Recently the Dish featured the poetry of Mary Szybist, whose collection, Incarnadine, won the National Book Award in November. In an interview, she discusses the connection between her religious life and writing:
When I was young, spiritual faith had an enormous presence in my life. When I was a young adult, its absence, at times, felt enormous. Now my relationship to it is more complicated, and I try to let those complications into my poems. W. H. Auden once said that “poetry might be described as the clear expression of mixed feelings,” and my mixed feelings about faith and spirituality often drive my work…. I don’t think I was ever after spiritual clarity, at least not the kind that might be held as an enduring truth. An insight that helps me through the struggles of one day will not necessarily answer to the spiritual unrest of another. That is, I think, why artists keep creating and writers keep writing. We change; our world changes; what suffices one day will not necessarily suffice the next day. We need new visions. I like Robert Frost’s idea that a poem is a “momentary stay against confusion.” Clarity may be “momentary”—but that does not make it less valuable or needed.
She goes on to argue that the poems in Incarnadine could be seen as a feminist response to the Biblical tale of the Annunciation, when Christians believe an angel told Mary about her miraculous pregnancy:
Feminism means, in its most basic sense, a belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. I do, of course, believe that. Feminism might also be described as activity in support of women’s interests, and I think Incarnadine does answer to that description. I grew up identifying with the icon of Mary, mother of God, since I was named after her. I also felt myself to be in her shadow. I think Mary is a problematic ideal to hold up to women for many reasons; she is celebrated for being both mother and virgin—an impossible ideal. It is particularly the virginity ideal that is held up to women (and not men) that I find problematic, and virginity is a concept and expectation that still has real and often dire consequences for women throughout the world. I wanted to complicate the figure of Mary and the way she relates to this “ideal.” So … I would say this is a feminist response.
The Dish 