Interview with Maya C Popa

We’re so honored to share words by Maya C. Popa who will be reading from her book American Faith (2019) which focuses on prominent themes such as a destructive administration, a history of cruelty and extermination, and a love of firearms. Though the collections first poem, “Mine’s not a political heart,” is reminiscent of the concept that to be apolitical is a privileged position, the poem flips back on its title and speaks to the opposite reality. Her direction extends to this film’s conversation: in addition to sharing her poems, Popa discusses topics such as political voices, a writer’s role, and how personal and political selves interact, giving insight into the human condition and what it might mean to be a citizen. To watch this interview, visit our Instagram IGTV at https://www.instagram.com/napkinpoetry_review/channel/

We have included a transcript of both Maya’s discussion as well as her poems.

When did you start to feel that American Faith was becoming a collection?

It was only in editing the book down, paring away poems that I realized the art needed to be an expressly political one, so during those years, namely 2013 to 2017, there’s been an uptick in political unrest—that political unease has become so acute and is so much a part of the zeitgeist. I had a healthy degree of unease and skepticism about what was going on in the States back then, a clear entry and access point, but paradoxically now that it’s so acute, I find it hard to write about.

How does the term “politics” resonate with you in your writing”?

I don’t know that I think about it enough—I don’t know if people involved in politics think about it enough, what that word really means. There’s that adage, “the personal is political,” and I think what we mean by ‘politics’ is this sort of ineffable overlap between individuals and public life, collective life, and maybe the logistics that come to manage that. We use that term so liberally to mean so many things at this point. For me, I mean the goings-on such as the history, the management of individuals that takes place by leaders. That’s my understanding of politics but again, there are gender politics, racial politics, all these are different lenses to understand who has power and who doesn’t and what does that do to language, what does that do to individual life. I don’t think it’s possible to be apolitical anymore, and it would have to suggest ignorance. Climate change is political, it’s a real problem and pressing issue but it’s also one that’s marred in politics which brings us to a standstill. But these are life or death things, it’s not as if you can come to a standstill here.

How would you consider your role as a writer in relation to politics?

I don’t think of myself as a political writer—I think it would be disingenuous to put myself in a category of activism. I’ve wanted to write poems that dealt with things that I wouldn’t necessarily discuss at the dinner table or with friends: I don’t really relish in political conversations that can get quite heated or can contrastingly feel as if you’re in the liberal echo chamber. I studied history and I really care about politics, but the way I process them is between measured realism and panic on the page with the poem. To me, it’s vital for my political consciousness to exist, but the way it exists is by slowing down the language of the media which engages in political discourse in a way that I find so unappealing and we can agree is made to rile people up. I don’t think I do the bulk of my work when I scroll through Twitter or even the New York Times, the work happens when I actively sit back and think. So, the poem allows space for that.

There is that beauty of a poem, You never know how language will land with another person and what it will do to inspire their feelings of activism—that would be a dream if it happens, but more than anything I still think language is a service for us to pay witness to our individual experience. That act reinforces our humanity, and I believe that poetry and literature do that. They reinforce our best parts.

Have your feelings about your collection changed over the course of 2020?

I don’t think I knew how bad it could get. There’s a poem in this book called “Late Under October’s Supermoons.” I don’t know if you remember, but right before Trump was elected there was a series of supermoons and I remember taking a walk, the evening air was quite crisp, it was a lovely October evening and I thought, is this an omen, is this classical mythology type stuff? Like many liberal New Yorkers at the time, I didn’t believe that he would really be elected into office. There was no sense of despairing doom. In any case, what’s happened since has been a series of atrocious human missteps and we’ve all witnessed them, we’ve all lamented them and we’ve all expected the actors to be held accountable for and they haven’t been, over and over again. So, short of a sense of nihilism which I don’t practice, I don’t think this book knew how bad it could get. And I’m happy about that since I was able to focus through the book on things more personal to me, for example hearing the language of misogyny used by a commander in chief and considering how that could play out on a smaller scale or in my own life. I thought about things like border law, access or not for refugees—again being the child of refugees. But the 2020 version of this book would be one in confetti.

Poems:

Late Under October’s Supermoon

A gentle inequity among the elements
for it is water moonlight wants most,

her attention, unsuited for the human scope.
In the great rivers, bodies dissolve

per their remembered shapes. We want
in October’s din, concussive music,
and it is clear why we must sometimes
change our lives, for beauty or disfigurement.

The supermoon blooms a tyranny of flowers,
white-knuckled, milk as the Pear soap
that could not save the mild Victorians.
Here, amid the cradled objects,

I hear the tacit accusation in her light
It’s what we are that keep a blight upon us.

The poem that opens book is called “Mine’s not a Political Heart” and it’s a misdirect since a lot of the poems in the book are political.

Mine’s Not a Political Heart

All of my childhood fantasies—icescapes
with Alaskan cranes, treasure diving
in the Black Sea—Putin has beat me to them.

He drapes a medal over his shadow
then extradites the dead from purgatory.
I live with this deadweight of humor

and scorn until the humor burns out.
I know my birthmarks aren’t heraldic,
the sunspots transcribed don’t form

a line of sheet music. Blinking, I kill
a group of gnats; I kill only to see clearly.
Give me refuge from that sentence,

freedom from the choir sanctioning.
Each day, the grail looks more like a chalice.
Each day, the chalice more like a mug.