Ariana Benson’s “Black Pastoral” Makes African American History Visceral through Poetry [INTERVIEW]

Ariana Benson’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Recipient of the 2022 Furious Flower Poetry Prize, Benson serves as a nonfiction editor of Auburn Avenue Literary Journal. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

James: Let’s start with the challenge of titling and organizing collections. In the case of “Black Pastoral” the title of the collection is also a poem that appears midway through the collection, and “Black Pastoral” is reworked by using boldface formatting to create three sections: “Black Past”, “Back As”, and “Black Pastoral”. For me this framing of the book was effective and intriguing, and I approached each section differently than if the sections had simply been numbered.How did you decide on this approach?

Ariana: “I’m delighted to hear it was effective. The goal was to shape how you engage with the sections. The term ‘Black Pastoral’ has multiple meanings. ‘Black’ represents both African American history and the idea of darkness, like a portal, such as black holes. I wanted to explore these meanings within ‘Black Pastoral.’ ‘Black Past’ refers to the history of Blackness. ‘Black As’ explores what Blackness can be and look like in environmental, cultural, and societal contexts. Finally, ‘Black Pastoral’ is a synthesis of all these elements in a contemporary sense. The titles of each section were chosen to not only encapsulate everything within ‘Black Pastoral’ but also to demarcate different themes and ideas, establishing connections.”

James: In “Strange Fruit Market” you employ the villanelle form to, as called out in the Notes, capture the contradictory histories of the pineapple, from a symbol of hospitality in Colonial America, to the role of the pineapple during the Middle Passage. The repeated (and closing) lines are:

A wild, strange fruit best served fresh and cold.
Cut deep enough, black flesh turns to gold.

I found the use of the villanelle form very effective. How did you approach choosing the form for this poem? 

Ariana: “That’s a great question. The poem you’re referring to is the oldest in the book, written during my undergraduate years. I had just learned about the villanelle form and fell in love with it. The content was inspired by my trip to Accra, Ghana. While walking to the Last Bath River, a site linked to the enslaved people’s journey to the ships, our guide pointed out wild pineapples along the path. He explained that they were used to track location, much like using stars in the sky. This idea profoundly struck me.

“Later, I moved to the UK, where I noticed pineapples depicted on banisters and buildings, symbols of wealth. I researched and discovered pineapples were once a colonial symbol of status; one could cost thousands due to the inability to grow them locally in the UK.

“I found the connection between the pineapple’s symbolic wealth and its role as a guide during the Middle Passage fascinating. The villanelle seemed like the perfect form to weave these contexts together, highlighting the pineapple’s literal wealth, its guiding role, and the metaphor of ‘black flesh being cut.’ The repetition in the villanelle felt appropriate for a poem heavily based on a symbolic object, allowing me to explore how the meanings of the pineapple, gold, and blackness shift throughout the poem.”

James: Many of the poems in this collection are anchored on research of the slave trade and African American experience. I read the Notes with interest, and went down several ratholes including reading more about the Great Dismal Swamp after reading your poem inspired by that subject. Your book, Kweku Abimbola’s book “Saltwater Demands a Psalm”, and others make me wonder if history should be taught using poetry. What are your thoughts on how poetry anchored in history can help build empathy and curiosity? 

Ariana: “James, you’ve hit on my very intention with these poems. History should be taught using not only poetry but also other lyrical, humanistic mediums. In American education, history often focuses on statistics – the what, when, and where, neglecting the who and the individual human experiences. By focusing on numbers, the human element is lost, particularly in black and slavery history. This approach dehumanizes the events and minimizes their contemporary impact. Poetry allows me to spotlight a single moment or life within a larger historical event, exploring emotions and experiences of individuals. Through poetry, we can understand the gravity of these events beyond just learning facts, and it helps prevent repeating history by knowing it more deeply.”

James: That makes sense. History books can be boring and flat, while history itself is fascinating and should be vibrant.

Ariana: “History was my least favorite subject in school because it was so dull. But when I rediscovered it through art and literature, like works by Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, it became fascinating. This new perspective highlighted how my history, and often American history, is taught in a narrowly framed way. My goal is to expand how we engage with and understand history.”

James: I recently interviewed Heather Bourbeau, a Californian poet who wrote “Monarch,” which vividly brings to life the history of the western states. I believe it can enliven a course on Western history, unlike typical history books.

Ariana: “Exactly. Poetry can spark curiosity and serve as a starting point for exploring history, making it more engaging and alive.”

James: Your book is an excellent example of why reading poetry is best done on paper, in physical form. You employ numerous visual forms including several concrete poems including one of my favorite poems in the collection, “Self-Portrait as Oil Spill”, along with “Elders Speak of Windchimes”, a concrete list poem titled “things tiny enough to fit through Elmina’s door of no return”, and more. The form of your book even plays a role – square rather than rectangular – to provide horizontal space. What is your approach to finding the visual form of a poem during the revision and editing process? 

Ariana: “Generally, the form of a poem is one of the last things I consider. I usually start drafting in prose and then break it into lines for the best enjambment. For poems like ‘Self-Portrait as Oil Spill’ or ‘Elders Speak of Windchimes,’ which deal with visceral events like oil spills, drowning, or lynching, I think about how the poem exists as an object on the page. Employing concrete forms can activate the brain to visualize beyond the words. People have different learning styles—visual, auditory, tactile—so if I can engage more than just reading the words, it can expand the audience and the poem’s impact.”

James: Amanda Gorman’s book also deserves to be read on paper and heard. It’s two different experiences, and visually, it’s part of the artistry.

Ariana: “Absolutely. Eduardo C. Corral gave me a valuable piece of advice about form being like a container for the poem. He pours the language of the poem into different containers to find the one that looks the most full. I think that’s a great way to approach it.”

James: Consistent with “Pastoral” being part of the title of your book, many of the poems draw inspiration from nature. But you also explore contradictions that make these poems more than simple pastorals. In the long poem “Anti-Elegy for the Trees” you write:

Yes, it’s true, we need them   and I’ll concede their beauty, but how I tire, too, and sooner still
of beauty—especially the kind we understand     as needed—

and in  “Antipastoral” you write:

So if I must admire the magpies,
their morbid halo, you will
look first, unflinching,
at what festers in the brush:
the saltating maggots, the feasting
butterflies; their dripping
wings.

In editing this collection, which has so much cohesion, how did you approach selecting poems that were consistent with the themes of the book, and those to leave out; many poets struggle with the poems to include in a collection.

Ariana: “That’s a great question. The toughest part of assembling the book was deciding what to include and where to place each poem. The concept of ‘Black Past,’ ‘Black As,’ ‘Black Pastoral’ helped me determine which poems fit and which didn’t. The poems you mentioned fall into the ‘Black Pastoral’ section, where I aimed to deconstruct the traditional view of pastorals, often seen as untouched, pure, and separate from human influence. I wanted to challenge this by acknowledging the ugliness that has occurred on these lands, reflecting my perspective as a descendant of those affected by these histories.

“The themes in the collection slightly bleed over between sections. I didn’t want to confine the poems too tightly to specific themes or categories. This approach allowed for a more fluid throughline. Initially, the poems were arranged chronologically, but I’ve become resistant to that structure. Instead, I focused on themes, images, and experiences, creating a symphony of different notes and themes that come together harmonically.”

James: “Etymology of Mercy” concludes with some of my favorite lines in the book, you write:

                                          how kindly I wring
rings of mercy into your throat. you
who whittled the cross into a crude shiv—I christen
forgiven. baptize breathless over, and over,
and again. you who sate your crops with flesh
-drawn rain, I wish nothing but miseri
-cord.

Perhaps the lines in this poem just fell out of you, that has happened to me a couple of times; more likely you worked and worked and worked the lines to achieve the exquisite beauty in this poem. What is your approach to achieving beauty in poetry?

Ariana: ”You’ve pinpointed one of the poems that required a lot of work to perfect the lines. My approach to beauty in poetry often revolves around the single line. A poem should be strong as a whole, but also contain lines that hold multiple meanings. Like a flower symbolizing love, friendship, grief, and death, I aim for my lines to carry varied meanings. A line in a poem about grief might unexpectedly convey love, creating beauty in the conflict and emotional complexity. For me, beauty comes from those moments where a single line strikes a different tone or chord, contributing to the poem’s emotional richness.”

James: The collection includes a series of poems titled “Love Poem in the Black Field”. After reading your book I went back and read these poems back-to-back, following the progress through time. The last poem in the series ends with:

                 And I am surer, now,
                 Of my ugliness, and surer that I love you
Because you don’t try to make me
                 Unknow this truth. The sirens,
The boots, they stampede on. But we alive
                 Because of—we alive despite.

This series of poems, as noted in the Foreword, “illuminate love under duress.” The poems made the broad historical context of the book personal. Talk about how these poems were developed, and how you approached incorporating the poems into the book, which could have been combined into a single long poem. 

Ariana: “Thank you for your careful reading and insightful questions. The idea of writing an entire book of ‘Love Poems in the Black Field’ is really appealing to me. These poems are some of my favorites because they invert the work in other sections of the book, taking something beautiful and revealing its ugliness. The field, with its dark connotations linked to slavery, is a place of both oppression and escape. Yet, there must have been love in those black fields, or else our history would be different. These poems bring moments of human tenderness and intimacy into the harsh reality of the field.

“The poems are scattered throughout time to reflect how the Black experience in America has evolved over centuries. By dating the poems and setting them in different field locations, I aim to show that there wasn’t just one singular field. ‘Field’ is a concept, a space with many iterations. This approach was meant to broaden the understanding of the Black experience beyond the simplistic view of enslavement.”

James: In “A Certain Sickness” you write:

Maybe I carry animals in my pockets.
And where you imagine I’ve tucked a barrel’s nose,
lies instead the huffing muzzle of a beast
untroubled by my fleshwarm dark.

I read this poem over and over, finding so many different interpretations, from gun violence to unconscious bias, to more personal interpretations of inner struggle and dark thoughts. I come at this poem from a privileged perspective. What has surprised you about how readers and audiences have been impacted and interpreted your poetry?

Ariana: “I really appreciate this question. Most readers grasp the themes of gun violence, historical violence, and the underlying issues of implicit bias in my poetry. However, I’m pleased to hear you mention the aspect of internal unrest, as well. A lot of the poems in this collection aren’t explicitly about me; they’re often narrated by trees or historical figures. This sometimes leads readers to focus more on the external elements rather than seeing how these poems also reflect an individualized experience of the impact of history and nature.

“Even when writing something like a ‘Love Poem in the Black Field’ about Loving v. Virginia, the feelings expressed could easily be mine. The fears and questions about public love and survival under scrutiny are universal. I’m grateful you noticed this deeper layer of self-interrogation. While the collection is mostly outward-facing, focusing on the world around, behind, and in front of us, there are moments where I speak through these created or historical characters, offering a glimpse into my own perspective.”

Listen to the full interview on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast to hear Ariana recite selections from the book.