Interview by Karina Jutzi
I recently had a zoom interview with poet Anne Elezabeth Pluto to discuss her most recent book, How Many Miles to Babylon. The author sipped tea while holding her adorable adopted French Bulldog named Celine on her lap. Pluto is the editor of Nixes Mate Review and teaches at Lesley University. This is her second book.
KJ:I noticed many of the poems mention Russia, but there are other places too. Texas comes up a few times.
AEP: I like place poems. My DNA goes indigenous east of Russia all the way to the West. One of my grandmother’s is a Tatar and the other is Belarus. When they were all living there it was Imperial Russia, and that’s where my Father was born. Then it became Poland and now it’s Belarus. In my family there were border crossings all the time. My Mother was born in America, then went back to Poland, then came back to America just before WWII. She was very lucky. So my parents have this great love story and often appear in the poems. But recently, so many poems came out of the invasion of Ukraine. I stayed up every night watching the news. The poem “In My Church, Mary Wears Red” with her rising out of the sea on Easter, came out of watching that.
KJ: They were born out of this most recent conflict?
AEP: Very much. One poem dedicated to the writer Anna Politkovskay, who was murdered. That story stayed with me. And that she was born in the Bronx, where I was born. But she went back, and that story, the idea of all the coverups, just terrible. I’m working on a poem about Navalny rising from the dead. That’s a very Russian theme, to rise from the dead.
KJ: Yes, very much.
AEP: And my husband was from Texas, and he was a cowboy, so that’s where the Texas references come from.
KJ: I see.
AEP: I highlight a lot of women in this book. I’m very drawn to the goddess Isis, and saving her name. When your name is stolen you never get your name back.
KJ: Say a little more about that, that’s interesting.
AEP: Just that it was stolen by this group of horrible madmen, if I can say that, and that they’re still not squelched for good. But yeah, there’s a lot of women in the book. It’s really about loss. Friendship and the death of friendship.
KJ: Yes there’s so much loss in the book. I think both the loss we are all witnessing on the world’s stage and also your own personal loss that you went through with your husband in hospice. Like the poem “Morphine.”
AEP: That was for my husband, who was in hospice. That was such a journey. I wrote those poems on pieces of scrap paper in between teaching online and just spending time with my husband. I don’t think the right word is “getting through it,” but more “being in the process of it” (with hospice care). That was really remarkable because after experiencing that, I’ve been able to help others through it.
KJ: What do you mean?
AEP: Well, I just had a friend die, and before hospice came she talked to me and said “tell me everything, so that I know how it’s going to be.”
KJ: I’m so sorry that you’ve had all this recent loss.
AEP: Thank you. It’s been a year.
KJ: And you can really see that in your work. I think it’s very relatable material for those who have been through hospice or being in the caretaker role. It makes you feel less alone to see someone else who has been through it.
AEP: I think that was part of what I wanted the book to do. Help people feel less alone. And it’s a female voice.
KJ: Yes, you can hear that.
AEP: At the end of a journey we have books, and we have women left to pick it up. After war women are left to put it back together. Even with stolen names, even with lost friendships or lost husbands, you have to know grief is okay. It’s a part of life. I hope people would have comfort in knowing they are not alone.
KJ: The list of losses poem, “More Things I Have Lost” was quite powerful.
AEP: Thank you.
KJ: Even something as simple as a list poem can bring out a lot of emotion.
AEP: It could have been a longer list.
KJ: Laughs
KJ: The book goes in chronological order, starting with a January poem, then moving to Valentine’s Day which suggests February and ending at Christmas. Was that intentional?
AEP: Yes I like dividing manuscripts in Time or Seasons. My other book “The Deepest Part of Dark” is in seasons. I like time.
KJ: Time and Place
AEP: Yes!
KJ: My final question is about the title. Miles to Babylon suggests a religious quest. Can you talk about how spirituality gets into your poems? I thought there was an undercurrent there that flowed throughout.
AEP: I think I’m drawn to something bigger than I am. It’s very difficult to love your enemies. It’s very difficult to turn the other cheek. And I think because it’s so difficult I’m attracted to it. It’s something I’m aware of both consciously and subconsciously. Especially in this difficult time. Some of my poems in this manuscript aren’t nice and they aren’t hopeful, and I don’t always choose to read them at readings. But part of the spiritual quest is to look inward. And just asking, “who I am and who made me?” And for me, being a first generation American and my Mother never wanting to talk about her Tatar Mother, there’s so much there I don’t know about. But my poem “The Journey to Babylon” basically takes a nursery rhyme and makes it about Iraq. I want to give voice to these people, especially more specific names of people we don’t read about, that if you dig deeper you find them. Like the poem “Funeral in Al-Malikah 2019” dedicated to Herivin Khalaf. I don’t want these people to be forgotten.
About the interviewer: Karina writes plays, poems, essays, screenplays and fiction. Her plays have been produced widely across the United States, and have been named among the Best of Equity Theater. Her poetry, essays, and comedy writing have been featured in various literary magazines both on and offline. She currently lives on a small farm in Vermont with her husband and young children.