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The Poetry of Grief

Grief Sequence By Prageeta Sharma

Grief Sequence
By Prageeta Sharma
Wave Books
104 pages
Paperback $20

PROFESSOR PRAGEETA SHARMA’S recently released collection of poems, Grief Sequence, has garnered acclaim from corners with cachet. In this, her fifth book, Sharma chronicles the loss of her husband to cancer and, as The New York Times put it, she “complicates her narrative away from sentimentality and into reality-fracturing emotionality.” PCM’s Sneha Abraham sat down with Sharma to talk about death, life and the poetry she made in the midst of it all. This interview has been edited and condensed for space and clarity.

PCM: What was the inspiration? It’s loss but can you explain a little bit about it?

Sharma: This one is very different from my other books. My last book had a lot to do with race and thinking through the ideas of belonging and institutions and race and community and who gets to be a part of a community and who is outside of that community by the nature of racial differences and gender. But this one just happened because in 2014 my late husband Dale was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and he died two months after diagnosis.

And so, I was in shock and I had no sense of what had happened and, often they say with shock you lose your memory. So, for several months I couldn’t remember our long marriage. I could only remember those two months of his progressing sickness. When I told my father, who’s a mathematician who specializes in math education, that I was having trouble with sequencing (because it was something I was starting to notice), he said, “Oh well, you’ve always had trouble with sequencing. I tested you when you were five or six.” So it was sort of this joke we had about the concept of sequencing. It led me to research theories of sequential thinking; I started to think about the process of sequencing events and what to do for your recall, and what you do to process trauma, deep feelings and difficulty; I started to write in a prose poem format as much as I could: to place on a page what I could recall. And I was also doing that because I felt truly abandoned by Dale’s illness and death, which were very sudden. He died of a secondary tumor that they discovered after he inexplicably lost consciousness. So, I never had any closure.  I didn’t get to say goodbye. We thought we had several months left and didn’t prepare for his death. We had no plans of action.

He was such a complicated person that, to not have had any last conversations just put me into a state of despair. It was an unsettling place, so I had to write myself through it and speak to him and document the days through my poems. And what I didn’t realize was that with such grief comes a fierce sense of loving—believing in the concept of love. Many people say this especially when they lose a spouse—they lost someone they loved, and they didn’t plan on losing them, so they’re still open to the world and to love. They’re still open to feeling feelings. So I started to learn more about my own resilience and my strength, and I was really receptive to the process of becoming my own person. It was painful, but I wanted to document the fact that I knew that when I was at a better place of healing I would feel very differently, and the poems might look different, which they did.

PCM: People talk about the stages of grief. Did you find yourself going through that as you wrote the poems?

Sharma: The joke is that you’re always going through different stages so they’re never linear.

PCM: No, no. They’re not linear.

Sharma: So, I think I went through them all in a jumbled way. I think they hold you in them. Dale was a really complicated person, so I had to really think about who he was, who he is.  I learned you love two people at once — you stay in the living world but you still love the person you lost. Grief Sequence has many kinds of love poems. Towards the end of the book are love poems to my current partner Mike, a widower, who helped me through the grieving process.

PCM: You both have that understanding, what that’s like.

Sharma: Yeah. The poems are about grief, love, and they’re about really trying to learn to trust the journey. These poems have taught me so much about my emotions, sequencing and my community.

PCM: Is there a particular poem in “Grief Sequence” that really gets to you or pierces through all of it for you? Is there a pivotal poem in there?

Sharma: I think that there are a variety of poems here. Some poems are processing Dale getting sick. Some are processing experiences with others that are sort of surprising—people can alienate you when they witness you in deep grieving, because some gestures or reactions aren’t pleasant. I began processing what gets in the way of your grief. We can sometimes get hijacked by other people’s treatment, and you forget that you’re really spending this time trying to just protect your feelings. Speaking to widows really helped me. Reading all the books I could find helped; my biggest joke is that the book that helped me the most, which—I mean, it’s sort of embarrassing, but it’s hilarious—is Dr. Joyce Brothers’ Widowed.

PCM: No shame.

Sharma: It was so practical: You have to learn how to shovel the driveway, relearn the basics. It was all of these lists. These basics are the ones that people don’t talk about: the shared labor you have with your partner and what you then have to figure out after their death. For example, my cat brought in mice, and I didn’t realize how often Dale would handle that. Things like that. So, the book was so practical that I just remember reading it cover to cover. I laughed so much when I recognized myself in there.

PCM: Those day-to-day gaps that you don’t realize you’re missing.

Sharma: Make sure to eat breakfast. Try to get enough sleep. So many basics.

PCM: When you’re in grief, I’m sure all those … you need it.

Sharma: All those things, yeah.

PCM: What did you find people’s responses are to the poems? Did you find that people expected you’ve gotten over it now that you’ve written this book?

Sharma: It may be the book; it may be also including a new relationship in the book. I never understood how somebody could move forward, but you really understand it when you have no choice. I think the book helped me document the experiences in real time. Readers have been very generous. I think they didn’t expect the book to be so explicit. One thing that I was also trying to negotiate in the book was poetic forms. Because I’ve taught creative writing for a long time and we teach form, and particularly the elegy, I was reacting to the beauty of the elegiac poem; it can be so crafted that often you’re not feeling like it’s an honest form to hold tragic grief. You can write a beautiful elegy in a certain way, but the tragic losses some of us can experience—or lots of us—may not produce a beautiful poem, and that beauty can be something that almost feels false to access. And so, I started to question the role of how the poem works or what people expect to read as an elegy.

PCM: Talk about some of your early influences in terms of poetry.

Sharma: I think I started writing poetry in high school like lots of people, and so I was really fascinated with what contemporary poetry looked like, reading it from The Norton Anthology of Poetry. And I think about it now and I was often interested in women writers of color, though they were very few. And then I think some women who were writing “poetry of witness” and kind of trying to figure out what their narratives in the poems were about.

PCM: Can you explain “poetry of witness”?

Sharma: According to many poets, it is poetry that feels it is morally and ethically obligated to bear witness to events and injustices like war, genocide, racism and tyranny. Many poets I read during my high school years who wrote about these events bore witness to it in other countries and often about cultures outside of their own. It led me to wonder and examine the distance between their testimony and the culture itself. It also forged the desire in me to read more internationally and in translation rather than through this particular style and method of writing.

PCM: When did it crystallize for you that you wanted to be a poet?

Sharma: I felt like it was a calling back in college but I think it was really applying to graduate school right from undergraduate and getting into a top creative writing program (also getting a fully funded scholarship). I was 21 years old and I just thought, well, this must mean something. And then when I got to grad school, I found a community of poets and that felt right to me. I am so grateful to those people—many are still very close friends today.

Ideas@Pomona: The Summit

THE IDEAS@POMONA SUMMIT, Pomona’s premier lifelong learning event, brought together more than 200 Sagehen alumni, families, students and friends from around the globe for an energetic day-and-a-half conference under the theme Liberal Arts NOW and NEXT. Dedicated to meaningful connection and active dialogue around timely, newsworthy and captivating ideas, the inaugural event took place October 25-26, 2019, at the Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

What does cutting-edge research tell us about who we are and where we are going? How are liberal arts values such as critical thinking and creative learning being brought to bear on today’s unique challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities? The sold-out event featured sessions led by alumni, parents, faculty and friends of the College including featured speaker Ari Shapiro, host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Laszlo Bock ’93, Liz Fosslien ’09, professors Kevin Dettmar, Nicholas Ball, Nicole Holliday and more.

Attendees left invigorated, with an increased enthusiasm for the liberal arts and a strong sense of a visit back to class on campus.

Planning is underway for the next Summit in 2021. Watch for details at Ideas@Pomona Summit

Ari Shapiro gives the keynote address

Ari Shapiro of NPR’s “All Things Considered’ gives the keynote address at the Ideas@Pomona Summit in San Francisco.

Ari Shapiro speaks to a sold-out crowd

Ari Shapiro speaks to a sold-out crowd on Saturday morning.

Fabian Fernandez-Han ’20 and Peter Han P’20 lead an interactive workshop

Fabian Fernandez-Han ’20 and Peter Han P’20 lead an interactive workshop showcasing the creative power Human-Centered Design.

Professor Nicholas Ball

Professor Nicholas Ball on “The Challenges of a Petroleum-Free Society.”

Brian Prestwich P’20

“Creating a Healthcare System that Works for Everyone” panelists (Brian Prestwich P’20) take audience questions.

Alfredo Romero ’91 and Cecil Sagehen

Alumni Association Board member Alfredo Romero ’91 and Cecil Sagehen.

Professor Alexandra Papoutsaki and Laszlo Bock ’93

Professor Alexandra Papoutsaki and Laszlo Bock ’93 discuss “Liberal Arts and the Future of Work.”

We Are Scientists’ Megaplex

The Brooklyn, New York, based indie rock band We Are ScientistsThe Brooklyn, New York, based indie rock band We Are Scientists—the creation of bassist Chris Cain ’99 and guitarist Keith Murray ’00, who’ve now been performing together for almost 20 years—released the group’s sixth full-length album last April from 100% Records—a new collection of original pop songs, including “One In, One Out” and “Heart Is a Weapon.”

Bookmarks Winter 2019

The Blue Wave Starts with MeThe Blue Wave Starts with Me:
A Volunteer’s Guide to Getting Out the Vote for Democrats
Ron Boyer ’76 penned a book for people asking themselves, What can I do to help elect Democrats?

 

 

 

 

 

 


Business ChemistryBusiness Chemistry:
Practical Magic for Crafting
Powerful Work Relationships
Kim Christfort ’96 and Suzanne Vickberg offer a guide to putting cognitive diversity to work.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Dark KnowledgeDark Knowledge
In his historical novel, Clifford Browder ’50 writes about a young man in New York in the late 1860s investigating the illegal pre–Civil War slave trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Sea ChangeSea Change:
The Unfinished Agenda of the 1960s
Dorothy May Emerson ’65 pens personal stories about a young life lived on the edge of hope, change and possibility in California in the 1960s.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Searching for My HeartSearching for My Heart:
Essays About Love
This book by Dawn Downey ’73 contains stories with themes of alienation, shame and the self-awareness that leads to love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


No Hard FeelingsNo Hard Feelings
Emotions at Work (and How They Help Us Succeed)
Liz Fosslien ’09 and Mollie West Duffy take a look at emotions in the workplace and how to navigate them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Summary ExecutionSummary Execution:
The Seattle Assassinations of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes
Michael Withey ’68, P’91 tells a true story that could be a crime thriller: a double murder replete with assassins, FBI informants, murdered witnesses and a foreign dictator.

 

 

 

 

 

 


The Power of the ImpossibleThe Power of the Impossible:
On Community and the Creative Life
Erik S. Roraback ’89 surveys cultural figures and icons like Spinoza and Ivan Ledi and examines global community formation and creativity.

 

 

 

 

 

 


PeregrinationsPeregrinations:
Walking in American Literature
Amy T. Hamilton ’98 explores physical bodies and movement in American stories and history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Sara When She ChoosesSara When She Chooses
Deedra Cooper ’76, who writes under the name Cat Jenkins, takes the fictional character Sara on a trip to her grandmother’s house—a primitive home that she hates to visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


The American Road Trip and AmericanThe American Road Trip and American
Political Thought
Professor of Politics Susan McWilliams Barndt shows how Americans have long used road trips not only as escapism but also as a vehicle to explore questions about American politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 


San AntonioSan Antonio:
A Tricentennial History
W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History Char Miller has written the first general history of San Antonio, Texas, the nation’s seventh-largest city and one shaped by environmental, social, political and cultural pressures.

Pomona Votes

students gathering to watch the midterm 2018 election returns

In the midterm elections of 2014, according to a Tufts University survey, only 17 percent of Pomona College students cast a vote. Four years later, a group of concerned Pomona students turned to an online voting support site to give those numbers a boost.

Student leaders Michaela Shelton ’21 and Lucas Carmel ’19 led the outreach effort, encouraging their fellow students to sign up with TurboVote, an online tool that helps users take the first steps to register to vote or to request an absentee ballot.

“A recent Pew study revealed that about 75 percent of nonvoters are not voting due to logistical concerns, confusion,” says Carmel. “Where to get a stamp? How to request an absentee ballot? Where’s their polling place? The same thing is true for college kids—but if you’re concrete with people and help them with the process, you can eliminate many of those barriers.”

Ethel Starr

A portrait of President Starr’s grandmother, Ethel Starr, whose dedication to voting was featured in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

President G. Gabrielle Starr joined in encouraging students to get out and vote, not only on our own campus but across the nation. In an op-ed titled “Dear College Students: My grandmother waited 70 years for the right to vote. Don’t ignore this chance,” published in The Washington Post in late October, Starr told the story of her grandmother, Ethel Starr, who was nearly 70 when the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. “As a child in the 1970s and ’80s, I always knew when it was Election Day,” she wrote. “My grandma got dressed in her Sunday best, put on her black shoes, hoisted her hard, black pocketbook, adjusted her hat and waited by the door for my father to drive her to the polls. She never missed an election. …”

“Do something no one else can do for you,” Starr concluded. “The students I’ve worked with know I love a good dare. And I send one back. I dare you.”

The efforts at Pomona seem to have succeeded in stimulating greater interest in voting, as TurboVote reports that about 40 percent of all Pomona students—703 to be exact—signed up for the service prior to Election Day.

Tech for Sleepy Drivers

Tech for Sleepy DriversDriving back to campus from L.A. late one night, computer science major Eberto Andre Ruiz ’19 felt himself drifting off at the wheel. Worried, he grasped for a solution.

“I’m like, ‘Man, this is not safe,’ so I told Siri to set a timer for every five minutes,” he says. “I woke up the next morning and thought, ‘I’ve got to make an app for this.’”

Enter the 5C Hackathon—a one-night coding competition. In early November, Ruiz joined classmates Peter Nyberg ’19, Thomas Kelleher ’19 and Brook Solomon ’19 to built a prototype called Olert, with the O reminiscent of a steering wheel.

“Basically we were interested in doing something that was ‘Tech for Good,’ an idea in some way applicable to the real world,” Nyberg says. “This is something that takes lives.”

Using a camera and eye-tracking software, they built a system that would vibrate the steering wheel if the program detected signs of drowsiness in the driver’s eyes.

One after another, checking out some of the 20 projects submitted after the Hackathon, students from the 5Cs sat down and gripped the makeshift steering wheel the team fashioned with the leather cover from the steering wheel of Ruiz’s Nissan Altima. Sure enough, they felt it vibrate when their eyes closed.

As a result, Olert took the Hackathon’s top prize for the best “Tech for Good” project.

Accessible Geology

Alida Schefers ’21 Alida Schefers ’21 usually makes the first contact with her professors to let them know she uses a wheelchair and may need accommodations. Last year, however, it was Professor of Geology Linda Reinen who contacted Schefers, inviting her to visit the classroom where Reinen’s Intro to Geohazards class would take place and talk over plans for the class field trip. Since then, the bond between Schefers and Reinen has strengthened, and the classroom experience has changed for the better—for all of Reinen’s students.

In her revamped classroom, the most important rock samples now sit at the end of narrow tables with spacious and cleared aisles that ensure a wheelchair user can move with ease. A stream table (a tall table that demonstrates stream erosion) has a camera with a bird’s-eye view. The video is played back on a large screen for all students to see the action without having to crowd around.

Reinen’s changes may seem minor, but they make the classroom accessible in a major way. It was these changes that the International Association for Geoscience Diversity (IAGD) took note of when the group honored Reinen with the 2018 Inclusive Geoscience Education and Research (IGER) Award, given to instructors who promote or implement inclusive instruction and research that supports active engagement by students with disabilities.

“If everyone were mindful of a missed opportunity for a disabled student and took the time to advocate on their behalf, then the changes would be immense,” Schefers says. “One of my favorite sayings is: ‘If everyone did a little, no one would have to do a lot.’”

Lessons from the Mouse and Other Lessons for First-Year Students

disneylandIn a rite of passage, first-year students at Pomona begin their lives on campus with a Critical Inquiry seminar. These seminars focus on developing writing skills as students collaborate with peers, professors and student mentors to refine their drafts. The familiar five-paragraph format and the strict word counts of admissions essays are left behind. Here’s a look at a few of the new courses offered last fall:

Lessons from the Mouse

Professor of Art Lisa Auerbach had never been to Disneyland until a birthday celebration a few years ago. She found herself surprised and curious. “Disneyland felt to me like a subject that everyone already has a relationship with, whether you’re a local person here who knows someone who works there, or you grew up going there, or you’re an international student who has grown up with Disney movies. I don’t think there is a place it hasn’t touched,” she says. “It provides for me the opportunity to make Disneyland into this lens to look at other kinds of things. We can use Disneyland to look at, for example, race and gender and pop culture. Or we can use Disneyland as an example when we talk about labor.” Labor issues were in the news this summer as Disneyland workers pressed for a “living wage.” Gender issues were at the forefront too, as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride reopened after an update that removed a banner at an auction scene that had read, “Take a wench for a bride.” Yet for all the complicated ways in which nostalgia, utopia, commerce and reality converge in Anaheim, “there is a magical ‘there’ there,” Auerbach says. And yes, there is a field trip.

The Politics of Protest

The Women’s March. The Arab Spring. The Tea Party protests. Tiananmen Square. And of course, the Civil Rights Movement. “There’s always something going on somewhere in the world,” says Professor of Politics Erica Dobbs, a new faculty member teaching her first ID1, based on a first-year seminar she taught at Swarthmore College. “Every year, there’s been an ideological mix,” Dobbs says, noting that many of her previous students had participated in protests. Some of the questions considered include what makes a protest a success or a failure, the role of historical memory and whether social media is a positive.     “Social media and the internet have changed the game when it comes to mobilization, but at the end of the day the powers that be are still more concerned about people taking to the streets than taking to their keyboards,” Dobbs says.

Math + Art: A Secret Affair

Mathematics Professor Gizem Karaali wants to put to rest the idea that everyone is either a math person or an art person. A sculpture of the symbol for pi sits on her desk. On her whiteboard are two colorful designs that turn out to be geometric art by her husband and 9-year-old daughter. The textbook is a $49 coffee-table book, Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History, by Lynn Gamwell, including work by the artist M.C. Escher, with his stairways and tessellations. “We find his work fascinating because it’s visually interesting, but also mathematically, what’s happening?” Karaali says. The course also explores concepts such as proportion, infinity and symmetry in other less-expected artists, in some cases considering their mathematical context for the first time.

Governing Climate Change

Acknowledging climate change is one thing. Figuring out what to do about it is another. Professor of Politics Richard Worthington takes on the complex topic of how local, state, national and international governmental groups are addressing climate change, with a particular focus on climate justice. “Climate justice is really built off the idea of environmental justice, this aspiration that people have basically equal access to environmental benefits and amenities and equal protection against environmental hazards,” he says, noting that the countries that have done the most to create the problem, such as the U.S. and China, aren’t the ones most affected. Geography makes a big difference, Worthington points out. For example, he says, “small islands, with sea level rise, are going to be hit harder.”

Statistics in the Real World

In a playful twist on the old Trident commercial, the full title of Mathematics Professor Jo Hardin’s updated ID1 seminar includes the phrase, “9 out of 10 Seniors Recommend This First-Year Seminar.” The class focuses on both good and dubious uses of statistics in politics, the media and scientific studies, with particular attention to the 2016 presidential election. “Every year I have a couple of students who take it because they think the seniors recommended it,” Hardin says. “I think to myself, ‘You’re the person who should be in the class.’”

If Banners Are Your Bag…

transformed banner into tote bagFor each major play produced at the College, the Theatre Department has a promotional banner made to be hoisted above the entrance to Seaver Theatre for a few weeks prior to opening night. But where does that banner go once the play is over? That was what Suzanne Reed, the department’s costume shop manager, wondered—so she asked. The answer turned out to be: the trash can. So Reed outlined a recycling idea. What if she transformed each banner into tote bags for some of the play’s principals as a parting memento of their performance? And that’s just what she’s done following the last few plays, the most recent being last fall’s production of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector. To make the recycling process complete, the chain sewn into the bottom of the banner to give it weight is now returned to the banner company to be used again in a future banner.

Oxtoby and the Academy

Former Pomona College President David W. Oxtoby has been named the new president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A chemist by training, Oxtoby was elected a member of the academy in 2012. Founded in 1780, the academy honors and brings together members from across a wide range of disciplines to pursue nonpartisan research and provide critical insight on issues of importance to the nation and the world. The list of Oxtoby’s predecessors at the helm of the academy includes former U.S. presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams; the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Theodore William Richards; and the co-founder of the Polaroid Company, Edwin Herbert Land.