Belline Chao is a San Francisco native making it work in Wilmington, North Carolina,
a classical violinist loosing up into folk, bluegrass and anything else the locals have to offer. She tutors English in an after-school program for “at-risk” youth, and in the morning works at a coffeehouse. In her spare time she participates at local poetry readings and writes lyrics for her friends. Her work has appeared in Askew and Mosaic.
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Belline Chao Interview, with Kaite Hillenbrand
Sound is important to your poetry. The rhythm of “Falling for Julio Cortazar” changes at the point when the speaker acknowledges that the dances and fanciful stories are fictional. “High Tide” uses lots of “s” and “sh” sounds, as well as repetition, imitating the sounds of the tide. Your poetry also seems to be influenced by music, both in its rhythms and in overt references to jazz and a tango. Even elements of nature become musicians, the moon becoming a sort of conductor emitting a base line and leading the ocean in its jazz rhythms. Can you speak to the way that music and sound have influenced your voice as a poet? On a similar note, can you elaborate on how these elements affect your understanding of what poetry is, and how the sounds of poetry (which are closely related to music’s sounds for you, it seems) affect people on a visceral level?
For me, rhythm has always been a key component in separating poetry from other forms of writing. I will admit, I grew up listening to hip-hop. And whether or not I cared for the lyrics, it was the sound of those words strung together that I enjoyed. There's an intensity in sound that we often discredit because of content. It's singing without melody, it's percussive and that's how we move people with words.
I'm obsessive about music. It's always on, even when I'm writing. There's been times I've kept a single song on repeat for the entire duration of a poem, because it speaks to an emotion I'm trying to convey. What I've learned is that music is instant whereas poetry takes time to absorb. It's good knowing that difference, because though I want my writing to feel like music, I know it can't work the same way. We recognize our favorite songs the moment we hear it. All the individual voices and instruments can layer on top of one another in matter of seconds and we wouldn't feel lost or overwhelmed. That similar sort of layering in writing, such as a change in perspective for depth, takes time to process.
You’ve said that content, as well as whether voice or image guides the poem, helps you decide that poem’s form. The form of “High Tide,” which uses ocean imagery, seems to imitate the washings of the ocean on the shore, but “About Jazz, Your Absence and the Moon,” which also relies heavily on ocean imagery, is written as a prose poem. Will you elaborate on the way you allow voice or imagery to shape a poem, and on how you decide whether a poem will be voice- or image- driven—and what that difference means to you?
I wish I could say how I decide whether a poem becomes voice-driven or image-driven. Early drafts are always a mess. The voice intrudes and takes away from the images or the image forces its way into a voice-driven poem. It's difficult to find a balance between the two. What helps is writing several drafts, asking myself what I believe the poem is about, then giving it some time. With "High Tide" it was that sense of place that inspired the poem, which makes sense for me to break it up into lines and even replicate the image of waves. "About Jazz, Your Absence and the Moon," originally a Spanish influenced poem, was carried more by the intensity of the speaker, than by images. But to be honest, I do very little deciding. My writing always begins in prose and if a certain rhythm, a cadence, or a line length jumps out at me, then it becomes a lined poem.
The themes of sleep and distance recur in your poems in different forms. Sometimes the distance is between two people in a relationship; sometimes the distance is through time and the failings of memory; sometimes the distance is between fiction and reality; sometimes a symbol of physical distance, like birds on the water, becomes a metaphor for an emotional distance. Sometimes closeness is even destructive, as in the case of the tide getting too close and ruining the town. What draws you to these themes in your poetry—and how do you understand them to be part of your voice? Are the themes of sleep and distance related?
I've never noticed closeness as destructive before. It could just be a logical conclusion I've come to. Barriers are what keep things distant from us, so I suppose closeness would destroy those barriers I've come to terms with. The whole idea of distances has been a long-standing obsession of mine. Many of my dreams are plagued with people I no longer know and places I'm far from. Naturally, I relate sleep and the night in general, with far away places.
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Falling for Julio Cortazar
Teach me Spanish and how to fry a fish.
Find me the quickest way to Argentina
where I hear a man can change
into a salamander by longing alone,
his nose pressed against the aquarium
tank, bewitched by those pink axolotls
with their curious golden eyes, smiling
at him from the wet insides of the glass.
And in Buenos Aires, I hear that glances
from across the dance floor are questions
and knowing looks returned mean "Yes
I will take your hand when the maestro begins
the tango, when the bandoneon player pulls
open his arms as if ready for embrace."
Then I shush my heart. I remind myself
that these fictions infused with theories
of infinity, quiet strangeness and yerba mate,
were no more than tall tales written down
and published in 1963 -- now, a time
I can only piece together through periodicals
and big fish stories. I remind myself
that Julio Cortazar was a writer
just as desire is another heartbeat.
But at night, when I feel the grease
of chicken broth on my fingertips,
which I know is nothing but oil
spilling over from sleep, I hear
the hollow sounds of distant trains
and I imagine that blue smoke drifting
skyward for the clouds, like dreams.
About Jazz, Your Absence and the Moon
I see those birds bobbing at sea like notes of jazz–unpredictable but not inconceivable. I believe in those birds (black from where I'm perched) drifting with the risk of getting lost or mistaken for the snapped-off blades of seaweed that could float in a fish tank and not know the difference. I hope those birds don't know how far these waves travel, that these are the great frequencies from the bass line of the moon. It is night when we dream. And so it is night when I follow the progression of sea sounds and pulses without meaning to. Even through the quiet slice of day, the tide never falters when it follows the moon. Yet, you and I were swept apart by little rifts.
High Tide
Beyond this strip of wet sand is sea,
restless waves weaving through
and over restless waves. Some settle
onto the black shore; some sink back.
I wish I could remember more
than fine sand passing through my fingers
and slipping back in.
I stand on nothing
but heavy slopes of sand that once
stretched miles past these rows
of houses with their rusty gates
and swollen doors.
The tide draws
entire city blocks back into the water,
demolishing telephone poles,
slumped trucks and furniture
forgotten on the curb.
That perpetual pull breaks
sun-bleached walls into sand.
In these dreams,
I walk into that blue-gray horizon
until the ground dips
and I am driftwood.
I have no memory
of how my father once slipped away
into the Pacific...
He tells me now
that I was digging for sand crabs
when a low-tide swept him under,
and dragged him half a mile into sea.
He found me digging still
when he returned, saved by some wetsuit
neither of us can recall.
Twenty years later,
I can only see the sand crabs,
dried out and set in a circle.
The nearness of night brings in the tide
that sweeps away hollows in the sand.
What remains are faint dips
where once were footprints and holes dug out
for sand sculptures, holes to bury
pebbles and unbroken sand dollars, and holes
for the sand crabs.
Then soon after,
not even impressions remain.