For Prescott writer Brooke Sahni, poems are a way to reconcile conflicting thoughts and emotions. Many of her poems are presented as internal monologues wherein she attempts to work out problems. “I believe that all creative writing sets out to answer a question. But really, it is more of an exploration of a question, because good writing never offers neat conclusions. I tend to exaggerate this searching impulse by explicitly pointing to an uncertainty the speaker is grappling with.”
Brooke has published two books of poetry, Divining and Before I Had the Word. She also writes short fiction and has just completed a novel. She finds that poetry and prose have much in common. “The motifs I’m most interested in come through in my poetry and my fiction, so I see my stories, poems, and my novel as one body of work with a lot of crossover.” She also admires fiction-writers whose prose has a poetic leaning. “I’ve always been drawn to lyrical fiction writers like Lauren Groff, Toni Morrison, Anthony Doerr, so writing fiction doesn’t feel totally separate from writing poetry.”
When creating poems, Brooke hopes that her readers identify with her words while also experiencing them on a more profound level. “I want my poems to feel both accessible and intricate. In other words, I want to welcome all audiences into my work, but I also want my writing to promote deeper thought.” While the intensity of poetry’s conciseness can be challenging, the payoff is rewarding. “You can distill the heart of a novel into a single poem.”
A recurring theme in Brooke’s writing is her mixed cultural heritage: she is both Sikh and Jewish. The metaphorical aspects of poetry helped her come to terms with her diverse identities. “For example, I loved the poetic idea of the missing 'o' in the Jewish spelling of God, or, G-d (ed: used to avoid writing the name in full). Or when I looked up Sikh and saw that it means learner, it perfectly corresponded to poems where the speaker is searching, seeking, learning how to be.”
Brooke often concentrates on writing interrelated poems for her collections. “I’ve found that writing linked poetry has been extremely generative. I typically do a lot of brainstorming, or ‘pre-production’ work, before I begin a collection. I ask myself what interests me and write it down. From there I make a kind of messy brain map that has the larger idea on the top with other ideas and associations that branch from that.” Although she does not have a daily writing practice, writing is ever-present in her mind. “I think about writing every day — the call to write is something I feel almost always.”
Brooke first arrived in Prescott from Ohio as a student studying creative writing at Prescott College. Ten years later she has returned to teach at Yavapai College. “Moving back to Prescott feels like a sweet and inevitable homecoming. Not only do I love its natural spaces, but this is the place I developed as a writer.” She is currently working on a series of poems exploring her life in Arizona. “My chapbook begins as a kind of origin story, the origin of the speaker’s life in the desert. At first, I missed the green of my native Ohio hardwoods, I missed water. But eventually I fell in love with the desert.”
Her poem “Letter for Ponderosa” describes her hesitant steps toward appreciating the landscape’s nuanced beauty. “This poem is meant to be an ode, a love letter to place, to the places that are part of us. It is also a love letter to things that are taken for granted because they are common, like the pine tree.” She again strives to reconcile her mixed emotions, searching for answers through the poem’s inquiries. “I write from a place of longing, and longing inherently is unresolved searching.”
More at brookesahni.com.
For a long time, I didn’t know to love you, I believed your green was lesser in needle form.
I missed the sensuous fanning of leaves, I missed the word, deciduous, I craved
canopy, leaves made of velvet or vellum, I wanted branches bent over,
heavy with blossom.
Just the other day, I read about you, most ancient tree. About Dionysus who adorned
the top of his staff with a pine cone, with its myriad of seeds. About Cybele who turned
Attis into a pine tree, where violets grew from drops of blood. About the tree
in Nevada with 4,800 growth rings. You, the oldest living plant on earth.
You, who has inspired artists with the depth of your metaphor—
how even in the depths of winter, your green persists.
And it’s true, I still grow tired of the familiar, I still take for granted unearned abundance,
the way sometimes I have to leave my beloved for the sweetness of returning, the way
I left this desert for the missing. But I’m back now. Yesterday, I gathered your
needles and steeped them in hot water. Yes, I’m back in this place I love.
You, my desert, my land of the pine and more pine, I’m here again,
learning to praise what persists. I drink you.
Dee Cohen is a Prescott poet and photographer. deecohen@cox.net.
