Stephanie Cawley is a poet and teacher who lives in Philadelphia. She volunteers at Mighty Writers, where she helps middle-schoolers write persona poems. Her work has recently appeared in BOXCAR Poetry Review and Used Furniture Review.
Her poems "Medusa" and "In Which Our Hero Becomes a Masked Vigilante" appear in Issue Thirty-Nine of The Collagist.
Here, Stephanie Cawley talks to interviewer Elizabeth Deanna Morris about myth and lovely language turned menacing.
1. Could you talk about writing “Medusa”? Why did you decide to retell this story in particular?
I have always been interested in poems and stories that retell myths or fairy tales from the perspective of a marginalized or monstrous character—Margaret Atwood's poem “The Sirens” and John Gardner's novel Grendel are two I remember loving when I was younger. “Medusa” was really the first time I attempted to do that kind of re-telling myself, though I have gone on to write a number of poems in this same mode. When I set out to write this first poem, I started thinking about some “monster” figures who I thought might have more to say than they had been afforded. I don't really know why I chose Medusa except that it struck me right away how lonely she might be, and how full of grief, and I knew I could make something from that.
2. In “Medusa,” the speaker seems to have lost most of the power that she wielded in the myths—instead of feeling empowered by her stone-turning abilities, she’s trapped by them. Could you please talk about shifting her to such a defeated character?
Oh, it's funny to think of her as defeated in this poem, though I guess she is. I suppose I thought of her “powers” as more like a curse—I should also probably confess that I did no research for this poem, so I have no idea if that's actually true or not. And I was also interested in taking the long view, of bringing her into the present, where, I imagine, even if she had once enjoyed or felt powerful from turning people into stone, she would be tired and lonely and ready to go home.
I think what I find interesting about re-purposing myths and fairy tales is how they can be stretched to accommodate multiple versions of the same story, the way people can contain multiple versions of themselves. I think when you speak through a mythological figure, no matter how you as author make that character, all the other versions of her are there as an echo. So Medusa is, in my poem, a little sad, almost a ghost, but the terrible, fierce version of her is there in the reader's mind, too.
3. I love the way you turn language in “In Which Our Hero Becomes a Masked Vigilante.” Phrases like, “I have been biting bullets for years” get reborn when you end with “but now I want to spit them out.” Later, lovely things, confetti canons and diamonds, get put together into something more menacing—a sort of gun with diamond shot. Could you talk about this play of language in your poem?
First of all, thank you for such a generous reading of my poem! This was a really fun poem to write. I began writing this in response to a prompt, actually, that gave me the task of reinvigorating some clichés. So I started coming up with clichés turned a little inside out and used that language to shape and drive the poem. I was also thinking at the time about the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia, and about the Occupy movement. The Mummers Parade, if you don't know about it, has happened for more than a hundred years on New Year's Day here in Philadelphia. The Mummers are mostly working class people who spend the whole year creating these elaborate themed costumes and sets. They then perform in various configurations of string bands with lots of dancing and choreography and confetti during the parade. Both the Mummers and, I think, the spirit at least of the Occupy movement involve kind of radical transformations, and maybe a threat of disruption as well. I wanted the language and voice of the poem to enact a similar form of transformation, a re-claiming, though I don't think I was conscious of all that happening as I was writing.
4. I read in your biography that you help middle-schoolers write persona poems through a program called Mighty Writers. How has helping these students influenced your own writing?
My students have written some amazing persona poems, poems in the voices of a lost baby bird, a hilarious version of Batman, the pea from “The Princess and the Pea,” a kidney waiting to be transplanted, and on and on. Just being around kids excited about poems is really energizing. But also, I think I am sometimes insecure that these more imaginative poems I write are “just for fun” or do less meaningful work than other kinds of poems. So when I hear students say brave, interesting, observant things in their persona poems, things they might not have said without the vessel of a persona, it affirms for me that a poem that is imaginative and transformative can also say something very true about the real world and the people in it.
5. What good things have you been reading recently?
The best thing I have been reading lately is The Gazer Within, the collected essays of Larry Levis. The book is wonderful not only for the compelling ideas about poetry, but also for Levis' enormous humility and humanity. I also just bought the huge, new volume of collected Louise Glück poems, which is a marvel to have on my bedside table. And I've been reading a lot of Philip K. Dick novels, most recently Martian Time-Slip.
6. What else have you been writing as of late?
I have been writing some more persona poems and also a few non-persona but narrative poems exploring other mythological, fairy tale, and science fiction characters and stories. I am also working on some poems and nonfiction pieces about the small town in New Jersey where I grew up.