The first time I read “Un-rivals,” I was deeply moved by the way you personify death. I think this both challenges and changes the way the reader relates to death as phenomenon. Can you talk about how you created death’s character? 

When I thought of my husband, who has died, I thought of him with love.  I know that most people personify death as someone in a black robe and a black hood, a fleshless figure, almost skeletal with long bony fingers—a true specter—someone to fear and avoid—yet unable to avoid or shun. But I wanted the best and most pleasant thing for the person I love. So I created a beautiful woman to be the one to accompany him to the next phase. I would not be jealous of that woman. I wanted my husband to have an environment where he felt special and adored.

To expand on your personification of death, I want to talk about how you craft death as a temptress or seductress. To me, this is so undeniably subversive in how it challenges our cultural fears of death. Was this subversion intentional, and if so, what led you to this framing device for the poem?

That's interesting. I didn't mean to characterize death as a seductress, though I do see death as beguiling. To me, death is a messenger who came to tell my husband not to be scared, he will not be in a place that is gruesome, but in one he loves. She is beautiful, and the surroundings are beautiful, because her message, also, is that we will be together again.  

I couldn't have written about death in this way right after I lost my husband, but as time passed, I came to a place where I needed to give him back all the love he had given me, and so I wrote this poem in which death is a loving partner.

How do you see the relationship between music and death, as portrayed here?   

Music is the voice of the soul.  The soul soars in music. Music takes us where death wants us to go. To a high lofty loving place where we can be together for ever and ever. My husband loved music, and as I worked on this poem I imagined him and I dancing together like in that song—cheek to cheek.

I’m always interested in how form is also a device for conveying meaning. In this case, the poem is written in couplets, which beautifully mirrors the metaphor of death as two-step. As a writer, how do the ideas you write about interact with technical structure?

I don't think about structure when I start to write. I pay close attention to my thoughts and let the way my mind works, the sounds of words, and my emotions lead the way. When I start a poem, I write without line or stanza breaks, then I re-hear the poem, listening for where the transitions in thought, language, and image are.

Can you talk about the title, “Un-rivals?” What relationship does it suggest between the speaker, the lost loved one, and death?

There could be a rivalry between death and I because we both wanted him. Death offered my husband a peaceful place and an end to pain, which was more than I could offer. There is so much in life that is impossible, but she had music and dancing to give him. I love dancing too, and instead of being a rival, I wanted him to dance with a wonderful dancer.  To go dancing into the arms of death.

You’re the author of a children’s book called Anna and Solomon, which tells the story of your grandparents’ immigration to the United States from Russia. What made you decide to tell this story as a children’s book?

I didn't know I was writing a children’s story. I just wrote the story as I felt it. It was my son-in-law, writer and syndicated cartoonist, Harry Bliss who suggested the story would make a great children's book. I am glad he saw that possibility. To me the story of my grandparents is a love story, and I want children to know that the people who came before them—their grandparents and great grandparents—are real people just like them, and that real stories, and not just fairy tales, can have happy endings.

Lastly, in your bio, you write that poetry is an early love that you’ve only recently returned to. What made you return to poetry?

I don't think of myself as a poet because poets are exalted beings and I never think of myself as exalted. However, throughout my life I wrote a poem every now and then when I was struck by an event, when I needed to undress myself and tell the truth.  For a long period of time I didn't write. I was raising a family and had work that I was passionate about. I felt no need to write. When my husband died, I wrote a little, but I didn't start writing seriously until I returned to NYC where I had grown up. It was a matter of occupying myself and of feeling less lonely. Only poetry can go deeply into a person, relieve that person of the burdens of sorrow and anguish, and give meaning to what one really feels. Writing poetry is also, to me, a way of going back into the past and reliving wonderful times.  Also, I want people to know who I am.  Or for me to know myself better. I've been fortunate in my life.  I know that when I write.

I am glad to still have the ability to use words. Writing makes me feel I am still occupied with life. 

Read Elaine’s poem, “Un-Rivals” in dulcet Literary magazine, vol. One, Issue No. 2, coming this february.