When I first read Blinded Birds, an award-winning collection of poetry by B. Fulton Jennes, I entered a world I assumed I knew. After a long career in nursing, I thought I was familiar with the wages of depression and addiction. But the poems in Blinded Birds took me deep into new territory, into multigenerational suffering and almost miraculous recovery. I was eager to talk with Jennes to find out more about these brave poems and her willingness to expose her family’s long hidden afflictions.
Cortney Davis: The poems in Blinded Birds are startling and sometimes difficult to read. Can you talk about the process of writing such personal poems–how you considered the idea of “truth” in poetry as you were writing?
B. Fulton Jennes: The poems in Blinded Birds are 100% autobiographical. One of the book’s reviewers called them “brutally honest,” and many people have told me they needed to stop reading to compose themselves before continuing (I guess that’s a compliment!). The intent was not to shock but, rather, to heal. For me, the only path to that healing was complete, unfiltered honesty. As we say in the program, you’re only as sick as your secrets, and I’d been holding in those poisonous secrets for far too long. Poet Anne Carson might insist that art is not therapy, but it was for me in writing these poems.
CD: Blinded Birds is your first poetry collection, but you’ve been writing award winning poems for some time. When did you begin your journey as a poet?
BFJ: When I was a child my grandmother used to read to me from my father’s copy of A Child’s Garden of Verse; I loved the rhymes and the musicality of the poems. Also, my mom wanted to be a writer when she was in high school. She used to write poems with me in the morning before I went to school. Of course, I took all the credit for them with my teacher!
CD: And now you’re writing poems that are like explosions on the page, visceral and stripped-bare. How did you come to write these particular poems? Was there a triggering event?
BFJ: It was after we discovered my daughter Mallory’s heroin addiction. Mal was home from college and preparing to begin overseas graduate studies when we found her overdosed and, essentially, dead on her bedroom floor. Fortunately, I was able to resuscitate her until the EMTs arrived, so she lived and entered a residential treatment program. But processing all that happened in the months that followed–including Mallory’s subsequent relapse and years of active addiction–threw both my husband and me into a state of perpetual PTSD. It also evoked memories of my own addiction to alcohol, including during Mal’s infancy (I relapsed when her pediatrician advised me to drink beer because my milk production insufficient and she was losing weight. I’m an addict–who was I to argue?). Additionally, she and I have both been treated for depression since childhood (I was on Valium when I was 12, for God’s sake–and Mallory’s depression manifested much earlier), and my mother suffered from horrible depression, most likely untreated bipolar disorder, throughout my childhood. So all of those factors congealed during this period–the memories, the fears, the regrets, the anger, the sorrow. The only way I could manage was to write my way through.
CD: Writing the poems must have been an extraordinary experience. Your poems about saving Mallory’s life (“Eating Dinner, After You Died,” “The Waitings”) begin in despair and end in hope. You might have kept these poems to yourself but chose to offer them publically in a collection. How did the publication of this book affect you emotionally and how have the poems affected your family?
BFJ: Let’s start with my family, first and foremost my daughter since she is a central character in the collection’s story arc. By the time I was ready to submit Blinded Birds to publishers, Mallory was in relatively long-term recovery–in fact, she had gone to graduate school to become a certified addictions counselor. I would never have published the poems without her permission, and she readily gave it, realizing not only the personal importance of telling our story but also the potential of connecting with others and offering them hope as a result since the final poems in the collection celebrate our joint recovery. Sadly, my mother–the third central character in the book–never achieved relief from her depression before she died. She was of a generation that clung to the belief that depression is a character flaw, not a treatable medical condition–much as addiction is still shrouded in stigma today. My husband was behind the book 100%. The rest of the family, including many who never realized our ongoing struggles with mental illness, were initially shocked but ultimately supportive. We got a lot of, “I’m so sorry–I never knew,” which just shows how well we hid the truth for so long.
How did the book’s publication affect me emotionally? I think both Mallory and I feel really empowered by having the truth out in the open for others to learn from and, perhaps, glean hope from. Every time I finish a reading, people from the audience approach me to share their stories, especially ones about their own children who suffered, or suffer, from addiction. I can feel the healing they’ve received from knowing they’re not alone. It’s therapeutic for all of us–the giver and the receivers of hope.
CD: Your poems seem to be “spot on” in examining the cultural and societal issues so many families struggle with today. It has been said that the personal is universal, and your very personal poems speak directly to these issues. Was that something you considered when writing, that your work might help others understand the genesis and effects of addiction?
BFJ: It’s only in studying how others react to the poems that I’ve developed a keener awareness of society’s misevaluation of addiction and addicts. However, while drafting the poems, I definitely took a “genetics as culprit” approach. The three of us recently had genetic testing done, which revealed that both Mallory and I have the A1 allele. In study after study, that mutation on the brain’s dopamine receptors has been very closely linked to early-onset depression, severe alcoholism, ADHD, intractable PTSD, and a heightened risk for addiction to opioids. There are two poems at the beginning of the book that highlight the fury I feel at being a victim of genetics: “Blinded Birds” and “To an Allele.” And I wish I could have shared those findings with my mother who no doubt blamed herself rather than her genetic inheritance for her lifelong depression. (Her father was severely alcoholic and despondent; two of her siblings committed suicide.)
CD: When you understood the genetic component of depression and addiction did you feel relieved somehow of guilt or blame? I very much admire your poem “Triple Helix” that helps you “pry apart the DNA / that twists our fates together . . . .”
BFJ: Vindicated, perhaps, but not guiltless. There’s another poem in the book titled “Every Bad Thing That Ever Happened to Me Happened When I Was Drunk,” and that’s pretty much the truth of it. And not just the bad things that happened to me, but the bad things I imposed upon others, most notably my daughter. I relapsed twice during her childhood: once when she was an infant (the poem “Alky Mommy” speaks to that) and again when she was a teen–the two most impressionable periods in a child’s development. During those times, I was unavailable to Mallory on many levels. That’s why there’s so much regret and sorrow mixed with anger in discovering the genetic connection to addiction–my genes might have opened the door for me, but I’m the one who wrecked the room.
CD: Yet you did not leave the room in shambles. The last several poems in Blinded Birds speak to healing and resolution. In the book’s last poem, “Hovenweep,” you write “And then you, a damaged daughter, saved me. / And then I, a mother damned, saved you.” Do you have a favorite poem among those that bring the book to a close with hope?
BFJ: Yes! My favorite is “Return,” the second-to-last poem in the collection. I still connect to it, feel its power, whenever I read it. In it, I metaphorically compare recovery to a tree reawakening after a long winter, a long night. Isn’t that exactly what it feels like, the first time you wake up and don’t ache for a drink or a fix? You feel alive again. It’s remarkable. Like being reborn.
CD: You often give well attended readings. Is it difficult for you to share such emotional and revealing poems?
BFJ: Not at all. As I’ve mentioned, I can feel the healing that’s happening in the room–both for me and for those in attendance. Sure, there are some who can’t scurry away quickly enough after the reading (!), but I tell myself that they’re the ones who most needed to hear the poems.
CD: Yes, sometimes we experience something–a poem that cuts too close perhaps–and it’s often only later that we realize how we’ve been touched, been changed. Has writing Blinded Birds changed you or your family in any way?
BFJ: Personally, I’ve gained confidence on many levels since the book’s publication–as a poet, as a public speaker, as a truth-teller and giver of hope. I’m unafraid–unlike all those years I felt hidden and hurt by the truth. I think everyone in the family feels pretty much the same.
CD: Once in a lecture years ago at NYU the poet Yehuda Amichai said that in war, poems can’t save us. Do you think poetry can save us? Can it bring about changes in our society?
BFJ: It certainly has saved me on more than one occasion. So on a personal level, absolutely: poetry saves. But I see the powerful poems being written about the atrocities occurring in so many places today, and while those poems have impacted my sense of urgency and compassion, I don’t see that power playing out on a political level. I think the effect of art–whether poetry, song, or visual art–is limited to moving a pre-disposed audience. Sadly, they “preach to the choir”–albeit powerful and affective preaching.
CD: And now that Blinded Birds has found wide readership, tell me about your latest book. You’ve written again about your family, but this time about a special and specific person.
BFJ: Yes–FLOWN (Porkbelly Press, 2024) is an elegy-in-verse for my late sister, who died of metastatic breast cancer in July of 2022. It’s a chapbook of very short poems, written during the final months of Harriet’s illness and the days and weeks just after her passing. It’s raw, very raw. I still relive the anguish of those days when I read the poems.
CD: how was writing this book different from—or similar to—writing Blinded Birds?
BFJ: In terms of differences, the biggest one was that FLOWN was written while the events were transpiring, rather than in retrospect. It was a period of deep recollection and reflection, sussing–intuiting really–the metaphoric connections between Harriet’s illness (which we knew from the first diagnosis was terminal) and events from our childhood. There were four years between us, so I learned a great deal from her when we were young, just as she taught me so much about life and about the process of dying with her illness and eventual passing.
Both books are rich in symbolism, which I guess was the greatest similarity in writing them. The title and title poem of Blinded Birds reference the old Flemish tradition of vinkensport, in which chaffinches being trained to compete in contests that require them to repeat their distinctive song the most times per hour were once blinded with hot needles to minimize distraction during competition. Cruel, right? I used that analogy to illustrate the cruelty of genetics in predetermining our propensity for addiction–and, yes, of any god who would create genetic mutations in the first place and use them for his “sport.” That metaphor echoes through the poems, just as the symbols of holes (including graves) and birds make repeated appearances throughout FLOWN.
CD: And one question about your poetic process. Do you have any special inspirations or habits that help you create? Sharon Olds once said that she finds inspiration in walking across water. Some poets have elaborate pre-writing rituals, or must have silence, or can only write at a table at Starbucks.
BFJ: For me, it’s hard to find a place quiet enough to write, to achieve that feeling of being completely removed from the world. So I usually draft my poems wearing headphones and listening to either Philip Glass or to theta wave-inducing music online. Both are very hypnotic for me and allow me to reach my Zen place.
CD: As one of your fans, I’m grateful for the words and images that arise from your Zen place! Finally, is there a message or a realization that you hope readers will take away after reading Blinded Birds?
BFJ: First, addiction and depression are genetic “gifts” that no one asks to receive. They are treatable conditions, deserving of society’s and the medical community’s non-judgmental compassion and support, not its dismissal and neglect. Second, there is always, always hope. The path to recovery is fraught with physical and mental anguish, blame-placing, and failure, but keep going. Keep going. Keep going. And help others on their path, too.
B. Fulton Jennes is Poet Laureate Emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she also served for many years as poet-in-residence at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have appeared in CALYX, Comstock Review, Extreme Sonnets II, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, Tupelo Quarterly, and many other journals and anthologies. Jennes’ poem “Glyphs of a Gentle Going” was awarded the 2022 Lascaux Prize; another poem, “Father to Son,” won the 2023 New Millennium Award. In 2021, her poem “From the Room of an Unknown Girl” was awarded the Leslie McGrath Prize. Jennes’ first collection of poems, Blinded Birds (Finishing Line Press), received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. Another chapbook, FLOWN—an elegy for her late sister—will be published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. She lives in Ridgefield with husband Chuck.