“My Mother, Reborn as a Bicycle”
Collaborators’ Q&A
What inspired you to bring your work to Broadsided?
Poet Rose Strode: I love working with other artists in collaboration.
What drew you to create a visual response to this poem, in particular?
Artist Cheryl Gross: Several years ago I had written and illustrated a book (The Z Factor) that was based on a science experiment that went south. The result: a subspecies of humans (umons.) Umons possess a third chromosome that has altered their appearance as well as their ability to navigate their existence in the world.
How did this poem come to be?
Poet Rose Strode: After my mother died, I noticed times when I’d see something that reminded me not necessarily of her directly, but of how she might have responded: for a moment I remembered her so vividly it was as if she were with me. I’ve written a number of poems about these moments, and this is one of them.
How did this image come to be?
Artist Cheryl Gross: It is an illustration from The Z Factor.
Did anything shift for you or come into new light as you began working on your visual response?
Artist Cheryl Gross: The image is pre-existing so no, my relationship did not change. As a matter of fact it validated my theory that there is a possibility that people can be born with bicycles wheels and blow-holes. Like they say, “it is better to roll than to walk,” an umon saying.
When you consider the full folio of work from this issue, what questions, observations, or connections arise for you?
Poet Rose Strode: There’s so much color!
Artist Cheryl Gross: I am very impressed with the quality of work chosen. I feel proud to be part of a group that is of such high level.
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 Rose Strode: Well, I’ll be honest: I was shocked. I’d hoped the tone of the art would match the quiet tone of grief in the poem and the sense of restraint. The poem echoes how I remember my mother, whom I miss intensely. I tried not to have expectations, but I hoped there’d be color and gentleness.
So it’s taking me some effort to respond here in a constructive way. I have to remind myself that sometimes art is shocking: sometimes shock is the point. That being the case, there is no sense in not being honest about my reaction: I was horrified.
I don’t get a sense that the artist picked up on what my mother was like, or on my grief, or any aspect of the poem. I like to think the artist did perceive these things, but this particular art doesn’t show that because it is not a portrait. It is its own expression in conjunction with my own expression.
So I don’t see this as a response to my work. And it doesn’t make me see my poem differently. And–this is important–if I’d seen the art in a different context–one where my mother wasn’t an essential topic–my reaction would have been quite different. The art in itself isn’t horrifying or objectionable. But it did trigger something.
That’s the interesting part–what’s going in on my brain and my heart? Why did this art hurt so much at first glance?
I don’t think it’s necessary to answer this, because art and poetry should always evoke more questions than answers. But it’s also important to try–that’s where art and poetry and most of science, for that matter, come from: the attempt to understand.
Also, I do want to hold up my end of the Broadsided bargain. So…
After a lot of thinking (and a lot of feeling) I believe one reason why my reaction was so extreme is because it reminds me of my mother’s attempts to contort herself to live with a man, my father, who was charming and delightful but also cruel, physically and mentally abusive, manipulative, and frankly terrifying. And the art forces me to admit that my gentle, loving mother in the process did something ungentle and unloving, which was to force me to contort myself–because I could only escape my father if she was willing to leave and take me with her. Since I could not escape, I had to change to survive and some of those changes were … awful. It’s a horrifying truth. And that makes the art appropriate to the poem.
The art also calls to mind how my mother died. Ma was diagnosed with Stage Four cancer when she was only 52–younger than I am now. She was just embarking on a more courageous point in her life, and we were getting to know each other as adult friends. Her illness changed her in ways that were, again, shocking and horrifying. She became simultaneously swollen and shrunken, she lost her hair, she was threaded with tubes attached to machines… and because she couldn’t control her illness, or even her body, she became very controlling of me. It was the opposite direction of where our relationship had been heading.
That’s what I feel the saddest about: that awful transformation of my mother’s body and spirit. How her world became monochromatic and painful. She was a vital, playful person who loved bright colors. I’ve learned that though my mother is dead, my relationship with her is very much alive. My poems are one way of being with her.
Describe your dream “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Poet Rose Strode: I would like it to go to the Moon. Or Mars.
Artist Cheryl Gross: Berlin. That’s the city I based the book on.
If this Broadsided collaboration were a type of weather, what would it be?
Poet Rose Strode: When I think of my mother, I think of the spring rain, which is monochromatic and soft but brings on a riot of color as the season progresses. Walt Whitman called such rain the Poem of the Earth. Read his poem, The Voice of the Rain, which is the poem I read at my mother’s funeral. But I think the collaboration might be a geomagnetic storm, of the caliber and intensity of the Carrington Event. The storm cause telegraphs to spark and shock their operators, who coped by turning off the batteries and using the auroral current to send messages instead.
Artist Cheryl Gross: High heat, because umons can withstand extreme weather conditions.
Do you have a favorite, generative prompt for artists or writers you’d like to share?
Poet Rose Strode: Use the last line of a poem as the first line of a new one.
Artist Cheryl Gross: ylSuch! (go for it in Klingon)
Read any good books lately?
Poet Rose Strode: Joni Mitchell’s Morning Glory on the Vine is a compilation of her poems/lyrics and paintings which she originally wrote and printed privately as a Christmas gift for her friends, and it’s been a fun thing to peruse. I’ve also been doing lots of reading about vernal pools and their conservation. And I re-read an old favorite from childhood: A Toad for Tuesday by Russell E. Erikson and illustrated by Lawrence Di Fiori.
Artist Cheryl Gross: The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. Also, I just received The Complete Little Nemo by Winsor McCay. Judging from the size, it may take a few years to get through it. But it’s very cool.
Seen any good art lately?
Poet Rose Strode: I’ve enjoyed the work of Paula Pitman Brown, displayed in the gallery at the Mass Audubon Habitat Nature Center in Belmont. The exhibit is entitled Wild–All the Time and can be viewed through the end of April. Here is a link to see some of the work.
Artist Cheryl Gross: Cynthia Lahti at the James Fuentes Gallery in LA.