“Alexis, 2016 – 2024”
Collaborators’ Q&A
What inspired you to bring your work to Broadsided?
Poet Philip Schaefer: Broadsided published a poem of mine as a broadside over a decade ago, back when I first had the courage to send work out. Publishing with the same journal twice, especially after such a long hiatus, feels a bit like returning to your childhood, like finding a box of letters under a bed you once called home.
What drew you to create a visual response to this poem, in particular?
Artist Lisa Sette: The thing I really responded to is “the blueberries are riper than August this June, we wear them like blood masks.” That line (and, of course, the red eyes of frogs)—the tenderness and sorrow. There’s a deep sadness, and the tenderness the poet uses to address grief and loss, both personal and ecological—it expresses so well something I feel but do not quite have words for.
How did this poem come to be?
Poet Philip Schaefer: Devastatingly, a young family member of an in-law’s passed away way too young. These kinds of tragedies leave us lost, dreadfully lost, fumbling for words where ashes must be.
How did this image come to be?
Artist Lisa Sette: I, too, like the red eyes of frogs. I spend a lot of time by ponds, observing frogs and turtles. It’s how I manage my grief. It’s where I go for healing.
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your poem? Does the artist’s response make you see the poem differently?
Poet Philip Schaefer: There’s the obvious nod to the frog’s red eye in this piece, which is gripping, but what illuminates the dialogue between the poem and the art here is the contrast of color, the stillness that rides the tightrope between life and death.
Did anything shift for you or come into new light as you began working on your visual response?
Artist Lisa Sette: Of course it does! As photographer, I respond instinctively to what I see. It’s hard for me to put into words what I see and feel. When I read this poem, this photo I took earlier in the summer immediately came to mind. It’s not just the frog—it’s the light and dark, the brightness and shadow, the emergence and submergence. Now I’m thinking in new ways about all of that.
What question would you like to ask your collaborator? (we will print your answers, too!)
Poet to Artist: It’s not hard to get lost, transfixed by that frog’s cosmic eye. What else about this photograph evoked a response from you in terms of conversation with the poem?
Artist Lisa Sette: I don’t know. This frog evokes everything—summer, warmth, ripeness—that is in this poem. There’s something about this poem that’s about time and season, and the photo, for me, is about that, too. It also has to do with the shortness of a frog’s life, the shortness of summer, that brief moment of beauty. Sometimes that’s all we get.
Artist to Poet: I just want to thank him. I appreciate his tenderness. I’d actually love to know what he’d like to be asked. Philip, what would you like to be asked?
Poet Philip Schaefer: I’m not totally sure here! Maybe something about how the poem came to be outside of the obvious topic?
When you consider the full folio of work from this issue (see the “related broadsides” links on the left), what questions, observations, or connections arise for you?
Poet Philip Schaefer: Much of the visual art in this issue seems to fixate on a detail from its adjacent poem, as if a kernel of the concrete opened a portal for the abstract. I love how each pairing builds off one another. It’s not just call and response, it’s finding layers between the layers.
Artist Lisa Sette: They’re all really different. I’m not sure yet… come back to me.
Describe your ideal “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Poet Philip Schaefer: This broadside feels sort of like an alternative obituary. I’d like to see it tacked to the sky, draped across an ocean, on the back of a postcard you sent to a friend you haven’t seen in ages.
Artist Lisa Sette: On a working waterfront. Where I live, that’s a place where all kinds of people gather: tourists, fishermen, harbormasters, locals. I like unexpected gifts in places like that.
If this Broadsided collaboration were a type of weather, what would it be?
Poet Philip Schaefer: The moment between fall & winter where you realize the leaves are still red by breaking their glassed fire under foot.
Artist Lisa Sette: A still, hot summer day.
Do you have a favorite, generative prompt for artists or writers you’d like to share?
Poet Philip Schaefer: Write/draw/sculpt/paint the thing that haunts you most. If it’s a feeling, give it a name. If it’s an object, break it down and reassemble it. Do the same thing with whatever bores you the most. Find where the two worlds merge, then breathe deeply into that balloon.
Artist Lisa Sette: Go take a very, very slow walk by yourself, quietly, and see what emerges.
Read any good books lately?
Poet Philip Schaefer: Richard Siken’s most recent book is pretty flooring.
Artist Lisa Sette: A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, by CA Fletcher.
Seen any good art lately?
Poet Philip Schaefer: PTA’s One Battle After Another.
Artist Lisa Sette: Work at New York’s El Museo del Barrio—the exhibit Tomorrow I Will Become an Island by Coco Fusco—it’s an amazing collection that explores queerness, gender, identity, race, and power. It’s powerful and such important work at this time, in particular.