“What’s Unsaid”: Five Questions for Maya C. Popa
In the beginning of English class this year, my teacher emphasized an important idea that he wanted us to keep in the back of our minds when entering class discussions. As an introduction to this idea, he presented to the class a quotation from “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages … Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.” This quotation came back to me when I came across a Maya C. Popa poem entitled “What’s Unsaid.” Though the Emerson quotation does not really align perfectly with the poem, it did lead me there, and “What’s Unsaid” is an incredibly deep, complex, and beautiful work of writing that I’m happy to have experienced.
Maya C. Popa is a Romanian American writer, and the author of multiple books of poetry. Popa’s first collection, American Faith (Sarabande Books, 2019) received the North American Book Prize in 2020. Her most recent book is Wound is the Origin of Wonder. She has additionally been nominated for and won numerous other awards for her writing. Popa holds degrees from Oxford University, NYU, and Barnard College; additionally, she has a Ph.D. in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London.
I read during my research that you are the daughter of Romanian immigrants. Has this influenced your poetry and have you ever written a poem inspired by this experience?
It absolutely has shaped my experience as a reader and writer. My first language is Romanian; I spoke it at home and still speak it with my family. I went to a French school, so my classes were in French for the first nine years of my education. I think navigating three languages at once and being exposed to different kinds of literature and ways of making sound/sense shaped my writing in ways I can’t even qualify, because they’re innate.
What would you say have been your biggest influences throughout your writing career?
My middle and high school teachers were instrumental in giving me the confidence that is required to pursue writing. I’ve never taken that for granted—I know it’s not the norm, and I’ve expressed my gratitude over the years to all of the English teachers who helped me find and refine this passion. I taught middle and high school myself for 10 years, and it’s something I kept in mind as I was teaching—that I was in position to help set my students on their paths as writers.
In high school, I discovered the critic Helen Vendler, whose criticism we were reading in my poetry elective. I remember being mesmerized by how deeply and thoughtfully she read each poem, unlocking layers and nuances that were entirely over my head at the time, but that helped me make deeper sense of the poems on second and third read. I found it all pretty magical.
Was there a specific poet or poem that most inspired you to follow a path in writing poetry?
One of the poets I read in high school who blew me away I was introduced to via another fantastic poet, Elizabeth Metzger. She had been reading Jorie Graham, and she shared the poem “The Geese” with me. I remember reading it over and over again and thinking, I’ve never experienced anything quite like this in my reading life. The poem moved so beautifully in a direction I couldn’t predict, but with its own airtight logic. It seemed to be based on a psychic and emotional tension that was mysterious and familiar at once. I still revisit that poem.
At the beginning of the second stanza of your poem “What’s Unsaid,” you wrote the line, “Only once did a boar burst out of the woods / like a question just as soon retracted.” I thought this seemed like an interesting line because of the comparison of the boar appearing abruptly out of the woods and a question appearing abruptly in one’s mind. Was there a specific reason you chose a boar to suddenly appear in this line as opposed to some other animal?
Once in a while, the right simile will arrive without effort, and that was the case with this line in the poem. This was a real event in a real setting, and what I was seeing already felt imbued with metaphorical energy before I even quite had a handle on the poem to which it belonged.
“What’s Unsaid” appears to be set with a couple people driving down a mountainside at either sunrise or sunset. Was there a specific place similar to this description that inspired you to write this poem or, if not, was there a reason that you thought that this setting would be perfect for the conditions of the poem?
This poem has its roots in a small town of 80 residents called Vamvakou in the Peloponnese region in Greece. I was in a car being driven down the mountain to Sparta, which was about an hour away. The region was known for its coyotes, which I heard the first night of my stay, and its wild boar, which can be quite dangerous. I only saw them once as they dashed in front of the car at sundown. It makes me really happy that I was able to write a poem that began in the car facing a spectacular sunset, and that I can revisit this poem as a time capsule of that moment.