HER CHOCOLATE SARCOPHAGUS: CLAUDIA’S
GIFT
By Paul Pines
I am trying to get my arms around the fact that Claudia Carlson is no
longer with us. I can’t call her on the phone, reach her by email or message
her on FB. She has gone. I believe that when friends die, they take that part
of us with them. If this is true, Claudia now trails a long train in her wake.
Parts of those she loved, who loved her, will ever more be absent in the space
they once inhabited, no longer reachable in real time except in altered states,
dreams and epiphanies. Framing her death this way, my sense of loss is
doubled—I grieve for Claudia gone, but also for the soul-fragment we shared and
that now accompanies her on her journey.
Our friendship developed around
the task of designing my Marsh Hawk book, Divine Madness. Her clarity and candor were evident on August
8, 2012, in her FIRST PASS INTERIOR. “Hi Paul,” she wrote. “Please check the
attached PDF carefully and I suggest you plead or pay for other eyes to look at
it too. You write great poetry but your skills in Microsoft word wouldn't be a
good fall back job.”
She asked if I’d read her collection,
The Elephant House. I was impressed by her work, and wrote her at
length. “I found your book riveting in the way I
find a good mystery… in which people do the unimaginable and think the
unthinkable in a way that makes sense in the end and something precious is
redeemed.”
Her response went beyond candor
and alerted me to a core quality she displayed when called upon: Claudia was
emotionally brave.
“I deeply appreciate your thoughtful and
moving reaction to my poetry. You made me cry. I am so used to cursory
readings. So often I hear one or two poems at most made a small impression. Or
I am faced with a fellow poet’s need to find my book unthreatening. It can make
me feel I am shouting words as a subway train passes, full of people not
hearing me.”
Our connection deepened around shared
trust. In January, 2013 Claudia asked me to blurb her second Marsh Hawk
collection, Pocket Park. The book detailed changes in a tiny oasis
wedged between mid-town Manhattan buildings over the course of a year. Claudia
called it “an urban park pastoral with photos”, an unusual space for Zen-like
meditation. I sent her my blurb in mid-May: These
poems harvest remarkable observations of a threshold world with the timeless
essence of a twelve bar blues.
Neither of us suspected that the organizing
theme of Pocket Park, as the compressed experience of timelessness in
time, would also describe the over-riding quality of her remaining years.
But there were clues.
On October 29, 2013 Claudia
wrote about her eyes declining from early cataracts and glaucoma. “I am so
aware sight is a gift on loan.” She addressed this with surgery, and began a
slow recovery. In late February, 2014, I told her about the decision I’d made
with Ken Thorp to launch a digital press dedicated to Ken’s late wife, Rochelle
Ratner. We hoped to make her work available as e-books and print-on-demand. Rochelle
had been Claudia’s editor on The Elephant House. Claudia had
designed Rochelle’s Marsh Hawk books, and admired her. We asked Claudia to
become a part of this project. She agreed, and created a brilliant logo for
Myrmaid Press.
As
we worked on Rochelle’s e-books, a shadow appeared in the wings. At the end of
February 2014, Claudia disclosed she’d been diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian
cancer, and one confirmed tumor in the lung. She was waiting to hear about a
stomach ulcer that might also be cancerous. In early April sent me “a mixed bag of poems. Thoughts welcome. Clearly therapeutic. Thanks for
your time on this.”
I was prepared to accept the
poems as therapeutic, but not their immediate impact. They stayed with me long after
I’d stopped reading. Moreover, she continued to send me poems from which I
couldn’t walk away. They rang with mastery. Given the weight of their origin, they
were surprisingly light at times, full of laughter, irony, and an embrace large
enough to take it all in. Claudia was
lifting the veil.
On Sunday, Feb. 8, 2015 at 11:02 PM, Claudia messaged me, "So I wrote this a few minutes ago, thanks, cheers, CC."
Living It
Read a true story about a woman
who hadn't
smiled in forty years
to keep
her face young,
and it
was, except for her eyes
where all
the smiles and frowns
must have
gone
to die
and I
think of
my daughter Natalie
who has
laughed more in this last year
of finding
love and new career, laughed more
than the
past three of her 20s
and
already faint quote marks
frame her
mobile lips
and as she
complains five white hairs
invaded
her scalp I know
her
perfectly freckled gorgeous face
will
escape
unmarked perfection.
The poem was written the night before her daughter Natalie’s engagement
party on a Brooklyn rooftop. Creativity she said was her best medicine, and
spoke glowingly of her new dog Sadie who kept her company in bed and on long
walks.
Claudia continued to engage life
day by day, traveled, underwent chemo at Sloan Kettering, gathered her loved
ones around her and held them close. At one point along the way I suggested
that her poems would make a compelling book, a lasting footprint. She could
design the book and Myrmaid Press would publish it. While she thought about it,
she ate chocolates, and chocolate became a symbol of her joy, Eros and
Thanatos, the taste of both that suffuses what she finally decided to title
collection, My Chocolate Sarcophagus.
By mid-April, Claudia had begun
to delegate work on Rochelle’s Print-On-Demand short stories, New York
Lonely, to her colleague, Heather Wood. Heather would later work with
Claudia on her own book. I visited Claudia at her apartment in early August. I
showed up again one morning in September. Claudia had become frail. Her head
now wrapped in a colorful bandana, her little dog Sadie beside her on the
couch, she was an elegiac Odalisque. I sat in a chair at the table facing her,
and unpacked two cups of café au lait and assorted patisserie, among
them a chocolate mousse. But she could no longer tolerate the rich fare. Husband
Jim was in Beijing working on a play. Sister Christina appeared, said hello,
and then vanished into the study.
Claudia assured me that she was
slowly putting her book of poems together. She hadn’t forgotten it. Christina was
there to help. We talked about Rochelle, her struggle with metastatic cancer
and what she expressed at the end. I asked Claudia what she felt about her own
demise. She spoke of Jim, her daughters Natalie and Caitlin. How much she loved
them. She knew that they’d be all right when she was gone. This made it so much
easier.
“What is, after all, really important?” Claudia
held her little dog Sadie.
“The love that united us was all
our joy.” I quoted the epitaph on the tomb of Heloise and Abelard in Pere
Lachaise.
Claudia repeated it several
times. She would use it as the superscript for her book, the epitaph for her
own sarcophagus.
On October 31st Claudia promised the first draft of her book, but I didn't receive it until November 11th, with the note: "Here is the first draft that you are seeing of my Chocolate Chapbook."
Claudia had indeed "plucked process bonbons, a few a day, / from pleated paper veils," because "taste is life!" And now here they were in their "ribboned sarcophagus." It suddenly struck me that Claudia's gift merited a stronger venue than Myrmaid Press could offer. The solution came in a flash. I approached Marsh Hawk editor/publisher Sandy McIntosh with the proposal that we make this a joint venture. Sandy agreed. Marsh Hawk Press would bring out the hard copy and Myrmaid would follow with an e-book.
The challenge in the weeks that followed was to produce the book and deliver it to Claudia while she could still savor her victory. Between final proofs, and adjusting the cover color, Sandy prevailed on the printer to make room in their busy schedule. We managed to print it while Claudia was still in hospice care at home. On December 29th, five copies of My Chocolate Sarcophagus were mailed overnight. Claudia received them just before she was transferee to the hospital. I emailed Christina to confirm that we had been on time and received this reply.
On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 11:09 PM, <carlson.christina@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear
Paul,
The book
is stunning to look at, incredible you got it into her hands when you
did. She is now in a hospice facility. Seeing the book in print gave
her tremendous joy and deep gratitude. I am so happy for the
encouragement and support you provide...huge!
And then this from her beautiful
daughter Natalie:
Visited
Claudia Carlson (Mom) again today. She hasn't woken up for longer than a few
seconds. She looks very comfortable at the hospice center. The facilities are
nice. They are taking good care of her. James, Christina, Elof, Nedra, Caitlin
and have all been watching and keeping her great company. Wish her sweet
dreams, friends.
***********
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