We both entered my room, he took his place perched on the corner of my bed and i took mine on my little stool in front of my desk. my steaming hot tea was placed in the middle of my dark wooden desk waiting for its contents to cool. the chromebook sat on the corner of the desk next to the bed, angled toward the stool i was sitting at. i pulled my phone from its little pouch in my backpack and found the little recording app i had on it to record our interview. i let Jose, my mom’s boyfriend, know that it had started recording and we can start. “the first question,” i started “doesn't even have to do with the poem itself, but with the name of the poem.” He prompted me to keep going. “the name of the poem is War Widow. what does the poem mean to you without reading the poem?”
“its written by some woman who lost her husband in some war.” he responded, his answer sounded almost a little too literal for what i was going for, as i was going for the symbolism and meaning behind it. but there wasn't a lot to go off of with just the title of the poem. I educated him on the author’s gender a little bit, and that it was in reality, written by a man. I handed him the chromebook from my desk with the poem open for him to read. The room became quiet as he began to read. I became increasingly more aware of my old pendulum clock sitting firmly on my wall as it cheerfully sang its song of time. i watched the pendulum rock back and forth in time with the ticks and the tocks. my dog gently pushed my cracked door open enough for her little body to fit through. she explored my room, sniffing it as though it was the first time she had ever been in my room, though she often visited. i reached down from my stool to pet her and lifted her into my lap. i hugged her close, grateful for the cuddly warmth she provided. A short amount of time had passed my mom entered my room. She left the door wide open, a wide gaping hole that i prefer to be shut the majority of the time. The open door gave me a view of the basement hallway, with its bright white walls trying to mask the darkness. The old, tattered linoleum flooring that has been there for as long as i can remember. she had come with news of a video having completed downloading for my ASL class. i had spent the previous two hours working on downloading the video i needed, having lost all my work in the process. i felt a surge of relief with this news knowing i could finish my project. my mom offered to transcribe the interview for me to help out and make up for lost time with my other project. She made her way to the part of my bed buried in the corner. she leaned on the pillows i kept propped up for comfortable sitting when i didn't need my desk to work. Jose seemed completely unaware of the interactions around him. we spent a few more minutes in silence, my mom and I waiting for Jose to finish reading the poem. the clock kept its steady pace in our silence, once again, the only sound in the room. In the silence the gap left by my door seemed to grow and taunt me. I got up and shut the door locking of us in the comfortable cave known as my room. The sound of the clock proved to be, once again to only sound in the room. My mom tried to fill the silence with conversation about how to make up the work I had lost. we made a plan of how to go about that. Only a few more ticks of the clock kept Jose occupied with the poem and we were ready to interview.
He handed the computer back to me and I placed it in its original spot on the desk. I clicked the tab containing my questions . “What did you think of the poem?” I continued, using the second question on the list.
“I think it um,” he began, it was a relatively open question, requiring an answer with more thought and time put into it. “It wants to convey a message of decay and death, and its addressed to a woman who lost her husband in a war, I suppose”
“Addressed to, or addressed about?” I questioned, needing to be sure i heard him correctly
“addressed to” he confirmed “addressed to because it uses you. ‘you open the letter, you ride the elevator, you receive the letter.” I hadn't picked up on the addressed to piece of the poem and I took mental note of that.
My mom had fallen behind in her transcribing and asked for a repeat in what was just said so she could write it down.
I continued on with my second question “what did you notice about the poem?”
He paused, needing to think about this question as well. The fast paced ticking clock seemed to be pressuring him into answer, though he didn't perceive it this way. “I noticed,” he started with his answer “that if it weren't for the title, I wouldn't know what the poem was about.” he continued “Because it didn't even mention war, all that it mentions is a letter. But if it weren't for the title I wouldn't know what the letter was about.”
My mom’s quick fingers raced to keep up with his quickened speaking pace.
“You know, the government telling this woman that her husband died during the war.”
“so you didn’t pick that up even from the telephone static?” i asked, mentioning the little things in the poem that i had originally thought to obviously state the war.
“no,” his answer was given quickly, with no hesitation in his answer “it could mean many different things.”
“what makes you think it was her husband?” i asked, trying to come up with a decent question off the top of my head
“because it said ‘widow’, ‘war widow’” he stated. i hung my head in realization of how obvious that answer was.
“is there anything that's confusing about the poem?” i asked having moved back to the written questions realizing they might be more helpful
“yes” the answer came quickly but the explanation took a little more time in being spoken, “what does she do for a living?” his answer made me giggle a little bit, what she does for a living seemed completely irrelevant to me. “Because,” he continued after hearing my giggle, “the last paragraph mentions she’s riding the elevator all day, non stop. so it makes me wonder, whether she... this is like some really old profession, one of those, elevator ‘bring people’ that just bring people up and down the elevator in the building, so i don’t know. It must be a very old poem, because i’m really puzzled about what her profession is.”
“its not that old of a poem” i stated, trying to answer his question on the age of the poem.
“maybe it refers to some person long dead” he suggested
I took another short break from the interview itself to check on my mom and how she was doing with the typing.
“is that the only thing that's confusing about the poem?” i continued my question
there was a pause filled with thinking. i set my dog down as she was panting from the head provided from my lap and the warm spring day.
“yes, there's another thing. the tea.” his confusion there was confusing to me, it had seemed normal when i had read the poem. “the tea and the cup. it seems like the cup is between the tea, when you would think that the tea would be within the cup. but the way it's phrased is kinda strange. So i didn't really understand that”
my mom interrupted again to catch up on writing.
“do you have any connection to the poem?” i continued when allowed. there was a long pause waiting for this answer. the clock once again made itself present in my conscious. its ticks and tocks calculating the length of the pause in answering. i reached down to pet my dog that had started pestering Jose for attention. i tested my tea to see if it had cooled down enough to drink. it was no longer at a temperature that threatened to burn even through the cup, but it wasn't quite at a comfortable temperature yet. i breathed in its sweet, healing fumes, anticipating the time when its cool enough to drink.
finally, after quite the pause he answered “my job” he said almost as a question than an answer. “Because its really boring, sounds just as boring as that lady’s job riding the elevator up and down.” he continued “that's my connection to this poem. i haven’t lost anyone in a war so i have no idea what this means.” i found his answer to be almost comical. it was not quite the answer i was expecting.
“you seem pretty stuck on that elevator” i stated thinking about how most of his answers focused on the elevator part of the poem.
“What emotions does the poem convey to you, other than the simple sadness and death?” I questioned.
“Loneliness, decay, oblivion.” He listed off the obvious emotions of the poem. “the first three paragraphs evoke very powerful emotions, in terms of everything decaying.” this answer heald no new information for me and i kinda laughed at how obvious the answer had been. “but the last one though,” he added “the last paragraph is very uplifting, because by her act of stopping the elevator between floors, she’s able to cheat death. she’s not reaching her destination.”
“wait, wait, wait,” my mom interjected, she needed the last few sentences to be re-stated.
“she hangs onto life” Jose helps her with her typing. “by stopping the elevator between floors, and in that way she’s cheating death”
“Cheating death?” i request more information in this area
“the metaphor is not reaching her destination. she’s prolonging the moment”
“why would she want to cheat death if her husbands dead?” i reach for more information and insight from him
“just to enjoy life. the fact that her husband is dead doesn't mean that she is. She still has her life.” he responded “after all she went through and all the decay and he old age, she’s still willing to live. prolonging the moment”
I found this to be inspiring and uplifting and had the desire to ask more of it, but no question came to me in time. i thought, the clock seemed to pressure me into thinking of something faster. ‘their waiting on you, think faster’ it said to me in my head. the prolonged moments of stress from the day were catching up to me in this moment. my head raced, looking for any possible question that would be worthy of asking.
“what did the uplifting-ness of the poem so impactful for you?” my pressured mind pulled the question from the available resources. i knew as i was asking it it was as pointless question, but i had asked it and might as well go with it.
“because its just the contrast with the rest of the poem. up until the last paragraph it’s pretty depressing, but then you get to the end of the poem and there is the contrast. its something positive in her life, something as lame as stopping the elevator in her boring job. And to her that's uplifting because she’s enjoying the moment.”
“do you think that's really important?” i prolonged the discussion
“oh yeah, i think its really important because she’s old, she’s lost her husband, she has a boring job, but she’s still enjoying life.”
“what makes you think she’s old?” her age kept coming up and i never saw anything about her age
“the cataracts” he bluntly answered
“what are cataracts?”
“Cataracts are a disease of the eye that develope usually in the older years”
“Willow stop it” i interrupted him as my dog had started pestering him even more for his attention. She had completely bored of my room and had moved on to demand love and attention.
“something i didn't understand,” i continued, “there is a line in the poem ‘like an old flagellant’ (Abani IV, xvi), what does that mean?”
“a flagellant is someone that whips his or her back with a whip”
“i had understood that much, but what does that have to do with the poem?”
“well, she doesn't even have the energy to whip herself. she’s so exhausted and drained by the loneliness and the decay and the death that she can’t even whip herself.”
“ok” i said, with my new understanding “that's all i need, i think that's enough to write my paper”
i was happy with all the new insight i had gathered, and excited and ready to write my paper. i reached down to pet my long neglected puppy and get the rest of my work done.
