Like the poems in JHU professor and Hopkins Review editor Dora Malech’s previous four collections, those in Trying x Trying find joy through a playful use of language and gravitas through a direct and keenly observed rendering of our world. Her images and references range from Diebenkorn to Denny’s, from Robert Lowell to the parking lots at GBMC. The collection bursts with details drawn from day-to-day life, from art, from poets of the past.
Malech offers us a glimpse of an artist who is constantly observing, recording, and making connections – both at the level of ideas and experiences, as well as at the more fundamental level of language itself. In “All the Stops,” the speaker rolls through a stop sign, then meditates on the idea of stopping: “All those years // wishing I were sure and thin as a sign and could wait / for no mandible nor manager nor manna nor mention.”
Poetry nerds will have a ball reading Malech, analyzing line breaks and word play and meter, but despite the impressive technical prowess on display, these poems are relatable. In “Early Evening,” she describes the universal parental inclination to protect our kids from the sad things of this world: “I promised a past self I would resist the shielded, sanitized, // but now I lose my nerve, buy us / another minute in which the worms are just // resting in puddles / and the bees are sleeping on the sills.”
Throughout the collection I found myself gasping in wonder at unexpected and gorgeous turns, nodding in solidarity, grateful for her ability to articulate something I, too, have felt. Whether she is writing about a school shooting, a delayed reaction to ecstasy, an infant nursing, or her child’s mispronunciation of a word, Malech captures something powerful and true about what it is to be alive in this world.
It was a pleasure to find out more about the poems and process from the poet herself.
Baltimore Fishbowl: A lot of the poems in Trying x Trying respond to the injustices that seem to be becoming increasingly a part of the daily life in this country. Do you feel that your work’s focus has shifted in recent years?
Dora Malech: Yes and no. My previous collections of poetry have engaged with the social and the political as well. For example, I wrote my first book of poetry, Shore Ordered Ocean (Waywiser, 2009), between 2003 and 2008, and that political moment casts—I think—a pretty clear shadow across that collection.
That said, Trying x Trying is certainly a product of this time and place. The title—which I say as “Trying Times Trying”—is, among other references, a reference to just how of their time these poems are; I wrote most of this book between 2016 and 2022, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who heard the phrase “these trying times” repeated often throughout those years.
I will admit that I thought (hoped?) that perhaps these poems would feel like “the past” by the time they came out, but instead, here we are.
BFB: On a related note, do you feel it is the poet’s responsibility to address injustice? More broadly, what do you think is the role of the poet in today’s world?
DM: I can’t see how a thinking, feeling human paying attention in and to language wouldn’t ever address injustice, but I think that can mean something different for different poets and different poems. And I think that part of poetry’s power is that it’s not a straightforward political speech—it resists rhetoric-as-usual, and it asks its reader or listener not to receive meaning, but to participate in making meaning.
BFB: Your poems are so rich with detail and references that range from the ordinary to the sublime. How do these observations come together to form poems?
DM: Thank you! I love the material of language, its patterns of sound, its etymologies and false etymologies, its inherent capacity for metaphor and figure, its connections found and connections made. Some poems start with a story or an observation or a particular memory that I can follow, though part of the joy of the process is remaining open to following a new association and ending up somewhere unexpected.
I may start a poem wanting to “say something,” but I rarely end a poem saying the thing I thought I wanted to say. I believe in the power of play and pleasure, and language is my favorite playmate and deepest source.
BFB: Many of the poems in the collection relate to the pandemic and way our lives changed during those long months. Did you write those poems – or any poems –during lockdown?
DM: When lockdown happened, I had a two-year-old child, and I was pregnant. In May 2020, I had a missed miscarriage (meaning the fetus dies inside you)—my second—and a D&C—also my second. Because it was the pandemic, those doctor’s appointments and procedures, and the ones that followed over the next few years, were ones I experienced masked, and alone. But at the same time, I had a small child and a job that included students, and I wanted the lives of my students and my child to feel as full and “normal” as possible.
The push and pull of that time—loneliness and domesticity, loss and delight, the public and the private—actually led to a number of the poems in Trying x Trying, but I’m not sure if I would have prioritized my writing at that time if I hadn’t been invited by Kristina Marie Darling and Jeffrey Levine to contribute a folio to Four Quartets: Poetry in the Pandemic (Tupelo Press, 2020). That invitation was a real catalyst for me, and the chapbook-length folio I wrote, Times Trying, let me start to see this full-length collection taking form.
BFB: You are a full-time professor, an editor, a parent, and an incredibly prolific writer. How do you make time for your creative work?
DM: In fits and starts! Or rather, the process feels like fits and starts to me, since I’m always hungry for the long loops of attention and dreamy flow state that I rarely access in these days of my day-to-day life. Ultimately, I need to get lost.
But even when I don’t have the opportunity to really settle into a deep creative rhythm, I’m gathering bits of language, images, patterns, and thoughts. I’m taking notes and storing them away for the times when I can lose myself in language again.
BFB: The theme of motherhood appears throughout this collection. How has becoming a mother changed your life as a writer?
DM: Logistically, it really just means that less of my time is fully my time (see above!), but it has absolutely introduced a whole new set of preoccupations and experiences that make their way into my poetry. My experiences of being pregnant and giving birth also had a big impact on my imagination, and on this book.
I didn’t think I could possibly love language more, but my children’s relationships with language acquisition and literacy have strengthened my relationships with them, and with language itself.
BFB: How do you feel about Baltimore as a literary city?
DM: I love Baltimore so much as a literary city. I can’t say it enough. I mean, the bookstores alone could convince a lit-lover to live here. Red Emma’s, Greedy Reads, Bird in Hand, The Ivy, Atomic Books—and that’s not even half the list, especially once you start adding in the used bookstores, the places you can buy art books and rare books, the incomparable Book Thing that just gives books away, and so on.
Between the great bookstores, all the universities and colleges, the incredible Enoch Pratt Free Library system, and the other performance spaces and series, you could really attend a literary event any day of the week.
Launch Events
Saturday, October 11 with Jeannie Vanasco
3pm at The Enoch Pratt Free Library, details here
Thursday, October 16 with Elise Levine in conversation with Nate Brown
6pm at Bird in Hand, details here
