If Beethoven Were a Whale: Robbi Nester Discusses Her Collection, Narrow Bridge

from (Main Street Rag)

Oct 11, 2024

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If Beethoven Were a Whale:

Robbi Nester Discusses Her Poetry Collection, Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag)

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Summary of Our Interview:

In this interview Robbi Nester discusses her latest book, Narrow Bridge. The book opens with a quote from Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, “The world is a narrow bridge, /and the main thing is not to be afraid.” In this collection Nester addresses things that scare her, from encounters with blunt people while trick-or-treating to having conversations with the ocean. We discuss family histories of immigration, dress-codes in the 60’s, and what we learn about the natural world when we write about it.

Poems Read

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Trick or Treat 

All summer we kids would plan 
as our mothers stitched and stapled 
in preparation for this day in late 
October, when the moon burned 
orange as maples and the air 
turned cool. My mother only hoped 
I might accept at last her bows and baubles. 
Rather than princesses or gypsies, 
I preferred the bizarre 
and the original—a light bulb, 
or a pencil capped with pink eraser, 
a praying mantis or a fly. But this year, 
at eleven, I agreed to let her  
dress me as a black cat,  
silky ears and whiskers 
perched on a black velvet hairband, 
slinky leotard and tail 
that brushed the ground. 
My figure was quite precocious. 
Most days, I hid beneath loose blouses,  
unbuttoned cardigans. 
At last, I let her show me off. 
Pins in her teeth, she smiled, and made me 
twirl before the mirror, handed me 
my coat and flashlight, shopping bag. 
They gawked, adults and kids alike, 
as I stepped up to each lighted threshold, 
bag extended to receive handfuls  
of Clark bars, Mary Janes, Nik L Nips, 
and Necco Wafers, wax lips 
and candy necklaces, Pez charms, 
enticing Licorice All-Sorts. 
Finally, one woman on a distant block
stepped sternly to the door,  
declared me an embarrassment. 
Too old for trick or treat.  
“Get a bra!” she said, 
shadow cowboys blurring  
as I fled.

Conversation 

Trafficking with immensities is dangerous. 
Knowing this, I went down to the sea  
and spoke to her—a kind of  
séance, though neither she  
nor I were dead. I thought about  
the moon, drawing the sea out  
of her basin like a hypnotist.  
Thousands of miles apart, that  
hunk of rock still makes the ocean  
leap and yearn, and riles us too,  
with its insistent light. 
The longing between them 
is that contagious. 
I’m not the moon. 
She could hardly hear my voice 
over the wind and water,  
though I could tell that she was listening  
by her expectant silence. 
I asked the ocean what  
message she might send. 
And then I waited.
Narrow Bridge 11 
For a moment, the sea  
lay calm and smooth,  
and then she raised a wide  
black wing, as a man might lift  
a hand to slap a fly out of the air. 
From a dry spot beyond  
the tide pools, I watched the wave  
crash down where I had stood,  
and might have stopped at that,  
but being curious and none  
too wise, came creeping  
down the bank, toward  
the rippling surf, like arcs  
on an oscilloscope. 
Putting out a calming hand, 
I sang to her, and found  
that sphynx, the ocean, opened up  
her silver eyes, and let me  
sit between her paws.

The Making 
If Beethoven were a whale, he would 
groan a song as monumental as his bulk,  
one the waves would write—always  
in suspension. They would take an hour  
to break along a shore so distant  
none of us could fathom where it was. 
Deaf, yet full of music, he would weave with song  
the ice-blue play of sun on arctic water, 
surge of rain on turquoise surf, conjuring  
the other creatures of the ocean as he sang— 
mantis shrimp constant as castanets, 
booming grunts and groupers,  
dolphins’ chatter in static bursts,  
the electrical hum of moon jellies, 
a thousand castoff planets 
drawn through the ocean 
like a comb through flowing hair, 
while choruses of belugas, blue whales, 
near-sighted narwhals would contribute 
a plaintive descant line. 
To start, he would have sung  
the molten earth, hot and smoking,  
the burning mountains shedding pools of tears  
where this whale, the only living creature, 
could circulate the globe, singing the world into being.

Quotes

Right now I’m writing little tiny poems, and sometimes when I cut them down they go away.

I have a poem that went through 20 drafts, and that’s not unusual for me…”Ties,” in Narrow Bridge, went through 30. It takes time to do these things. Don’t be impatient.

“(I want my poems) to be accessible, but also like a deep lake, like Lake Baikal in Russia.”

Writing Techniques

Try writing a poem about a personal memory. Give just enough detail to show the reader what is going on, but don’t belabor the point, as Robbi does in “Trick or Treat.”
If writing about a mysterious subject, try doing more research on it, as Robbi does in “Conversation” in which she imagines having a conversation with the ocean.