Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? Oh my goodness. I was studying abroad in Prague reading work by Czech authors from World War II. The names of a few writers I studied in Prague: Milan Kundera, Miroslav Holub, Arnošt Lustig, Vaclav Havel, Ivam Kilma, and Franz Kafka.
Click on the below link to visit the website of Milan Kundera
http://www.kundera.de/english/
Click on the lnk below to read about Miroslav Holub
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/miroslav-holub
Click on the below link to visit Arnost Lustig’s website.
Click on the below link to visit Vaclav Havel’s website
Click on the link below to read about Ivam Kilma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kl%C3%ADma
Click on the link below to visit Franz Kafka’s website.
I was also visiting sites like the Old Jewish Cemetery. I came across a black and white photograph by Jan Lukas taken of a young girl, Vendulka Vogelova in a train station, a few hours before she was transported to a concentration camp. So much world and sadness were in her eyes and hope.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was in a dorm room (we called it Kaya Tonka(sp)), then on a historic Tatra T-3 tram and in classrooms at Central European University and also Charles University.
The poem spoke to me in various venues. I remember sitting on a gravesite with a large stone angel; the statue was for a child who had died. I was writing in a notebook with a dark green cover, spattered with a gold geographic pattern on a soft cover, that folded back easily, no spiral binding.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? It was in the summer of 1993, perhaps July or August. And now? With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia? And women and children being killed, women and children fleeing the country they love and the rise of antisemitism rearing its ugly head. This poem feels real and relevant and absolutely immediate to me. Sadly. Again. I fear that we are nearly there, I think, World War III.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? I believe perhaps I had more details about the linden trees, the flowers, their scent and there were a few lines that led us astray from the girl’s portrait and her dark eyes.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? How strong she was. How violence and war can happen without good reason. As in WWII, one man’s skewed vision damaged multiple lives. It can destroy millions of kind people who only want a chance to thrive and live in peace.
I have been rereading the novel The Great Gatsby and one quote resonates with me, about careless people. Careless sounds like such an innocent and harmless word. But it is anything but. With “careless” comes the brink of evil.
From narrator, Nick Carraway, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
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Very different degrees of carelessness, of course, but two individuals have been on my mind and both involve Ukraine: Putin and Alec Baldwin.
Alex Baldwin (how careless, unthinking, it appears he was and how he denies responsibility and to him it all seems like an acting scene) How he fired a so-called prop gun during a rehearsal in a church, on a movie set for “Rust,” killing Ukrainian-born cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Leaving behind her husband and young son.
Putin, starting a war with Ukraine for no good reason. Attacking a country because why? He wants to “get the USSR band back together again”? Because Ukraine was considering joining NATO? Because Ukraine was democratic? And THIS is cause to invade and put 45 million people’s lives and land at risk?
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The lines:“I am the mirror for all the world’s silence,” and “I crack in the dark. I shine in the snow.”
Has this poem been published? And if so where? “Portrait of a Young Girl 1942” was originally published in a print version of Westerly Centre for Studies in Literature, Special Issue: Australian War-Time Voices, Vol.40, No. 4, summer (1995), 69-70 and later appeared as part of my poetry collection Only More So (Salmon Poetry Ireland 2016), alongside sister poems: “Only More So” and “Ciscenje Prostora (Ethnic Cleansing).”
Click on below link to order ONLY MORE SO from Amazon
Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four books, most recently Only More So (Salmon Poetry 2016). Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Fulbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, the California Arts Council, Fundação Luso-Americana, and Barbara Deming Foundation. She’s led poetry workshops at Keystone College, Nimrod Writers Conference, The Muse in Norfolk, Virginia, and the University of Texas, Austin.
Click on the link below to visit Millicent Accardi’s Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/MillB
Most of the BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html