Ripple, Scar, and Story: Karla Huston

Poems with “roots in the stories people tell”

I met poet Karla Huston in the mid 2000s at a Walloon Lake Writers Retreat. She’s a gifted poet whom I respect and admire. She’s penned several collections, and has had the honor of being Wisconsin Poet Laureate in 2017-2018. Her newest release, Ripple, Scar and Story, is published by Kelsay Books. I’m pleased that she had the time to answer a few of my questions:

What was the inspiration for this new book of poems?

Because I was working with Memory Care Elders during my time as Wisconsin Poet Laureate, these poems have a lot to do with memory. I don’t purposefully set out to write about a specific theme. I’m grateful when a poem comes as it comes. When I taught workshops during that time, I often asked poets to write about their first memory. What was it? How old? Is it a real memory or something that was talked about and became a memory?

Marge Piercy wrote once, I don’t remember in what, or where, that “memory is revisionist.” That always stuck with me. We see our memories through our own eyes, our own lenses. We keep what suits us and discard what doesn’t. 

The title intrigues me. How did you arrive at it?

Donna Hilbert, my friend from Long Beach, suggested the title. I had another title, though I don’t remember it now. I thought Donna’s suggestion worked well, though. I wanted to name the collection The Queen of Broken Bones but Cathy mentioned that there were only three or four poems about bones. 

Ordering the poems in a full length collection seems daunting to me. How did you manage this task? 

My book is in 4 sections. No quotations to preface each, I’m afraid. 

I had been toying with this book for a long time. I think it started with at least 90 poems. I knew better than to do that. I remember learning somewhere that I needed to find the minimum number of poems for a collection–for contest. I’d heard that if a press asks for 45 to 60 poems to err at the lower level. It took me a long time to organize and rearrange. I’m not good at this. I had quite a few early readers for this collection. Much of it was organized while I was at Write On Door County. As the WPL, I was given two residencies. My husband came with me. He wanted to fish the upper part of the bay of Green Bay. Everyday, he’d ask what I was doing. I said “writing.” He asked if that was all I planned to do. “Yes, yes it was.” He had plenty of time to explore the bay and I went home with a manuscript. Still, I fooled with it for a long time before I sent it out. 

That’s a funny aside about your husband. For a poet, writing is the most important thing we can do! So, you were born, raised and educated in the Midwest. Do you think there is such a thing as a Midwest sensibility when it comes to poetry?

I’m not sure about a Midwest sensibility. Maybe. I’ve met several California poets who explore the same territory. Memory, family, the domestic? Maybe it has to do with being a certain age? Or gender. I write what I write, I guess. I’m always grateful for a new poem. They come a lot harder now that I’ve grown as a poet. Once I thought everything was a poem. Now I know better.

Please tell me about the lovely cover photograph

My sister-in-law Jennifer Selbrede is an excellent landscape photographer. She took this photo. Chaco Alley is in La Grange, KY. My brother and Jennifer live in California City which is in the Mojave Desert, near Edwards AFB. They are tired of the desert and the heat. So they have purchased a place in La Grange. I don’t know what Jennifer will photograph without the desert’s wide and open skies. I’m sure she’ll find something. She has some stunning Joshua Tree photos.

Your list of accomplishments as a poet is impressive. What’s next for you?

Thanks for these kind words. What’s next? Keep writing! There are a gazillion wonderful poets in Southern California. I know a few of them. I want to continue to make friends and spread my Wisconsin wings here. And keep writing! I have no plans for another book, but maybe it’ll happen.

LEFT WRIST

 Good-bye, dear wrist, small runway 
to my hand—the way you flex 
and extend, how I love your soft 
blonde hairs, the way you shrug 
into my sleeve when I’m cold.  
Good-bye to the underside, skin 
pale as milk, a blue river of blood pulsing 
through, sweet freckle and lump.  
Today you are broken, skin purpled 
and swollen, but tomorrow, you 
will be cut and probed, bones poked 
into place, then plated and screwed 
into something stronger, better, 
perhaps bionic. So long to the old.
Goodbye to the smooth 
and pristine. Hello ripple,
scar and story.

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Karla Huston is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry, most recently Grief Bone—Five Oaks Press, 2017. She has also published two full collections: A Theory of Lipstick, Main Street Rag Publications, 2013 and Ripple, Scar, and Story, Kelsay Books, 2022. Huston has published poetry, reviews and interviews in many state and national journals. KarlaHuston.com

About Ripple, Scar and Story: I love this book filled with numinous objects of memory and daily life: a grandmother’s rolling pin smelling of “Crisco and butter,” Father’s horns “upright/ silver bass and the curly/sousaphone.” Mother’s gold bridge, “Now around my neck,/ a pendant . . .” I love the sanctification of the lake scape, landscape, of Wisconsin with its “cathedral of trees,” and “more lakes than Minnesota,” home to cardinals and Sandhill cranes, and frogs and fish. I hold with William Stafford who says, “Our best work derives merely from a continuity of our daily selves.” And to Stafford’s dictum, I would add the daily selves of our memory, and offer Ripple, Scar, and Story as proof, a terrific book by a poet at the height of her powers. ~ Donna Hilbert, author of Threnody

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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist.
Learn more about her multi-award winning novel, In the Context of Love.
Learn more about her picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab.
Learn more about her poetry chapbook, Security