If you’ve ever dabbled with the Tarot, a deck that originated as playing cards in Italy in the mid-15th century and, since at least the late 18th century, has been used for divination, you know that the cards have an uncanny way of making more sense than you expect them to. I’ve flirted with the deck since a teenager, always with what I think of as a healthy dose of skepticism, and I always end up oddly impressed.
Even if the efficacy of the Tarot can be explained by our subconscious minds making connections between the imagery on the cards and specific people and situations in our lives, that would be enough — since the whole point of Tarot readings is to encourage deeper understanding. So sure, the cards aren’t magic, they’re just allowing us to pinpoint things we haven’t been admitting —— or haven’t realized — we were feeling. But how to explain the fact that a particularly difficult person in my life always ends up being represented by the same card, despite the fact that there are 78 cards in the deck and they’ve been shuffled well each time?
Poet Sarah Sousa of Ashfield began experimenting with the Tarot about a year ago. To get to know the deck, Sousa would draw one card and use it as a prompt for writing. Her poem, “The Moon,” was written in response to the imagery on what’s called a “major arcana” card from a well-known deck, the Rider-Waite deck. (There have come to be so many different decks that tarotassociation.net lists the “Top 50 Essential Tarot Decks.”)
Like the playing cards we know from childhood, Tarot decks have four suits — wands, swords, cups and pentacles — with ten numbered cards and four court cards (page, knight, queen and king). These cards are called the “minor arcana,” or lesser secrets. In addition, there are 22 “major arcana” cards, including “Justice,” “Death,” “The Lovers,” and the card Sousa drew: “The Moon.”
Sousa picked the card from the deck at a time when she’d been hearing and reading a lot about conjoined twins, and the card’s imagery seemed to coincide with that. On the Rider-Waite card, two dogs howl at a moon that appears full but also contains within it the shape of a waxing or waning moon.
In poetry, as in the Tarot, there are no hard and fast answers. You can’t draw a diagram to explain how Sousa’s poem was derived from the card. It was more that the idea of the moon containing both light and darkness resonated for Sousa with the idea that a conjoined twin might both miss her separated twin and lust for her own freedom. And she began to write from the point of view of that conjoined twin.
Poems written in the voices of other people are called persona poems, and Sousa loves to write them.
“I feel like it allows you to write from another part of yourself,” Sousa says. “Even if you don’t share at all the situation — like conjoined twins — it allows you to do a creative exercise. But also, there’s something in you that allows you to connect.”
A lover of history, Sousa often chooses subjects whom she feels have been silenced — or just not heard — and need a voice.
Her first collection, “Church of Needles” (2013), includes poems in the voices of an abused farmwife, a ridiculed giantess and an escaped slave. Her second book, “Split the Crow” (2015) is about “the Native American contact period in New England and then the expulsion down South,” Sousa says.
“And that can get tricky because I’m speaking in Native American voices.”
While she worried that some might think she was appropriating from Native American culture, Sousa’s thorough research, including reading oral histories to get a sense of her subjects’ voices, moves the poems away from voyeurism towards a deeper understanding and connection.
It’s “a poetry of witness,” Sousa says.
Recently, Sousa launched Queen of Cups, a free, online mini-literary magazine delivered to subscribers’ inboxes every Wednesday. Each edition features the work of just one poet or writer. This week’s edition, #8, features a micro-essay on motherhood by Jennifer Kakutani of Bainbridge Island, Wash..
On the site, Sousa writes: “I chose the Queen of Cups as the title of this mini-lit mag because she is the most intuitive of all the queens, is of the water element, and associated with creativity and prophesy.”
Each week, Sousa selects artwork from the public domain to accompany the featured writer’s work and draws a card from the Tarot. She explains some historic meanings of the card, as well as its implications for writers and artists. Just as in a Tarot card reading, Sousa often finds surprising and illuminating correlations between the artwork, the writing and the card.
Only two months in and Sousa already has over 400 subscribers. She solicits much of the work but also takes unsolicited submissions. Be aware: she’s already got writers lined up through January 2017. And you must subscribe to submit. Subscribe at: https://tinyletter.com/QueenofCups. Find guidelines to submit at: https://sarahasousa.com/queen-of-cups
One gift of Queen of Cups is a weekly writing prompt at the end of each issue. Here’s this week’s: Write a micro essay/story (about 500 words) or a prose poem about consciously throwing something special away or about getting rid of something in a bizarre or unique way.
Trish Crapo is a writer and photographer who lives in Leyden. She is always looking for Pioneer Valley poets and writers, or books published by a Pioneer Valley press, to feature in her columns. Crapo can be reached at tcrapo@mac.com.