By ALISON LESTER
Managing Editor
Published September 7, 2011
After viewing the 1944 film version of Jane Eyre, “while going through a painful and protracted divorce,” Saint Rose Professor Barbara Ungar found herself saying “Charlotte Brontë, you ruined my life!” These words would lead to her writing a poem which she ended up not liking.
“Others did, however,” said Ungar. “So it grew on me gradually, till I realized it would make a good title for the collection.”
This collection of poems, published earlier this year, was inspired either directly or indirectly by events in Ungar’s life. Ungar, who practices freewriting, says she does so in an attempt to contact “the secret monsters of the id.” Along with poetic license, the inclusion of “dreams, books, movies, artwork, stories, fantasies, and so on,” and inspiration from rereading the classics, Ungar’s poems are born.
“I find the process of self-exploration exciting and challenging,” said Ungar.
Before Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life, Ungar wrote two other poetry books: Thrift, which was published in 2005, and The Origin of the Milky Way, which was published in 2007. According to the back of Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life, Ungar won the following awards for The Origin of the Milky Way: the 2006 Gival Press Poetry Award, an Eric J. Hoffer Notable for Poetry Award, a Silver Independent Publishers’ Book Award, and the Adirondack Center for Writing Award for Best Book of Poetry 2007 (as a co-winner).
Ungar says that Thrift, whose poems were written over a period of many years, “doesn’t have any coherent theme, apart from ‘how did I get here, to where I am now?’” Some of Thrift’s poems were more experimental than others.
The Origin of the Milky Way, which was written during Ungar’s last sabbatical, focuses on the themes of pregnancy and early motherhood. Ungar believes her second poetry book is more “cohesive” than her first.
“The poems are shorter, simpler; many of them were written in my head when my son was very young;” said Ungar. “As soon as he would go down for a nap, I would rush to write them down.”
Ungar believes that Charlotte Bronte, You Ruined My Life is somewhere between her first two books. “It coheres around the theme of divorce, descent into hell, and rebirth, but the poems range somewhat widely.”
As a professor who does the assignments she gives her students, many of the poems that appear in Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life were created from writing insult poems, which is one of Ungar’s favorite assignments.
“I find it can release terrific energy and free students (and me) from constraints,” said Ungar.
Ungar hopes that her latest poetry book will both comfort and entertain those who have dealt with struggles related to those that she has dealt with, such as divorce.
“The book attempts to deal with many layers of culture that influence women and our choices: from nineteenth-century novels with Byronic heroes (I could have called the book Blame It on Byron, and I’d still like to write a poem by that name),” said Ungar. “To Disney with its absolutely atrocious heterosexist and sexist stereotyping, which (thanks to VCRs and DVDs) young women now grow up absolutely saturated in.”
Ungar, who says she is always writing poems, has been working on a new collection.
“It has a lot of aquatic imagery, and has to do with mortality,” said Ungar, “My father is 89 and fading, so I’ve been wrestling with that lately, along with my own aging (and that of all my friends and relations).”
Its current working title is Does Anyone Know a Spell to Become a Mermaid That Really Works.
“No one would write poetry if they didn’t love it;” said Ungar. “There are no other rewards.”
