ABP- Thank you for taking this interview, Diane. Last year, ABP was fortunate to have published City of ‘Shadow & Light: Philadelphia’. What can you tell us about this collection?
DS-This full-length poetry collection started in 2018 and evolved into its completion and publication in 2022.
City of Shadow & Light (Philadelphia) is divided into three sections: I. Suite for Iris; II. City of Shadow & Light; & III. Sing Me Ruby Red.
I. Suite for Iris is a suite of 19 individual Iris poems. Iris starts in shadow (domestic abuse) and grows toward spiritual enlightenment/awakening, as she frees herself inwardly and outwardly. It is layered in metaphor, as Iris is the name of a woman; flower; color part of the eye (which assists in letting light into the eye for seeing, hence seer) and mythological goddess of the rainbow, as messenger.
Since this collection deals directly with Jungian shadow and redemptive light, there are 10 shadow and 10 light poems, totaling 20 poems, in the second section, II. City of Shadow & Light. Set up to have both a “shadow” and a “light” poem as a thematic, dichotomous pair this section is constructed in ten pairs of poetic opposites, reflecting extreme times of shadow and light. This section presents images, events, and people in a modern-day city, including escapes to city’s natural parks, creeks, and rivers, even a still operable city run farm. Nature is the optimism woven through this section.
III. Sing Me Ruby Red, the last section, contains the poet’s childhood poems. The father (Irish & German, non-practicing Catholic, a heavy drinker) worked in Philadelphia’s textiles mills his entire life, dying of emphysema aka “Brown Lung.” The mother (Irish, a devout Methodist) is a retired cleaning lady (like her mother before her), working 37 years at the poet’s former elementary school. This mix created a “juxtaposed” childhood of shadow and light, which is recounted in 16 realistic poems of people, place, and a time that no longer exists the way that it used to.
City of Shadow & Light (Philadelphia) is a narrative poetic story told in shadow and light encapsulating the evolution of a soul in a city, namely Philadelphia, from childhood through womanhood, and the city still residing, as much in the poet, as she in it.
Perhaps the late poet, William Sharpe (1856-1905), sums it up best:
And sought therein the passage of the soul
From light to dark, from dark to light again…
ABP- Are you working on anything new?
DS- Luna, the lesser light is a forthcoming chapbook that will be published by Moonstone Press, September 2023. I am currently completing a full-length poetry collection, which will be my 8th collection and I have a 9th book of poems in progress.
ABP- Can you share a poem with us here?
DS– Shadow 6
In Darkness of Night this Face I See (Pages 55-56)
In darkness of night, this bright light boring through bone, drilling
carpenter bee tunneling into wooden thoughts—spine curling fetus
on bed of nails; and then dream storm after dream storm invades
sleep, until descending dark chamber steps into swamp.
Untrustworthy place, the mind’s mind beneath unconsciousness,
beneath dreams this subterranean place, too difficult for even
Freud to explicate. File cabinet holding filed-away-dreams
like the one where I was dying in a foreign land, unable to speak
the language, ineptness to adapt to captive lifestyle, evil dictator
brainwashing as Hitler’s propaganda, controlling as Orwell’s
Thought Police. Once, dreamt my face in the gas chamber line.
My voice cries out. Darkness of surrealism inexplicable
as the invasion of Dali’s black ants crawling everywhere,
Bosch place, where I cannot pull my drowned body up,
away from nightmare. Years of dragging chains—absence,
my missing-in-action face. Phantom haunt awakenings
and occasionally these garish dreams where I am walking off
the plank of splintered heart into missing spaces of foaming
waves crashing against stars, washing over disappearing
phases of each waning moon’s mountainous storm clouds—
misty night blinds remembrance.
And just last night, I thought I finally arrived on the calm bank
of closure, tranquil summer river unfurling blues to violets—
spiny sailboats’ shark fins in breezeless sunset, pointing
flapless wings toward heaven—yet never really arriving
stillborn in stormy night. Anchor swirling eddies of time,
splashing sleeping face with cupped fistfuls of river’s
wakefulness; and that was precisely when the wooden framed
photo fell loudly enough to awaken me & the spirit of the dead
tree, which it was made from—splintering everywhere.
I searched forbidden, a subterranean inferno for an empty voice.
Naked feet walking across time’s divide over broken-glass-dreams.
Nail of memory is all that remains and my face under all
the shattering, safe. Feet, unburned—uncut. Released.
ABP- What is the art/lit scene like in Philadelphia these days? Have you been to any good readings lately?
DS- The Philly poetry scene is alive and well in every neighborhood of our city. g emil reutter and I host a featured reading series at the Northeast Regional Library in Northeast Philadelphia, as well as seasonal readings at Chase’s Hop Shop. Check out our North of Oxford link – https://northofoxfordreadingseries.wordpress.com/
We recently hosted a featured reading and open mic at the Pennypack Environmental Center in June 2023 and had a great turnout.
ABP- Thanks again, Diane. If there is anything else you would like to announce, share, promote, or anything else, please do.
DS- Thank you for this interview and all that you do to promote the art of poetry.
I would like to add that I have poems forthcoming from Wingless Dreamer Press: Echoes of T.S. Eliot; Tiny Seed Journal’s Wildflower Anthology; & Arlington Literary Journal.
Also, I work a full-time job as a buyer for the government and I am poetry editor at North of Oxford. Submissions at North of Oxford are always open for poetry, book reviews, commentary, and essays. Check out our ABOUT page: https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/about/
Lastly, you can visit me at https://dianesahmsguarnieri.wordpress.com
http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=diane+sahms
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