by Robert “Bob” Bussey
Mary Striegel comes to poetry with a science background. She obtained her PhD, worked as a conservator of art, was the chief research scientist and manager for a federal laboratory specializing in historic preservation, worked on the preservation of the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington Cemetery, and worked as an Assistant Conservator Scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute. You might wonder how in the heck do science and poetry have anything in common. How can one lend anything to the other. Some historical background for Mary will help answer that question.
I interviewed Mary at the StoryBrew Coffee Shop in Natchitoches where she coordinates poetry readings once a month (musicians are also welcome.) You can find the coffee shop on Facebook at StoryBrew Coffee Café. Besides sponsoring poetry readings, they also sell excellent coffee and foods to go along with the coffee. Below are sections of the interview. We sometimes spoke over one another. I did the best I can in setting out what Mary had to say.
Bob Bussey: I usually go back to Thomas Aquinas when I do these interviews. I like to start there, and it’s just a quote from him: “Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.” Do you agree?
Mary Striegel: “I do agree. But I would throw in that philosophy, philosophers, and poets, and scientists are all alive with wonder. Because it’s hard to imagine people always think that scientists and poets are from diametrically different parts of the brain. But the reality is they’re asking the same question: Why? Why does the world work this way? And they look at the minute detail to find out the Why and the Wonder.
Bob Bussey: I noticed that your poetry almost always has a science flavor to it.
Mary Striegel: It does, and that’s because I have a PhD in organic chemistry. And I was always this person who had one foot in each door. From the time I was young, my father used to say that as soon as I could talk, the first question that came out of my mouth was WHY. And, when I was a little girl, he took me fishing. And he said, “Okay, you’ve caught you fish, now you are going to clean it. He was standing beside me, and he was cleaning his fish. I was cleaning my fish, and he got distracted for a while. He looked back over. I completely dissected my fish. I wanted to know how did this animal creature work. So, one foot in both doors. So, I took philosophy in college. I actually took the intro philosophy, which was scan of different philosophers, and then I took a course on aesthetics because I wanted to see why one piece of artwork was better or easier to interpret, or different, and to be able to quantify and qualify how the artwork worked. Whether it was a painting, a poem, a story … to get at the internal aspects of it. It was a 300-level philosophy course, so I would've been a junior in college at the time. I was also taking a painting class and there was this one kid who was very, very good that didn’t like my painting. And so he would start coming at me, and so I would just start quoting my aesthetics class on the meaning of the work of art. And finally, his brain exploded. Enough of this philosophical stuff and I’m cleaning it up. He was very, very
into hyper realism painting. And I worked more in a sort of, post impressionist sort of Matisse style. So that is where my philosophy intersected with my classwork.
Bob Bussey: So, were you doing poetry back then, too?
Mary Striegel: I started writing poetry when I was 7 years old. I started because there was a woman in my neighborhood who was a Sunday school teacher and a poet, and she decided there wasn’t enough poetry being taught in school, so she started up a poetry club for the kids in the neighborhood. And we met once a month, and she would hand out a simple written biography of a poet like Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, or Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And so, we started by looking at a couple of their poems. Learning about who they were. We had punch and cookies and then we would read our own poem that we brought to each meeting. And I did this for like three years as a child because I really liked it, and she had cookies and crackers. It was almost an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes long.
Bob Bussey: Tell me about your poetic journey as it went along.
Mary Striegel: When I went into high school, I preferred the creative writing English classes over the literature classes. I skipped a year of math, so that put me ahead in math. Which is always good for science. And then I was a slow reader, so that’s why I didn’t want to take the literature classes, because I just read slowly. I also learned a little better by either doing or hearing. So it’s interesting because my son is a completely auditory worker. Give him a book and he’s not going to read it. But he’s going to remember everything you say. So I wrote in high school as well.
Bob Bussey: What happened to the little neighborhood poetry group?
Mary Striegel: Most of the kids lost interest in the neighborhood poetry readings. I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and so they would have poetry readings downtown at the main public library.
Bob Bussey: So you were exposed to other adult poets.
Mary Stiegel: She (the neighborhood lady) would take me and I would go down there because she knew I had an interest. It was a different time back then. And by the time I was 13 I was hopping on the bus and going downtown by myself all the time. I would go down to a piano lesson on Saturday mornings, and then I would go to the public library. You know they would have a poetry reading or an art exhibit, or I would just pick up some books there. Then I would take the bus out to the art museum, and I was 13 and I go in there and they had the Satterwhite Hall which was the English Middle Ages hall that they had moved into this museum, and it had armor, and I would go in and pretend that it was my house. This is what I wanted my house to look like. I would hang out there for a while, and then I would catch the bus and go home.
Bob Bussey: Most of your poetry writing poetry back then was rhyming poetry?
Mary Striegel: Pretty much. In high school, I mostly wrote free form. The first poem I wrote back then was this:
“The world,
The world before me,
The past,
Let it be behind
For I shall go a wandering,
A wandering in time.”
Bob Bussey: That was like three stanzas or six because they all run together when you speak it.
Mary Striegel: I just remember it. I have it in a journal.
Bob Bussey: For how long have you kept any journals?
Mary Strigel: I’ve been keeping journals since I was about 10 or 11. I always have some king of book (journal) with me. You know, I dream a lot of my poems. They just seem to come out of my subconscious.
Bob Bussey: Do you have a particular place where you write poetry?
Mary Striegel: I dream a lot of my poems, and I keep a pad of paper by my bed. More recently, I might jot down some lines that just pops out of my head and then that will later become fodder for a poem. With that we began to discuss a number of her poems. The first is called “Spring Rains” and Mary told me that it comes out of a new relationship that she had now been in for the past 3 years. It is filled with metaphors, and while it might seem like a nature or Eco poem, it is really a
romantic one. So here it is:
Spring Rains
The river rises as the spring rains move onward.
Tomorrow, it will breach its banks.
A blue heron is stalking brim along the water’s edge.
Red-eared sliders and cooters perform a balancing ballet on a log.
Rain-beat yellow and purple irises sway in the wind.
Clouds roll back, leaving sunlight to sparkle beneath live oaks.
Seedling pop with bright green leaves stretching wide
With promises of a new world.
She explained that this came to her as they went to Fort St. John Baptiste and they were walking along, and there had been a lot of rain, and it was in the spring, and the spring rains had happened, and they were in a relatively new blossoming relationship … and that’s when the spring rains happened. The spring rain is a metaphor for the new relationship. But, true
to her scientific background and her childhood filled with adventures outside, she weaves nature into the fabric of the poem. “River rises” is another metaphor about the rising of emotions, the wonder in the new relationship. The second line of the poem is a complete metaphor … the breaching of the banks is really about the eruption of emotion that was occurring in this new relationship. The 3rd and 4th lines are about nature and take the reader back to some of Mary’s history as a child exploring nature, without telling the reader about her past. “Clouds rolling back” is another nature reference that is also a metaphor about how relationships seem to have a period of discovery when new insights into the other person or the
relationship in general are revealed … the clouds roll back. There are other references to nature that are metaphors about a relationship that I will let you contemplate. While this poem is about a specific relationship for Mary, she does not specifically reference that relationship which gives the reader a chance to place themselves into the poem. I think most of us have had relationships where the river rises, or falls. Where the clouds roll back and the sun shines, or perhaps the clouds dump a torrent of rain upon us.
The next poem we discussed was “Poete Street Nocturne.” When I first read it I thought it was a romantic poem. One that wove into its fabric references to nature. Those references, I thought, were metaphors for a description of a romantic relationship. You read it and decide. I set it out below.
POETE STREET NOCTURNE
The owls call from the cemetery.
His mate returns the call.
A harvest moon rises to the East.
White cool breeze blows from the North.
Winter is coming.
The zinnias are waning.
Leaves fall from sycamore and pecan trees
to blanket my yard.
I sit on the back stoop of my porch
Watching the stars slowly move in the sky.
The dog and the cat stay close
Fearing the predator in the trees.
The owl cries.
I have read the poem three or four times, and I still get a type of nature poem. But one that is describing the beauty of nature, almost like an ephemeral poem or an ekphrastic poem. But Mary quickly told me that this was about the dangers of society. About what is coming. It is a political poem wrapped up in metaphors of nature. “Winter is coming” is a metaphorical warning that something bad is coming for our society in general. So what then is the “owl.” Perhaps not a creature at all, but
perhaps a political point of view. Okay, so reread the poem and try to figure out what each element means if you place a politically colored glass over all of it. Or maybe it is both a nature poem and a political poem. At any rate, you can see Mary’s background wrapped up in each of the lines.
The last poem I am going to present is about Mary’s deceased husband. He was active military for 40 years, having served in Vietnam during the height of that conflict/war. He was exposed to “Agent Orange” on multiple occasions and later came down with bladder cancer from which he died. The poem, Mary told me was a way to gently and lovingly close the book on that chapter of her life and move forward. No references to nature in this one … she does write other types of poems, and even poems that are not completely filled with metaphors. So here it is:
My Veteran
I sleep with your relics surrounding me –
A flag, a bronze star, a purple heart.
There’s a sword in the bedroom
marking 40 years.
Letters from the government
Thank you for your service.
Did they know you gave your all?
Did they know you never complained about
The agent orange
or the cancer
or marching all night long in your sleep?
Did they know you were brave?
I see you now,
heading off for drill or training.
There’s a rustle of uniform as you kiss me goodbye.
You’re behind the wheel of the
’96 Ford pickup,
strumming your thumbs to the rhythm
of an Alan Jackson song.
There’s a $1 bag of peanuts in your hand.
You smile at me and say
“Everything’s just ducky.”
Mary, to me, is a mystery, but not so much anymore since I was able to interview her. But for that interview, I would still be reading some of her work as poems about nature. Now I know that she weaves nature into her poems as metaphors. Sneaky is what I have to say. I think she would like that. At least, I hope so. I hope her “Spring Rains” continue to be gentle, that they help her flowers “bloom fully” and that she does not have to “Wait until November” to see the beauty of all her flowers as they add color to both her night and day.
Robert Bussey is a local attorney and poet who has resided in CenLa since 1986. He interviews other poets and then writes these articles to help promote poetry. You can reach him at Rlbussey450@icloud.com if you are a poet and would like to be interviewed.
