BLOG OF THE WEEK ~ AN UPDATE WITH PEARL KETOVER PRILIK

My friends, it has been a while since we featured Pearl Ketover Prilik, who writes at Imagine. On March 14, 2011, Pearl became our 200th member, back in the day when Robert Lloyd was our Commander In Chief. We spoke to her last in March of 2012. (How the years zip by!) So I thought checking in on her was long overdue. Pearl lives in a glorious spot, on Long Island, the peninsula across from New York City. Wow. Let's stop by and see if she has the kettle on, shall we?

Sherry: Pearl, it was 2012 when we last interviewed you.  What’s new? Give us a snapshot of your life today. Including the beautiful Sir Oliver.

Pearl: It is difficult to believe that three years have passed  since our last interview.  What is new?  Mhmm.  Actually, what is new is that I only recently realized that I have been in a state of suspended animation – with more emphasis on the suspended and far less on the animation,  for much of these past three years.   Although I have had more than two handfuls of poetry published in hard copy literary journals – little else of a tangible nature has been accomplished.  I believe that the onrush of Superstorm Sandy had a far more profound effect, in that I feel as though I hit pause and have simply been in a state of stasis –

Neighboring Long Beach in days following 

Superstorm Sandy

AFTER SANDY

We emerged blinking

at sand piled streets

upturned cars, boats

flown from sea to land

all manner of tumbled

possessions

flung as toddler toys tossed

after a particularly onerous

unexpected temper tantrum

We emerged blinking

staring at splintered boards

torn remains of a walk holding

the footprints and memories

of generations long past

We emerged in crawling

returning lines

refugees

with collective held breath

until we reached home

or what still remained

We emerged

and rushed salt

destroyed gardens

through the murdered

pines to see

if our marsh tree

planted as a tender sapling

thirty years ago

still stood

tall

It did.

Only

then

did we

cry

Sherry: I worried about you when that storm was causing such havoc. It must have been devastating. 

Pearl: One of the first things that happened three years ago was Brady Max, born after Superstorm Sandy. He is a big boy now.

Sherry: He is beautiful, Pearl.

Pearl: Although the poetry has flowed, with many poems written during each week – the weeks have melted into months and months into years and rather than being able to respond to what is “new” – I would be more likely to respond with what is ‘not new.”  Those ready-to-final-edit and resubmit novels have neither been edited nor submitted.  There has been no poetry collection published, nor have any non-fiction books been submitted for publication.

Although this  lack of “productivity” admittedly sounds fairly dire, what is new is that during the past  months I came to the startling realization that I have been rather standing still, and began to venture out into the world and to go more deeply within myself .  On the extrapsychic level, I had my first reading at a well respected summer event last summer, where the former poet laureate of Nassau County took notice, and from there I have received several invitations for readings.  Just a few months ago I was a featured speaker at a local Starbucks for a poetry reading, and am looking forward to being  a featured speaker in December at an event sponsored by Poets & Writers.  More about this later. 

Sherry: Well these events sound quite wonderful, Pearl! It is great you have been giving readings.

Pearl: There have been some personal family celebrations and additions - I was particularly enthralled with the pregnancy and birth of my nephew’s twin boys – They live in Florida which is not at all close to NY – but the photographs and a visit soon after the babies were born was pure poetry. 

My niece, a marine biologist, took this picture - 

I think it is one of the loveliest pregnancy photos 

I have ever seen ...

Twins at several months old

Sherry: The underwater photo is amazing, Pearl. And those babies are adorable.

Pearl: Rounding out the "grands" are my two beautiful granddaughters, Halle and her younger sister Rori.

        

                   

Sherry: They are beautiful indeed. You have a gorgeous family. I know your son was recently married. From the photos, it looked like a spectacular event.

Pearl: Yes Sherry, I rarely post personal photos on my FB page but make an exception for births and marriages and, lol, poetry readings.  My son Josh, married this summer. My son arranged this wedding with his fiancé, and it was, as you described, a “spectacular event.”

My husband and I at the wedding

Our mother and son dance

Sherry: It looks absolutely magical. 

Pearl: As an aside, three years ago, my husband and I celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary with a renewal of vows. This renewal was a gift from my son. 

Sherry: What a wonderful gift. It must have been such a special event. Since the superstorm, I have wondered if you were still in  your wonderful location on Long Island.

Pearl: Yes, Sherry, I know you are a lover of water, and I still live in this wonderful part of this spinning blue marble. This summer I realized that I am squandering the beauty of living across a large avenue from the beach and made absolutely certain to get myself out, almost running from my car across the sand to the shore, to exhale and to stand in the water as though someone else rather than I had held me from this joy for over two years– I must say that I felt reborn. 

Favorite time of day at beach just before sunset - 

what has possessed me that kept me away from 

enjoying this wonder that is three minutes from my house - 

sheer insanity - now cured!

Sherry: It is so beautiful there, Pearl. Sunset was always my favorite time at the beach, too. Still is.

Pearl: I mentioned an interior journey – I think that this year I realized that I had somehow fallen into a less serene and somehow more driven mindset and have been making great strides in returning to the former me – that found something each day in which to marvel and draw great joy.  I am not quite sure where I had misplaced that way of living, reveling in the most simple of pleasures.

Sherry: ‘Tis the secret of happiness, my friend.

You can find my bf/proof-reader/husband/DJ and I eating 

a frozen yogurt here by the water most evenings at sunset - 

a combination of some of those simple pleasures.

Pearl: I have just about regained the sense of joy and wonder in daily living, and my commitment to doing whatever I can to bring about a kinder, more gentle approach to this surreal thing we call life. 

Sherry: That is wonderful, Pearl.

Pearl: Oh yes – in case I needed a reminder, the Universe decided to slap me upside the head a bit.  Last September my blood count dropped quite dangerously low – and I had a surprise visit to the ER and a stay of three days and four units of transfused blood.  Yikes!

Sherry: Yikes, indeed. That would sort your priorities out pretty quickly, I imagine. 

Pearl: Speaking of the mystical will, of course, lead to thoughts of Oliver.  Oliver is still a magical creature – again the quicksilver passage of time is marked by his fifth birthday.

Oliver - or should I say "Sir Oliver" - 

who has become quite majestic.

Sherry: He is majestic! Are you happy with how your writing is going? Do you have any goals for the coming year? I know you are regularly published in literary mags and periodicals, and have three books out on the topic of step-parenting. Any thought of producing a book of poems?

Pearl: The poems keep on coming.  However…. I have three novels that are basically in the same place they were three years ago-  Odd how they just don’t pick up and move somewhere themselves, isn’t it?  I have more or less decided that perhaps it is time to let Kaitlin go and move onward to other endeavors – if she will let this be so.

In terms of a poetry collection. Yes, there is something in the works… which might come under the heading of a “funny thing happened on the way to that afore-mentioned December poetry reading.”   I was asked if I had a manuscript I could supply and mistakenly thought that I was being asked for a poetry collection manuscript (which I did not have collected – but again within a few weeks – fingers flying on the keyboard - I managed to gather a book of 150 pages, which is ready to be submitted who knows where).  Now, the comical part… the person organizing this reading simply wanted a manuscript of poems I would be reading! – Oh well, everything for a reason, as they say.  I do now have a collection ready to launch, titled Girls in Plum Sweaters and others …

Sherry: LOL, a misunderstanding that results in a completed manuscript is serendipitous indeed! We look forward to its release.

I absolutely love your poem, "Cumulonimbus of the Soul", and would love to include it here. Would you tell us a bit about how this poem came to be?

                                         

Pearl: Well… this poem began as many others do – with a scattered handful of words from a ‘wordle’ prompt.   I love to take a handful of words and simply look at them and let them “whirl” me wherever they like… I write quickly and hardly ever edit (I am not quite sure whether this is a source of pride or shame).  I do feel that this particular poem spoke to the innermost clouds of negative toxic feelings that may sadly occlude our soul … thankfully this is for me a very rare occurrence – but I have had the opportunity during this past year to experience some very disorienting and painful personal conflicts.  I am one of those who believe all, even the most painful experiences, are opportunities…  I wondered if this clouded feeling was perhaps obscuring an explosion of this gathering negativity.  At least that was my analysis after having read what I wrote!   Here is the poem; you may judge for yourself. 

Cumulonimbus of the soul

They float as cotton candy

toys for children to shape

as they lay upon their backs

In the green grass of summer

Seeing forms configure in sun

Sometimes they pass with only

a moment of shadow falling over the

the laughter of childhood innocence–

Sometimes they darken and pour

rain upon barefoot children running

Meteorological cumulonimbus oft times

a pastime – other times a rainstorm benign

But then there is the cumulonimbus of the soul

A different breed altogether- these do not float for

Often anger is a lagging latent cloud

rising unseen –from its grave of toxic blood waste

Mercurial and unstable – activated by a simple word

or blade of veritable non-sense that

opens a vein and in an extravagant

Show of outrage - silver thunderheads

gather and chalk the landscape of the soul

from the topmost to inner core until cumulonimbus

explode into storm - pouring-pounding - on and on and on

drowning all in its wake until spent innocent wide-eyed children

peek from their hiding places and when safe

venture out again upon wet green grass

to imagine shapes in the puffs drifting

through blue skies

Sherry: I love the image of the children creeping out after the cloudburst, to play. Might  we have two more, please?

Pearl: Both poems are written about or from a child’s perspective – the first "The Inevitable Creep of the Tide" is more personal, where the second, "RedDust",  is intended to have a more symbolic, larger reach.        

  

If I had to chose one poem that basically incorporates the emotional quality of the bittersweet inevitability of life itself, this would be it.  A conflation perhaps of actual memory of very young childhood and the sense of the sea, my father, love and loss, and the mystic magic of the way the Universe can hold us, safe and warm, within time, that never truly vanishes.   

The Inevitable Creep of the Tide

There on the shore my father and I

sea breezed blown

he tanned and

black haired

waiting at a sanded

mound I ferrying Fantasia's beach

buckets of seawater

He drizzling into magical

being a castle

three quarters

as tall as I

All afternoon we worked the

sun lowering in the sky

people walking

by and stopping

to look to smile

a trio of tow-headed

siblings watching

for long minutes

thumbs in mouths

dumbfounded

until they were called

away

Finally sand golden sun setting He drizzled

wet sand through his hands squeezing a draped

doorway into life

a small fuchsia flag

posted and waving

in the salty air

and I

watched my father

my castle

and the sudden unnoticed inexorable

creep of the tide

lapping at its sides

I leaned against him

inhaling the scent

of him - cigarettes and salt

we bought creamsicles

from the man who came

around one last time

In the orange light

the bittersweet taste

of citrus and cream

on my lips the gentle tide

turned - rose and pushed

waves closer - inch by inch

until in a sudden lurch

of powerful spray

all that remained

was a tiny fuchsia flag

floating out to sea

My fathers arm

stayed around my shoulders

as we sat warm in the chill

of bittersweet

inevitability

Sherry: Sigh. You took me right to the shore. I could see the castle and almost taste the creamsicle. Memories of childhood summer, encapsulated in a poem. So lovely. This reminds me of the beautiful tribute you wrote to your father in the poem Rosemary featured in I Wish I'd Written This, "Happy Birthday to My Father." A truly breathtaking poem. (Kids, if you haven't read it, click over - you don't want to miss it!)

Pearl: We live in a world where children must too often be sheltered against all too real terror in all sorts of forms.  As a person and a poet vested in bearing witness  - this poem speaks in rather clear,  perhaps far too simplistic terms, about the plight of innocents all over this spinning blue marble, who are simply insignificant  collateral damage in the insane continuation of violence, war and bloodshed that defies the logic of love. 

Red Dust

On the steps behind the garden gate he sat, a

small dark-eyed boy compact, steely as a newly

minted dart sheathed in the exile of his mother’s

undoubtedly dubious fears.  For outside plain to

see - others shouted, kicking skittering stones into

red baked earth and he watched - billowed joy drifting

through the latch until a child chasing a soccer ball came

to the gate and  waved him out – petulant, dubious, puffing

his sparrowed chest, his dark eyes dancing-disarming the latch

he ran onto the red rusted dust - as the fuses flashed and all was

glinting metallic, but for a boy’s arm, a showering of red rock, that sneakered foot, slice of a soccer ball floating in this conflagration of collateral damage,our-now-gone-boy once safe behind his gate now settling cinders floating flotsam falling into the sun-baked red dust.

Sherry: Very powerful and all too sadly true, Pearl. I can see him, "Puffing his sparrowed chest."

  

Pearl: I often write from a child’s perspective.  I recognize that my writing is often dark, and yet I am personally filled with boundless hope that we can and shall ultimately live in a world of peace, and so I always try to end any collection of poems with the following….for it is truly wondrous to me that we, as human beings, who have struggled so very much, continue to hope and strive and to write and create and to laugh….

And yet we laugh

and yet we laugh

and sing and toss

off our shoes and

dance barefoot on

aquamarine shores

jiggling babies of hope

on strong hips

built for bearing

Sherry: And thank Goddess we do. Laughter is what gets us through, I do believe. I love those "babies of hope" on the "strong hips built for bearing".What do you enjoy doing when you’re not writing, Pearl? 

                                        

Pearl: I maintain a small private practice in psychotherapy/ psychoanalysis.  Several years ago I closed my “proper office” in a town about thirty minutes from my home and began to see folks exclusively from my home office – There are times when I miss the “professionalism” of getting up and out and about and unlocking a door with my name on a brass plaque in a professional medical building – however.. those days are very quickly obliterated when it is either hot, or icy, or rainy, or when the sun is shining brightly.  I very much enjoy my ‘commute’ downstairs from my study where I write,  to my office which is basically the entire lower level of the house.  

The people I see enliven me, and I hope that I continue to have something to offer them as they share their journeys on this spinning blue marble with me, and as we together try to remove any obstacles that are in their way toward wherever it is they are traveling.  I also have two folks who have moved to other parts of the country with whom I maintain phone sessions on a bi-weekly basis.  My “patients” enrich my life – I can only hope that I continue to enrich theirs. 

my office - to the right is a fireplace and behind is a small roll top desk... 

through the open door is a sunroom  pictured below ..  

The sunroom adjacent to my office - 

perhaps my favorite room in the house

Sherry: What bliss to be able to work from home. And you have such a lovely one, Pearl!

Pearl: I do my writing upstairs …. here in this room … where I have a window I can look out and in spring see a tree, and through and in between the houses across the road, a glimpse of water of the channel --- the beach is across a wide street around the corner – more easily accessible by car. 

As said, I did realize that time was flowing very quickly even as I stood still.  I often tell others “time marches on with us or without us” .. but somehow … I did not hear the band that was marching on right by my own nose.  As I did, I began to realize that along with going out with my best friend, I know it is time-worn but my husband truly is my best friend. Nevertheless or perhaps because of our intense friendship with each other – I thought that it was important for us to develop other friendships as well and we have done so, especially over the past three years with three lovely couples whom we see one by one, sharing dinner and good conversation.  

Independent films are a love of ours; we make it a point to get out to a small theater on a weekly basis and see a foreign and/or independent film.  There is a lovely town on the other coast of Long Island called Huntington which has a wonderful cinema center and we enjoy both the delightful town and the wonderful films that are shown. 

Town of Huntington, Long Island, NY

For myself, I am returning to a far more mindful state, looking for and enjoying the simple pleasures that surround me, such as going into the lovely little town close to my home to mail a letter in this lovely tiny post office and truly stop smell the flowers. 

Taking a short car trip along a road descriptively called Ocean Parkway at all times of the year and simply enjoying the ride in all ways. 

Ocean Parkway in February

Ocean Parkway in late summer sunset

Sherry: Sigh. Oh, Pearl, you live in such beauty! Is there anything you’d like to say to Poets United?

Pearl: Poets United is a vitally important part of my week.  I eagerly look forward to the Sunday Pantry – to sharing my work , reading feedback and of course reading the work of others and having the opportunity to comment.  It is through Poets United that I have connected with some marvelous poetic people …from across the globe.  I am awed by our ability to connect and to become a family in the whisper of the lyrics that blow across and through my screen and take root in my heart. 

You are all so critically important to my sense of being connected in this thing we call life. Thank you, Sherry, for reaching out to me – I sincerely apologize that I do not have more to share in terms of tangible accomplishment, but I do believe that there has been some growth during this past year in realizing that life is constantly shifting and changing, as much as that water moving across my bare toes – it is up to me to make sure I walk into the water – it will not come to me unbidden. 

Sherry: Do keep dipping those toes in! Never apologize about accomplishments, or perceived lack thereof. It sounds like you accomplished a lot this past year. Louise Erdrich likens these inward-turning times to the period of gestation a pregnant woman enters when bringing forth new life. I love that comparison!

 Well, my friends, isn't it wonderful to virtually step inside our poet-friends' lives and take a peek around at their setting? Then when we read their work, we can picture them, at their desks, or sipping tea on their couches. This is my favorite part of my job. I am such a Looky-Lou, LOL. Thank you, Pearl, for giving us such a generous glimpse in.

Do come back and see who we talk to next. You never know. It might be you!