“Waking Up Without You,” “Moonrise,” and “Sheltering in the Moon” by Carol Tyx appeared in Issue 31 and can be read here.
We’d love to hear more about “Waking Up Without You.”
After being single for almost thirty years, I fell deeply in love just before I turned seventy, during the pandemic. We both have our own places and we’re still working out the right rhythm for being together. “Waking Up Without You” works with the complications and delights of this fluidity.
Which poem in this set was the most difficult to write?
“Moonrise.” The challenge of this piece was how to convey the magic of this experience without coming out and saying it was a magical experience. I reworked the final two lines many times, trying to find the words that could hint at the mystery and marvel. Years ago I had a dream in which an old therapist said to me, “The radiance is for all.” When that dream popped into my mind as I was working on the poem, I knew radiance was the word I had been searching for.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
I would recommend Aimee Bender’s The Butterfly Lampshade, a novel that moves like poetry.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I would love to meet fiction writer Aimee Bender. Her novels move like clouds, wisps of things coming together and then raining down, dousing us with amazingly subtle emotional resonances. The smallest details can carry incredible weight. I want to talk with her about how this ability evolved.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m working on putting together a manuscript with poems I’ve written over the last ten years. Since I write about a whatever strikes my fancy, the challenge is to find an order that enhances the reader’s experience of the poems. Every day I move a few poems around; it’s like playing musical poems.
Our thanks to Carol for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “”Waking Up Without You,” “Moonrise,” and “Sheltering in the Moon” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/three-poems-by-carol-tyx.
___________________________________
Carol Tyx lives in Iowa City, where she participates in the community sing movement and supports community-based agriculture. Her poetry has appeared in Concho River Review, Caesura, and Remaking Achilles: Slicing into Angola’s History. Currently Tyx is the artist-in-residence at Prairiewoods eco-spirituality center. She also makes a phenomenal strawberry rhubarb pie.