Katy Aisenberg's poems have appeared in various journals such as Ploughshares, Partisan Review, and ONE ART. She has taught at Tufts University and works in Cambridge MA as a clinical psychologist. Her poem “A Cold Supper” appears in the Fall 2022 issue of Carve.
This poem evokes Henry James in the first line. What is your relationship to Henry James? Did you start from a place of reverence for his work or someplace else?
I have always loved The Portrait of A Lady. James' reverence for the place of objects and visual art in our world captivates me. So does his ability to describe psychological states with great, great nuance.
There’s so much unique, powerful imagery here. Where do you pull from when developing image sets for a poem?
Some parts of this poems are shadows of other poems. The prayer shawl is an image I have been waiting to use for years. I first imagined it as worn by a disciple in an ashram, then later as a child watching my mother get dressed. The other images come mostly from different times I spent in England—first as a little girl and then, in my twenties, in Cornwall.
The poem sets up these lovely images and then negates them starting at the end of the first stanza. How did you arrive at this unique move in the poem, and how did you develop a successful structure to highlight this move?
If I knew how to answer this, I could write poem after poem that I liked. But really the poem came as one long thread, like a gold chain that is unknotted as you find the right place to pull. The idea of it—the turn—was a vague idea that became precise as I wrote into the poem.
Along those same lines, why three line stanzas?
The three lines, I hope, are meant to feel like a person, their shadow, and someone invisible to them. Perhaps the speaker, the companion, and her fears. The number three is an odd number and the speaker feels like the odd person out in others' lives.
I'm so intrigued by the companion that shows up at the end of the poem. I don't want you to feel like you have to give away any of the mystery, but could you talk a little more about how you thought of the “you” that punctuates the end of the poem?
A great question. The companion is an internalized dark part of the speaker, one from her childhood. Her shadow companion is both constant (like a familiar) and frightening to her. I often write in the third person, using my first name Margaret. I suppose it is a way of trying to render how we can feel so separate from ourselves, always observing.