How a Poet Became a Mystery Writer by Elizabeth Zelvin

 Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York City psychotherapist whose story, “The Green Cross,” is up for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story, her third nomination in this category. Her mystery series about recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler includes Death Will Get You Sober, Death Will Help You Leave Him, and the forthcoming Death Will Extend Your Vacation.  You can read “The Green Cross” and learn more about Liz and her writing at www.elizabethzelvin.com. She blogs on Poe’s Deadly Daughters. 

 

How a Poet Became a Mystery Writer

Elizabeth Zelvin

I found out my host today, Kaye Barley, liked poetry when she mentioned on Facebook that she’d been reading the work of former poet laureate Billy Collins. She, in turn, didn’t know that I’d been a poet for more than thirty years. I sent her a copy of my second book of poetry, Gifts and Secrets: Poems of the Therapeutic Relationship. And voilà! I knew what I’d write about for my guest appearance on her blog.

Although I became a poet long before getting my first mystery published, I discovered mysteries a decade before I started reading poetry. I was a college English major who chose the field because I loved reading novels. I remember saying, “I don’t have a poetic sensibility,” meaning that I had to study poetry but didn’t get it, probably because my male professors never taught the accessible, deeply felt poetry I could have related to. My conversion to mystery reader came right after college, when someone handed me a copy of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise. And I started writing poetry a decade later, eventually having many poems in journals and two books published by a good small press. I wrote three mysteries during the same period, but none of them found a publisher, which is probably a good thing.

For me, poetry and fiction are connected in a number of crucial ways: story telling, voice, and accessibility. I’m proud to say that nobody has ever said, “I didn’t understand your poem.” My poems are about people (myself or others) to whom something happens. So are my novels and short stories. My goal as both poet and fiction writer is to move readers (or listeners) to laughter and tears. On occasion, I’ve achieved that goal, and it means far more to me than financial success—luckily! Many of my poems end with a punch line, often a line taken from real life speech. That’s not too different from the proverbial “twist at the end” of a good short story. When I discovered flash fiction, I was confident that I could meet the challenge of telling a story in less than a thousand words because, as a poet, I’d told stories in a hundred or two hundred words.

I’ve written both poetry and fiction on the themes I feel passionate about, including alcoholism and recovery, relationships, being a woman, and being Jewish. With Passover only a week away, I’ll share two poems that I like to read at our family’s Seder. The first, “Passover,” recounts some of my own family’s history and appeared in my first book of poems, I Am the Daughter. The second, “Miriam,” turns an incident from the Exodus involving the sister of Moses into a character-driven story. It first appeared in the journal Poetica, and I would be delighted for readers to incorporate it into their own Seder.

Passover

my father revels in his role of patriarch

in velvet skullcap and white turtleneck

he looks, by some irony, like the pope:

He works for one of our boys, says my father

this is his night in this house of women

who snub patriarchy on all occasions

whose strength overflows the crucible

of faith and family it is his night

to make it sing

we break unleavened bread together

without politics

he is telling it for all of us

the only grandchild

(Do I have to listen to the boring part?)

my mother, the proud Hungarian

with her doctorate and law degree

for whom even the prayer over the candles

—women’s work—remains a mystery

for me, who never went to synagogue

who never suffered as a Jew

for my Irish lover, here for the first time

to whom I am serving up my childhood

on the Pesach plates

for Aunt Hilda, who married out

and Uncle Bud, who was my friend who isn’t Jewish

thirty years ago

at 79 my father has forgotten stories

muffs the accent sometimes the punchline

no longer knows the name of every lawyer in New York

but tonight he is clear as wine fresh as a photograph

confident and plump as the turkey itself

awaiting its turn in the kitchen

tonight he is the raconteur I remember

as cherished and familiar as the books the cloth the china

the Hebrew words I cannot understand

the melody I miss at anybody else’s Seder

that my father and Aunt Anna with her trained soprano

learned in Hebrew school as children

all I have traveled back, back to see and hear

measuring his audience

expanding in the warm room like love

my father pours the wine

skips the prosy rabbis arguing

and tells instead the illustrated Bible story:

Moses in the bulrushes cruel Pharaoh the Red Sea parting

Let my people go

or I’ll give you what for

says my father

Miriam

the men sit perched on rocks

their faces grimed

furrowed with runnels of sweat

their sandals crusted in Red Sea salt

stunned by their change of fortune

the power in Moses’ staff

the thunder of the sea overrunning Pharoah

the scream of terrified horses

the crack of chariots breaking up

the wall of water at their heels

they stare outward into the desert

will not meet one another’s eyes

Miriam moves among the women

offering one the water skin

another a cloth to wipe her dusty feet

a quiet word here

there a hand pressed gently on a shoulder

crouched where they dropped when Moses called a halt

they have instinctively formed a circle

Miriam completes her round

pours the last few drops of water

on a corner of her shawl

passes it across her face

shaking off weariness like a scratchy cloak

she gathers them with her eyes

her slow smile blossoms

“Ladies,” she says, “we’re free!”

“Who wants to dance?”