SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
An Irish goodbye is when somebody leaves without bidding farewell. A new collection of micro-memoirs by the poet Beth Ann Fennelly considers love, parenthood, old pals, a cherished mother-in-law. But her sister, Julie, who died in 2008, is a presence throughout, including in this reflection called "Two Sisters, One Slicing The Cake, One Choosing First."
BETH ANN FENNELLY: (Reading) Keeping meticulous score was our favorite girlhood pastime, adjudicating the dispersal of the cereal boxes' plastic treasure, tallying who had more Christmas presents under the tree. When given a piece of cake to split, one sister was handed the knife. The other got to pick her half, quadruple fanatical eyeballs pressing down on the blade, its slow, slow submergence through the buttercream. And then poof. You rolled over and played dead, took yourself right out of the game. Fancy that.
SIMON: Beth Ann Fennelly was poet laureate of Mississippi, and she teaches at the University of Mississippi and joins us now from Oxford - her book, "The Irish Goodbye." Thank you so much for being with us.
FENNELLY: Oh, thank you, Scott.
SIMON: What was it like to write? There's laughter in here but also a lot of sadness and anger.
FENNELLY: Well, I did hope the book could try to capture the full range of the human emotion, all the colors of the human heart. The death of my sister in 2008 is a pretty dark strand that runs through the book, but I also find that there's a lot of whimsy and humor and absurdity in life. And the form I was writing in micro-memoirs, little, tiny true stories about my life, allowed me to find some of the difficult moments to balance out some of the darker material.
SIMON: Is that a way of keeping going when you're doing a book like this?
FENNELLY: Absolutely. And I also think writing small allows you to go to the dark place because you know you get to come back out in a paragraph.
SIMON: Can I ask you to read something else?
FENNELLY: Absolutely.
SIMON: "Married Love, Playing The Long Game."
FENNELLY: Oh, sure.
SIMON: And I'll tell our listeners, this is a poem about a kitchen implement. Let's put it that way.
FENNELLY: (Reading) Even now, three years later, when she opens the drawer beside the stove for an oven mitt, she finds the oven mitts folded. This is because three years earlier, during an intense game of Scattergories, when the category was Things You Fold, and the letter was O, her husband had written oven mitts. Nobody folds oven mitts, she scoffed, and refused him his point, forcing him ever since to prove it.
SIMON: Oh, that's wonderful.
FENNELLY: Thank you.
SIMON: And it says a lot about marriage over the long term, doesn't it?
FENNELLY: Yeah. So one thing I was interested in looking at is the love of people who've been hanging out for a long time because I don't think our culture has an ethos that appreciates that kind of love. We celebrate, in songs and movies, unrequited love or first love, but married love is its own beast with its own humors and moments of recognition and vulnerability. So I was looking at that as well.
SIMON: Can I get you to talk about your sister?
FENNELLY: Yes. My sister died very suddenly. It was a difficult and complicated death because no one saw it coming, including her. She thought she had the flu, but, in fact, she died of pneumonia.
SIMON: I was interested in the exchange that you share with us with an editor who wanted you to talk about how she died. And that piece is entitled "Because My Editor Suggests I Reveal How My Sister Died."
FENNELLY: Yeah. I have a really great editor, and she's Jill Bialosky at Norton, and I turned the book into her, and she accepted it. And she said, you know, you have to tell the reader how your sister died. And I did not like that at all because I knew she was right. And I didn't want to talk about it because it's too painful. But I'd written all these pieces about mourning her. And in a way, it directed the reader to think about her death, but I never talked about her death. I never gave the reason why. And I went the fastest and most painful route I could think of just to tear off the Band-Aid, which was quoting from my sister's autopsy report. And I wrote the piece really fast, and then the book was actually done.
SIMON: How did that feel?
FENNELLY: Horrible.
SIMON: But necessary?
FENNELLY: Yeah, necessary. And in a way, I mean - I guess - I'm 54, Scott. I'm not interested in holding anything back anymore. I'm not interested in protecting myself or being coy or photoshopping my emotions or my life. I'd simply didn't talk about that because I didn't think I could. And finally getting it out, I think, might help free some of the burden I carry.
SIMON: Yeah. You devote the last piece in your collection to a brief episode where you worked as a nude model.
FENNELLY: Well, that's almost putting it too strongly. I didn't work as a nude model. That's, you know, a little salacious sounding. I did pose. I was one of 12 people in my little town of Oxford, Mississippi, who posed for an artist.
SIMON: I didn't mean to be salacious. I was saluting your professionalism.
FENNELLY: (Laughter) Thank you. Well, I didn't really get paid, but, yes, yes. I did do this thing that shocked me and still shocks me, actually.
SIMON: Well, I mean, you didn't have to. What led you to decide it would be something you wanted to do?
FENNELLY: Well, almost exactly what we were just talking about, Scott, in the regard that I'm interested in vulnerability. I'm not interested in shrouding anymore, anything. And this artist who I respect said he wanted imperfect bodies, and I happen to have an imperfect body. And his name is Robert Townsend, and his work is so beautiful, and I trusted him. So I did pose as an experiment to see if I could accept being that revealing. And I'm glad I did it, but I did really have to do a lot of thinking about it, and that's why I wrote the essay.
SIMON: At this point in your life, what do you think about memories? Do we revise them as we go along? Do we pack them up into satchels we can carry along?
FENNELLY: I think we think we pack them up into satchels, but every time we unpack our satchels, we revise them. And writing a memoir, of course, is an interesting exercise in what truth is because we realize our memories are faulty and that when we're recollecting things, we have our own biases. So I did try to fact-check my own memories with anyone I could. And if I mentioned anyone by name in these pieces, I asked them to read them and sign off on them.
SIMON: Beth Ann Fennelly. Her collection is "The Irish Goodbye." Thank you so much for being with us.
FENNELLY: Oh, thanks, Scott. I really enjoyed it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
