MIRIAM

When did you start writing?

NATALIA

Less than three years ago. For eighteen months I had been studying with Kenneth Hart. He was an incredible teacher. I also attended many conferences and workshops (Catskills Conference with Steven Dunn, Drew University summer semester with Robert Carnavale, Sarah Lawrence College a week-long conference with Thomas Lux). I am planning to take the winter semester in Sarah Lawrence College. It just so happened that at the Dodge Foundation Poetry Festival in 2002 I met Edward Hirsch and Robert Pinsky in person; they both helped me a lot in my endeavor of writing. I consider them my "virtual teachers". They wrote blurbs for my two manuscripts.

MIRIAM

Where are you published?

NATALIA

I have been published in over 25 publications. They include THE PATTERSON REVIEW, MOMENT, ILIAD PRESS, POETRY MAGAZINE, LOUISVILLE REVIEW, CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY, VERSES and others.

MIRIAM

Wow. That's an amazing accomplishment for someone who has only been only writing for three years. How did you do this?

NATALIA

I am very serious about my writing. Now that I am retired, writing is my life. But, sending out poems to publishers is the worse, tedious, mammoth work. I take two whole days to send out work. First, I go through the list of publishers who accepted my work and the publishers that refused my work. Of course, I also use POETS & WRITERS.

MIRIAM

You have one book out now called AUTUMN SOLSTICE [published by Windsong

Publishing Div, RBC Publishing Co, CA]. You said that your other manuscript also has been accepted by the same publisher.

NATALIA

Yes, MEMORIES BELOW THE BRIDGE. It should be out by the end of the year.

MIRIAM

How did you find this publisher?

NATALIA

I have had bad experiences with "big league" publishers. It is a catch-22. They accept work only from agents, but agents will take you only if you are known. You have to turn to small presses to get your work published. Here is some advice - there are lists of many small presses online. In 2002, I went to the Small Press Conference in NYC (57th Street, in Manhattan). There were three stories of expositions of publishing houses and editors.

MIRIAM

For those unfamiliar with your work, I would explain that your poetry talks about life, your memories as a Refusenik, a Jew, a mother, wife, lover, and poet.

NATALIA

One can get to know my poetry if he/she goes to my site www.inessazaretsky.com/natalia.

MIRIAM

When did you decide to leave the Soviet Union?

NATALIA

It started in 1978 before the Olympics in Moscow. I thought it would be easy to get the visa, but USSR messed up in Afghanistan and the door was closed. It was too late. I applied for permission to leave the country and lost my job as an Assistant Professor in the Physics department at the college where I worked. My daughter was expelled from the Conservatory. We had been Refuseniks for almost three years. The KGB kept tabs on my phone, but I didn't care anymore. We stopped being afraid - we were afraid all our life. But now it was an enormous feeling.

MIRIAM

Why did you want to leave?

NATALIA

Anti-Semitism penetrated all layers of society, we were second class citizens, afraid of any ramification if someone was arrested with a Jewish name. "Kike", "Jzid" we heard all the time on busses, metro (trains). All colleges have a 5% allowance for Jews to be accepted (like in the Tzar's Russia), but by some mystery ALL JEWS get a higher education. It was our ticket to life. We have to be better than anyone else in any field to survive. After graduation from school I was working as a seamstress, then went to the evening college, and then was able to transfer to study physics.

MIRIAM

Do you consider yourself Jewish?

NATALIA

At that time, the government denied any kind of religion. It destroyed thousands of churches and the few synagogues that were there. We were brainwashed into thinking "RELIGION IS THE OPIUM FOR MASSES". We use passports as our IDs with our addresses on them and a line for "nationality" where we would put: Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Jew. We were considered ethnically a "Jew". Everyone who was born to either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father was a Jew. I didn't know anything about Judaism - holidays, traditions - nothing. My parents were brought to Moscow when they were 4 years-old, and then they stepped on the path of pioneers, "Comsomol", party members. And all that was embodied in me.

MIRIAM

One of your poems, "Some Memory Is Better To Banish", you shed some light on your life as a Refusnik:

...They asked me to spy on foreigners,
promised to get me a quick exit visa, if I gave in,
threatened to punish my unwillingness.
I waved my hands,
"I don't know I didn't notice, I did forget, I will forget".
What a performance. Strangely they let me go.
 

NATALIA

There is a poem in my book AUTUMN SOLSTICE that is a short 'history' of the country's illness and explains the reasons why I hated the country. It's called "Journey From Russia To Present".

MIRIAM

You also write a lot about Israel. You can tell you have visited the country and cherish it dearly. In "Jerusalem, We Are Your Soldiers", you write:

...Jerusalem, we are your children,
your servants, your guards, your keepers.
We've been apart for hundreds of years. Was it our fault?
We were forced to our knees, exiled,
blamed for everything we have never done,
hated for everything we were and we were not.
But we promise - we will never leave you again.

I love that poem. However, my favorite poem that you wrote about Israel is "The Father Worries About His Children". The poem alludes to the tangled relationship between Jews and Arabs. The poem starts with:

...Before you Land was covered
with two religions, there were two brothers,
Isaac and Ishmael, who never got along
always upsetting their father Abraham.
Millenniums later, their descendants
Still cannot reconcile olive trees, sand and air...
 

NATALIA

I have visited Israel five times and volunteered for the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). I studied Torah - didn't become completely religious; but my rabbi admitted that I know more about the religion than many American Jews. In another poem I wrote:

I studied a lot and learned a lot.
The Torah's dysfunctional family is mine.
My place at the table has waited for me
through all my long ignorance.
 

MIRIAM

I think your poem "Two Chapters Of My Life" summarizes your journey from the past to the present:

Time writes my life into memory -
two chapters - before and after.
Genesis and Deuteronomy.

And as in many poems you mentioned your daughter (that I'm sure you love dearly). In the last two stanzas of Two Chapters, you write:

My last blessed poem will be born
into illness that eats away at my lungs,
it will translate my air
into images and silences.
And I will unclench my hand
and let my last poem
fly into my daughter's sadness.

What is the process of your writing?

NATALIA

I am very serious about my writing, and very ambitious. I spend nine to ten hours daily working on my writing. My day begins around 6:30 a.m. with reading for two hours - American poetry or/and books on poetry. My favorite poets are Yehuda Amichai (Israeli poet in wonderful translation by Hanah Bloch), Edward Hirsch, Billy Collins, Grace Paley - and now I've discovered Ilya Kaminsky. I also read (or re-read) Italo Calvino, Russel Hoban, Alan Lightman. I also read many of the poets that come along in Reviews or Magazines that I subscribe to.

After two hours of reading I begin to revise and revise and revise what I have already typed. I work until 11 a.m. Then after coffee go to my computer, typing, answering email, sending to magazines.

Late night, before turning the light off, I read Russian poetry: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Mendelshtam, Akhmadulina.

MIRIAM

How do you find proper words, especially the last lines?

NATALIA

I work very diligently on every word, image, metaphor. I have a notebook where I write down everything that I encountered in my reading or that came to me out of the blue. I feel that a poem without images transferring into metaphors or similes is nothing. Sometimes I look at every object and try to see what it reminds me of. Like in my poem "Quiet":

Cars are like tired horses, stabled in driveways,
facing houses, sniffing at garage doors

I learned a lot from my teacher Ken Hart and then later from others, including books by Edward Hirsch and Stephen Dobbyns. A poem should finish with surprise - "the last line should surprise a reader and yourself". Revision is another mantra of my teachers.

MIRIAM

Thanks so much for your time and wisdom.

NATALIA

My pleasure!