Tragedy Queens: Writers on Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

When visionary editor Leza Cantoral asked me to contribute to the Tragedy Queens anthology (you can also order from the publisher, Clash Books) she said something to the affect of, "you are literally perfect for this," which probably means I'm a very, very Sad Girl. More seriously, though, I felt drawn toward it because of Plath's impact on my own poetry career and my not-so-secret Lana Del Rey fascination.

There's Plath wrangling with the shadow, full of beautiful, unique language, and then there's this singer-starlet who aestheticizes her own sadness. Sorrow was the language and the vein of this anthology, and I wanted to explore that. I wanted to investigate my own relationship to sorrow—and the ways in which these Tragedy Queens informed my creativity. I ended up writing an exceptionally melodramatic piece called Girls In The Garden of Holy Suffering, both a true testament of my youth and psycho-sexual development, and a nod toward Lana's exaggerations of sadness and sadness aesthetic. Both of these women have inspired me to explore the authentic and inauthentic—and how they both sort of meld into one.

In this mini interview series, I chatted with the editor, Leza Cantoral, along with a few of the other stellar contributors, and got their story on why the anthology felt so right for them.
— Lisa Marie Basile

RELATED: On Sylvia Plath, The Tarot And Bad College Writing

Leza Cantoral, Editor:

"Tragedy Queens is the culmination of my obsession with Sylvia Plath. When I read Ariel, it changed my life. I read everything I could find about her. I am drawn to tragic figures. I relate to them. But I am getting sick of the tragic narrative. When I sent out the submissions call I did not specify a genre. What I cared about was character arcs. People making choices. I especially wanted the female perspective.

Lana Del Rey came into my life a few years ago and I became obsessed with everything about her: her voice, her music, her hair, her eyeliner, her lips, her past, her glamour, her sadness, her passion. Her songs resonated deep within me. I loved her openness. The confessional quality of her music reminded me of Sylvia Plath, so it made sense to join two of my favorite muses together. They both inspire my own writing. I wanted to share that and was so excited to see what people came up with. I was not disappointed. Everyone knocked my socks off. I was sobbing, laughing, and gasping, as I read through the stories that made it into Tragedy Queens. People think of pop music as low art and poetry as high art and I think that’s bullshit. Lana Del Rey is a poet of the highest order and she deserves that recognition for her craft."

Gabino Iglesias:

"For me, Plath embodies mental health struggles. She was incredibly talented, but the demons in her heart, soul, and mind ended up winning. That she was able to focus all of that and express it in words is something that deserves to be celebrated. LDR, on the other hand, is a modern anomaly that somehow became a sensation thanks to am atmosphere of strong women taking over and a massive push to obliterate patriarchy, and she does it all while being bizarre and having her own aesthetic. I knew many women would be getting involved in this, and that made me want to be a part of it. Strong brujas all around celebrating two unique ladies with their words. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that magic?"

Monique Quintana:

"Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey get at death, beauty, and the grotesque in artful and unnerving ways. As a writer and mother, I’ve always felt that womanhood and motherhood should not be sanitized, but rather, stripped down to its visceral core, so that blood and bone and tissue are exposed. My story was inspired by the trash glam aesthetic of Lana Del Rey’s song, 'Sad Girl' and Plath’s dark mythos of mother and father figures. It’s about a teenage Xicana’s doomed love affair in a 1997 dystopian central California that results in the conception of a brujo baby."

RELATED: 9 Lust for Life Observations from the Ultimate Lana Del Rey Fan

Christine Stoddard:

"I wrote a short story inspired by Lana Del Rey's captivating song, 'Summertime Sadness.' Throughout her work, Lana eerily and beautifully captures the nature of tragic love. I don't think she glorifies domestic violence or other forms of abuse. She's simply telling stories. Love is complicated and even the healthiest relationships have their tragedies. Those stories need to be told because, even when they are fictitious, they are very real. I saw this anthology as a chance to tell yet another story about love's complexities."

Jerry Drake:

"Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey represent an inspirational arc covering the course of my life. As a teenager struggling with OCD and depression I found in Plath a comforting fellow traveler, someone who had a shared voice. As a man in my 40's I find in Del Rey the echoes of my own wild youth—hot nights, too much beer, and the dangerous fun of mischief and trouble. I had toyed with writing a story but didn't like my original idea. I found myself standing in my kitchen chatting with Leza Cantoral, the anthology's editor, during the 2017 AWP. I gave her my original idea and she said, 'No, I want you to tell the story that clearly draws from your real life and your real inspirations, don't make anything up.' It came together and I sat down that night and wrote my story. I am pleased to have it accepted. I feel like I caught a night of my youth in a bottle for others to experience."

Trish Grisafi:

"Plath has inspired me since I was twelve years old and picked up The Bell Jar. It spoke to me so much as a floundering adolescent—and it was incredibly funny. I could really relate to Plath’s sardonic wit and her cut-throat observations about the world. She’s smart, heartbreaking, and culturally astute about her historical moment. I wanted to create a story that, like The Bell Jar, deconstructed typically idealized experiences and put forth commentary on mental health care. Growing up, I suffered from depression, anxiety, and OCD. I wasn’t able to get help until I ended up in a psychiatric hospital in my mid-twenties. I wanted to create a character who is clearly suffering but also ignored—like Esther was in The Bell Jar. It was very important for me to get that voice down."

PURCHASE IT HERE!

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Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath

By Lisa Basile, Gabino Iglesias

Buy on Amazon

Lisa Marie Basile is a poet-witch and founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine—a digital diary of literature, magical living and idea. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern grimoire of inspired rituals and daily practices. She's also the author of a few poetry collections, including the forthcoming "Nympholepsy."

Her work encounters the intersection of ritual and wellness, chronic illness, magic, overcoming trauma, and creativity, and she has written for The New York Times, Narratively, Grimoire Magazine, Venefica, The Establishment, Refinery 29, Bust, Hello Giggles, and more. 

Lisa Marie earned a Masters degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

Leza Cantoral is a Xicana writer & editor who lives on the internet. She is the Editor in Chief of CLASH Books & host of the Get Lit With Leza podcast where she talks to cool ass writers. Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath is a CLASH Books anthology of stories that she edited as a result of being a Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath megafan. You can find her on YouTube at Trash Panda Poetry & everywhere else as herself. She blogs at lezacantoral.com

Selections from Omotara James: 2 Poems by C. Bain

BY C. BAIN
SELECTIONS BY OMOTARA JAMES

What is it that survives trauma? Or rather, outlasts it? Bain’s evocative poems offer elusive tenderness for those who traverse this liminal space. Through haunting portraits, the poet daringly reimagines the dailiness of these tortured mythological figures. Their relatable frailties leave us to ponder our own lusts. Though vastly different, the protagonists of both poems are generously afforded an agency unavailable in the original myths. What they do with it is another matter. Through the perspective of the speakers, Bain acknowledges transfiguration as restoration. These poems bridge the distance between hamartia and humanity. No sins left unsung, Bain leaves us to marvel at the creeping nature of human compassion as it ebbs…

(Persephone’s Husband Is Not Important And He Says)

She’s sitting on the bed
with her long legs folded under her.
Her eyes sliding away from me
as they like to do, like I’m a figure in smoke
like there’s a river of information
that only she sees. I want to ask her why
but I don’t. When the man took her
(the witnesses said chased, dragged)
trapped her under the earth
then she did what she did. It’s strange
when you think about it
that fruits are seeds and we
eat them, sugar fertile and harping
at the tongue. It bothers me
that that is what she took
not the utility of bread, but tart, crystalline
the skin red and transparent inside its covering
of outer, rougher skin. And now
she isn’t mine. I was never yours. It isn’t
ownership, she says, because since she’s come back
she reads my thoughts
and sleeps six inches above the bed,
moaning. I know this happened because
she does not believe I love her. Now I ask permission
to kiss her, air hissing past
my seedling teeth. I ask her why
she comes back and she puts her hell-hand,
her death hand, gilded immortal
against my cheek. I come back
because you need me. You would die
without the rain. Sucks at my tongue
until it bleeds sugar, a seed. Her nipple,
the crest of her ribs, the cells
of my body and the devices in the cells
and the space in between them. Whatever
life is. Electrical,
animate. Please.
Please give it back.
 

After the Curse Was Lifted, Midas

fell & wept, the grass
emerald blades bent
at his kissing mouth.
It lasted weeks
tender humility
his trembling hands tracing
rumpled bedsheets, ribs of living oxen
enough gratitude for any god.
He avoided his treasure-room
had the metal stripped off the cornices
cherished the wood’s raw bones.

But in some small span of human time
the truth; he wanted that power again
even if he’d starve, heartstiller, shitgleamer,
weeping alchemy out every pore.
He dreamt of it and woke and cursed.
And when his daughter disobeyed him
tell me he didn’t remember her small visage
frozen into metal. Tell me he didn’t wonder
if there had been some secret work around –
a gloved slave to feed him

and the question of women
if he could take them sudden enough to force
dilation before the metal took hold,
or if he’d have been forever
at a closed, golden gate.

He blamed the god
for giving him a wish that went too far.
Isn’t it god’s task to save you
from yourself? Wouldn’t a kind deity
have found some way to truly provide,
not this lawyer’s trick
food turned rock in the mouth

but no, here’s Midas
is thirst grown back.
His daughter alive.
His coffers howling.

---

C. Bain is a gender liminal writer, performer, and teaching artist, based in Brooklyn. He is a former member and coach of multiple national-level poetry slam teams. His work appears in anthologies and journals including PANK, theRumpus.net, A Face to Meet the Faces, and the Everyman’s Library book Villanelles. He has shared stages with Jim Carroll, Patricia Smith, Dorothy Allison, and Saul Williams. His plays have been produced in summer festivals at the Tank and at the Kraine in New York City. His full-length poetry collection, Debridement, was a finalist for the 2016 Publishing Triangle Awards. He is a book reviewer at Muzzle Magazine. He works extensively with movement, embodiment, trauma and sexuality.  But he'd rather just dance with you. Visit.

Omotara James is a poet and essayist.  Her poetry chapbook, Daughter Tongue, was selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Her debut full length collection, Mama Wata, is forthcoming in the Fall of 2018 from Siren Songs, of CCM press. She has been award fellowships from Cave Canem and Lambda Literary. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. For further information, please visit her website: www.omotarajames.com

Dear Jesse, by Andi Talarico

BY ANDI TALARICO

Dear Jesse,
Happy 29th birthday in prison.

Dear Jesse,
I write this to you on your 29th birthday, which you’ll spend in prison.

Dear Jesse,
Happy Birthday, little brother, in prison.

Dear Jesse,
I meant half-brother. It matters.

Dear Jesse-
I don’t know how to write this letter. I don’t know how to do it.

Dear Jesse-
I’m sorry.

Dear Jesse,
I hate you.

Dear Jesse,
Her life mattered too.

Dear Jesse,
She was 23. She was 23 and you gunned her down over $60 worth of shit heroin. You did that.

Dear Jesse,
I hate you.

I hate you for making this family the wrong kind of poor. A snarl of statistics on rural poverty, a tragedy so common, so small, you’re not even a footnote in the 10 page New Yorker article on the opioid epidemic. I read it on the train to work. I read a clinical article on the pharmaceutical industry on the train to work in New York City. In my ears, airpods scanned the highs and lows of Chet Baker. The most distant mirror.

I read about your world at arm’s length. I thought of you saying-

“Fuck you, Andrea, and your perfect fucking life.”

“Give me 20 bucks, Andrea. I know you got it.”

“You’re not better than me.”

I’m not.

I am.

I’m not.

Dear Jesse,
I watch your arrest on the news. They show a picture of the dead girl on the bottom right corner of the screen. The reporter asks you what you have to say for yourself. You snarl,

“Get out of my face.”

I am.

I’m not.

I am.

Dear Jesse,
I know you’re no broken branch on a perfect family tree. Not even a tree, really, a snarl of a thorny bush, really, a tangle of blighted limbs, really. To call anything that happens here cyclical is to bestow too much order upon it. Really.

Dear Jesse,
We have different fathers. Yours was not a great man. Let’s say that. Let’s remember that when his chemicals crested or cratered, the wrong pill, say, the wrong smoke, the wrong spike, the wrong sniff, it usually ended badly for our mother. You’re too young to remember her broken arm. You’re too young to remember when he still drank. I watched him pour a beer over her head during an argument. I watched her hurl a glass ashtray at his face and almost blind him.

Dear Jesse,
I remember.

Dear Jesse,
I was seven when you were born, barely not a baby myself. I learned how to love a new human through you, your bright brown eyes reflecting everything you saw around you, new and holy through you. You, on my hip. You, taking the bottle in my hand. You, a small version of me. You, making a big sister of me. You. You named me DeeDee. I named you Young King. I wanted to give the world to you. You.

Dear Jesse,
Our mother joked that she named you for Jesse James. She always liked the bad boys best.

Dear Jesse,
Your father was one of the worst.

Dear Jesse,
I know it was right after he died that you spent your first bout in Juvie. What were you, twelve? Thirteen?

Dear Jesse,
I know that you chose violence over grief, or violence through grief, or violence as grief, or that maybe violence is a grief, or that maybe grief is a violence in that it can murder the person bearing the weight of it.

Jesse,
It is not lost on me that your drug of choice is a pain-killer.

Dear Jesse,
I love you.

Dear Jesse,
I hate you.

Jesse,
That poor woman. I grieve for her life.

Jesse,
You poor child. I grieve for yours as well.

Jesse,
The letter I send will say just this,

“Dear Jesse,
Try to have a happy birthday. You know I’m here if you need books. Love you, little brother.”

---

Andi Talarico is a Brooklyn-based writer and reader. She’s the curator and host of At the Inkwell NYC, an international reading series whose New York branch meets at KGB Bar. She's taught poetry in classrooms as a rostered artist, and acted as coach and judge for Poetry Out Loud. In 2003, Paperkite Press published her chapbook, Spinning with the Tornado, and Swandive Publishing included her in the 2014 anthology, Everyday Escape Poems. She also penned a literary arts column for Electric City magazine for several years. When she’s not working with stationery company Baron Fig, she can be found reading tarot cards, supporting independent bookstores, and searching for the best oyster Happy Hour in NYC.

3 Poems by Cathleen Allyn Conway

BY CATHLEEN ALLYN CONWAY

Author's note: These are all found works, some using modified versions of traditional poetic forms. Their sources are Toby Whithouse's Doctor Who episode VAMPIRES OF VENICE, Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT, the stage adaptation of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, miscellaneous Sylvia Plath poems, and DRACULA by Bram Stoker. They are part of a longer work, Bloofer, a collection of found poems on the female vampire that forms the creative component of my PhD thesis.
 

THE VAMPIRE WHO SAID HE WAS YOU

He bites. A mouth just bloodied.
The blood flood is the flood of love.

A love gift utterly unasked for.
Death opened, like a black tree, blackly.

The box is only temporary, the
black bunched in there like a bat.

I bleed or sleep all the blackening morning,
separated from my house by headstones and corpses.

I am red meat, red hair; marble facades.
The corpse at the gate petrifies as I rise.
 

THE VILLAGERS NEVER LIKED YOU

I wake to a mausoleum.
This is the room I could never breathe in.

Black bat airs wrap me, raggy shawls,
blue garments unloosing small owls.

Eternity bores me; my soul dies for it.
I eat men like air. I never wanted it.

LUCY’S SWEET PURITY

I could see in the white flesh a dint
then Arthur struck with all his might:
contorting and cut, The Thing writhed,
a blood-curdling screech from red lips.

Arthur never faltered, deeper driving
His stake into the body, twisting and wild,
crimson foam smearing white,
blood from the pierce welling, welling.

The teeth ceased to champ,
the writhing became less.
On his forehead sprang
drops of sweat, broken gasps
came his breath, and a light
broke his face, glad and strange.

---

Cathleen Allyn Conway is a PhD creative writing research student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the co-editor of Plath Profiles, the only academic journal dedicated to the work of Sylvia Plath, and the founder and co-editor of women’s protest poetry magazine Thank You For Swallowing. She has previously worked as a journalist on UK trades and national newspapers, and as an English teacher in inner London. Her poetry has appeared in print, online and in anthologies. Her pamphlet Static Cling was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2012. Originally from Chicago, she lives in south London with her partner and son. You may follow her intermittent feminist ranting and retweets at @mllekitty.