Assistant Managing Editor Bess Winter: When we asked contributors to issue 21.1 to share something on our site to accompany their work, Rebecca Griswold was quick to volunteer the playlist that helped her write “The Forager’s Guide.” Here’s a little musical inspiration to help bring to life the world behind the poem.
Listen to the playlist:
Notes from Rebecca:
When considering what might accompany “The Forager’s Guide,” the answer was clear: song. The initial playlist was twenty-six songs, but in whittling, I present:
“Eat Yourself” by Goldfrapp
This song offers a kind of interiority and fragility that is present only at the beginning of the poem. The idea, too, is that all of these chemicals and incompatibilities with life exist in our bodies (microplastics in placenta for example), so when the speaker is consuming these things, she is also consumed (by the baby and by herself).
“A Great Design” by Black Marble
A meditation on time, with its moves from the self to a cosmic level. It feels in conversation with my poem.
“Uncontrollable Urge” By Devo
I think this one is self-explanatory, but if not, I chose it to play alongside the speaker’s loss of control, mirroring our climate trajectory.
“The Execution of All Things” by Rilo Kiley
This song speaks to a systematic destruction of life: “the bears, and the air, and mountains, rivers, and streams,” and how powerless it feels in the face of it.
“Spitting Off the Edge of the World” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The tone is more empowered than other tracks in the playlist, evoking a kind of villain-era birth, a move into power that may not be coming from the healthiest place. In the poem, the speaker moves from dirt and bark (more traditional Pica cravings) to the toxic: gaining momentum as she consumes by-products of coal mining and plastic production.
“Coal Miner’s Blues” by Hazel Dickens
So much of the poem takes a critical look at industry and its effect on health and the environment, and who better to back that up than Hazel Dickens?
“Not” by Big Thief
I love this song for its litany of negation, the desperation, the clawing for answers. “Not the fire lapping up the creek” is such a phenomenal line: one of those lines you wish you’d written first.
“Red Rain” by The White Stripes
This one offers a voice to the craving: “Can’t you hear me calling your name, girl?” It also suggests the role of religion that is present in accompanying poems, but only alluded to in this one. Its antagonistic tone feels like a fit.
“Cities in Dust” by Siouxsie and the Banshees
While about the destruction of Pompeii, it feels like a match for the poem—especially toward the end with the burned-out trailer image. The tone feels tough and gritty.
“Windowsill” by Arcade Fire
The desperation looms large in this look at American life in the age of profit-over-people as the tide continues to rise.
“Ashes of American Flags” by Wilco
Much like the Arcade Fire song, Wilco’s look at consumer culture feels bleak on the doorstep of climate collapse. “Speaking of tomorrow, how will it ever come?”
“Farewell Transmission” by Songs: Ohia
This song feels like an end. The order of things has fallen. In this, though, there’s a glimmer of something that continues, and whether “The Forager’s Guide” offers that or not, I cling to it.
Rebecca Griswold is an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson. Her debut collection is The Attic Bedroom (Milk & Cake Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Cimarron Review, Superstition Review, Blood Orange Review, and Still: The Journal among others. She was a finalist for the River Styx International Poetry Contest. She’d describe herself as equal parts Valentine’s Day and Halloween. She operates White Whale Tattoo alongside her husband in Cincinnati.
