[To read the poem “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues,” click here.]

1. This poem was initially inspired by a line of dialogue near the beginning of So Long A Letter by Mariama Bâ, which is also the last line of the poem and the moment I tried to build up to: “Lady, death is just as beautiful as life has been.” This sentence made many different ideas and feelings that had been on my mind sort of suddenly click together, and I began exploring.
    
   1. The novel opens with the main character Ramatoulaye going through 'Iddah, a four month and ten day mourning process that widows in Muslim Senegalese culture must follow. During the funeral proceedings after her husband’s death, she struggles with her feelings regarding the religious, cultural, and gender expectations placed upon her.
       
      Of the many indignities she endures, there is this fascinating moment where this old woman who is attending comes across Ramatoulaye. She is indulging herself on the free food, cola nuts that “reddened” her teeth as she spoke, when she sees Ramatoulaye looking miserable. She looks at her “disappointingly”, and then says this line. This moment moved me, and seemed to capture so much.
       
   2. And this moment made me think of the religious, cultural, and gender expectations placed upon me and others I care about in my life, which, growing up in the rural Midwest, meant Christianity and heteronormativity. As a queer person who grew up in a homophobic environment, I developed a pretty complicated relationship to Christianity.
       
      Every religion or attached cultural makeup has its quirks, and certainly its faults. In this poem, I tried to capture the almost mind-numbing bewilderment you experience when you are faced with these expectations, when these expectations go against one or more of your identities, or is otherwise depressing or disorienting to endure.
       
2. In philosophy (I’m currently in a PhD program out in Florida), my primary research actually focuses on the ethics of technology, but I’ve always been interested in feminism, queer theory, social epistemology, and other ways of analyzing and understanding our social world. So, some of my readings on womanism also came to mind.
    
   1. It also felt right to title this poem after this classic vaudeville-style blues song (I love blues) called “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues” (or also called “Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues” or “Wild Women”). It has a strong feminist message, and the song was performed by many female blues singers over time.
       
      This sort of musical line of sisterhood (or, all these singers connecting to each other over song, about this subject matter) echoed to me the importance of friendship and connection in So Long A Letter. The novel is epistolary, written as a long letter to Ramatoulaye’s best friend, Aissatou, another woman who she deeply connects with, and who she is able to talk about her innermost controversial feelings with.
       
      I also like the connection of sadness and “blues,” as the narrator of my poem wasn’t doing that great, even before she was informed her guardian angel killed herself (note that this angel was also female), and now the narrator’s soul will soon be attacked by demons. And to think she thought her day couldn’t get any worse!
       
3. And then there’s the fact that this is a speculative poem … it’s hard for me to articulate the logic behind my ideas, but I absolutely love surreal absurdity. I like to say I try to “craft sense through nonsense,” and I very much agree with Bianca Stone, an amazing poet and previous mentor of mine, who says that her poems often know more than she does. I just loved the premise of waking up one horrible morning to this angelic horror at your front door, here to tell you your guardian angel is no more, like some sort of holy general arriving to tell you your lover was slain on the battlefield.
    
   Symbolically though, I’m happy that the biblical depiction of angels has so many eyes, because this also reflects the many glaring “eyes” of society, regarding expectations. Like how the narrator in my poem’s first thought was what her mother would think of her actions, and so on.
    
   And then of course the ending—I tried to build up to it, to that phrase and all that was packed inside it. Having an angel who was kind of awkward and rude, and who gave you bad news, fly away and scowl down at you from the clouds, like you’re a some sort of misbehaving child … I felt that way often growing up, not fitting into the social world around me, in the rural Midwest. Those disapproving looks were demeaning, but also terrifying, in a way. Sometimes I didn’t know what would happen, how they would react after that look of disgusted recognition—if I was about to be verbally harassed, kicked out places, or assaulted.
    
   So that ending of the poem was, for me, such a mood: this horrifying ridiculousness of life, of what little control we have over how we see the world, and how the world sees us.