, and there should’ve been some lesson that would’ve helped me see what was gonna matter next. But it doesn’t usually work that way.

The final stanza, it really goes back to weighing history and memory again, and where they meet. This poem, “Goodbye 14,” is a part of a larger serial work called “The Goodbyes,” and “The Goodbyes” come from losing a lot of people that I’ve loved. And the premise isn’t like, oh poor me, I’ve lost people I love. The premise is that we see difference, especially right now, everywhere. And this actually celebrates one of the only universal things I could think of, which is that, everybody will lose someone or something they love more than themselves in their lifetime. And so there was this way in which I missed them. I missed how they talked, and I started reading their letters and different things that allowed me to kind of summon those languages in a way. So that’s when you’ll see a lot of these kind of longer lines that try to fit all these chronologies in.

(QUOTING FROM POEM)

Not that anything would change the case, or more / Closely approximate the correct answer, but with the lawn / exposed I would not have to wonder when / it is you enter and when it is you leave.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Katie Klocksin: That was Emily Sieu Liebowitz and her poem “Goodbye 14.” I’m Katie Klocksin and this is PoetryNow, a production of the Poetry Foundation. For more about this series, go to poetryfoundation.org/poetrynow.