UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology FALL 2024 and ANNUAL REPORT - Flipbook - Page 25
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
I think the world would be a better place, and people would walk out to the world
feeling like they’ve created something.” What she is talking about is in line with
Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross’s Your Brain on Art, the importance of creating
art and viewing art. “You make a doodle, you put something into the world that
wasn’t there. You’ve created something where there wasn’t anything. And that’s
hopefulness,” Agodon says. Because, too, Agodon believes that success is subjective,
that all the awards in the world don’t necessarily mean success.
She addresses this in “Braided Between the Broken.” The lines “No one expects
perfection, except when they do, / which is always,” followed a few stanzas later
by, “In my life I try to apologize for things I haven’t done / yet,” are heartbreakingly
human, as is the entire poem. As it turns out, Agodon was going through a fullblown depression when she wrote it. She confides, “I remember it was December.
I sent it out four days later, which I never do; it was a very raw poem. I’m usually
revising a lot. And within a month, New England Review accepted it, and my first
thought was what have I done?” And yet, she accepted that because this experience
that the poem put into the world was one that spoke to the human condition, she
needed to accept its publication. Too, Agodon doesn’t do small talk, so the poem
being accepted by such an esteemed journal was gratifying because, as a poet, the
best is “When we show up and are a bit more vulnerable....”
And that vulnerability shines through in her work. The youngest of six girls, Agodon
recalls always having the empathetic streak. “I was called bossy. I stood up for my,
like, little friends. If I thought neighbor kids were going to harm another animal or
a potato bug or something, it drove me crazy even back then.” Maybe it’s a youngest
child thing? I tell her it reminds me of my own youngest sister rescuing what we
called “stink bugs,” these prehistoric-looking, slow moving beetles that emitted
a horrific smell when stomped. Agodon shares, “If I find a hurt animal, we have
a wildlife sanctuary 40 minutes away, and I will like pick up a robin, put it in a
box, cancel all my plans, drive it there. Because that matters to me a lot. I’m really
uncomfortable seeing smaller living things struggling.”
Agodon is, however, aware of why we are inclined to do things like pin butterflies
so we can exhibit them on our walls as art. She writes often about butterflies, but
in “Hold Still,” she writes, “It’s a falsehood to believe we can pin life / to our walls.”
I ask her if the Bruce McGaw landscape, Lucy Gray photo titled “Taxi” and Matthew
Dols portrait of Mike Doughty during the Soul Coughing Ruby Vroom tour I can
see from where we are speaking are pinned butterflies. She admits that there are
plenty of butterflies and moths and spiders in her forthcoming book, and that those
represent fighters for her. But... “We want to capture splendor, so we chop down the
sunflowers and bring them into our homes. Or the butterfly is so beautiful we kill it
and use it as art on our walls. There’s a humanness to the idea of wanting to hold on
to beauty or know how to use that as a way to exhibit success.” She asks if the art still
brings me joy and I admit that mostly I don’t notice them often. After a pause, she
says, “They really are moments. And so when we like you said are pinning things to
the wall, we are trying to capture the moments to keep near us, and to remember
25
