“Lilith in Exile,” “Aphrodisiac,” and “Instillation Artist” by Lisa Rosinsky appeared in Issue 36 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this set of poems.
These three pieces are from a sequence of poems I’m working on that imagines erotic/romantic tension between Lilith and Eve. Who could they be in a contemporary landscape—without the snake, the garden, Adam, God? Ancient Jewish texts say that Eve replaced Lilith after Lilith refused to be submissive to Adam and left Eden—so presumably the two women never met. But what if they did, and what if Eve fell for Lilith, intoxicated by the rebellion and independence she represents?
What was the most difficult part in writing this set?
All three of these poems started as longer, more narrative poems and went through a lot of revision and tightening. I had to get some time and space away from them and then return to be able to see the unnecessary detail and trim it out—when I’m teaching revision, I love using that quote attributed to Michelangelo, about carving the stone away to find the statue waiting inside.
“Aphrodisiac” and “Installation Artist” didn’t start as Eve/Lilith poems, and it was only once I slotted them into that sequence and revised them to resonate with the other poems that they both really started to excite me.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
The Mothers by Leila Chatti and Dorianne Laux—a book of “poems in conversation” about motherhood, a topic close to my heart and my own writing. I love the work of both these poets individually, so reading their work in collaboration was such a treat.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Marie Howe—one of my favorite poets to hear at a reading. I would love to talk with her about her gorgeous book Magdalene, which is all about reimagining the Biblical character of Mary Magdalene as a contemporary woman.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m revising two chapbook manuscripts for submission to contests, and I’m also working on a full-length poetry manuscript.
Our thanks to Lisa for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “Lilith in Exile,” “Aphrodisiac,” and “Instillation Artist” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/new-poetry-by-lisa-rosinsky.
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Lisa Rosinsky has been a finalist for the Slapering Hol Chapbook Prize, the Fugue Poetry Contest, and the Morton Marr Poetry Prize, and was the recipient of the 2016 Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, Mid-American Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Baltimore Review, Salamander, Measure, 32 Poems, and other journals and anthologies. She is a graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and holds an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where she was a Robert Pinsky Teaching Fellow and a teaching artist at the Boston Arts Academy. Lisa’s debut novel, Inevitable and Only, was named one of Barnes & Noble Teen’s top 12 “Most Anticipated Indie Novels of 2017.”