Natalie Tombasco, poet and nonfiction editor at Tampa Review, interviewed poet Scott Frey about his forthcoming collection, Heavy Metal Nursing.
Natalie Tombasco: Heavy Metal Nursing establishes us within “The Pumping Room—” just on the periphery of the neonatal ICU as the speaker and his wife supply breast milk “for the small, tender mouth / that might never drink it.” It is harrowingly bittersweet how the couple prepares for the shared journey ahead to care for and love their child born with a severe brain injury. The collection is gut-wrenching in its confrontation with “the brutal truth” of a terminal diagnosis and its exploration of the unimaginable loss of a child that levels their hope for potential parenthood. Surrounded by unused toys, the wife regrets, “I’d have been such a good mother.” Can you begin by sharing your intentions for this debut work?
Scott Frey: During our daughter’s life and death, I turned to my journal as a place for some of the rage and sadness and as an attempt to capture moments that were seared into my consciousness. The moment that my wife smashed the toys and said, “I’d have been such a good mother” is something I’d written in my journal not too long after it happened. “The Pumping Room” is another example of this, long before its current form, when I was trying to take note of some moments of laughter that got us through those first days of the crushing diagnosis and the intensity of the NICU. It felt like a kind of double baptism, washing us in breast milk and laughter, and then we felt the slightest bit renewed to face what we had to face.
After our daughter died, even though we remained close to the wonderful medical communities we’d gotten to know, we were no longer part of them in a concrete way. So many of the pieces were also attempts to reach toward and honor some of the people who had worked with her and with us.
At first, I was trying to write a memoir, but after many different frustrations and inspirations, I eventually learned that my process and my practice needed to be poetry. Though there were many struggles, of course, it’s amazing as I look back on it. It was truly organic in the way it unfolded, with wonderful teachers and mentors and poems and collaborators coming into my life. I didn’t think about when or how to send my work out into the world until, after about ten years, a couple of friends and colleagues gave me the guidance and encouragement to do so.
NT: There is a continuous reminder of the waning body through medical instruments. Aiming to provide insight into the day-to-day struggles of being a caregiver, the poetic landscape is shaped by the disorder, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, and its accouterments such as medications, braces, and wheelchairs. These objects linger after Charlotte’s death: the “suction catheter” cleaned out from the medicine cabinet, the chair’s wheels grooved into “West Beach,” then carried away in “Pass It On.” The poem “Instructions for Deep Suction” offers a manual for those in similar positions. What do you want readers to know about this condition, in particular, caring for someone with a disability, or someone going through those five stages of grief?
SF: Charlotte’s condition always felt difficult to describe, especially in terms of a quick overview or summary. Over time, I learned that one of the best ways to make it clear was by showing the objects and details that were so important in her life, and ours. But the thing that I most want readers to know is that yes, it was hard and full of suffering, but spending time with a child with profound disabilities, for whom each head tilt and bowel movement is a struggle, can open you up to the mysteries and miracles that are life and breath. I don’t think I’m naturally very observant, but Charlotte taught all who knew her how to be still. How to be patient, and to notice the morning light in her eyelashes.
My wife and I did not realize these things quickly or easily. Our daughter’s extraordinary therapists and the infant-toddler group at Perkins School for the Blind gave us lessons in how to appreciate her tiniest behaviors and gestures. So, too, did the Coordinated Care and Palliative Care teams at Children’s Hospital Boston.
The other thing I’d say is that, in terms of conditions like Charlotte’s, I want people to know as much as possible. So many times, children with complex medical needs, because of their need for care, are invisible. Already, in the short time my work has been out in the world, so many people, including some of our friends and family, have said to us something along the lines of, “We had no idea.”
Lastly, a word on the “five stages of grief,” which I grew quite interested in the second and third years after my daughter’s death. My wife and I were fortunate to receive wonderful support in the first couple of years of our grief, and over and over again we were given encouragement about the different ways grief can strike each person. In On Death and Dying, the beautiful book in which Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduces the different stages, she is clear to say how the order and duration and intensity of each “stage” is vastly different for each person. It’s our culture that often takes that idea and simplifies it into a tidy, linear progression. There is no “getting over it.” Rather, you work over a lifetime to integrate it into the rest of your life. A day or two after Charlotte died, I was on the phone with one of her palliative care doctors, and I mentioned that I couldn’t stop replaying the last moments. It was like her death was playing on a loop in my mind. She told me something I’ve always held onto. She said, “Over time, the loop widens.”
NT: As I read the poem “Coming Home Without You” we’re faced with welcoming balloons, blankets, and a vase of tulips for your newborn. This immediately brought to mind Sylvia Plath’s get-well “Tulips.” Although similarly set in the hospital room, her flowers are menacing, serving as a nagging reminder of her maternal responsibilities and her family like “little smiling hooks” awaiting her recovery. Were there any poems about illness or healing that were a source of guidance for you?
SF: “Coming Home Without You” was another moment I knew I wanted to write about, but struggled to find its lines and shape. In revision, I came across Marie Howe’s marvelous book, What the Living Do, and in particular, her brilliant poem, “Tulips,” which I think was inspired by Plath’s poem. It’s been wonderful to discover poems that way, where a newer poem points me back to an older poem. John Murillo and Edgar Kunz had poems that pointed me back to Larry Levis, for example, and William Brewer had poems that pointed me back to Phil Levine.
Many of the poems that guided me were more about using form to revisit or interrogate grief and trauma than they were about illness: Natasha Trethewey’s “Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath,” Natalie Diaz’s “My Brother at 3 A.M,” John Murillo’s “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,” Spencer Reese’s “Margaret,” and Camille Dungy’s “Notes on What is Always With Us.”
Early on, two books that I read over and over were Odes by Sharon Olds, and Ross Gay’s Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude. Though they are books of joy and wonder, the wonder often occurs alongside illness and deep grief, and it’s the conversation between these elements that I’m most moved by.
NT: It’s fascinating to hear about the poetic lineage that you’ve traced through the process and how you turned to Olds and Gay—two of my personal favorites.
Despite this being a pretty heavy book considering the subject matter, there are moments of striving for distraction in “Lacing ‘Em Up” and steering from complete sentimentality as seen in the “heavy metal” quality of the collection. There are also moments of levity in “Night Nurses,” where Kadeeja accidentally witnesses the couple’s “raw and unguarded” life: a scene of postcoital embarrassment. I thought this poem was great, by the way, in how it captures a gesture of love, intimacy, and hope for their future family. Why were these moments important to capture?
SF: Thank you. In trying to tell some of this story, it always felt important to take note of the things that kept us going. Though we don’t ever want to lighten or trivialize the story, we also wanted to include moments of joy and laughter and distraction. People outside of the situation often say things like, “I don’t know how you do it.” But when you’re in it, you mostly try to move from one moment to the next. There are so many moments that pulled us back into the world, gifts or gestures of time or help or encouragement, and the poems are of course only a fraction of these.
At a certain point, my wife and I knew we needed to reach for each other if we were to make it through. The statistics about the effects of children’s complex or terminal illnesses on their parents’ relationships are not good. So it’s worth highlighting some of those moments of connection—even or especially when they end up in unexpected places.
NT: While reading these poems, I was thinking about how it was once viewed as radical for female poets to write about their immediate source material: their children. Bernadette Meyer and Adrienne Rich come to mind in how they illustrate motherhood not as an ideal with darling cherubs, but as the realistic and exhausting experience it can be (at times). Your poems present fatherhood in a similar light, but it made me think of how rare this perspective is. With fathers stepping increasingly into the trenches of childcare and domestic labor, I’m sure this topic will become more prevalent. Did you consider the representation of fatherhood or have any poems in the back of your mind through the composition process?
SF: Initially I did not think about the representation of fatherhood. But I did think a lot about parenthood, and about pushing back against the cultural expectations surrounding this. Emily Rapp Black wrote a powerful essay about this called “Notes From a Dragon Mom” that crystallized many of the thoughts I was struggling to understand or articulate. In it, she points out how parenting is deeply future-oriented. For parents of terminally ill children, those goals and ideas about the future have been obliterated. Because of this, we find that there is an incredible intensity of presence. You’re often forced to be right there in the moment.
All of us writing as parents owe so much to Mayer and Rich, and also to so many of their heirs – Sharon Olds and Rachel Zucker and Tina Chang are three who spring to my mind. I sort of followed their example for a while. I also came across Edward Hirsch’s book, Gabriel, and some essays by Brian Doyle about fatherhood that are important to me. More recently, I’ve read books and poems about fatherhood, but not many during the time I was writing the book.
NT: Some argue that most poems are political, or at the very least, imply something that ought to change in society. There are moments in Heavy Metal Nursing that call attention to the financial difficulties of childcare, healthcare, medical insurance, and even home ownership in America. A pointed line in “New Neighborhood” shares, “The first land we purchase / is our daughter’s grave.” Can you speak a bit about these hardships and your advocacy for starting a nonprofit charity?
SF: Something I think a lot about is the kind of medical care that is possible when that care is applied thoughtfully, holistically, and with enough resources. Despite the difficulties and suffering in our story, we were fortunate to receive, for the most part, extraordinary care. Even so, we were overwhelmed in trying to navigate the primary and secondary insurance, the special relief funds, and the medical, hospital, and pharmaceutical systems. If it hadn’t been for an amazing social worker or the other parents we got to know who were in situations similar to ours, we wouldn’t have been able to do it.
We witnessed firsthand the importance and impact of Early Intervention therapists and dedicated pediatricians who were the first to help us face the bewildering terrain on which we found ourselves. They put us in contact with the teams of doctors and specialists that we needed. It wasn’t smooth or easy, but we connected with the infant-toddler program at Perkins School for the Blind and then with the pediatric palliative care team at Children’s Hospital, Boston (who go by the acronym, PACT). These two teams of folks are the strongest, kindest, and best people we’ve ever met or spent time with. Day after day they step into the most complicated, difficult, and heartbreaking circumstances and they help families make decisions about care and quality of life that are specific to each family’s story, background, and experience.
That might sound grand, but so often the help is something small. Other parents told us to type out our daughter’s medical history and updates and the list of her twenty medications, and suddenly the intake process at appointments or hospitalizations that took an hour now felt more manageable. Or when someone hands you a gift card to help pay for meals and gas when your child is back in the hospital for two or three weeks. Someone comes to sit or spend time with your child so that you can step away and get some small tasks accomplished.
After Charlotte’s death, when we thought about starting a non-profit charity, we knew pretty quickly that we wanted to offer a similar type of simple, concrete help to other families in similar situations. We also knew that we wanted to support PACT and Perkins, who were already doing such incredible work for children with complex medical needs, and for their families. Even though they are two of the best in the world at providing the vital kind of care they do, they still must fundraise each year to offer the kind of program and resources they know are needed. We knew if we could offer them a bit of additional support, it would be time well spent.
NT: Towards the final pages of the book, poetry writing increasingly emerges as you document the whimsical and otherworldly statements of your young children in a journal: “I think the wind is me” and “My mouth does not like these peas.” What role does poetry serve in your life at this moment?
SF: It’s a practice. I know that word gets used a lot these days, but that’s it for me. Put a pen on the page daily. Show up. I’m continuing to notice the ways that my consistency is yielding some good fruit. It will feel like I’m going nowhere or producing little on any given day, but when I review the accretion of work, I am routinely surprised by how much is there.
For me, this is my way of being in the world. And I think it changes me. It helps me to step outside the constant rush of entertainment, noise, and needs. It helps me discover a different sense of time. But it’s not only putting pen to paper, of course. It’s finding and reading a poem like Ellen Bass’s “Indigo” that reminds me of everything I’m trying to do. It reminds me some poems take a lifetime to write. It reminds me we can lavish attention on the world through language and image and note what meanings surface.
I don’t think I’m naturally very observant, but I aspire to Jane Hirschfield’s notion that “a poet should be a person on whom nothing is lost.” Young children are marvelous guides in this. One of the first things they often say is, “Look!” So I try to, even though I yell at them when they’re going to miss the bus.
I don’t know how to phrase this, and I’ve already said much of it, but one last thing I want to say is that spending almost four years of my life with my oldest daughter, and witnessing so many different people offer a humble, sensitive, kind of care has taught me how I want to move through the world. And watching my daughter struggle to breathe, to move, to demonstrate the smallest expressions of her preferences or delight… I really do think it has attuned me to the miracles that are life and health and breath. So now I notice it everywhere. Or at least I try to. The realities of horror and injustice and desperate systemic problems in our world do not diminish this. In many ways, I think it makes the need for wonder that much greater. When our brilliant organist plays on in an empty chapel after the students have filed out, I will stop and listen in awe. When the blue heron soars over my kids’ soccer practice, I’ll be transfixed. Last week I was leaving my gym and there was a family class running down and back in our parking lot. There they were, a thundering herd of four and five and six-year-olds laughing and stampeding forward, caught up in the simple joy of their speed and their running. Simple but not. They’re thundering in my chest still.
Scott Frey grew up in Western Pennsylvania and teaches English at Pine Meadow Academy. He learned to teach and found his first writing community at The Landmark School. He then found a wonderful writers’ community during his years teaching at The Ethel Walker School. He also served as a parent advisor for the Pediatric Advanced Care Team at Children’s Hospital, Boston. He and his wife run a non-profit charity, The Charlotte Frey Foundation, whose mission is to help children with multiple handicaps and life-threatening illnesses improve their quality of life. Among other publications, he has work forthcoming in Passages North, december magazine, One, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Missouri Review, where he was awarded the 2023 Perkoff Prize for poetry. His prose chapbook, Night Nurses, was a winner in the 2023 Black River Chapbook Competition. He and his family live in Granby, Connecticut.
Natalie Louise Tombasco is a poet from Staten Island, NY. Tombasco holds an MFA from Butler University and a doctoral degree in creative writing from Florida State University. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Tampa. Recent work can be found in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. Her debut collection MILK FOR GALL has been selected as the winner of the 2023 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and will be published in Fall 2024 by Southern Indiana Review.