Local Lyrics hosted by Amber Renee appears on the 3rd Monday of each month. In it, Amber features the work and musings of a local poet.
“When numbing out with “Netflix and chill” is our go-to as a society, we need poetry to make us feel real again.”
Krisann Janowitz
What a hypocrite.
Overwhelmed by the tunnels from Suburban to City Hall station --
I shuffle quickly.
Head down, feet moving --
I notice the masses of heartache.
Laying, nodding, begging --
everyone chooses their own
activity in their crevice
of concrete.
Who knows their story,
their pain, the reasoning
that brought them to call
this home, for today.
I can't predict their
tomorrows, but I'm scared
to find out, afraid
to linger too long w/ nothing
in my hands to offer.
(If I even had one piece of
fruit, how would I choose who
to give it too? How would the others feel?
It's just too much to inhale;
so I choose to hold my breath instead, and walk on.)
I want to care, but I'm afraid
to care too much -- or maybe,
I already do.
Q and A
Give us one poet you'd want to sit and talk to.
The first poet that comes to mind is Sylvia Plath. Her work is so hauntingly beautiful and truly real — I would love to just sit with her and talk inspiration and duende. Ever since I learned about duende, life just make so much sense, I wonder if Plath knew about duende and how it may have changed the path for her. For those of you who don’t know, duende is similar to the idea we have of “getting inspiration from the muse” but it’s very different in that duende shows us the murky humanity underpinning everything we do. The father of duende, Federico García Lorca, described duende as “the mystery, the roots fastened in the mire that we all know and all ignore.” I would say that much of my work comes from that place and I wonder how much of Plath’s work did too.
Tell us about how other forms of art (music, painting) influence your work.
Painting is another activity I enjoy dabbling in. So, I have written a poem inspired by a painting/mixed media piece that I created. But that doesn't happen often. More common in my poems are for them to be inspired by music, spoken word artists, and other poet's work. In one of my poetry classes while in the St Joseph's master's in Writing Studies program, Dr. April Lindner had us reading works like Citizen by Claudia Rankine, Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, and Denise Levertov' s poetry. Our assignments were then to write a poem inspired by the corresponding poet's work. That exercise really opened my mind to the reality that a lot of art is inspired by art, it just makes sense. If we count Mother Nature's masterpieces, then most art is inspired by other art. It's the natural cycle of art.
Your collection of poems is entitled 'Homeless' and it addresses the issue of homelessness from several different perspectives. Could you talk a little about what inspired you to focus your collection on this topic?
I’ve always cared about what many call “the downtrodden.” I grew up volunteering as a teenager at missions around the city that temporarily house many homeless (and non-homeless) people who are on track to overcome their addictions and elevate their future. I always thought it was so beautiful that these people have been given the opportunity to pivot the direction of their lives and that they were honest enough with themselves to know that they needed to do so. Let’s just say, conversations were always amazing and definitely impacted my thinking.
Then around 2011–12, I began hanging out with homeless people in Bucks County through Project Home and monthly community dinners. It was amazing because I would meet people living in a tent city on the grounds of the Bucks County Hospital, invite them to the community dinners, and see them happy communing with their neighbors (both those with and without homes), and we all became friends! More and more, I saw that homeless people whom many write off as “vagrants” or “all drug addicts” are really just people like you and me. That then became my mission to write poems inspired by people I have interacted with in both the present and past in order to show the humanity of us all. People with homes and those who have (or choose) to live in tent cities — we are all just humans and should see each other as such. That is one idea I want people who read the collection to come away with.
But the poem above is not from your collection?
No. The poem I included is the one I wrote after my homeless collection was published, while still on the same topic. It more explores the relationship between Philadelphians and their homeless population, which is also a major theme throughout my chapbook published by Moonstone Press.
Where do you think poetry fits into our world?
I believe that poetry is all around us. First and foremost, poetry is expressed emotions. Traditionally, we think of poetry as emotions with words and use of figurative language, but I think poetry is more expansive than that. Poetry is anything that moves us to feel emotion. That’s why spoken word is poetry and music is poetry, as well as other forms of art, beautiful interactions between two human beings, and great buildings that force you to feel humility— that’s all poetry in my book. I think as times get harder globally, as climate change is unpredictable and mass murders occur way too often, we need moments of poetry to shake us up. When numbing out with “Netflix and chill” is our go-to as a society, we need poetry to make us feel real again.
Full disclosure: how many poems have you written about Kesha?
Technically, I’ve written two poems about Kesha, but her spirit influences a lot of my work. I feel like we all have those couple people whose existence just inspires us and we feel a special connection. That is how I feel about Kesha. She has inspired so many of my poems because she inspires me everyday.
Krisann Janowitz has always had a passion for poetry and words (elementary school-- if you count all the song lyrics about bubblegum). This passion has led her to graduate with her MA in Writing Studies from St. Joseph’s University in 2017. While there, she enjoyed being the Editor-in-Chief for her program's literary magazine, The Avenue. Among others, her poems have been published by streetcake magazine, Cliterature journal, and Z Publishing. Along with her chapbook Home(less): A Sampling of Poems on Home & Homelessness published by Moonstone Press, Krisann is honored to be the host of Moonstone’s New Voices, a monthly reading series. In her free time, she enjoys romping about in parks and skateparks with her burly husband and spunky Shih Tzu. You can find her on Instagram: @lovinlifewithsass
AMBER RENEE, she/her, 26, writes from her home in suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania. A fool hopelessly in love with the pursuit of psychic knowledge, she often writes autobiographically; though without sacrificing her distinctive off-rhythm canter. 'Thoughts on This Most Recent Episode' was her 2016 full length collection of self-published poetry ruminating on her thoughts & illnesses. Currently she is working on a musical album of poetry.