Butterfly Nebula by Laura Hogan
A Review Interview
“I’ve always been intrigued by the physical world around us, from our everyday encounters with nature to the far reaches of landscapes we cannot live in—the bottom of the ocean, the edges of space. This project began with poems which took a single strand of the physical world—tiny or vast, insect or sea creature or star—and searched for patterns or some revelation about who we are as humans” shares Laura Reece Hogan, regarding her latest collection Butterfly Nebula, winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry.
The title of the collection stems from Hogan’s fascination with nebulae and the complexity regarding their origins and significance, since nebulae come into existence after the death of a star “a nebula became a nexus of death and new life, of destruction and reconstruction, or simply change. Of course, this happens over millions and millions of years, and on a massive physical scale that we humans have a hard time even imagining. But that is precisely the aspect I love most about it. A nebula is just otherworldly enough, just vast enough, just strange enough—yet also just real enough—for it to be a useful lens of our own realities.” The poet is interested in what nebulae can teach us about ourselves and our connection to the divine, to something beyond our comprehension. They are a part of our universe, and yet there’s limited information about them, but what is available can, “function as signposts pointing far beyond earth…. to the cosmic and spiritual realms, yet at the same time disclosing truths very close to home.” These truths speak to our struggles as human beings, our relationships with others and with our own mortality, as well as with the idea of universal love. Hogan “chose to include twelve nebulae in the collection, little star-charts logging the narrative arc of the book,” each of them guiding the reader into a unique experience with the natural world and with the universe.
When writing the book, Hogan mentions how much research she went into the process, but also how much time she spent with each of her findings, “I wanted to wonder at it in all its marvelous complexity, but also interact with it. This delving would go on for some time, until I felt I had an intuitive understanding of the specific animal or cosmic phenomenon at hand, and something about it sparked and spoke to me.” She relied on free writing for days “until verse came” or until “a poem suggested itself.” The most significant part of this practice was spending time with each of the beings she chose to write about as well as in reflecting about potential connections to her own life experiences, “something distinctive about the creature or cosmic object would immediately grab my attention and connect with mythology or history or a religious figure or an interior experience of my own.”
Hogan’s poems are teeming with curiosity and wonder as they show the readers, “our human layers, desires, traumas, hopes, and our relationship with the divine.” The poet’s exquisite descriptions of nebulae, sea slug, dark, matter and jellyfish, among others, speak to “questions of identity, our finite limitations including death, and transformation. What does a firework jellyfish say about seeing, or a long, colonized sea creature called a siphonophore say about the human heart? Or what does dark matter reveal about longing? What does the Butterfly Nebula disclose about becoming and resurrection?” And this idea of resurrection is present throughout the book, not as a religious experience but as a natural occurrence related to life cycles of decay, decomposition, and rebirth,
Maybe the remnant tells the whole
story. Maybe the shattering says the one-
ing and we just can’t see the we
in its visible form, the unleashed dazzle of matter
not debris but a new creation, what remains
––our cinders, come together–– (86)
In these lines, the poet is keenly aware of mortality, but also of all that is unknown, what we “can’t see,” not only because it might not be visible to the human eye, but also because infinity cannot be grasped by the human intellect. As Hogan explains, “Poetry has a singular power to provide renewal because of its porous, dynamic nature. It is written and read as a living action: every element of the poem—language, sound, form, and so on—enacts.” Thus, every time the poem is read, something is born again, renewed within the poem and also in the relationship between author and reader. The poet connects this experience with “the Greek word telos, which, loosely translated, means fulfillment of purpose. The telos of the poem is its enactment within the engaged reader. The reader not only experiences the poem but also can be changed by the lived experience of the poem,” like in “Elyssian Sea Slug,”
When I unhook all the parts
and struggle away, won’t you come rebuild? Tear down
the years the locusts have eaten, let the heavy consignment fall.
Regenerate a glistening wholeness from only one piece.
Let that piece be you.
Hogan speaks to the effect writing this book had on her, as she noticed the chaos and destruction around her, the wars, the pain. But within that, there is also hope and renewal, “who is to say that the cure for the pain has not already come out of the pain in the form of new strength, perspective, or change? Or that my endings are not beginnings? There is physical evidence everywhere in the universe that powerful renewal happens and happens to us.” The reader can “be changed by the lived experience of the poem,” a change also experience by the author as she offers a measure of hope amidst darkness,
It is the candle
on the sidewalk, the nurse not giving up, the teacher making
space for the pressures of the room, the tensing future held
in the present
Hope is the binary star, the solidarity
that appears as one sure shine.
It winks, precedes.
It never fails to traverse the night.
When asked about finding hope in today’s world, Hogan says, “for me there are two realities which compete with the darkness and keep me hopeful. The first is the light of divine goodness. The second is how light and goodness are made manifest through people and the natural world around us. Every day we make choices about what we focus on, what we think about, what we work toward, what we say and what we do. Even in the darkest place we can yet be the light. We have that power, each one of us does.” She explains how this doesn’t mean we ignore the realities around us, but rather embrace all of it and consider how we can engage and navigate the difficult paths in front of us. She brings up a question posed by a friend, “if it were the last day of the world, what would you plant?” The depth of the questions has led her to reconsider her role as a literary citizen, as well as her telos “I go about putting pen to paper because that is my way of planting, of hoping, of trying to participate in what matters the most to me.” Butterfly Nebula is an incredible journey of self-discovery and connection with the many facets of the divine, many of which share this planet with us.
Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press, 2023), winter of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winter of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and the award-winning nonfiction spiritual theology book I Live, No Longer (Wipf & Stock, 2017).