Dance of Atoms: Interview with Mary K. Lindberg

Dance of Atoms
Mary K. Lindberg
Oakledge Press, 2025
View or purchase on Amazon:
​https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Atoms-Mary-K-Lindberg/dp/1939030129
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The Ekphrastic Review: Mary, talk to us about Dance of Atoms.

Mary Lindberg: In this poetry collection, I take liberties. I bring back to life the victims of the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius to show us their last moments in Pompeii, Herculaneum, nearby villas. Figures in art come to life to socialize; some to challenge, confront spectators. Newly-roused composers Mozart and Beethoven critique today’s performances of their music. 

Let’s not forget Franz Liszt, the probable very first “rock star” of the musical world. His mesmerizing virtuosity drove women to snip his clothes for souvenirs. Other poems explore nature’s healing power, examine the role of truth in memoir, inquire if an MRI can be a poem. 

Such liberties confirm my sense that the world is in constant motion, atoms are always dancing, if people can free themselves and use imagination. The specific phrase “dance of atoms” comes from Mrs. Natica Aguilly, a California artist, dancer, and poet who has spent decades internationally promoting poetry and dance as a unified art, exemplified in the annual Dancing Poetry Festivals she created. I take from her the idea that atoms of life can dance and create, by participating in imaginative forms of art.

This collection is divided into “Vesuvius at Your Back,” “Locked in Oil,” and “Life’s Tumultuous Surprises.”

The Ekphrastic Review: The first part of your book is a series of poems inspired by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Tell us about your fascination with this part of history. How did this interest turn into poetry?  

Mary Lindberg: I have always been fascinated by the tragedies of Pompeii and Herculaneum that occurred when Mount Vesuvius erupted unexpectedly. This interest grew when I saw the Pompeii casts of victims and Herculaneum skeletal remains on trips to Italy, and read the letters of contemporary Pliny the Younger describing escape with his mother at Misenum, and his uncle Pliny the Elder’s death on the Bay of Naples shore.

To glimpse unguarded moments just before death made me curious about life. When shaking began, what were people doing? Working? Relaxing? Eating? Stealing? Making love? Writing? Those silenced first-century Romans and their slaves invited me to create fictional identities to show them alive, along with their aspirations and relationships, the very moments the eruption began.

Remnants of life 2,000 years ago continue to fascinate. In May 2025 The New York Times reported on a newly discovered Pompeiian house where a bed was used to barricade against the first geologic onslaught. That inspired my poem “How To End a Poem.” 

Further, scholars have found that there were survivors, those who managed to leave before debris and pumice locked people into pillars and pyroclastic flows boiled human brains. Using Pompeiian family names, researchers have found that some survivors left early enough, and were able to thrive. Because Pompeii has only been one-third excavated, much more will be revealed in the coming years, especially with new technologies in archaeology.

The news suggested a way to begin the book. A 22-year-old American man from Maryland climbed a forbidden path to the summit of Vesuvius in July 2022, tried to take a selfie, dropped his phone, and tumbled down toward the crater’s bottom. He was rescued by Italian guards who had followed him on the restricted path. His back was bloody from scraping the crater, but he is alive. His photographic disaster turned into the first poem, “Shooting Vesuvius.”

The Ekphrastic Review: Your book has sections on poems inspired by visual art, as well as being inspired by performing arts and music. What common thread do you see that connects these diverse arts? 

Mary Lindberg: First, the personal. I have a deep interest in music, having studied piano for many years, even performing as a teenager on TV, and I attended the Eastman School of Music. But, as the saying goes, "I cannot draw a straight line." Later, when selecting an English doctoral thesis, subject, I studied British artist and social satirist William Hogarth (1697-1764), and found striking interconnections between his art and the London theater in form and content. At the time, an evening at the theater, at a minimum, consisted of a musical number, a prologue, the play with entr’actes of dance and music, and an epilogue. My focus was on the visual, his art, and what it meant at that time.

To your question, the common thread is a striving toward expression of the inexpressible, such as love, life, grief, death  — what can be called universals. In music it is more difficult to describe, but I believe the urge is the same. Music is usually part of dance, but choreography offers another dimension, attempting to demonstrate in gesture the inexpressible. All are part of atoms dancing.

The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us about your relationship with visual art. Were there any specific experiences that invited you in? What does art mean to you?

Mary Lindberg: Just as I see the victims of Vesuvius alive seconds before death, surrounded by beautiful, fanciful frescoes, I see works of art as living objects, despite being made of marble, alabaster, or centuries-old paint and fresco. Thus a painted basket of ripe figs on the damaged wall of the Villa Oplontis became a symbol of the flirtation between Flavia and a Roman soldier, so I placed a basket of figs on the table between them in my poem “Garden Room, Villa Oplontis.”

In short, to me, art isn’t fixed in time or intention, it’s a jumping off point for the imagination.

I also picture works of art communicating after hours in museums, as when a Matisse odalisque slides down the stairs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit a marble hunter in my poem “After Dark After Restoration.”  In another vein, it is human to be full of mystery and ambiguity. I find that the enigmatic nature of many portraits suggests this is true. That makes me think about what sitters may be thinking. Could I be gazing at represented fantasies, unimaginable dalliances, power clashes? I’m inclined to think so. 

In “Hushed Hint of a Sneer,” I speculate from the sitter’s facial expression and dress what emotions might be behind or in it, and to whom they might be directed. Thus my psychological response becomes the basis of the ekphrasis.

In reviewing a recent Kerry James Marshall exhibition in London, Emily LaBarge says that, when looking at Marshall’s paintings, “it often seems the figures we behold …  stare out watching us watching them and together we are all part of the project of art, which is a project of looking.” (New York Times, 10/2/25, C5). I agree.

The reviewer adds, in some Marshall paintings the spectator becomes the subject, and “the great question becomes not what are you looking at, but who you, the viewer, are. And what you want to see.”  That is the essential idea of my poem, “What We Exhibit.” The “we” is the viewers, you and me walking in a gallery, peering at subjects, paint, even frames; while, at the same time, we “exhibit” revealing personal data about ourselves.

The Ekphrastic Review:  Tell us about your ekphrastic process. How do you choose the artworks you write about? Were there any surprises in your writing or selection process, or in the paintings themselves? What does art mean to you?

Mary Lindberg: Such good questions. I always look for surprises in works of art, or one could say, contrasts. In a large 16th century painting of Diana and Actaeon, by Titian, I see a curious, timid, pretty girl observing the actions of the gods, as if she is an in-painting spectator.  In Francesco Goya’s Portait of Ferrer, I examine the thoughtful expression on the sitter’s face. On closer examination of his pose and the way he holds his book, the portrait opens up questions about his emotional life that I perceive him asking himself.

The Ekphrastic Review: You mention in the collection’s notes that writing these poems was an act of resilience in the aftermath of cancer and the side effects of treatment. Tell us about this. How did ekphrasis and other writing help?

Ekphrastic writing helps me understand what I’m looking at.

For example, I saw a New York Times photograph and article about the Italian restorer who cleans Michelangelo’s seventeen-foot statue of David periodically. The woman stands on tall scaffolding, leaning over to brush the thigh of the giant statue, a tiny figure next to David. She must have unique moments of perception, I thought, being that physically close to David, one of the most perfect works of art. She can more easily see what we cannot. For instance, the pupils of his eyes are sculpted in the shape of hearts, which I discovered on a post card. The poem “Preserving Perfection” is the result of all this.

To your question about cancer. After receiving my final biopsy report, I had completed the first section of Dance of Atoms. I thought of this as a standalone short book. Successive bouts of chemotherapy, radiation until finally, eliminating the lymphoma by CAR T-Cell immunological treatment, ended less than a year later. During that time all I wanted to do was extend and finish a longer book about literature, music, nature and art.

It was at first difficult to write about the medical procedures I experienced.  The awareness that I would have to work very hard simply to walk again, and that my numb right foot is the piano’s pedal foot, threatened depressive thoughts. But as rehabilitation progressed, it was easier to write about how nature’s autumn colour change stirs new emotions, even joy at the possibility of walking again. Driving toward that goal made completing Dance of Atoms significant.

The Ekphrastic Review: What’s next for Mary?
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Mary Lindberg: I have finally begun to write about many of the experiences I had during cancer: questions, fears, hopes, the wait for a biopsy result, and other hospital out-of-body experiences. Considering that I am completely free of lymphoma, it is easier to write. Atoms dancing enables me to imagine totally new approaches to medical procedures and healing, and to the myriad possibilities poetry itself offers.
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Mary K. Lindberg

Galactic Flowers, by Julian Potulicki (USA) 2024

Galactic Flowers

Bouquet of two dozen blossoms,
assorted colours, unique, bizarre
shapes bending, leaning, leering.
They rise out of a pink-orange round
cup that recalls a still-life glass vase
by Dutch painter Jan de Heem.

Let me harvest these blossoms, reap words
for poems, fresh, arranged organically,
as if expelled from a far-off nebula,
winging their way through multiple universes.

Let the word stars whirl, embraced by galaxy
arms that swirl new semaphore signals
evoking unheard music, a polonaise led
by Terpsichore in blue-green aurora borealis.

Let these galactic flowers bow in homage
to each other’s uniqueness. Against black night,
this dance shakes atoms of the universe
to tease out the poetry of art.

David, by Michelangelo (Italy) 1501-1504. Jörg Bittner Unna, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Preserving Perfection
(Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, Italy, 2022)
 
Home from a day of careful brushing Michelangelo’s David,
Signora Silvia Pollinari prepares dinner. She lifts a pasta strand
like strumming a harp string, chiffonades basil for her sauce.
 
Every month, the expert restorer sweeps away foreign particles
from the young giant-killer, fresh from slaying Goliath. She
marvels at the detailed perfection of his sculptured muscles, veins.
 
Grating parmesan, she recalls the surprise discovery of cobwebs
on David’s head, dust ensnared in his curly locks, where spiders
dare to live. What a challenge, she muses, first to imagine, then chisel,
 
such beauty from one stone into a seventeen-foot titan. She sees how,
at first sight, David halts visitors in their tracks, a young god sprung up
before them. His magnetism beams, spreads gasps, respectful silence.
 
She wants him to speak. Does he relish attention from millions, who
gawk speechless at his body, wave cameras for selfies? Or, is it tiring?
Would he say: “Some of them eat, or worse, chew bubble gum”?
Involuntarily, Silvia smoothes his cheeks with the back of her hand.
 
Tonight the restorer sculpts her recipe expertly. She puts finishing
touches on artichoke salad, samples mascarpone for dessert, opens
the Chianti. Guests should arrive soon.
 
They burst in, exchange kisses, offer gifts. “Are you still trying to be
perfect, Silvia?” Lucia asks. “My daughter Marina’s class saw you 
dust David’s ears.‘What a view Silvia has!’ she remarked.”
 
Inhaling the bouquet, Silvia recalls hidden master strokes, 
like the heart-shaped pupils of his eyes. Only she can see them. 
“Flawless art can take your breath away — yes, and tonight
I want to dazzle you with culinary purity.”
 
Brava! Friends clap, smile, take a goblet, excitedly anticipate
an impeccable dinner.
 
Mary K. Lindberg
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