Behind the Poem With Jennifer LoveGrove
Today, we invite Jennifer LoveGrove to the blog to share the story behind the writing of Amber: resting place of departed souls, one of the poems in her latest collection The Tinder Sonnets. Read on for insight into the various associations Jennifer drew from the word Amber, and how this shaped her writing. Take it away Jennifer!
Content Warning: This piece discusses SA and violence towards women.
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When I started this poem, I began brainstorming associations with the material in which scarabs are encased: amber. At first, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. It’s not a gemstone or a mineral. It’s a solid made from a liquid. It’s fossilized pine tree sap. It resists easy classification, it seems ambiguous, it traps small creatures, it preserves souls. It is attractive to poets.
To see where a poem featuring amber might take me, I delved into the folklore and history of amber’s uses, and like many of the poems in The Tinder Sonnets, it was impossible not to see metaphors for dating habits and human connection and relationship rupture in much of the myths and uses of amber.
Remember those yellow teething rings for babies? Or those amber anklets purported to release pain-relieving matter through toddlers’ skin? Soon came associations of baby rattles, rattling sounds like chattering teeth. Not just an analgesic, amber is said to also eliminate fears.
Female fear–it’s a staple in pop culture and porn. Fear is a powerful motivator. For some, causing fear is arousing. For some, feeling fear is arousing. Our fear is pathologized, commodified, and sold back to us. We amass rituals and strategies to provide an illusion of safety. But safety is never guaranteed.
Climate anxiety and dread also weave their way into this poem with the sun’s sweat dripping, ominous shorelines, and pit mining devastation. I couldn’t write about amber without acknowledging the negative impacts of its pursuit and harvest.
There is a lot of fake amber on the market. Besides enjoying the sound and sonic play with words like“polymer”, “vinyl” and “polyester”, I also explored notions of authenticity and counterfeit, of what and who is believed, and what is fake news. Who is assumed to be lying? We contort ourselves to believe that a man we know, even love, couldn’t have assaulted a woman, yet question and discount someone brave enough to name him.
There is no escaping that amber is not just a material, but Amber is also a woman’s name. There are Amber Alerts when a child goes missing, and there is Amber Heard.
The Amber Heard testimony in the Johnny Depp trials was happening during the drafting of this poem, and her treatment in the public sphere was so appalling. It made me consider how we as a society respond to “victims,” how as women we must be the “right” kind of victim or no one will believe us. So there is reference to that, like “All Ambers lie. Especially about / men.” We can be flawed human beings, messy, inconsistent and still be telling the truth. That too is an uncomfortable truth.
Obviously #MeToo and #BelieveWomen were on my mind a lot during the writing of this poem (and the entire book). I have been forced to confront my own internal biases regarding who I instantly believe and who I may silently doubt. I hope this poem helps others to examine these impulses within themselves.
Like so many, I also recognized vicissitudes of fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses in myself, and wove in some of my own unpleasant experiences into the poem.
This poem marks a transition in the writing of this book when the poems moved away from depicting pleasure and empowerment and began to reflect my growing disillusionment and anger at how men treat women in the current dating culture. The poems got angrier, but I remember feeling destabilized after drafting this one, surprised almost, that this was where itwas all going. Did I really want to write about the guy who bit me, and afterI lurched into a taxi,jumped in at the last second because it was safer for me than being alone with the driver!? HowI was more angry at myself than him that he then knew which building I lived in?
I also talk about how fortunate I’ve been to maintain resilience and avoid a lot of “could have been worse” situations, despite some of the risks I’ve taken in my life. My gut is never wrong. We should all trust our intuition: “Tune the antennae.”Amber is also said to attract good luck. Phrases like “Jackpot chant, sweepstakes tempo” reference how I feel like many events in our lives are arbitrary and random and stem from good or bad luck. I’m no fatalist. Cause and effect aren’t always so navigable. Many of the things that happen to us, good and bad, we don’t deserve.
The ending loops back to discuss believability. Whose truth is true, who is considered fake? Is it always worth reporting? Does it matter or is justice for women a fallacy? I chose to end with an em dash deliberately, like an interruption, an abruptness, this attempt to tell my truth either cutoff or aborted. I wanted to leave the reader with a moment that may impel them to consider those questions, and to perhaps confront their own perceptions of a“truth myth.”
