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May 16, 2022
Jeffrey Thomson's Playlist for His Poetry Collection "Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in Purgatory"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Jeffrey Thomson's surprising and poignant poetry collection Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in Purgatory explores the power of religious relics and artworks.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"The quirky and macabre [ninth] book from Thomson is rich with breathtaking juxtaposition. . . . These elegant poems are full of surprising and moving revelations."
In his own words, here is Jeffrey Thomson's Book Notes music playlist for his poetry collection Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in Purgatory:
Several years ago, on a blazing hot June day, I wandered into the church of San Giovanni Battista in Rome. There, just off the nave, was the foot of Mary Magdalene encased in a silver-bronze reliquary—frozen and glamorous as a fish made of dawn. I spent a long time looking at that foot. It spoke to me about the past, about gender, about mystery. It told me a story of the time after the death of Jesus when Mary Magdalene and her sister were set afloat on the Mediterranean in a boat without oars or sails. I found some comfort there in that space made magic by an object from the distant past, thinking about this story. I have been chasing these objects ever since.
In my recently published poetry collection, I explore the idea of magical/spiritual objects. Many of the poems in the book are devoted to meditations on (or encounters with) religious relics like the fingers of Doubting Thomas or the skull of John the Baptist, but I am also looking at the power that lives inside other objects and works of art, such as an underwater sculpture in Mexico or the skull of a tightrope walker who died of a broken neck.
There is something compelling to me—especially in this moment of global crisis—about these relics. About the hope they offer and the consolation they bring. We have all lost a great deal in this pandemic, and I am no different. The pieces of the past are all around us. They do not fit back together. But maybe, if I hold the right fragments in the light that filters down from ages ago, I can find a bit of consolation.
"Mack the Knife" by Ella Fitzgerald
One of the first poems in the book is an ode to Ella’s version of this song and a broken statue of Hercules found in the Museo Pio Clementino in Rome. I am fascinated by this song, and in particular, the version of it that was recorded live in Berlin in 1960. What is particularly amazing about this version is that she has obviously just learned the song and forgets the lyrics half-way through. Brilliantly, she plows into the second half of the song, scatting and singing about fact that she doesn’t know what’s next: “What’s the next chorus to this song? she sings, This is the one now I don’t know.” I think the brokenness of the song is what makes it so perfect. That brokenness is echoed in the fragmentary statue of Hercules found in the Vatican Museum. Michelangelo famously fell in love with this torso, with its broken strength and beauty, and used it as a model for his self-portrait in the Sistine chapel.
"All Eyez on Me,” Tupac
In Milan, on the duomo, there’s a statue of St. Bartholomew who was skinned alive for preaching the gospel to the King of Armenia. What’s fascinating about this statue—carved by Marco d'Agrate in 1562—is that Bartholomew stands naked and wears his former skin like a Roman toga. His ferocious stance and soulful gaze reminded me of Tupac for some reason and the refrain from “All Eyez on Me” played in my head on repeat as I worked on this poem. He is the man within the man, the figure we see when all trappings have been stripped away. Beautiful, tragic, and lost too soon.
“Bizarre Love Triangle,” New Order
Midway through the book, I tell “The Tale of the Great Martyr Demetrius, the Myrrh-Gusher” (one of the greatest of all the saint’s names, imho). Demetrius was a closeted Christian in the reign of Maximian who “came out” when he was proconsul of Thessaloniki and was run-through with spears. It is also the name of a friend of mine back in college and kissed me on the mouth at a party in some filthy basement. I remember that “Bizarre Love Triangle” was playing loudly and after he kissed me, he said, “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.” When I think of this moment now, I think about his courage. This was 1987 and he trusted me (without evidence) not to react badly.
“Imperial March” from Star Wars, by John Williams
It turns out that you can buy a life-sized Han Solo frozen in carbonite wall decoration, should you wish to for some reason. This is important, I think, because in The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo becomes a modern martyr—the rogue who sacrifices himself for his friends and his love. I hear the deep-bass march of Vader as he enters the carbonite chamber late in the film in my poem that features this moment, but I also hear the soft turn into the Love Theme. Loss and love: from these things come art.
"Corazon, Corazon," Pedro Infante
In this song, Pedro Infante sings about what it means to be haunted by the past, to want to hold on to life and love: “If after feeling your past /You look me in the face and say goodbye / I will tell you with my soul in my hand / That you can stay because I'm leaving.” In Puebla, Mexico, several years ago, I was walking among the ofrednas (personal shines) laid out for Dia de los Muertos, saffron flower petals strewn wildly across flagstones and asphalt glazed from a late rain. Suddenly there was an ofrenda for Pedro. His black-and-white photo glancing seductively into the crowd. For some reason, this moment felt rich and deeply mythic and resonated with the encounter between Odysseus and the sad and defeated ghost of Achilles at the gates of Hades in the Odyssey. Achilles, who died for honor, now wants nothing more than a taste of the former life he once led.
"Long Black Veil," Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell (written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkins)
This song always feels both Irish and timeless to me despite being written in the early 1959 in the US. The duet Johnny Cash sang with Joni Mitchell sang on The Johnny Cash Show is particularly haunting and haunted. The harmony of their vocals is remarkable and evokes a time long past inside a story the is fully contemporary Two poems from later in the collection, “The Heart of St. Laurence O’Toole” and “The Well of the Staff,” put ancient Irish ghosts and myth alongside the modern world and try to find a similar way into a past that is in harmony with the present.
"Once in a Lifetime," Talking Heads
There have been, over the years, lots of artistic ways to remind us that we are mortal, that our time on earth is brief, flowing, and flown. I think “Once in a Lifetime” is absolutely one of my favorites. I love the layering of the percussion against David Byrne’s manic, lyric narrative: “And you may say to yourself, My God, what have I done?” My poem “Memento Mori”—featuring the sculpture of the decayed corpse of French minor-nobleman, René de Chalon, that his wife commissioned after his death in the Battle of Champagne—echoes this song. The rapid passage of time that becomes the wail of grief and loss. The water that flows underground is all that remains.
"When The Levee Breaks," Led Zeppelin (original by Kansas Joe Mccoy and Memphis Minni)
This song always sounds like tragedy to me. Everything is failing and collapsing and yet, somehow, the blues form of the song withstands the beating laid on it by the drums and the bass. “Crying won’t help you, praying won’t do you no good,” Robert Plant sings (I am partial to Zeppelin, but I also love the Playing for Change version where Susan Tedeschi takes on that vocal moment). That song is what the first months of pandemic lockdown felt like. “How We Survived” is a poem that lands in this same space. It explores that moment of pandemic downfall and finds an echo in the destruction of the city of Troy by the Greeks—the Trojan horse becomes the disease vector that enters the city, despite the high walls we have built.
Jeffrey Thomson is a poet, memoirist, translator, and editor, and is the author of multiple books including the memoir fragile, The Belfast Notebooks, The Complete Poems of Catullus, and the edited collection From the Fishouse. Alice James Books published Half/Life: New & Selected Poems in October 2019. He has been an NEA Fellow, the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre at Queen's University Belfast, and the Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Fellow at Brown University. He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington.
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