Love Story

 Marianne Szlyk and Ethan Goffman 

 

 

 

 Photo by Allyson Lima 

 

A Marriage of Two Storytellers

By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Marianne Szlyk, a college English professor and Ethan Goffman, a part time English professor and part-time nonfiction writer and editor, have the distinction of being the only married couple in Storyteller Poetry Review. Since they both contribute poetry and fiction to the journal and read their poems at Storyteller zooms, I decided to interview them together by email for my Love Story Series.
 

 SHARON: 

How did you two meet?

MARIANNE:

Actually that’s an interesting story. Ethan and I met at Purdue University. in 1999. He was an adjunct at Purdue, and I was a grad student. His cubicle was near mine, and one day he popped in to gripe that he had no one to play tennis with. I said that I'd play if he taught me. And so he taught me. However, I did know him before that. During the summer of 1999, I had waited on him at the Purdue archives (that's not the name but I don't recall it at the moment). A little while later his psycho girlfriend claimed that he was cheating on her with me. But she was wrong. Ethan and I weren't seeing each other until the fall of 1999, perhaps the winter of 1999.

SHARON:

When did you marry?

MARIANNE:

We married on July 27, 2001 in Lafayette, IN at the courthouse. Our witnesses were our parents.

SHARON:

Had either of you been married before?

MARIANNE:

This is Ethan's first marriage, and I divorced my first husband in 1996.

SHARON:

What would you say is the secret of your 23-year-old marriage?

MARIANNE:

I would say that a few things have helped us. We were in our mid to late thirties when we met, so we knew ourselves better and weren't as liable to believe that we could change ourselves for the other person as younger people might. We had interests in common, and we were open to acquiring new interests from each other. We try to be more of a partnership and to see the other person's side---although we may not always succeed as much as we'd like. I do think it helped that I'd been married before. Did you have anything to add Ethan?

ETHAN:

I would add that we both have a strong sense of whimsy in different, but complementary, ways.

SHARON:

What common interests did you have when you met and what interests did you acquire from each other.

ETHAN:

books, 60s music, basketball,

MARIANNE:

also ethnic cuisine.  We used to eat at this Spanish restaurant in downtown Lafayette. We kept that place alive. I also remember the Puerto Rican restaurant El Palenque where we used to eat with Ethan's family. Once I met Ethan, I started listening to more jazz and playing board games. We used to play Britannia a lot with a friend of ours.

 SHARON:

Were you writing poetry and fiction when you met?

ETHAN:

No--we had both done so in the past but were both in a very long dormant period. We had both written fiction and Marianne had written and published poetry.

MARIANNE:

At that point, we were focusing on our academic careers. I stopped writing poetry in the late 80s when I moved back to Boston from Eugene, OR. I stopped writing fiction for the most part when I started grad school at Purdue.

SHARON:

 What years did each of you start writing and publishing?

ETHAN:

I was unpublished till about ten years ago. Somehow, I suddenly published four short books of poetry and fiction from 2020-2023.

MARIANNE:

I was publishing poetry in the mid to late 1980s.  Publishing is so much easier now when journals are online.  Back in the 1980s, it was a very long drawn out process. For that reason, most of my old publications were local ones in Eugene, OR.

 SHARON:

Do you help each other with your writing? How?

ETHAN:

Yes. We read and comment on each other's writing. We're both supportive but also a bit tough, or at least honest, in our criticism.

MARIANNE:

I concur! It is especially good to have Ethan's advice now that I am writing fiction. In fiction, you have to be willing to let bad things happen to characters you like, so it's important to know how far is too far and what is not far enough.

 SHARON:
 
What other activities do you manage to do now besides working and your writing endeavors?

ETHAN:

We have word game groups and go to concerts and plays. We actually have some separate hobbies--Marianne does yoga and I play tennis.

MARIANNE:

I do a little more traveling than Ethan does although it's to see family and friends in Boston.


Ethan’s poems

By the Wetlands My Wife Often Visits

I gaze
over the bountiful little swamp
blooming with yellow and purple flowers
erect reeds, billowy shapes

A butterfly bounces
above the vegetation,
an angel’s yellow wings

Within a flower, an intricate, sculptured bee
gathers and replenishes

On a green stalk
a spot of white,
half-microscopic organism half flits, half crawls

within the murky water
a slow turtle?
or just a rock?

On solitary journeys, my wife and I
compose poems to this wetlands
each poem individual
each of the same swampy pond
trickling words and water, ineffable
every droplet linked to every other

I think that I shall never see
a poem as lovely as a bee


This House We Built

This house we built:
a man a woman and two cats
the perfect family, just as God intended.

This house that built us:
foundation miles thick
picture window streaming with life
yellow shingles and orange fence
blazing with light.

This house the contractors built
for cash
although with
a certain pride
perhaps even
love
that they were building something lasting
to bind the universe in its small way.

Is it love that builds things?
Or is it cement, nails, wood, and plaster?
Or is it money?

This house we had built
or that always existed
surrounded by birdsong in the trees we planted
by scampering squirrels
rabbits feasting
on the tall fescue.

This house made of commerce
made of love.

This house we built,
a man a woman and two cats
the perfect family, just as God intended. 
So unlike
two men and a baby
a man a woman two dogs and a gerbil
a woman, a child, a goldfish
abominations all

unless they are built
with love and kindness.


Marianne’s poems.

Lafayette Sept. 11, 2001

Later that morning after classes were cancelled,
I crossed the river, beneath a perfect sky,
going home to you.

We didn’t think that Al-Qaeda would reach us
in this college town,
this pin that the angels danced on.

We listened to the radio.

We thought about stopping by your parents’.   
There your mother watched the news all day
as if it were the rain that would not fall.

Instead I watched the trucks trailing American flags  
rush up and down Ferry Street,  
making it a river we could not cross.

I wished it had rained that morning  
while the passengers were lining up at Logan  
and the workers were streaming from the subway.

Standing at the window, looking at the sky,
fierce even in Lafayette,
city of wedding-cake houses and candy stores,

I prayed for rain.

 

The First Time I Shopped at Whole Foods, 2002

I came back with brie and crackers for you
to eat in our cave, safe from the sniper,
safe from Al-Qaeda and flag-bearing trucks.

We turned on the radio.  Mostly jazz
played.  We hoped to learn about the city
without going out in it, fearing white

vans threading through traffic, appearing here
in front of our building, at Rite Aid, or
at Metro.  We couldn’t escape.  We stayed

inside listening to midnight music
at three-thirty on a gray afternoon
while the deejay spoke of his pops’ U Street.

I read cookbooks, dreamed of dinner parties,
old friends and new, all sitting on the floor.
I ignored the papers stacked on a chair.

You dreamed of returning to Reeves Bakery.
The one time we stopped there we drank coffee
and gazed at glistening strawberry pie.

I didn’t yet dream of leaving this place,
being able to walk beyond our street,
to spend three-thirty outside.

Note: In October 2002, the DC snipers held the area in thrall.  Over the course of three weeks, they killed ten people and injured three others at various places in the area such as parking lots, gas stations, and a post office. (Background information from Wikipedia and CNN).


Travels with the Gray Ghost

Back then we drove everywhere,
even to Burrito Loco, the place
on top of the hill we thought of
as steep in our flat state of Indiana.

Shifting gears on the incline,
you drove the Gray Ghost,
up the dark street, space between
elsewhere’s blotches of bright lights:

the mall and chain restaurants,
plants strung out on the south
side of town, campus to the west,
our students wedged into Harry’s.

Its sound system blasted
Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” all spring.
Burrito Loco’s jukebox was shut off,
maybe repossessed, maybe sold.

I don’t recall other customers
as we talked over the grill’s sizzle.
Ghosts even at this restaurant,
dark men must have sat near us.  

I didn’t know their language.
You might have tried out your Spanish,
the way you did at Mexico Lindo,
a restaurant closer to the light.

But I remember Burrito Loco,
our steak burritos, their beans
and avocados as dark and soft
as the night we clung to.

By fall we, too, would be gone,
the Grey Ghost still parked
on a dark street, still
haunting this town.


The Tower

It was locked. We didn’t have to
brave steep, uneven steps or hot
reek of beery urine with just
thin windows to bring in fresh air,
to find the view of the suburbs:

endless trees and houses, winding
streets of trucks and SUVs. I’ve
climbed up in a tower like this
before, but not with you. I huffed
up steep steps, held up my long skirt.

Victorians built these towers
all over New England. Young men,
some women climbed them on Sunday
afternoons for inspiring views.
I rode past these places back home.

Of course, this tower was open
back then. It smelled of fresh air,
pine needles, and gentle sunshine.

You might not have been welcome here
except as a wandering peddler.
I’d buy needles and thread from you
in my mill house, its back to woods,

its face to winding, unpaved road.

"This House We Built" is from Words for Things Left Unsaid (Kelsay Books, 2020). "By the Wetlands . . . " Is from I Garden Weeds (Cyberwit, 2021), "Travels with the Gray Ghost" and "To the Tower" first appeared in Verse-Virtual,"The First Time I Shopped at Whole Foods" first appeared in Spectrum 30, "Lafayette, September 11, 2001" first appeared in Red Bird Chapbooks' Weekly Read, and "Dreams of Lafayette" appeared in Eos: The Creative Context.