Kristina Marie Darling: Tell us about the larger projects these stunning poems are culled from.
Barbara Krasner (BK): These poems come from two collections. The “Emma Lazarus” poems come from a chapbook, Miss Emma Lazarus Enlightens the World, now on submission. They are all persona poems from Emma’s perspectives except for a couple toward the end that use her sister Josephine’s voice, and the final poem in my voice. The second set comes from a full-length collection on submission, The Cousins Club of Dead Relatives, in which I engage with the spirits of my ancestors, whom I’ve come to know through decades of archival and family research.
KMD: The poems give considerable attention to women whose lives might otherwise disappear from the historical record. What have you discovered through the process of writing about them?
BK: I think about female collective memory and how it’s passed from generation to generation. It’s true I have some female relatives, like the grandmother who died years before I was born, and a great-grandmother who refused to have her photo taken lest it steal her soul. I feel compelled to tell their story. Arthur Kurzweil, one of the founding fathers of Jewish genealogy, said once that we family historians are called into service to bear witness. I believe that. I believe that my previous training in German and Russian help me access the historical record. So, for instance, while I never knew this great-grandmother or grandmother, I have a paper trail. Writing about them, using the documentation, helps me understand their lives, their choices.
KMD: I’m intrigued by your ability to step beyond autobiography and incorporate the archive into your work. How much research happens before the poem begins, and how much research happens because the poem itself demands it?
BK: I began researching Emma Lazarus more than ten years ago. I had a fellowship at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati in 2016 where I could access many primary source materials. Research on her took me to Newport, Concord, New York City, and Brooklyn. I had originally written a middle-grade biography of her, so I had already synthesized my research before I translated to poetry.
My family history poems are based on more than three decades of research. I have folders of birth, marriage, and death records. Property deeds. Citizenship papers. Photographs.
Mostly, the research produces the poetry. But sometimes I find I need more details and back into the research I go. An example of that are the Headline Fugue poems where I went back into the newspaper archives to re-read the relevant articles.
KMD: Several poems seem to ask what survives when the people who carried a culture are gone. What do you believe survives most powerfully—language, ritual, objects, stories, gestures, photographs, or something else entirely?
BK: Such a great question. I’m thinking about an article I read in my doctoral program by gerontology scholars who interviewed families about the Armenian genocide. Three bodies of memory emerged: stories, keepsakes, and recipes.
I recall minute details and use photographs and other visual arts a great deal to trigger memory. For instance, I was at the Brandywine Museum of Art this week and when I saw a portrait of Andrew Wyeth at age five holding a fire engine, I recalled how my father gave my son a Hess truck every Hanukkah. Wyeth’s painting of a neighbor encased in a snow drift on a hill reminded me of my father in his coffin and my distinct feeling he was no longer in that body.
Objects often catalyze my writing as well. This includes, for example, Emma’s handwritten letters that I examined in Columbia and Harvard university libraries.
But when I step back from this, the throughline of memory connects all the artifacts—language, ritual, objects, stories, etc.
KMD: What advice do you have for writers who have never tried using the archive as fuel for their creative practice?
BK: Another great question! I have to admit that my introduction to the archive began as a family historian, visiting the National Archives Northeast Division which in the 1990s was located in the military terminal in Bayonne, New Jersey. It has since moved to Manhattan. I grew accustomed to pencils only, pockets full of quarters, and wearing white gloves. As I trained as an academic historian, I applied this knowledge to other archives. It’s also good to research the archive online. Understand the specifications. For instance, do you have to request materials in advance? Are you allowed to take photos (more common now)? Stories lurk in historical documents, in the how and why, beyond the who-where-when. Take extensive notes and photocopy or photograph whatever you can, because you will need to examine and reexamine the primary sources.
KMD: What’s next? What can your readers look forward to?
I have three poetry collections on submission, including Miss Emma Lazarus Enlightens the World and The Cousins Club of Dead Relatives. The other collection is ekphrastic, poems after female surrealists. In the wings are two other manuscripts I’ll submit in the fall: an ekphrastic poetry collection that focuses on war and its aftermath (including the Holocaust) and family, and a genealogical memoir, Conversations with Eva: The Grandmother I Never Knew.
I have two books scheduled for release in 2027: an ekphrastic chapbook, The Appropriation of Brueghel (Shanti Arts) and Memory Collector (Kelsay Books). I consider Memory Collector the precursor of The Cousins Club of Dead Relatives.
Meanwhile, I continue to write flash/micro fiction and nonfiction and individual poems, usually sparked by visual art (I’m an art museum fanatic). I lead online workshops in writing family history and using art to craft poetry and prose. I’m working on a novel about a fledgling family historian out to discover a great-aunt’s Holocaust secrets while also determining her own paternity, and I am eager to research fin-de-siecle Vienna for more fiction writing. My grandmother’s distant cousin moved there and married a socialite who ran salons and patronized major artistic movements.