Flavours of The Countess: A Personal Essay

I always knew that any review I would write of Mary Meriam’s first book The Countess of Flatbroke (Modern Metrics, 2006) would turn out to be very personal.  For I feel honoured that she chose me as one of her companions in this journey, even giving me previews of earlier drafts and online access to the full text of a version of The Countess when it was a very different book.

Perhaps, by some happy chance, we chose each other, because I first contacted Mary after reading the poems she posted to the Lesbian-Writers email list.  She was hard to ignore as her poetry output was prolific compared to others on the list.  But it was the strength of Mary’s voice, the mix of humour and poignancy, and the tone and structure of her poems which caught my attention.  I enjoyed how these poems encouraged the reader to engage with other texts, referencing literary traditions and lesbian history.

Underlying the book is the story of another Mary – Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke – who had wealth and a whole library of literary riches, but unlike the Countess of Flatbroke who is determined to tell it like it is, may have been robbed of her voice for four hundred years.  The influence of Mary Sidney is handled with characteristic charm and subtlety.  Only in the final sonnet, Sir Philip Sidney Speaks, do we learn of her wider significance; the compelling evidence which suggests the Countess of Pembroke may have been the true author of the plays and sonnets attributed to William Shakespeare.  The self-referentiality, play and punning of the title therefore opens up a whole subtext of questioning around literary heritage and authenticity.  It also gives us another clue to Mary Meriam’s fondness for the sonnet.

Others have mentioned that Mary’s work is “charming and witty” and the title of the collection clinches this for me.  The persona of the Countess of Flatbroke enables the poet to describe what it is like to live as an outsider, as a lesbian who has neither the advantage nor security that money might bring.  Mary Meriam isn’t afraid to emphasise the personal in this book or to poke fun at herself, while it’s also clear a reader cannot fully ‘know’ the writer through her poetry alone.

How does a lesbian writer, and one flat broke at that, find her voice and place?  As the narrator asks in the collection’s title poem, “What happens when a poet lives beyond/ the time she would have died, except for fate?”  The answer is that the poet must continue to write, and it’s clear that sonnets are Mary’s passion and comfort, as well as becoming the practical resource for “recovering [one’s] health” in Frozen Banana Milkshake Sonnet.

Mary Meriam has so many signature sonnets.  Positioned next to The Bitter Side of Flatbroke, on facing pages, Frozen Banana Milkshake Sonnet is a serving of “soothing sweetness”.  Life is never bitterness alone in Flatbroke and this poem epitomises the poet’s belief in the restorative qualities of poetry.  Milk and fruit can’t achieve it all; the sonnet form itself also acts as healer.  She is explicit about this in Exchange Rate: “The poet solves these problems in a sonnet,/ restoring atoms to their proper places.”

Even when detailing hardship and hunger, Mary produces touching, funny, sexy images that desire to connect with the reader as love-poems.

Sometimes it takes a glass of milk to heal
a soul that’s been reduced to shredded rags.
First take a bunch of ripe bananas, peel
and slice them into pint-size freezer bags.
I’ll say this nice and slow because I know
that you’re my baby now. Put fruit in freezer.
Lie down and listen to the radio
and dream about a recipe to please her.

What helped me connect with Mary so quickly was her absolute understanding that a poem is only complete when it has a reader.  The poem is always a desirous exchange between poet and reader, as told in Exchange Rate:

Her book is read by one she hoped to find.
This reader, she adores the book – embraces
the poet – loves her body, soul, and mind.
How slow the reader turns her lover’s pages,
counting the loss and gain of poet’s wages.

As well as the “Flatbroke” poems, there are other gems to be savoured here, like Something Good, which sees the young poet realising her lesbian sexuality as she waltzes with Julie Andrews.  This is a classic poem, speaking for many who have admired Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music as camp icons in queer culture, and can be read in full here.

I think Mary’s writing is often at its best when quirky and cute, as in the opening lines of Karma Log: 5/2/06 where the half-rhyme sounds help to construct a humorous picture which belies the more serious aspects lurking in this poem during a car journey’s brush with nature, the thin line between life and death, sickness and health.  “When April ended with a muscle wound,/ I couldn’t stand, and so I sat and rolled/ around”.  Then there is the direct play with the reader in Perhaps a Little Context Would Help.  The riddle is solved in the final three lines, but enough ambiguity remains for the reader to make their own interpretation of “Some are. Some aren’t.”

Reader, the secret “some” is out just now:
she’s of the “some who are”, and so am I.
How sweet and kind of her to clarify!

Perhaps one of the finest compliments I can personally pay Mary is to reveal that I’d never attempted to write a sonnet until we began our email dialogue about her poems.  She helped me recognise the flexibility and beauty of the sonnet, and encouraged me to embrace the heart-beat rhythm of iambic pentameter.  As a reader I took the exchange a step further and wrote a direct response to The Bitter Side of Flatbroke on the same day Mary posted a draft for comment at Lesbian-Writers.

Having just enjoyed a sociably queer afternoon at a local LGBT Pride event, I found I had to respond to these words:

If I had money, I’d have time to write
and read and socialize with any femme
or butch or in-between who came in sight.
Or spend my time alone or take a trip.
Then I could call my life a life and not
this constant jungle fight to get a sip
of water, find a place to rest, too hot,
too cold, too worried, hungry, lost, alone.
Perhaps someone will throw this dog a bone.

I threw Mary a sonnet, intending to offer my support and hope that her book would soon find the publisher she deserved.

Dear Countess, I’m an urban socialite
compared to you. In different domains,
I still believe we’re sisters in the fight,
know desperation when injustice reigns.
Today within the park I thought you’d like
to be here, too, an arboretum full
with denizens of Pride. I’m just a dyke,
I have no magic beans, no one can pull
the wool over your eyes. But if we were
in fairy tale I’d hatch your golden text,
transforming jungle space as you prefer.
With words as riches your turn should be next.
I’ll play the Princess, reading all you write.
What’s real is understanding and delight.

One year on, and thanks to Modern Metrics I can now hold Mary’s book in my hands, and share this personal essay encouraging others also to become desirous readers.

The journey I read through The Countess of Flatbroke is Mary Meriam demanding and constructing a place for herself within lesbian and feminist literary history. This often involves a re-reading and fresh approach to personal and literary histories in order to uncover what was once left unwritten, unable to be said.  No-one understands this better than Lillian Faderman, lesbian historian and cultural theorist, who writes the Afterword to the book.  This demonstrates the successful voice of the Countess, and is Mary’s icing on the cake. 

Nicki Hastie
Nottingham, UK
10 September 2006