Perceptions Of Being With Poet Martina Reisz Newberry

A reading of the poem “Subsequence” from Blues for French Roast with Chicory. We discuss the suffix “ess”, ageism and creativity and how it affects the perceptions of being. Cultural perceptions on age and values are explored.

Transcript

Welcome to the Poetic Resurrection podcast where we explore perceptions.

How self-reflecting questions can give you a better understanding of self.

I'm your host,

Sonia Iris Lozada.

Stay tuned.

Our guest this week is Martina Reese Newberry.

Martina has been writing for 60 years.

A passionate lover of Los Angeles,

She currently lives there with her husband,

Brian Newberry,

A media creative.

Martina Reese Newberry.

Hi,

Martina.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Oh,

Sonia,

Thank you so much for asking me and it's so much fun to see you again.

Oh,

Yes.

For those of you that don't know,

When I did my first reading of my poetry book,

Martina was the guest poet.

I didn't know that when I started talking to you and you were very supportive and I want to say thank you.

It was easy to be supportive.

It was good work.

Oh,

Thank you.

Thank you.

So today we're going to discuss a wonderful poem that I love.

It's from with a Subsequence.

From what book is Subsequence from?

This is from Blues for Coffee with,

Sorry,

Blues for French Roast with Chicory.

Oh,

There.

Yes.

Yeah.

You have the book.

Yeah.

The book is Blues for French Roast with Chicory.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we're going to be honored right now because you are going to read Subsequence to us.

Okay.

I'd love to.

As you said,

The poem is called Subsequence and the epigraph reads,

I have brought you here so you will know forever the silences,

Which are our beginnings.

And that's from Evan Boland,

Wonderful Irish poet.

Look here.

My years don't make of me a footnote,

Not a semi mystic or an elder woman poet,

Nor am I a poetess.

Yes,

Indeed.

Yes,

Does not fit the largeness of my anger,

The uncomfortable clarity of my voice.

S's do not strafe your eyes with a battery of code words for passion.

S's are not breathing,

Walking,

Cauldrons,

Love,

Drive,

Death.

They are not incendiary,

Fierce,

Judiciously choosing life no matter how ruinous it is,

No matter how terrifying it is,

Rather than a marshmallow death strung out over years,

Seated pleasantly and unseen on a cushion.

Listen up.

Keep your S's.

My years are no indication of the violence to which I've testified,

The wars I've detested,

The poverty and ineligibility I've fought unsuccessfully.

I am not become unbeautiful because of my 70 plus years around the sun.

I have not become anonymous or resigned.

I began in silence,

Similar to S,

No?

Too many of us have,

But I have not stayed there and I will not return there.

That those which who have given me cause to regret have only done that one little thing.

They have not killed me.

If there is killing to be done,

I will do it.

Destroy me out.

Read what I say.

If I bleed,

Do not doubt it.

You will drown.

That is beautiful.

Thank you.

I love that poem.

Thank you very much.

So now since you discuss age,

What do you think is the stigma of age?

Why do you think society has this kind of judgment?

So many of society's biases and judgments just stink out loud,

Actually.

And the ageism is right up there with the worst of them.

Women in general have been at the lowest end of the totem pole throughout time.

And they always have the same damn perceptions,

The same expectations.

Women are the weaker sex,

The less brainy sex,

The less logical sex,

And on and on and on and on.

And at the top of that list,

At the top of that negative list is age and beauty.

If we're old,

We're ignored and or considered unbeautiful.

If we are unbeautiful,

God forbid,

In the ways that models and celebrities are,

We're laughed at,

We are pitied,

And we are underestimated.

It is a sociological thing.

I will not say that it isn't getting better.

It is getting better.

It's not the best it could be.

And I would like it to be a lot better.

I saw there was an artist that I saw and he,

A photographer really,

And he took pictures of people of any of every age,

But he did beautiful black and whites and these black and whites.

And I have to admit,

I fall into the category wanting to look good and oh,

Well,

Sure,

Age.

And but he took pictures of the people and all their lines on their faces showed,

But it was done so beautifully.

I looked at these pictures,

I go,

Wow,

You would think all those wrinkles,

But it just showed a bit of regalness and acceptance of self.

And then I love his photography because of that.

I like,

I like pictures like that too.

I like seeing pictures of women who have,

Where it shows their dignity.

There is a lot of beauty and dignity.

Beauty isn't,

Beauty isn't just smooth skin or big eyes or skinny body.

That isn't the only thing beauty is.

Beauty is dignity and intelligence and patience and wisdom.

And that can be captured if photographers want to look for that.

Yeah.

And there's a self-confidence that comes across.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah,

I think self-confidence is beautiful straight across the board.

Absolutely.

I can't agree with you more.

I think that is absolutely true.

And self-confident women who hold themselves straight up and look you in the eye are beautiful.

There's a stigma about being creative and being mature in age.

How do you feel about the biases that older people are no longer creative or add any value to society?

Some of us come into our creativity later in life because of jobs and parenting,

All sorts of things,

Trying to help somebody else finish their education.

But I think barring debilitating diseases,

We come into our own with experience,

With what we've learned just by being alive and being there for what does happen,

For what may happen.

Through the years,

I think we learn what's important,

What isn't so important anymore.

And then that all goes into what we write and what we paint or sculpt,

Weave,

Or whatever it is we do.

Those experiences all are in that product and whatever it is we're putting out there.

And I think that older writers and older artists just have the bonus of bringing with them years of what they've heard and seen and eaten and smelled and loved and didn't love.

And if you've never had a broken heart,

How do you put it into your writing?

If you've never been poor,

How do you put that into your writing?

So I think older writers have that very much to give that plethora of experiences and just life,

Just being there.

So yeah,

I think that's what I like so much about our more mature poets and painters.

They bring with them an entire,

Not just one world,

But an entire series of worlds that they've experienced throughout their life.

Because a lot of them,

You can see their life in it when you read it.

And it's almost like reading history,

But yet in a very artistic sense where it really connects to people.

Yes,

Exactly.

I think there's nothing wrong with,

I don't want to sound like there's anything wrong with young folks,

Young artists,

Because there isn't,

They're wonderful.

But I think no one should underestimate the power of years,

The power of experience,

The power of having had things happen to you and you happen to things.

Because what I like about the youth poets now,

A lot of them have made it popular again.

With the slam poetry and everything,

I'm like,

Yes,

You know,

They brought it back.

So I love slam poetry as well because there's an art to it.

There's like a rhythm to it and they bring their life experience to that point.

Yeah,

There certainly is.

You must know,

I know not a lot about your history,

But I know a little of it from your books and just from talking to you,

You must feel that what you would have written 25 years ago is a great deal different than what you would write today and what you would say and how you would see things.

And I mean,

It's only natural.

And look at,

I didn't read anything you wrote 25 years ago,

But I have seen what you write now.

And it's excellent.

It's wonderful.

You know what I noticed when you're young,

Let's say life is an arc.

And when you're young,

You kind of like going partly through the arc,

But as you get older,

You see the whole completion of it.

So now I can see where I was 25 years ago.

You can use that as a yardstick.

You can say,

I see where I was 25,

35 years ago.

I see what I did then.

And you can use that as a yardstick to say,

Is that where I want to be now?

Was I what I wanted to be then?

If I wasn't,

How did I work my way out of it?

And can I use that to work my way out of something else?

You know,

With history comes knowledge.

It does.

Talking about that,

You informed me before that you were shy until the age of 50.

Oh God,

Yeah.

I was so shy.

I was one of those,

I figured if I put my hand over my eyes,

You couldn't see me.

And I was just so shy.

The first book I ever wrote was called Lime of Beans and City Chicken.

Love the names by the way.

Thank you.

Some professors of the English department where I worked at Cal Poly Pomona threw me a party for this book opening.

And it was really sweet of them.

And so I got there in plenty of time,

But I sat out in front of that house in my car for 30 minutes until somebody came out for a smoke and saw me sitting out there and said,

What are you doing out here?

Come in and sort of escorted me in.

I used to throw up before poetry readings.

I just was so scared.

I was afraid everybody was thinking bad things about me or my hair wasn't right or they'll hate the poetry or whatever.

I was just scared to death.

And then,

I don't know,

When I reached 50 or so,

I guess because I'd had enough to experience around people,

I'd worked all my life and so I had coworkers and all that.

I suddenly realized that for better or for worse,

Nobody was really thinking about me.

Not in that way,

Not that just my mere appearance sent some shockwave through a crowd.

I just realized everybody is trying minute by minute to keep their own shit together and not very many people are interested in me or mine.

And my first reaction is still reticence.

I'm still a little shy,

But I can push it to the side now like I wasn't able to before.

I guess I think it just came with meeting people and working.

I used to,

I always sort of worked behind a desk one way or another.

And I used to say that desk was just so comforting because behind the desk,

You're somebody else.

Behind the desk,

You're competent.

You look good if you go to work,

You probably look pretty good.

Behind that desk was great.

And it was,

Having to get in front of that desk,

It was the problem.

But it did happen and it just sort of happened.

I can't even say I worked very hard on it.

It was just sort of a realization that,

Hey,

People have their own thing and you're not that,

You're just not that big a deal in their lives,

No matter what you're doing.

No,

And what I realized with people,

If they're coming to see you speak or perform of any kind,

They just want you to be good.

They just really,

They want to be entertained.

They want you to be good.

They're not thinking,

Oh,

Her hair,

They might say,

Oh,

That hair is messy in their head for two seconds,

But it's gone.

They really just want you to be good.

They want to enjoy their evening.

Have you ever been shy or do you have,

You know,

Like,

I've been shy.

No,

Not,

No,

I've never been shy,

But when I did theater and I was doing musicals,

It was weird because right behind there's like six inches to a foot between backstage and the stage,

I had to be pushed onto the stage.

I was so terrified,

But for some reason,

Once I got on that stage and everything,

But just crossing from backstage to,

To the stage was terrifying for me,

But it's weird.

Once I just crossed that I was fine.

And it was fun for me.

It's going to stay in,

Has it been that way ever since for you or have you gotten over stage fright or?

I don't think you ever get over stage fright.

I've,

I've gotten better at it.

Gotten better at psyching myself into it,

But it's terrifying.

You know,

You helped me with my reading.

I didn't even,

It was my very first reading.

You look like a pro.

You didn't look like you needed any help.

You look great.

Oh,

Well,

You know,

There's the acting background.

Well,

See,

There you go.

You did great.

Yeah.

It was a pleasure to hear you.

Thank you.

Now I have another question for you.

What do you think would help in clearing women's age perspective?

What do you think would help because it's so ingrained in us to believe in a certain way.

And I am guilty of that too.

When I was younger,

I said,

Oh my God,

When I get old,

I don't want to get old,

But if you don't want to get old,

I mean,

You die.

So I,

Then I became,

Then I kept saying,

Just let me accept my age with grace.

Cause I don't want to look like getting all this plastic surgery and,

And then you don't even look like yourself anymore.

How do you think that that would help?

What I think at the very most basic,

I think we as women have got to get tougher in mind and heart.

I am not saying mean I'm saying tougher.

We need to start demanding respect for who we are and for what we do from our families,

Our coworkers,

Our spouses,

Our friends,

Everyone,

We need to start demanding respect.

My husband's grand great grandmother,

I think his great grandmother was a little bitty lady.

And when she was chastising someone or was angry with someone,

She'd pick up her fist like this and she'd say,

Smell it and tremble.

And we need to do that.

We need to say,

Smell me and tremble,

Get part of me and be aware of who in the world I am and what I do.

We need to be able to say,

Behave yourself to people who put us down,

Who make light of what we do,

Who call what we do a nice hobby.

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked that call that,

You know,

They say,

Well,

That's a nice hobby.

You know,

It's work.

How many books do you have out now?

That's a hobby.

And as you know,

It's work.

It's not a hobby.

It's work.

And I think we need to demand that we need to be strong and staunch of character.

We need to just by our attitude,

We don't have to yell at anybody or shake our fists like Brian's great grandmother,

But we do have to,

I think,

Change the way we give and receive information in such a way that they see us as strong and as staunch and as not willing to always back down or not to give up everything in order to nurture.

I think we have to just get tougher and we can ask for society's change and we can do what we can to change it.

We can raise our sons to respect women.

We can raise our kids to respect everybody,

To respect the arts,

To respect anybody that does art.

We can do that.

But the big change has to come from inside of us where we say,

I'm a grownup now and I work at what I work at,

Whether it's writing or painting or sculpting,

I work at what I do and I have respect for it and you need to have respect for it too.

You don't like it,

But you do have to have respect for it and you have to have respect for me.

I think a lot of that comes from how we perceive ourselves and how much we value ourselves at the same time.

Yes,

Absolutely.

Because if we don't value ourselves,

It's really weird.

If you're happy,

People can sense it.

If you're confident,

People can sense it.

If you feel you have value,

People give you value.

And that's the hard part is breaking through perceptions of what somebody else might have and clarifying who you are,

That you are valuable.

I find everybody's valuable.

You just have to be able to be responsible for things that are good in us.

We have to be responsible to grow them.

We have to be responsible for our own education,

For learning,

For reading,

For listening,

For getting in touch with other people.

We have to grow those things and not ever stop growing them so that we have something to bring to the table.

So we always have something to bring to the table.

Yes.

What do you feel that instead of behaving demure and not stressing with the importance of being,

How does poetry have that hear me move?

Poetry is about hear me.

It's poems and stories tell the reader or the listener,

This is how I see it.

This is how I feel it.

This is how I work with it.

This is how I sense it.

Come with me.

Come with me and see that.

And our work constantly invites others into our hearts and souls,

Into our truths and our lives,

Into our dreams and our nightmares.

It's a pretty vulnerable and rather wonderful thing of us to do actually is to say,

Come with me and I'm going to show you how human I am and you can see how human you are because these are things you've experienced or these are things that you felt.

So I think that's what hear me is all about.

At least for me,

That's what it's all about is that I would like you to see it,

How I see it and maybe be find a relationship to it in your own life.

Seeing it and hearing it.

Have you ever had anyone come up to you and say,

Wow,

I read your poem and it's exactly how I was feeling.

You can touch someone and make them not feel alone.

And along with that,

You can show them that you felt alone too.

That they were not alone and feeling alone.

That all of us have those times when we just feel like we're totally on our own and have no one to back us.

And I think you can show them that.

I think one of the things about putting yourself out there with your art,

You can get either one of those responses.

I have had people come up to me and say,

That sounds just like me.

Or I had that happen to me too.

Thank you for writing about that.

I never knew anybody else felt that way.

And I've had that happen.

I've also had people come up and say,

You don't know what you're talking about.

I've been so,

I mean,

Really I haven't.

Or they'll say,

I read your stuff and it's just too dark and that's depressing.

I don't want to read it.

Just I don't,

I don't think things are like that.

And that's okay too.

That's all right.

If you see what I write,

If you read what I write,

And even if it sets you off negatively,

Even if you say,

God,

That's dark.

Okay.

Well,

It is.

It is.

And I'm inviting you to feel dark if you need to.

If you want to feel dark,

Go ahead.

That's okay.

You can.

And so either way,

Whether they say it brought them a smile or it made them be able to relate or whatever,

If you read me and it causes some sort of stir in you.

Good.

That's good.

I find poetry normally is dark is where you're willing and you feel you have the freedom to open up about things people don't normally talk about.

I mean,

That to me is poetry is hitting upon things that hurt or make you laugh,

But it's something that normally people don't discuss.

I feel that a lot of times people have shared with me what they fear or what they worry about is what they don't talk about is what they don't.

And they'll say,

I read this book or that book of yours.

And I didn't know anybody else worried about that.

I mean,

Silly things,

Silly things like,

You know,

What if my,

What are my jacket tears on the way to work?

Or what if I lose my purse or what if,

You know,

Just things that you worry about on every single day level?

What if somebody hates me?

What if my good friend doesn't like me anymore?

What if nobody will talk to me?

And as you know,

In the case of writers,

What if nobody buys my books?

It's like,

Oh my God.

But but you know,

It's funny.

I was talking to somebody about what is and what is I think are amazing for writing.

They're not good for living in your life because it's always in the future and never in the present,

You know,

We're always worried about what if,

But I find what is our amazing.

Exactly.

I think I think you're right about seeing what is I think if you can say to yourself,

Well,

I'm okay now,

I'm not cold right now.

I'm not hungry.

I'm not party stricken.

I'm not.

I'm okay.

I'm I'm all right right now.

And maybe I don't know,

Maybe concentrate on that as you go through your life.

I don't know.

I certainly don't.

I don't have the answers to it,

But I'm a worrier.

I was a what if person and I still am a what if person because I found that anxiety is what if living in the future is what if and I'm going to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes,

And it's from Lao Tzu is if you're depressed,

You live in the past.

If you have anxiety,

You're living in the future.

And if you're calm,

You're in the present.

Oh,

I love that.

Yeah,

It's fine.

So he's one of my favorite and I think I'm I it's one of the things I repeat often,

But it's that was me living in the in the future.

Oh,

I love that.

That's really beautiful.

I'm gonna have to pick up my Lao Tzu and get refreshed on that.

What is what do you think is the connection between age and beauty?

Hmm.

Age and beauty.

Well,

I think it's I think one thing is that Americans in particular need to change their perceptions.

I wrote a poem kind of an ode to a woman named Catherine Walters,

Who was a famous English courtesan in the Victorian era,

Which was an era she was very famous.

And she was considered she didn't retire from being a courtesan until she was 80 years old.

And until she was 80,

She was sought after for not just physical attributes,

Although I'm sure early on she had those but she was sought after for her intelligence,

Her charm,

Her humor,

Her political savvy,

Her basic good sense.

And she was a sought after companion of royalty,

Of wealthy businessmen of artists,

All kinds of people.

And I think so many women have those same characteristics.

They're aside from physical attributes,

And they need to have we need as an American society to learn to pay attention to those qualities to to all the qualities that make a person what they are not what they look like.

And I think that the ageism I haven't traveled a lot,

But I think ageism is more prevalent in in America than it is other places.

I worked in the foreign student office for years and years and years at Cal Poly Pomona.

And so I got to talk with lots and lots of students from from other countries,

Just lots.

And one of the things I noticed that was always with them that I didn't see an American students so much or hear in American students,

You would hear these kids from foreign countries say,

I need to go home and take care of my grandma.

I need to go home and take care of my mother.

I'm my mother and my dad and I,

We live with my grandparents and we have I take care of them on Fridays or Tuesdays or whatever,

You know,

Just this absolute respect and a knowledge that that's what you're supposed to do is respect and respect your elders.

And it's one thing I they would say things like my grandma's the best cook in the whole world.

My grandma watches my children while I go to school.

My mother in law,

I mean,

They would just have all these wonderful things to say about these older people.

And I think I don't know what we do in this country to start that up in ourself.

You know what it seems like?

Because there's a lot of generations living under the same roof in many cultures.

And I think that's where you become more accepting of age because they have value in your home.

Exactly.

And you're all under the same roof.

I mean,

I've known people that have like four generations under the same roof.

Yeah,

Exactly.

They did me.

I think there is a certain expectation in other cultures that older people always have something to offer and that they always deserve respect.

They are treated that way.

And actually,

They for the most part,

A lot of them anyway,

Behave that way.

You respect me or you're going to you're going to hear about it.

I'm going to get a nasty.

Some of them are literally and some of them are not.

I did want to ask you a question about ESS and how it feels to have our value diminish with the ESS.

Yeah,

Exactly.

That damn S feels like a leavened,

Condescending pat on the head is what it feels like.

It's literally the suffix to identify things as smaller,

As less.

I don't regard mature women's art in a way smaller or less important or better or worse than any younger,

Prettier or more malleable person.

Can you imagine?

Okay.

Can you imagine calling Mary Cassatt a painters or Frida Kahlo a painters really?

Is she a photographer?

Was she an illustrator?

Amanda Crow a wood carvass?

I mean,

For God's sake,

It's got to stop.

We're not S anything.

We're not smaller anything regardless of our stature,

Regardless of what your height is or your weight or whatever.

We are not S's.

We're not cute little things.

We're not less than other artists.

Writers paint,

Writers write,

Poets write poetry,

Sculpting,

Sculptors sculpt.

What is the sense of putting an S on the end of that so that the person always knows just by their name that they're less than?

We're not less than.

We are not.

We are just artists trying to get along,

Trying to do the thing,

Trying to share our most vulnerable parts with other people.

We are not S's.

No,

And there's a lot.

I mean,

I've even had guys come up to me because one of the taboos was,

You know,

Women got raped by men.

You just,

You don't talk about that.

And they've come up to me and said,

You know,

We write these poetry,

But it's easier hearing from a woman so we don't feel so alone.

Oh,

That's cool.

They don't want to talk about it,

But it happened to them.

You bet it does.

Yeah,

Children get molested,

Male or female.

It was something that I've heard them say it.

I'm like,

Oh,

Cause then,

You know,

You make them,

They come across so loving.

And most people would think of that as an act,

A weakness,

And it's not.

Vulnerability is not weakness.

No,

Absolutely isn't.

Quite the opposite strength.

It's very,

Sometimes you have to really have a stiffened spine to be vulnerable.

Cause you know how people might react to it.

So Martina,

Tell me,

You are fabulous.

I love always talking with you.

I love talking with you.

Thank you so much.

You are a precious poet and a precious person.

Thank you for having me,

Sonia.

Oh,

Thank you.