Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa, a high school English teacher, is a poetry editor for The Weight, a journal for high school students, and Porcupine Lit, a journal by and for teachers. She and her husband live with their dogs in Lawrence, KS, where she co-hosts the Volta reading series at the Replay Lounge.
Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Of Tyrant (Word Works Books, 2024.) She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The Couplet Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work can be found in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, POETRY, and American Poetry Review. She can be found at http://www.leahumansky.com or @leah.umansky on IG.
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Melissa Fite Johnson: Thank you for having this conversation with me, friend! I love you so much and couldn’t be more thrilled that we are both celebrating the publication of our third collections in the same month (April 2024). I want to start at the very beginning—at our beginning. We met (over Zoom, but still) in May 2021 at a virtual reading for poets who are secondary school teachers. You and I especially hit it off, and I’d never felt so seen, meeting all those poets whose daily routines and lives most clearly resemble my own. It was also affirming to meet so many teacher-poets whose work I admire deeply, because for a long time I thought my profession meant I wasn’t a real poet, that the “real” poets were academics. Meeting you changed my life. It reframed how I see myself and my life’s work.
I’d love to know if this is something you ever struggled with, and to what extent your identity as a teacher ever influences your identity as a writer (and vice versa)? I’ll say that for me, Midlife Abecedarian marks the first time I really embraced my identity as a teacher, and it felt wonderful to finally write poems about that huge (and mostly joyful) part of my life.
Leah Umansky: First of all, you made me cry. Thank you for these generous and kind words. It means the world to me that our interactions made you feel seen like this. I just felt such a kinship to you, like we had been friends and more importantly, poet-friends, for years, even though we hadn’t.
I understand your struggle. It’s an interesting one, being a poet and an educator. I don’t write about being a teacher very often. I am inspired by my students, often, and sometimes things they say or do may spark a poem, but very rarely do I write a poem about being a teacher. What’s bizarre is that your poems in your new book—about you as a teacher—truly resonate with me.
On the topic of identity, I’m curious to know the flip side of this—when did you start to truly identify as a “writer”? Was there a certain moment you can remember, or several moments?
MFJ: I had trouble identifying as a writer for a long time. I didn’t want to make a false claim to a title I hadn’t earned. There’s an epigraph in Midlife Abecedarian that’s taken from the last three lines of Linda Pastan’s “25th High School Reunion”: “Look! We have all / turned into / ourselves.” I chose it because the book is coming out almost exactly 25 years after my high school graduation, and as a writer, at least, I do feel like I’ve finally turned into myself. It’s been years since I thought I would “earn” the title of writer or poet after achieving whatever goal would finally validate me. Eventually, I figured out there’s always someone out there who’s won a bigger prize or published in the bigger journals or with the bigger press. Waiting for something external to validate me was never going to work. I had to feel validated for the same reasons I did as a kid writing in my journal, before I knew how competitive and harsh the publishing world could be—because writing makes me feel the happiest and the most myself. Writing has led me to some of the most beautiful friendships and moments of my life. Once I learned to follow the love and stop chasing validation from strangers, I finally felt like a writer. Now I don’t hesitate to call myself a poet, and it really took decades of being a poet to get to that place.
Speaking of being hesitant to claim certain aspects of our identity, I wanted to mention how much I loved your thank you to your mother in Of Tyrant’s acknowledgments—“Thank you to my mom, Ronnie Umansky, who always told me I should write political poems and taught me that each of us is political…” How did she teach you that “each of us is political”? And were there certain topics, like politics, that you didn’t let yourself write about earlier in your career?
LU: Wow, my mom is going to be so excited to be mentioned in this interview—she doesn’t know about the acknowledgement.
I made the choice, after my divorce, over 15 years ago, to self-identify as a poet. I started to do the work. I started going to more readings around NYC, meet more poets, and began to take myself seriously. Ultimately, I got so annoyed at being turned down for readings because I didn’t have a first book or a large enough publishing record yet, that I started my own series, COUPLET, which turns thirteen in the fall. This is how I developed the agency I needed to identify as a writer and a poet. I had to find my people and garnish that strength.
It wasn’t until I was an adult, a woman getting divorced whose world was turned upside down, that I realized oh, being a woman is political. A love poem is political. A poem about the self is political and well, a love poem to the self (which is kind of what every one of my poems are), is also a political poem.
I think, as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s “politics” was like an ugly word to me. I wasn’t interested in it. I didn’t understand my role in it and I think our generation was so far removed from that of my mother’s. She was a teenager in the 60s, she protested, marched, and talked about Vietnam all the time—it was all like another world to me as a teenager. Now, it’s happening again all around us, with all ages.
All of my poems are about womanhood in one way or another, and thus about politics. Of course, I’m a political poet. Of course each of us are political.
When I saw Trump following Hillary around the stage during the debates back in 2015, I was horrified. It activated something in me. All the “Tyrant” inspired poems started spilling out of me and I remember telling my mom, “Well, you’re going to be very happy; I’m writing poems inspired by that Tyrant.” I never thought he’d become the President of the United States, and I shiver to think it could happen again.
It blows my mind that my third full-length is a book inspired by that Tyrant and other tyrants in our lives—whether they are personal, political, professional, or romantic. Every poem we write against that is political. As I said earlier, I chose to adopt it and accept it. I know my mother is proud. I’m sure my father will look at my mother when they get a copy and say, “Oh god, look what you did.” Honestly, I think the political nature of this book, along with the disgust, anger, and hope within, will make it a more accessible book of poems. I wonder if this will be the book of mine my parents actually read. I hate the Tyrant, but he did get me to learn something about myself.
Is there a poem in Midlife Abecedarian that you are most proud of? Or most surprised by? One that was the most challenging for you to write?
MFJ: I love everything about this answer—the humor, the awakenings. I’m especially fascinated by the comment “I wonder if this will be the book of mine my parents actually read.” You seem so close to your parents, so I’m surprised they haven’t read your books—but then again, my mom and I aren’t close anymore and she reads everything I write. It’s actually terrifying, because I know she believes certain things aren’t proper to discuss.
And that leads me to your comment, “Of course I’m a political poet. Of course each of us are political.” The poems I’m proudest of in my new collection are political, in the sense that I’m tackling something I was taught not to make public. “How Dare Anyone Say I Don’t Know Love” is about my husband’s and my decision not to have children, a decision we’re really happy about. “Easter Pantoum” is about sexual assault, specifically about how my old friends didn’t protect me from getting into a bad situation. “Deciphering Grief” is the poem I’m most nervous for my mother to read, because it’s about our difficult, painful relationship. And then the teacher poems you mentioned—even those feel political to me, in the sense that they challenge the stereotypes of what it means to be a teacher, that it’s precious and noble and thankless. These poems are my way of taking up space, of refusing to be small, which is always what I was taught I should be. I didn’t write any of these poems to offend, but I wrote them in the spirit of total honesty and authenticity—I wrote them even knowing they could offend. I wrote them because I had to.
This idea of being important enough to take up space and tell our stories reminds me of a theme in Of Tyrant that really meant something to me: “Every one of us is important.” You write about the origin story for that line—Mario the Lyft driver says it. Do you believe that sometimes we’re meant to hear, see, or witness something that gets us through when we need it? In this book, you mention your emerald year, your horoscope—do you believe in signs? Also, you have multiple encounters with drivers, with strangers, in this book. You seem to either be actively seeking out the good in people (to believe in humanity again despite, despite, despite) or encountering it by chance. Do you think you were looking for that good? Or was the world just showing you what you needed to see?
LU: I believe in goodness and kindness. I’m always telling my students that a kind act goes a long way. You never know how your kindness will touch someone else.
Yes, I do believe that things happen for a reason. I do believe that there are some things we are meant to see or hear or feel, but the tricky thing is—are we receptive to it? Do we catch it? Do we let it resonate or move us? Honestly, I wish I had a better memory and could remember these key things when they happen, but I don’t. Or maybe I don’t trust myself enough to remember. I tend to text myself when these sorts of things occur, and then I include them in a poem. I just think there are many ways to live a life and the one I want to live is one of appreciation and wonder.
You know, when my boyfriend first came over to my apartment, he totally made fun of me for all of the positive affirmations I have hanging up, but I think it makes a positive difference in my life. The mind is a mystery: what it sees, what it hears, what it feels matters. In my poem “What Does the X Mark?”, a Lyft driver named Mario says, “Every one of us is important.” When he said that to me, I was upset about the world we were living in and I was discouraged in terms of dating. What he said grounded me. It affirmed my faith in the universe.
I do believe in signs. I love horoscopes. They inspire my writing and often give me encouragement. I loved that notion of the “emerald year.” I don’t know if I had one exactly, but it lifted me and all that lifting brought me to where I am now.
I love “Deciphering Grief” because it is so difficult and so heart-wrenching. That’s what a poem can do sometimes—it is cathartic, sure, but it can also help someone else in need. I think it’s the most powerful poem in your collection, for exactly that reason! It feels like it was difficult, and it has that urgency and that tenderness in it. You were brave.
I joke about this being the book my parents will finally read because they don’t read poetry, they really hardly read books at all, and the reality is a lot of people don’t read poetry. I talk about this in class all the time—the stigma against it, and the fear—it’s a shame, but this book might be the one that reaches non-poetry believers.
How did you know your book was done? It’s something we’re always wondering, right? For me, it was very clear when I had the last poem, which I think is my favorite poem in the book because it terrifies me.
MFJ: Thank you for your generous words about “Deciphering Grief,” which is the poem in Midlife Abecedarian that most terrifies me. I’ve never written about my mother’s abusive ex-husband, whom she started dating the year after my father died, and even though he just gets mentioned in a couple of poems, I know she won’t be comfortable with lines like, “When he died, my mother wore her grief like a nightgown / and rebounded with a monster.” I don’t do it to stir things up. I do it because if we push down the past and pretend it didn’t happen, we can’t move on from it. We can’t grow. And we might be doomed to cycle back to it for the rest of our lives.
I am fascinated by the idea that the last poem of your collection, “Tyrant as Self Reflection,” is your favorite because it terrifies you. I absolutely love that poem, and it’s terrifying to experience as a reader, too. The idea that we’re in any way connected to a tyrant, to the Tyrant, to tyranny… It is also so important to hold ourselves accountable if we have any hope of making the world better.
Interestingly, my favorite poem in your collection is “Make It,” which lives as far from the land of terrifying as possible. It’s pure hope. It’s the poem that made me cry—I was experiencing it at the end of a very hard week, and it reached something inside me, these lines especially:
I hear praise. I turn my head and a mother is carrying her child
Across the street saying, “you have been so good today,” as she puts her
Down at the median. I smile. We all would like to hear those affirmations.
The last poem I wrote for my collection was actually the title poem, “Midlife Abecedarian.” Lynn Melnick edited this book, and I said I was thinking something to do with “midlife” for the title, and she suggested—since I had so many abecedarians in the book—that I write a poem called “Abecedarian for Midlife” and then have that be the book’s title. I asked her if she liked “Midlife Abecedarian” and she said, “Even better!” It was a cool experience writing a poem already knowing it was meant to be the title poem, and maybe because it had to, it ended up capturing many of the book’s themes—namely, mortality and pop culture. And since so many of the poems in this book are form poems—sonnets, villanelles, a pantoum, a ghazal, a sestina, and of course abecedarians—it also felt right that the title poem was in a form.
While I wrote in specific forms, you experimented with form in a very different way. Your use of repetition (the various uses of the titular word in “Stone,” “therefore therefore therefore therefore,” “reset // reset // reset // reset // reset // reset // reset // reset,” “I threw in an extra fuck,” etc.) and form (especially the poems with lines so long they are printed sideways on the page)) is absolutely mesmerizing. Do you go into a poem knowing what container would best fit the content? Or does the container surprise you as much as anything?
LU: Thank you. I am so touched by this. First of all, I’m glad that “Make it” speaks to you. I remember when that moment happened to me: I was crossing the street, and I experienced this glimmer of hope and texted myself about that comment. We often think it’s easy “to be good,” but it’s not, it’s work. Everything is work to some degree. It makes me think of Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” which I just taught last week, “You do not have to be good,” and students were so enthralled by her spirit and her message. I think we all need to carry that goodness and we need to also recognize the goodness in others—isn’t that what life is about? I recognize the good in you and you recognize the good in me?
I felt that “Tyrant as Self Reflection” was my end poem because it was the most difficult poem for me to write because of its focus on narcissism and toxic masculinity, and also just the intoxicating nature of the prose poem—it’s a two-page-long prose poem! It’s dense. I knew with that poem, the book was finished.
I love all the forms in your book. I envy them. I love poetic forms and I often use them, but they are usually a surprise, a rarity for me. To answer your question about form, no, I don’t often know what container the poem will take. I will say, I’m typically a fast writer and I try to follow my instincts. I knew many of these poems were going to be prose poems because I wanted to capture that intensity and that layering-over that only a prose poem can do. Some of the longer-lined poems, that are sideways, are acrostics, where I didn’t want to break the long line.
I love wordplay. It’s something I have to work hard at. I think it’s the hardest thing about being someone creative—to try, to play, to experiment, and to get out of your head.
In my poem, “[Of] Tyrant in Jest”—what a funny little poem, right?—well, all the words came out of the word “tyrant.” I mean, where else could I write “tan tart” and have people really get what I mean? Play has meaning, right?
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