Friendship with Marj

Susanne Pohl-Zucker

“The kiss of poetry“
(Line from Marj’s poem “Hua Mu Lan Greeting Her Spirit-Husband“)

I met Marj in the summer of 1986. I was eighteen, had just graduated from high school, and wanted to see the world. An opportunity presented itself, and I attended a month-long seminar in Taipeh. I wanted to learn Chinese, but my time in Taiwan was crucial in other ways than I had imagined. It was there that I met Marj. Like many other international participants, she had come to Taiwan for the summer. One evening, everyone shared stories and songs from their home country, and Marj read a poem from a collection that would become her book Dreamwavers. I was electrified and struck by the beauty of her language and by the atmospheric intensity her words conveyed. It felt as if the poem’s “kiss of poetry “had changed something within me.

Taiwan’s sights, a bamboo forest, golden Buddhas, and a peaceful lake, became enchanted by talks with Marj about poetry and Philippine culture. I felt I could not get enough of the beautiful lines with which she captured moments, emotions, experiences, and spirituality. This was before E-Mail and WhatsApp, and the way to communicate after the time in Taiwan was through handwritten letters. I treasured the envelopes arriving from Manila in Marj’s beautiful handwriting, and I wanted to find ways to keep her poetry a part of my hectic and often disorganized German life. Choosing a path, subject to study, and town to live in was difficult.

The letters showed me how Marj faced challenges: with clarity of purpose and discipline, and a will to find beauty in small things during difficult times. Her letters were always an inspiration, a work of art. While she shared stories of life, growth, change, and travel, I read words of encouragement, admired lines of poems at the beginning and end of the letters, and looked at the beautiful images and drawings she attached. It was true. She wrote once that “time and space is not what separates people.“ The mail brought letters and packages with chocolate- covered mangoes and other Philippine delicacies. And then, as time went by, one beautiful publication after another arrived; each time, a festive moment, a time to celebrate. Besides my awe at the imaginative worlds she creates in her readers’ minds, I was also struck by how her poetry alludes to friends, family, honored mentors, dedications, and references telling stories of ever-increasing ties of friendship and connections.

“And many other women naming half the world together“
(Line from Marj’s poem “Dreamwavers“)

Our friendship led to other meetings; in Germany with mutual friends and my family. I was so happy when Marj visited, and I could show her where I grew up. We met again on another continent: an unlikely wintry place in Canada, at an international writer’s festival in Winnipeg. By then, I had moved to the United States to study medieval European history, and the Canadian border was not too far from the town where I lived. Such an experience: after the lush, humid Taiwanese summer and the paler German climate, we could meet in the cold and the snow. I was thrilled to get to know Marj’s daughter, Mayann, who drinks tea in a Canadian hotel room and discusses modern art in Manila. I’ll never forget the contrast between the cold outside and the warmth of the meetings and conversations inside. The next place where we met was again a more temperate setting: a spring many years later when I saw Marj, Mayann, and their poet friend in Florence. There we toured the sights in the city and the countryside. This was a lovely and unforgettable moment of our friendship; the experience of Tuscan sights blended with memories of walking through a bamboo forest and with tales about mutual friends and the places dear to her in the Philippines.

“I suddenly feel the blueness embrace us “
(Line from Marj’s poem “Is it the Kingfisher? “)

Reading “Is it the Kingfisher? “for the first time, was a decisive event; a letter came with the poem typed on a separate page, and then the beautiful collection Skin of Water that contains the poem arrived. I kept reading and rereading, repeatedly, arrested by the strong blue images the lines conjured. The words resonated, especially when life seemed chaotic and breathless. They brought flashes of blue, moments of stillness, transient but precious. This is an important aspect of my friendship with Marj: so many moments in my life have received new meaning through her lines; it seems a poem is associated with each stage and turning point. And the poems take on new meanings depending on the vantage point from which I look back at a particular moment. At the same time, beyond the personal meanings and connections, I am grateful for what I learned from Marj: she not only brings gifts of words but opens windows into cultures, languages, and histories. It is a great happiness to be her friend. Thanks, Marj.

I was born in 1967 in Mainz, Germany, and grew up in a small village surroundedby vineyards. I have always loved history, and after graduating from High School, I studiedthe European Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. After a few terms at the Universityof Tübingen in Germany, I moved to the United States and finished graduate school at theUniversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Work brought me to Ithaca, New York, where I taught at