UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology_SS 2025_FOR PRINT - Flipbook - Page 33
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
Americans as Arabian Nights. Of the poem, Glück wrote, “Tell me,
room. I left this on the table for you. I hope it helps. Whoever you
the poet says, the lie I need to feel safe, and tell me in your own voice,
are, reading this—it would have been nice to meet you, but I couldn’t
so I believe you. One more tale to stay alive.” Since in the poem’s 昀椀nal
wait, I had to move on, I am already so far away.” As makers, as
lines, the speaker says, “and love too,” we must intuit that this is not
practitioners and patients, as individuals experiencing similar human
a love poem (which does not discount the sultan/speaker perhaps
conditions and feelings, isn’t it lovely to be able to relate to others, to
being in love with Scheherazade), Siken tells me that the reading of
share our experiences, to engage? ☐
the poem could be that “the speaker is pushy, invasive, demanding—
greedy and self-absorbed, self-serving,” but hazards against reading
Contributed by: Ciara Shuttleworth
into the poem the idea that it could be about security or insecurity,
Ciara Shuttleworth is an alumnus of the prestigious San Francisco Art
Institute. She has worked for three prominent San Francisco 昀椀ne art galleries.
Additionally, she has provided art consulting for private and corporate
collections, including Google. She is also a published writer with works in the
Norton Introduction to Literature and The New Yorker. Her most recent
book is the poetry collection, Rabbit Heart.
“the words are never used, the images not examples of the concept.”
But love, Siken admits, might be possible. He tells me, “I think the
sultan loves her. That’s my understanding of the situation of the
poem, of the performance of the actions of the poem.” But the caveat,
he says, is that “It doesn’t need to be true for the poem to work. It
could be love or need. Could be something else. I insist there is a
distinction between the facts of the poem, which are not debatable,
and the reader’s response to the facts of the poem, which are based
on their understanding of love and need or any other feeling or
motivation that resonates with them.”
And, as a reader, the feelings conjured from your own experiences
when reading a poem may resonate with you and hold you in a poem.
As is true with any experience, our experiences and feelings carry us
forward. The facts have been presented by Siken; he has painted a
picture for us without knowing how we will interpret the facts. “Love,
boredom, isolation, boundary-pushing—these are great consequences
to consider. I have provided an opportunity for a reader to consider
them,” Siken says. He continues, “I have made some clouds in the
sky for you. I am not going to guess at the shapes for you. What’s the
point of that?”
And “Scheherazade” is indeed a poem to read again and again, to roll
over in the mind and to read aloud. So many of his poems are. Siken
has painted us pictures of moments, has given us “the facts,” and it’s
up to us as readers to recognize ourselves and others in his poems. If
art is indeed antidote, “Scheherazade” and other poems are medicine,
are moments to contemplate, to explore, to hold in our voices and
thoughts as we explore our own panic, loneliness, demands, and love.
As Richard Deming did in This Exquisite Loneliness, and as
discussed with Deming in this issue’s article on loneliness, Siken
reaches out through the past to the future, to us, the readers. In the
afterword for the 20th Anniversary edition of Crush, Siken writes,
“We expect poets to explore uncomfortable realms and return with
secret knowledge. Sometimes we do. At the end of my second book,
the speaker says, ‘I live in someone else’s future.’ It’s so obvious, it’s
terrifying. We document to share with the future. We bene昀椀t from the
documents of the past. We say, I was in this room once. It is a di昀케cult
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