Interview
Mythos, Magdalene, & The Mother: aN INTERVIEW WITH Dale M. Kushner
BY Alexa Diamant, Jamie Roes, & Briar
March 2025
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What does it mean to carry the weight of history, and how do the stories of those before us shape the present? These questions lie at the core of Dale M. Kushner’s debut poetry collection, M, a vivid exploration of women’s lives throughout history and the multigenerational traumas that linger in their wake. Dale M. Kushner, a native New Jerseyan currently living in the Midwest, surrounds her work around all aspects of the feminine, exploring issues of community, identity, and transformation. Studying as a potential Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute in Switzerland, her knowledge of psychology influences her works. Her pieces have received great acclaim, including special mention in 2024 for a Pushcart Prize for her poetry and a Pushcart Prize nomination for her short fiction.
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Through M, Kushner confronts themes of vulnerability and resilience, peeling back the layers of silence imposed on women across generations to reveal the enduring strength of their stories. We had the privilege of speaking with Kushner during a particularly charged moment in time: the 2024 Presidential Election. Against the backdrop of intense political discourse on rights, freedoms, and societal divides, our conversation unearthed the profound ways her work resonates with both the past and present.
While our focus was on her poetry, the intersection of art and current events proved unavoidable, adding depth and urgency to the discussion. Kushner’s reflections offered a rare glimpse into the power of storytelling as a means of reckoning with history, sparking a conversation that was as thought-provoking as it was timely.
While our focus was on her poetry, the intersection of art and current events proved unavoidable, adding depth and urgency to the discussion. Kushner’s reflections offered a rare glimpse into the power of storytelling as a means of reckoning with history, sparking a conversation that was as thought-provoking as it was timely.
Kushner’s Preface:
I started answering your questions before the 2024 election. It is now the day after (The Day After), and I am struggling through the quicksand of despair. In the context of a radically changing America, I ask myself how the poems in M reflect the current zeitgeist. What comes to mind is the sense of jeopardy expressed by the women speakers in the poems—women caught in war or violence, women from Old and New Testaments stories, girl-children burdened by ancestral trauma. They are situated in dangerous conditions, their bodies, their lives at risk, as are women in our increasingly violent misogynist society. The dismantling of Roe, the call to throw out the HEW and other federal regulatory agencies—all part of the cruel agenda of Project 2025—promise to put women and women’s bodies and health and the body of the planet in great peril.
The poems in M are not political poems and did not arise with politics in mind, including the politics of feminism. These poems have been swimming around in my unconscious for a while. How and when a poem leaps into consciousness is always a mystery. The poems in section two, “Via Dolorosa,” arrived in a sequence, one poem after another. They surprised me; I had no idea they would be prescient, harbingers of Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, and elsewhere. Grief and loss but also desire and resilience are creative catalysts for my writing. I wonder—and I think many poets and writers are wondering the same thing now—am I to become chronicler of dark times?
The amazing thing about poetry, about art in general, is that it is an act against repression; it names the unsayable and brings us to a fuller knowing of who we are, individually and collectively. Poetry can be a guide and companion through affliction. It does this by confronting reality with eyes wide open, naming the horror, and, by means of color, sound, movement, language and feeling, bearing witness.
Everything that has ever happened to humans is recorded in a poem somewhere—the beautiful, the terrible, the spectacular and the mundane. The poem “Handless Maiden” in section three of M is based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, “The Girl Without Hands.” In the story a father chops off his daughter’s hands at the devil’s bidding, The daughter goes into exile, and with the help of angels and various characters, her hands are restored. This may sound messianic, but I believe poetry has a regenerative function; I believe it has the capacity to restore and expand our interconnectedness, and our humanity.
I started answering your questions before the 2024 election. It is now the day after (The Day After), and I am struggling through the quicksand of despair. In the context of a radically changing America, I ask myself how the poems in M reflect the current zeitgeist. What comes to mind is the sense of jeopardy expressed by the women speakers in the poems—women caught in war or violence, women from Old and New Testaments stories, girl-children burdened by ancestral trauma. They are situated in dangerous conditions, their bodies, their lives at risk, as are women in our increasingly violent misogynist society. The dismantling of Roe, the call to throw out the HEW and other federal regulatory agencies—all part of the cruel agenda of Project 2025—promise to put women and women’s bodies and health and the body of the planet in great peril.
The poems in M are not political poems and did not arise with politics in mind, including the politics of feminism. These poems have been swimming around in my unconscious for a while. How and when a poem leaps into consciousness is always a mystery. The poems in section two, “Via Dolorosa,” arrived in a sequence, one poem after another. They surprised me; I had no idea they would be prescient, harbingers of Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, and elsewhere. Grief and loss but also desire and resilience are creative catalysts for my writing. I wonder—and I think many poets and writers are wondering the same thing now—am I to become chronicler of dark times?
The amazing thing about poetry, about art in general, is that it is an act against repression; it names the unsayable and brings us to a fuller knowing of who we are, individually and collectively. Poetry can be a guide and companion through affliction. It does this by confronting reality with eyes wide open, naming the horror, and, by means of color, sound, movement, language and feeling, bearing witness.
Everything that has ever happened to humans is recorded in a poem somewhere—the beautiful, the terrible, the spectacular and the mundane. The poem “Handless Maiden” in section three of M is based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, “The Girl Without Hands.” In the story a father chops off his daughter’s hands at the devil’s bidding, The daughter goes into exile, and with the help of angels and various characters, her hands are restored. This may sound messianic, but I believe poetry has a regenerative function; I believe it has the capacity to restore and expand our interconnectedness, and our humanity.
Glassworks Magazine (GM): In your poetry collection, M, you explore themes of Christianity and Judaism. How did you alchemize the blend between Christianity and your background with Judaism? Did you study the Bible as a history book in order to understand another monotheistic religion, or was there a deeper religious connection that drew you to the New Testament and its characters?
Dale M. Kushner (DMK): I love that you use the word “alchemize,” which tells me you already have a glimmer of my process in using biblical sources for my own creative purposes. The ancient art of alchemy was centered on transformation. The idea was to transform base material like lead into a higher material like gold. Symbolically, alchemy represents a movement toward psychological wholeness (the gold).
In the same way, I’ve attempted to bring a fresh and expanded perspective to the traditional religious stories that shape Western thought—our morals, our conception of good and evil, of justice, of gender and relationships. To answer your question, I did not reread the Bible, but turned to the imagination’s empathetic powers to “stand in the shoes of” the speakers.
One of the first stories we learn is that of Adam and Eve. This is a cautionary tale. Eve is the original badass sinner. We blame her for getting us kicked out of paradise. Poor lass transgressed. She ate from the tree of knowledge; her curiosity and daring got the pair banished. Thus, from the very beginning, a curious woman was a threat.
I did not discover Mary Magdalene until the 1990s when I read about the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary. These are extra-canonical texts that hint at the special relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. A whole industry exists around the life and legacy of Mary Magdalene, and anyone interested in the subject can do research. My own obsession with her took me to Italy with a Jungian scholar. In Florence, we visited every church and museum that had representations of Mary Magdalene. And there were many. What struck me were the vastly different images. Sometimes she was portrayed as a voluptuous and alluring young woman (the prostitute), and sometimes she was portrayed as a repentant sinner (the penitent) who found salvation through Jesus, and sometimes she was depicted as an anorexic saint (the apostle). The confusing variety of representations highlighted how her image changed according to what the church needed her to be as Christianity evolved. The capacity of her image to adapt and accommodate to a patriarchal world felt uncomfortably familiar; women’s mutability, an asset and a curse.
And then there is the apocryphal love story between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, which was popularized in the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.” We can’t know the facts but imagine for a moment Jesus and Magdalene were lovers. Imagine what she felt when she learned his fate. Imagine losing your beloved and your connection to God. Imagine the weight of that grief.
Dale M. Kushner (DMK): I love that you use the word “alchemize,” which tells me you already have a glimmer of my process in using biblical sources for my own creative purposes. The ancient art of alchemy was centered on transformation. The idea was to transform base material like lead into a higher material like gold. Symbolically, alchemy represents a movement toward psychological wholeness (the gold).
In the same way, I’ve attempted to bring a fresh and expanded perspective to the traditional religious stories that shape Western thought—our morals, our conception of good and evil, of justice, of gender and relationships. To answer your question, I did not reread the Bible, but turned to the imagination’s empathetic powers to “stand in the shoes of” the speakers.
One of the first stories we learn is that of Adam and Eve. This is a cautionary tale. Eve is the original badass sinner. We blame her for getting us kicked out of paradise. Poor lass transgressed. She ate from the tree of knowledge; her curiosity and daring got the pair banished. Thus, from the very beginning, a curious woman was a threat.
I did not discover Mary Magdalene until the 1990s when I read about the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary. These are extra-canonical texts that hint at the special relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. A whole industry exists around the life and legacy of Mary Magdalene, and anyone interested in the subject can do research. My own obsession with her took me to Italy with a Jungian scholar. In Florence, we visited every church and museum that had representations of Mary Magdalene. And there were many. What struck me were the vastly different images. Sometimes she was portrayed as a voluptuous and alluring young woman (the prostitute), and sometimes she was portrayed as a repentant sinner (the penitent) who found salvation through Jesus, and sometimes she was depicted as an anorexic saint (the apostle). The confusing variety of representations highlighted how her image changed according to what the church needed her to be as Christianity evolved. The capacity of her image to adapt and accommodate to a patriarchal world felt uncomfortably familiar; women’s mutability, an asset and a curse.
And then there is the apocryphal love story between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, which was popularized in the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.” We can’t know the facts but imagine for a moment Jesus and Magdalene were lovers. Imagine what she felt when she learned his fate. Imagine losing your beloved and your connection to God. Imagine the weight of that grief.
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GM: In a 2015 blog you stated that you were not overly concerned with Jewish lore or how your Jewishness impacted your writing but that it does, to your surprise, impact your writing greatly. You stated that “the Old Testament is a compilation of teaching stories that we tell and retell… Storytellers retell, and I am one of them.” However, you are not retelling the same stories of the Old Testament. Can you talk a little bit about the inspiration behind the feminist depiction of women in your book?
DMK: Well, for one thing, persona poems, poems in the voice of historical, mythological, or invented characters, date back to ancient Greece or earlier. More recently, Margaret Atwood in her collection Circe, Louise Glück in her collection Averno, or the poet AI in her New and Selected Poems inspired the use of dramatic monologue as an expressive form. A dream of mine came true when some of the speakers of my poems were recently woven into a play about women’s resistance that was performed at the Overture Center here in Madison, Wisconsin. |
It’s a bit difficult to talk about my relationship to Judaism, especially now, during this time of horror in the Middle East, but I will try. What I’ve come to understand is that I am part of a lineage. The experiences of those who came before me have shaped me. I share with them physical traits and mental characteristics, but also, I carry their untold stories. Not only have the ancestors passed down their DNA, but also their trauma of exile and persecution.
These faceless and nameless ancestors continue to haunt me. They survived so that I could be born. I don’t know what happened to them, but I know the general terms of their existence and fate. I am particularly moved by the hidden stories of the women. They held the family together, nursed the sick, buried the dead, including their dead children. What do these ghost-women have to tell me, to tell us? And how has their experience shaped me? I write to find out.
GM: Suffering for many women throughout history has often been tied to sexual violence, particularly at the hands of men. In your work, is there a connection between this reality and the portrayal of figures like Magdalene, who is often associated with themes of suffering and redemption? How does her story intersect with the experiences of women in your poetry?
These faceless and nameless ancestors continue to haunt me. They survived so that I could be born. I don’t know what happened to them, but I know the general terms of their existence and fate. I am particularly moved by the hidden stories of the women. They held the family together, nursed the sick, buried the dead, including their dead children. What do these ghost-women have to tell me, to tell us? And how has their experience shaped me? I write to find out.
GM: Suffering for many women throughout history has often been tied to sexual violence, particularly at the hands of men. In your work, is there a connection between this reality and the portrayal of figures like Magdalene, who is often associated with themes of suffering and redemption? How does her story intersect with the experiences of women in your poetry?
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DMK: In any patriarchal system, women are deemed the inferior gender. That was as true in ancient Judeo-Christian Palestine as it is today. The suffering, oppression, and costs to self-worth, identity, agency are socially determined according to time and place. What interests me are the inner lives of women. What do we tell ourselves about our lives? What stories don’t we tell? What are the costs to women living under conditions of enforced inferiority? The poems in M attempt to embody the feelings of the women speakers. Their suffering is in and of the body, the gendered body. What history book includes the words of a mother who has watched her daughter raped by soldiers or her son carted off to be a boy warrior? In what history book do we find out what it might be like to give birth during an air raid strike? Can we imagine the terror Mary, later to become the Virgin Mary, might have felt when an angel whispered she was pregnant with God?
I lived with Magdalene in my heart and mind for a long time. She taught me about desire, which is suffering’s bedmate. Desire always ends in loss. Women and desire. There is so much more to explore. Contemporary women may feel more agency and sexual freedom than our foremothers but alas, our relationship to our bodies still causes distress and shame. |
"What interests me are the inner lives of women. What do we tell ourselves about our lives? What stories don't we tell?" |
GM: We noticed that your poetry delves into complex intersections of historical and personal trauma drawing on themes of both human and environmental devastation. How do you approach the psychological dimensions of these experiences in your work?
DMK: At the turn of the last millennium, I went to Switzerland to study at the C.G. Jung Institute with the idea that I would train to be a Jungian analyst. I did not. I realized I did not have the emotional energy and stamina to be both a writer and a depth psychologist. I chose writing as a career instead. But Jungian ideas have been a major influence on my life and work. This is a longer discussion, but I take from Jung his insistence on the symbolic and healing values of dreams and his revelatory investigation of the unconscious mind. Whether exploring my own psyche or a character’s, I’m interested in the silences and gaps, what isn’t being said. If I am open and receptive, a line or an image or an idea will pop in out of nowhere, and it will be exactly the right line or image or word that shakes up and delivers the piece. I can’t make that happen and am enormously grateful when it does. The process evolves into refinement with attention to craft…very conscious frontal brain stuff. But in the incubation stage, I propitiate the spirits!
In terms of human and environmental devastation, I return to the concept of a dominator culture. There is that startling sentence in Genesis about having dominion over the rest of creation. To privilege humans over all other sentience inherently felt wrong as a child, even dangerous, and in my heart of hearts, it pointed to a God who was intent on smiting enemies. Our “dominion” gave us permission to slaughter, excavate, degrade and deplete our planet.
The narrator of the novel I just finished, The Lost Mother Archives, is a war photographer. As background, I read a lot of memoirs by women war photojournalists that introduced me to the horrors of war in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Liberia, Iraq. In these wars, women and girls were strategic targets of the most terrorizing atrocities. The rationale for this was that if you break up families by killing the women or driving them mad, you break up resistance. This is still happening: rape as war strategy and women as booty.
The question for writers is how do we make poems that are neither pedantic or preachy or state the obvious about our capacity for self-destruction, and yet reveal what’s at stake? How do we make art, as the poet Adam Zagajewski says, that praises the mutilated world?
In terms of human and environmental devastation, I return to the concept of a dominator culture. There is that startling sentence in Genesis about having dominion over the rest of creation. To privilege humans over all other sentience inherently felt wrong as a child, even dangerous, and in my heart of hearts, it pointed to a God who was intent on smiting enemies. Our “dominion” gave us permission to slaughter, excavate, degrade and deplete our planet.
The narrator of the novel I just finished, The Lost Mother Archives, is a war photographer. As background, I read a lot of memoirs by women war photojournalists that introduced me to the horrors of war in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Liberia, Iraq. In these wars, women and girls were strategic targets of the most terrorizing atrocities. The rationale for this was that if you break up families by killing the women or driving them mad, you break up resistance. This is still happening: rape as war strategy and women as booty.
The question for writers is how do we make poems that are neither pedantic or preachy or state the obvious about our capacity for self-destruction, and yet reveal what’s at stake? How do we make art, as the poet Adam Zagajewski says, that praises the mutilated world?
"In the West, the dominant worldview is rational, linear, materialistic; what’s gone missing is a reverence for the sublime, ecstatic, the mythopoetic. Science is one way of knowing the world, the imagination is another." |
GM: Your poetry explores tragedy from a distinctly female perspective, addressing both natural disasters and the consequences of actions set in motion by men. While it doesn’t directly criticize men, it feels as though the heartache and suffering often stem from their influence. Could you elaborate on how you weave these elements together, and the impact of this interplay between man-made and natural disasters on the women in your work?
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DMK: I often start a poetry reading by saying: How did we get from worshiping goddesses with corpulent thighs, huge vulvas, and pendulous breasts to worshiping an invisible, disembodied unnamable male sky god? This shift may have set humankind on a disastrous path. It’s not a big leap to make the connection between the dismissal and denigration of women and our fleshy bodies to the domination and spoiling of earth.
I’d like to share a little-known Roman creation myth that speaks directly to what is missing from our society right now. It’s about the goddess Cura, whose name means “care” or “concern.” Cura was said to hold the new creation, human, “for as long as he shall live.” How we care for each other, with attentiveness and responsibility, at this pivotal time in history is of huge concern.
According to the myth of Cura, the goddess is at a riverbank where she gathers clay and molds it into a being. Jupiter appears and Cura asks the God to give it spiritus,“breath,” which he does. She then asks to have the being named after her, but Jupiter refuses, arguing it be named after him. Then Tellus (Earth) joined the argument saying the being should carry her name because it was made from earth. The dispute was settled by Saturn who resolved that the being would be called “Homo” because it was made from “humus” or “earth.”
Martin Heidegger challenged the myth of self-sufficiency and individualism that dominated Western philosophy and used the myth of Cura to define the human condition as one of care. Worry burdens us but selfless care, he thought, can set us free.
I want to state flat-out that of course men suffer, and suffer terribly, physically and psychologically, from war, natural disasters, and the miseries that plague our world. In no way do I believe that suffering falls only onto women. But governance, the laws and regulations that affect our lives, and the power to implement or impose them, lie mostly in the hands of men. We do not know what models of behavior and what values might emerge if women had equal authority. Would Eros, interconnectedness to all things, prevail over Logos, rationality, the mind as world? In the West, the dominant worldview is rational, linear, materialistic; what’s gone missing is a reverence for the sublime, ecstatic, the mythopoetic. Science is one way of knowing the world, the imagination is another.
I’d like to share a little-known Roman creation myth that speaks directly to what is missing from our society right now. It’s about the goddess Cura, whose name means “care” or “concern.” Cura was said to hold the new creation, human, “for as long as he shall live.” How we care for each other, with attentiveness and responsibility, at this pivotal time in history is of huge concern.
According to the myth of Cura, the goddess is at a riverbank where she gathers clay and molds it into a being. Jupiter appears and Cura asks the God to give it spiritus,“breath,” which he does. She then asks to have the being named after her, but Jupiter refuses, arguing it be named after him. Then Tellus (Earth) joined the argument saying the being should carry her name because it was made from earth. The dispute was settled by Saturn who resolved that the being would be called “Homo” because it was made from “humus” or “earth.”
Martin Heidegger challenged the myth of self-sufficiency and individualism that dominated Western philosophy and used the myth of Cura to define the human condition as one of care. Worry burdens us but selfless care, he thought, can set us free.
I want to state flat-out that of course men suffer, and suffer terribly, physically and psychologically, from war, natural disasters, and the miseries that plague our world. In no way do I believe that suffering falls only onto women. But governance, the laws and regulations that affect our lives, and the power to implement or impose them, lie mostly in the hands of men. We do not know what models of behavior and what values might emerge if women had equal authority. Would Eros, interconnectedness to all things, prevail over Logos, rationality, the mind as world? In the West, the dominant worldview is rational, linear, materialistic; what’s gone missing is a reverence for the sublime, ecstatic, the mythopoetic. Science is one way of knowing the world, the imagination is another.
Follow Dale on Instagram @dalemkushner or on Facebook @Dale M. Kushner
For more information visit: dalemkushner.com
For more information visit: dalemkushner.com
