Memoirs of a Poet

Poets' Quarterly features an interview with poet and author Jane Satterfield. Jane and I went to high school together at Prospect Hall in Frederick, MD. I remember especially our French III class which consisted of five girls, including Jane and myself. Our teacher was lovely Mrs. Kincaid. We were pretty much allowed to discuss anything we wanted as long as we conversed in French. It was one of the most enjoyable classes I ever had. About once a month we would have what we called a "Gourmand Day" in which we would have French cheese, bread and sparkling grape juice. Some of us later went to France together; I remember crying my first few hours in France when real French people did not seem to understand what I was trying to say, until I found out that such experiences were par for the course.

I thought what Jane has to say in the interview about poetry and writing might be of interest to some of the aspiring writers who stumble upon Tea at Trianon. It certainly was helpful to this aspiring writer, especially since Jane's newest book is a memoir based upon family heritage. To quote:

Place is crucial--there's the visible reality a writer seeks to honor and the less visible histories that inform and shape both place and inhabitants. Place is the source of our remembering, the site of our witness. As a person with "transatlantic" roots, I've often felt pulled between multiple places and definitions of home. It's easy to think that this is simply a "new world" condition, but it isn't. At the end of the book's title essay, I reflect on a colleague's well-meaning statement: if you've lived in America your whole life, isn't the "exile" metaphor contrived, little more than a "romanticized longing" that should be put aside? Marina Tsvetaeva wrote that "One's homeland is not a geographical convention, but an insistence of memory and blood." In some ways, the book's a meditation on that observation.

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