First, two notes:
- This post was written in mid-May 2022 when I was in Florence, a trip funded by a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship from my poetry MFA at Boston University (which is why I talk so much about poetry and literature). When I talk about current events in the post, I am writing before the horrific Uvalde shooting happened and before Roe v. Wade was horrifically overturned. If you want to know more about how I feel about the SCOTUS decision, you can read almost anything Jia Tolentino writes on the subject, but especially this: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/we-are-not-going-back-to-the-time-before-roe-we-are-going-somewhere-worse. If you want to support abortion as integral to reproductive justice, human rights, the rights of women and people with uteruses, the health of parents and children, and more, you can donate to abortion funds: https://abortionfunds.org/funds/
- Why am I posting about Italy on my “Ayla in Ireland” blog? The answer is in my updated “About” section of this blog: “I created this blog in 2018 when I was 24 and left Chicago, my home of 6 years, to live and work in Cork City, Ireland, for a year on a Working Holiday Authorisation. Since I moved back to the States in 2019, I earned a poetry MFA from Boston University, started a counseling psychology PhD at the University of Louisville, and have decided to add a few non-Ireland posts. I am working on a more general website for myself, with not only travel/life musings but also updates on my poetry and psychology publications. Until then, enjoy this site!”
Now, the post (with pictures at the end):
How I Ended Up in Firenze (Florence) in May 2022
In February 2020, when I was about seven months into my one-year creative writing MFA program (poetry concentration) at Boston University, I was at a campus event with some of my fellow poets and we were talking about the news of COVID-19. Remember that time, when we didn’t know how much COVID would change our world? It brings to mind the beginning of section 20 from George Oppen’s masterful poem, Of Being Numerous:
20
—They await
War, and the news
Is war
As always
Though the pandemic may sometimes feel like a war—especially to healthcare workers, other front-line workers, and those who experienced and in many cases died from the worst symptoms of COVID-19—I do not wish to make that direct comparison, especially now when Russia has been waging war on Ukraine since February 24. However, I do wish to stress the pandemic’s seriousness, and how everything I talk about in the rest of this blog is situated in a place of extreme privilege relative to the pandemic, the war on Ukraine, and more.
Despite our privilege, the poets and I felt real fear (as most of the world did) when discussing the news of COVID back in February 2020. Because of our privilege, one point of discussion was the possibility that our Robert Pinsky Global Fellowships, the final part of the MFA program that would give each of us a monetary sum to go abroad and work on our writing projects, would be cancelled or postponed. This was far from our biggest concern, and it wasn’t a source of fear but rather a sign that COVID should be feared; was the virus so formidable that it could change the landscape of something as big as our MFAs were to us? Yes.
I spent the three months of fall 2020 that I was supposed to be traveling abroad at home with my parents in North Carolina, and I treasured every moment. Now, in May 2022, I finally get to treasure the time abroad that I eagerly anticipated for 2+ years. It looks very different from my original fellowship proposal to “lean into nostalgia” and spread three months among three countries that have meant so much to me: Turkey, where my father is from and where I spent summer 2015 in a Turkish language immersion program; Spain, where I studied abroad as a Spanish minor in fall 2015; and Ireland, where I lived and worked on a working holiday authorization from September 2018 to August 2019, the eleven months right before I began my MFA. Now I have a shorter amount of time, and I am in Firenze (Florence), Italy, a country not on my original list at all! I am beyond grateful nonetheless.
Though I considered international travel in summer 2021, I did not partake because I was a bridesmaid three separate times, and I moved from NC to Kentucky to start a counseling psychology PhD program at the University of Louisville. For a long time, I was not seriously considering travel this summer 2022, either. Though I did worry for how long I could postpone the Global Fellowship, my very busy life as a PhD student became my primary focus. But then, my oldest friend Sonam (we met in 4th grade!) told me she was spending months in Italy this spring/summer, working remotely for her US company, and said I should come visit. I jumped at the opportunity, especially when I found out this trip could indeed count for the Global Fellowship. In a way, I am getting to “lean into nostalgia” after all. There is nostalgia for my friendship with Sonam, which blossomed in elementary school in California and stayed strong even when my family moved to North Carolina as I was starting 6th grade; nostalgia for Firenze, which I visited almost exactly three years ago (May 2019) with Sid, the person I dated while I lived in Ireland; and nostalgia for the lives my family members have lived. My parents met in Italy—my mom was 21, visiting her mom and stepdad, who was stationed at the NATO base in Naples with the American military, and my dad was 30 and stationed at the same NATO base with the Turkish military. My mom spontaneously decided to stay in Italy and work various jobs for the American military, and she lived here for around 6 years (though never in Florence). My parents talked so much about their time in Italy when I was growing up that it feels very much a part of the fabric of my family, though we are not actually Italian.
Finally, Firenze is a wonderful place to sink back into poetry, which I have spent just a little time on since starting my PhD program. More on poetry will come in later blog posts, but for now I will say that I traveled light and brought just one poetry book to Italy: The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forche. I was reading it this morning as I sat on the curb waiting for Sonam to meet me so we could walk through a park (Parco delle Cascine) and eat lunch. Sonam walked up to me and said, “What are the poems about?” I said, “A lot of them are about the political conflict and terrible violence in El Salvador that Carolyn Forche witnessed decades ago.” And Sonam was so surprised! She said, “You looked so peaceful reading—I had no idea you were reading poems about war!” I said, “A lot of people don’t think of war when they think of poetry, but political poems and war poems are very important.”
I stand behind what I said this morning. But am I just chasing the impossible by trying to have both the aesthetic life (poetry, travel, etc.) AND the ethical/political life? I was introduced to this dichotomy by the author Elif Batuman’s discussion of Soren Kierkegaard’s presentation of the aesthetic and ethical lives existing in opposition: https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/elif-batuman-04-25-22. It made me wonder: did I bring The Country Between Us to assuage the guilt I feel traveling when so much else is going on in the world: Russia’s violence in Ukraine, and in the US, the recent white supremacist violence in the Buffalo shooting, the threat to abortion rights (which is a human right), the exploitation of graduate students and other university employees by a broken academic system, and more? Maybe. But maybe I also believe the conclusion Batuman reached after many years: the aesthetic life and the ethical life don’t have to be in conflict. And even if guilt factors into my politics, I know true conviction is in there, too. How can it not be, when we live in a world where Oppen’s words still ring true, as he assured us they always would?
Some pictures from Firenze, when I was leaning into the aesthetic life.
Il Duomo, and postcards of Il Duomo I sent to the BU MFA program:
By the Arno River at dusk, and in the Giardino delle Rose (Rose Garden) at the golden hour:
Lunch and Hugo Spritzes in Parco delle Cascine:
Street scenes, including the San Lorenzo outdoor market and a shop window of Florentine paper products:
View of Florence from the Church of San Miniato al Monte (with tall skinny cypress trees) and from my and Sonam’s favorite rooftop bar, Loggia Roof Bar of the Hotel Palazzo Guadagni (with a church facades and tower), and then the courtyard as seen from my Airbnb (because I did NOT stay in the very fancy Hotel Palazzo Guadagni, haha):
Finally, for more on George Oppen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poem Of Being Numerous, you can read sections 1-22 here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53223/of-being-numerous-sections-1-22
And sections 9, 26 (my favorite), and 29 here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46401/of-being-numerous
There are 40 sections total; not all are on the Poetry Foundation website.
Ayla in Ireland 