The Space Between Zen Teachers Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison Interview Poet Marie Howe

The Space Between Zen teachers Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison interview poet Marie Howe How do we pay attention? How do we attend to what is right in front of us, whether it be a loved one who is dying, a homeless person, the cashier in the local food store, or simply slamming the car door shut? What motivates us to take care of others? How do we separate ourselves from the “other”? These are some of the questions that New York’s poet laureate, Marie Howe, holds in mind as she writes her poetry. , 2005 Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen Buddhist teachers and the founders of New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care (NYZCCC), are friends with Marie Howe and she is a guest teacher in the NYZCCC’s Foundations UNTITLED INTERIOR (BLIZZARD) in Buddhist Contemplative Care Training pro- gram. On a bright winter Sunday in March, Chodo and Koshin spent the morning with Marie Howe and her daughter, Inan, in New York City. Over bagels, cream cheese, and tomatoes, they spoke with Howe about poetry, caregiving, and paying attention. PHOTOGRAPH BY SARAH MALAKOFF, MALAKOFF, SARAH BY PHOTOGRAPH 48 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 49 Magdalene—The Seven Devils “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had How had this happened? been cast out” Luke 8:2. How had our lives gotten like this? The first was that I was very busy. The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it The second—I was different from you: whatever —distinct, separate happened to you could not happen to me, not like from me in a bowl or on a plate. that. Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of The third—I worried. the list. The fourth—envy, disguised as compassion. The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of The second was that the laundry was never finally life of the aphid, done. The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The third was that no one knew me, although they The mosquito too—its face. And the ant—its thought they did. bifurcated body. And that if people thought of me as little as I thought Ok the first was that I was so busy. of them then what was love? The second that I might make the wrong choice, The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t because I had decided to take that plane that day, allow myself to belong that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early to anyone. BY EMILY GRAHAM EMILY BY and, I shouldn’t have wanted that. SINK The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know The third was that if I walked past the certain place on what we didn’t know. the street Robert Chodo Campbell: What was your experience of care- stuff for days. But my sister-in-law—“Toots” we used to call her, the house would blow up. The sixth was that I projected onto others what I giving? we call her “our outlaw”—I went to her house that night, and she myself was feeling. listened to me when I told her the stories, because I just needed to The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with Marie Howe: Oh, it was a joy. The days and weeks with my talk, talk, and talk. And she listened to me. a thin layer The seventh was the way my mother looked when she brother Johnny were some of the happiest times in my life. It was of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing. was dying. one of the few times in my life where I didn’t feel like I wanted to Koshin Paley Ellison: How did Johnny’s dying influence your The sound she made—her mouth wrenched to the be anywhere else. I’m a restless person and I got to be with him poetry and life? Your voice changed after your first book. The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me right and cupped open for hours and hours and hours. Finally, we could just be together. than the living So as to take in as much air—the gurgling sound And I got to read while he slept and look at his face and get him MH: Everything changed when John died. And being with John —so loud we had to speak louder to hear each other ice water and talk and tell stories. And just the way the hours when he was alive in those hours and days in his room with the The sixth—if I touched my right arm I had to touch over it. would pass was so sweet. green, flapping shade. Sitting by Johnny and just talking in those my left arm, and if I touched the left arm a little I took care of him growing up, but then he became my spiri- ways for those hours and all the particulars: the glass, the sand- harder than I’d first touched the right then I had And that I couldn’t stop hearing it—years later— tual advisor when he was in his twenties. And it feels like in any wich, the shade, the bedclothes, the cat, the summer heat outside to retouch the left and then touch the right again so grocery shopping, crossing the street— friendship, there’s that mirroring back and forth of your deepest pressing against the windows, the coolness in the air, the dim it would be even. truths—and our souls were connected from a very early time. He room. The peacefulness. The sounds of kids on bikes outside. For No, not the sound—it was her body’s hunger got very sick. And at one point he was lying there in bed and he once there was nothing else going on but that. That’s the freedom The seventh—I knew I was breathing the expelled finally evident.—what our mother had hidden all her said, “You know, Marie, my worst nightmare was that I would be of it, right? What’s more important? Nothing. So you’re actually breath of everything that life. lying here dying, and you’d be feeding me one of those stupid living in time again. After Johnny died I couldn’t write at all. was alive and I couldn’t stand it, milkshakes. And now it’s happening, and I’m so glad you’re And I was so lucky at that time: I received a fellowship to the For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots, here.” I loved it. Bunting Institute right down the street from me in Cambridge, I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word—cheese the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by at Radcliffe. So I just had to go down the street to an office and I cloth— what grew underneath. RCC: Who took care of you after he died? could write all day. But I couldn’t write, and I just would sit there. to breath through that would trap it—whatever was And I would write, “Still dead.” Then, “Still dead.” But I had a inside everyone else that The underneath—that was the first devil. It was always MH: Almost nobody. Nobody in my family knew how to take reading in the spring and that was enough of a deadline. So in entered me when I breathed in with me. care of themselves after John died. We went insane. The day after early winter I began to write those poems about John. John died, my sister Anne, who was a woman of action, decided No. That was the first one. And that I didn’t think you—if I told you—would we should tear apart my mother’s house and refurbish it so she KPE: It is such a crucial time, and having the time and space to understand any of this— could sell it. And people were pulling up linoleum floors and grieve is such a big deal. The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. 50 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 TRICYCLE SUMMER 2013 51 MH: That was really a big deal. I was given this place to be RCC: Being a part of the world is so essential, and it is the heart without any expectations really. And everything changed so that of spiritual practice. The stories from the Bible are so alive in all the particulars of life—this white dish, the shadow of the bottle your work. Can you speak about that a bit? on it—everything mattered so much more to me. And I saw Government what happened in these spaces. You can never even say what MH: Growing up, they were deep stories to me. They are the happened, because what happened is rarely said, but it occurs archetypical stories that help me live. Everybody’s there. Because Standing next to my old friend I sense among the glasses with water and lemon in them. And so you Easter’s coming, Inan and I were just talking about when Jesus that his soldiers have retreated. can’t say what happened but you can talk about the glasses or went to the garden the night before he was arrested and asked And mine? They’re resting their guns the lemon. And that something is in between all that. his friends to stay awake with him.

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