Tenny Arlen - In Memoriam: California Poets Part 8, Ten Poems

Tenny Arlen (1991-2015)

January 8th, 2025

California Poets: Part VIII

Tenny Arlen

Ten Poems

1A Լուսանկարներ

Մանկութիւնս կը սիրէի.

լուսանկարներու պէս փոքրիկ յիշատակներ.

փայլուն գոյները, ջերմ բոյրերը, ծանր օդը։

Ա՛յս լուսանկարը կը սիրէի։

Մայրիկս ամանին վրայ ծռած,

ձեռքերը թթխմորին մէջ,

ալիւրը օդին մէջ ծփացող ամպի մը պէս։

Ու այս լուսանկարը.

ծաղիկներու դաշտերը,

ջերմ արեւ մը.

օդը՝ մշկընկոյզի համով։

Այս լուսանկարին մէջ

աստղերուն տակ էի։

Երկինքը սեւ էր, բայց

խաւար չէր ինծի համար։

Այսօր կը փորձեմ մտածել

մանկութեանս մասին։

Բայց բոլոր լուսանկարներս չեմ գտներ։

Զանոնք տունը մոռցայ երբ դեռ

տասներեք տարեկան էի։

1E

Photographs

I loved my childhood,

small memories, like photographs;

the bright colors, warm smells, heavy air.

This photograph I loved.

My mother bent over the pot,

her hands in the yeast,

the flour floated in the air like a cloud.

And this photograph;

the flowers’ fields,

a warm sun,

the air tasted like cinnamon.

In this photograph,

I was under the stars.

The sky was black, but

to me the sky wasn’t dark.

Today I try to think

about my childhood.

But I can’t find all my photographs;

I forgot them in my house,

when I was only 13.

2A

Զարթնում

Կարելիութիւնը բնաւ չարթննալու։

Կեանքս այս պզտիկ սենեակն է, գիրքերով

ու ճաշերով ու լռութիւններով։

Դուրսը ամբողջ ապակի է

կ՚ըսէին ինծի ամեն օր։

Բայց յանկարծ պատուհանը կը բացուի,

ու աշխարհը հոն է ինծի համար։

Եւ այս ձայները

այսօրուան ձայներ են,

իսկ ես անզօր եմ։

Մեռած ձայները չեմ կրնար լսել այլեւս,

այն հին ձայները որոնք

հոգիս կը կերակրէին

այդ սենեակին մէջ։

Ապրողները հոս են խօսելու համար

կը փսփսան,

կեանք տալու քեզի։ 

Ուրեմն խօսէ՛, խօսէ՛

կը կանչեմ սենեակէս։

Գիշերը կու գայ

մութ խորհուրդի մը պէս։

Ձայները պիտի խօսի՞ն

գիշերէն առաջ։

Սպասումը, անդորրութիւնը—

կարելիութիւնը—տանջա՜նք—բնաւ չարթննալու։

2E

Awaking

The possibility never to awake.

My life is this small room

with books and meals and silences.

Outside all is glass,

I was told every day.

But suddenly the window opens,

and the world is there for me.

And these voices,

they are voices of today,

and I am powerless.

I can’t listen anymore to the dead voices,

those old voices who

fed my soul

in that room.

The living are here to speak

they whisper,

to give you life.

So speak! speak!

I call from my room.

The night comes

like a dark mystery.

Will the voices speak

before the night?

The waiting, the stillness—

the possibility—O torment!—never to awake.

3A

Միտքս

Միտքս հանգստանալ փորձեց,

հանդարտ ըլլալ փորձեց։

Հեռու լեռներ տարի զայն,

դէպի ցորենի դաշտեր ու կապոյտ ծովեր առաջնորդեցի զայն։

Պղատոն, Նիցչէ եւ Քանթ անոր կերակրեցի,

եւ ան նկարիչներ ու հեղինակներ ու բանաստեղծներ խմեց։

Բայց ասոնցմէ միշտ շուտով հեռու վազեց.

դուն. քեզի վազեց։

Որովհետեւ երկու լեռներու պէս են ուսերդ,

մազդ ցորենին գոյնը ունի,

աչքերդ աւելի կապոյտ են քան թէ ծովերը,

 միտքդ արդէն փիլիսոփայութիւնով եւ բանաստեղծութիւնով լեցուն է։

Այսպէս, ամեն տեղ ուր միտքս թափառի՝ քեզի դարձեալ կը յարի։

3E

My Mind

My mind tried to rest,

it tried to be quiet.

I took it to distant mountains,

to wheat fields and blue oceans I led it,

Plato, Nietzsche, and Kant I fed it,

and it drank painters and authors and poets.

But it always ran quickly from these things;

you; it ran to you.

Because your shoulders are like two mountains,

your hair is wheat-colored,

your eyes are more blue than the oceans,

your mind is already full of philosophy and poetry.

Thus, each place my mind wanders, it wanders again to you.

4A

Ծաղիկ

Կիները պէտք է մեղմ ըլլան

ըսաւ հայրս ինծի

Օգոստոսի տաք օր մը։

Ծաղկաթերթերը հոգիիս մէջ թօշնեցան,

գոյնը դէմքէս մեկնեցաւ,

բայց փորձեցի ըսել այո եւ ժպտիլ։

Չկրցայ սակայն։

Մորթս յոգնած էր

ջերմ Օգոստոսի արեւուն տակ։

Այժմ կանաչ բլուրները մեկներ էին,

ու ոսկեղէն բլուրներ եկան։

Չէ, չկրցայ.

որովհետեւ գիտէի թէ մեղմ ինչ էր հօրս համար,

եւ թէ ինչ է տակաւին։

Մեղմը ողորկ քարերն են

անզուսպ գետի յատակին,

ծաղիկը, որ կը ջրուի

բայց բնաւ չի քաղուիր,

մարգարտաշար մանեակը որ

բնաւ վիզէն չեն կախեր։

Սակայն ողորկ քար չէի,

գեղեցիկ վարդ մը չէի։

Եւ ասիկա հօրս չկրցայ ըսել։

Ջերմ հով մը մազերս մեղմօրէն յուզեց

մինչ ամառնային բոյրերը խորունկ կը ներշնչէի։

4E

Flower

Women need to be gentle,

my father said to me

one hot August day.

The petals withered in my soul,

the color left my face,

but I tried to smile and say yes.

But I couldn’t.

My skin was tired

under the warm August sun.

At this time the green hills had left,

and golden ones came.

No, I couldn’t.

Because I knew what gentle was to my father,

and what this still is to him.

Gentle is the smooth stones

under the uncontrollable river,

the flower that is watered

but is never picked,

the pearl necklace that

is never worn.

But I was not a smooth stone,

I was not a beautiful rose.

I couldn’t say this to my father.

A warm wind gently stirred my hair,

while I deeply breathed in the summer scents.

5A

Կարապներ

Ա.

Արծաթէ լիճ մը կար անտառին մէջ,

միայնակ, մեկուսի, պատսպարուած,

առանց շէնքերու, առանց մարդերու։

Վայրի ձարխոտներէ ու վարսաւոր ուռիներէ սարքուած էր անոր տունը,

ու անոր տանիքը մեծ կաղնիներ էին։

Երբ առաջին անգամ այդ լիճը գտայ

աշնան օր մըն էր։

Լռութիւն մը կար,

խաղաղութիւն մը

որ ծառերէն ու հողէն

մշուշի պէս դէպի վեր կ՚ելլէր։

Այն ատեն նորատի էի

ու կեանքի անձկութիւնը,

կեանքի յուսահատութիւնը

չէր երեւեր դէմքիս վրայ։

Բ.

Դանդաղօրէն լիճ եկայ,

կաղնիներուն տակ եւ ուռիներուն միջեւ,

մինչեւ որ լիճին եզերքը կեցայ։ 

Եօթը կարապ կը ծփային ջուրին վրայ

բոլորաձեւ շարժումներով,

բոլորովին ներդաշնակ,

բոլորովին շնորհալի։

Գ.

Դարձեալ աշուն է

ու արծաթէ լիճին վրայ այդ կարապները

դեռ կը լողան մտքիս մէջ

բոլորաձեւ շրջանակներով։

Այս լուռ շէնքը տունս է

եւ այս պաղ փայտն է տանիքս։

Ձեռքերս ոչինչ եւ ոչ ոք կը բռնեն,

ու կեանքս թէյի պարապ ապակիէ գաւաթներով

ու պատուհանի փոշոտ յեցուկներով լեցուած է։

Ուրեմն տանս մէջ շրջանակի քալելով

բանաստեղծութիւն պիտի արտասանեմ

ժամանակը մոռնալու համար։

 Ժամանակ որ թէյի գաւաթներ կը փշրէ,

պատուհանի յեցուկներ կը բեկէ.

ժամանակ՝ որ ձեռքերուս մէջ ոչինչ կը դնէ։

Պիտի արտասանեմ, պիտի արտասանեմ.

ժամանակը կրնամ կեցնել,

օ՜, կարապներ, կարապնե՜ր…

5E

Swans

1.

There was a silver lake in the woods,

alone, isolated, protected,

without buildings, without people.

Wild ferns and weeping willows were its home,

and oak trees were its roof.

When I found that silver lake for the first time

it was an autumn day.

There was a silence,

there was a peace,

which from trees and from the ground

rose up like a mist.

I was young then,

and life’s anxiety,

life’s despair

did not appear on my face.

2.

Slowly I came to the lake,

under the oaks and between the willows,

until I stopped at the lake’s shore.

Seven swans floated on the water

with circular movements

all in unison,

all in grace.

3.

It is autumn again,

and those swans on the silver lake

still swim in my mind

in circles, in circles.

This quiet building is my house,

and this cold wood is my ceiling.

My hands hold nothing and no one,

and my life is filled with empty glass teacups

and with dusty windowsills.

So in my house walking in circles,

I will recite poetry

to forget the time.

Time, that shatters teacups,

that breaks windowsills;

time, that places nothing in my hands.

I will recite, I will recite,

I can stop time,

oh swans, swans!

6A

Մեծ քաղաքը

Գացի մեծ քաղաքը ապրելու։ Առաջին մտածումներս յստակ կը յիշեմ. առտուան շողշողուն ճամբաները, գիշերուան շողշողուն լոյսերը տուներէն, հսկայ շէնքերը, աղմուկները կառքերէն եւ մանուկներէն եւ ծախողներէն, եւ դէմքերն ու դէմքերն ու դէմքերը… Նորածինի պէս էի նորէն։

Բայց ո՞վ պիտի պատմէ ինծի երբ խրախճանքները վերջանան, երբ երգերը վերջանան, երբ կէս գիշեր ըլլայ եւ միակ բանը որ ունենամ եսս ըլլայ. ո՞վ պիտի պատմէ ինծի իմ մասիս։ Ո՞վ պիտի պատմէ ինծի վիթխարի մենութեան մասին, բազմութեան միջեւ ցաւոտ միտքերուս մասին։ Ես պիտի գամ կլլելու լոյսերը, աղմուկը, անտարբեր դէմքերը, մինչեւ որ իրենք հոգիիս մէջ ըլլան. ուրիշ կտոր մը էութենէս ներս։

Հիմա կը ճանչնամ օթեկ շունչն ու յոգնած աչքերը։ Կը ճանչնամ պարապութիւնը։ Մերկ մարմին մը ըլլալ եւ տեսնել դէմքերը որ առանց տեսնելու կ՚անցնին։ Դէմքերը, դէմքերը, դէմքերը… եւ հանդարտ, միայնակ եսս։

6E

The Big City

I went to live in the big city. I clearly remember my first thoughts; the morning’s glistening roads, the night’s glistening lights from homes, giant buildings, the noises from cars and children and salesmen, and the faces and faces and faces… I was like a newborn again.

But who will tell me, when the festivities end, when the songs end, when it becomes midnight and the only thing I have is “I,” who will tell me about myself? Who will tell me about the immense solitude, about my aching thoughts in the midst of the crowd? I will come to devour the light, the sound, the apathetic faces, until they are in my soul, another piece in my essence.

Now I know the stale breath and tired eyes. I know the emptiness. To be a naked body and to have the faces pass by me. The faces, faces, faces… and the quiet, the solitary “I.”

7A

Գիշեր

Երեքշաբթի, Մայիս 7

Պզտիկ միանձնուհիներ, երկար ճերմակ պատմուճաններով, եկեղեցիին գաւիթը կը զարդարէին լուռ գոլորոշիներու պէս։ Ես կը քալեմ գաւիթի ցանկապատին շուրջ. իրիկունը կ՚ըլլայ գիշեր եւ գոլորշիները կամաց-կամաց կ՚աներեւութանան եկեղեցիին մէջ։ Երբ պզտիկ էի, կը նստէի եկեղեցիին մէջ եւ կը մտածէի, որ բոլոր այս միանձնուհիները ապերջանիկ են եւ տրտում կեանքեր ունին։ Լռութիւնը, հանդարտութիւնը… հեռատեսիլ, բարձրաձայն երաժշտութիւն, ո՞ւր էք։ Բայց ո՛չ այսօր։ Այսօր, այս ճամբուն վրայ տասնչորս մուրացկան տեսայ. փողոցներ, աղմկոտ կառքեր, մեծաթիւ ժողովուրդ եւ տասնչորս մուրացկան։ Տասնչորս պարապ գաւաթ, տասնչորս յոգնած մարմին, քսանութ խոռոչաւոր աչքեր որ ինծի նայեցան, ինծի նայեցան։ Գիշերը զիս չի կրնար պահել։ Եւ ասիկա միայն մէկ փողոց է այս աշխարհին մէջ։ Գիշերը զիս չի կրնար ծածկել. այնուհանդերձ չեմ ուզեր որ առաւօտը գայ։ Այս գիշեր միանձնուհիները իրենց երկար ճերմակ պատմուճաններով հանդարտօրէն կ՚երգեն եկեղեցիին մէջ։ Մոմեր կը պլպլան պատուհան ներէն։ Երբ պզտիկ աղջիկ էի, կը սխալէի։ Եկեղեցիին մէջ քսանութ խոռոչաւոր աչքեր ինծի պիտի չհետեւէին։

7E

Night

Tuesday, May 7

Small nuns, with long white robes, decorated the church’s courtyard like silent vapors. I walk around the courtyard’s fence; evening becomes night, and the vapors slowly disappear into the church. When I was little, I would sit in church and think that all of these nuns were unhappy, and had sad lives. The silence, the quietness… TV, loud music, where are you? But not today. Today, on this road, I saw fourteen beggars; streets, noisy cars, numerous people, and fourteen beggars. Fourteen empty cups, fourteen weary bodies, twenty-eight hollow eyes that looked at me, looked at me. The night cannot protect me. And this is only one road in this world. The night cannot hide me, but I don’t want the morning to come. Tonight, the nuns with their long white robes are singing softly in the church. Candles flicker from the windows. When I was a young girl, I was wrong. In the church, twenty-eight hollow eyes would not follow me.

8E

Beauty

How is it—

you exist.

We call you many names,

building tall towers,

constructing crystal castles,

publishing periodicals,

binding books and books of you.

Here you are—

no, there.

You are

what i say

you are—

bacteria, squirming lifeless

beneath microscope’s eye—

picked at, spot after spot.

But you

speak—

apricot sunset,

trembling leaf,

a blush from petals,

pregnant terror in storms,

silver lake of moon—

and i

wonder—

at the magnitude,

clinging to existence.

8A

Գեղեցկութիւն

Ինչպէս կ՚ըլլայ—

կաս դուն։

Քեզ կը կոչենք շատ անուններով,

բարձր աշտարակներ շինելով,

կառուցելով բիւրեղէ դղեակներ,

պարբերականներ հրատարակելով,

քեզմէ գիրքեր ու գիրքեր կազմելով։

Ահա հոս ես—

չէ, այդտեղ։

Դուն ես այն

որ ես կ՚ըսեմ

որ ես

—մանրէներ անկենդան գալարուող

մանրադիտակի աչքին տակ—

վերցուող՝ բիծ առ բիծ։

Բայց դուն

կը խօսիս—

ծիրան մայրամուտ,

դողդոջուն տերեւ,

շափրակներու շիկնանք,

մրրիկներու մէջ յղի սարսափ,

լուսնի արծաթ լիճ—

իսկ ես

զարմացած

վեհութենէն,

կը փարիմ գոյութեան։

[Note: In "Beauty" the English text precedes the Armenian—the former constitutes the original language of composition and the latter is its translation by Hagop Gulludjian. Likewise, Tenny Arlen composed the final two unpublished poems featured here originally in English, though to date, no translation of these works has been done.]

9E

Unspoken

The summer wind rolled in scents of

jasmine and hyacinth on invisible clouds,

mixing with the fading blue

of the sky—

here, now,

leaves reflected oranges and yellows,

a waning blue afternoon blushed purple,

while cicadas,

in a triumphant symphony

came together in a presentation of

unified collectivity to welcome evening.

Soft petals yawned for the night,

curling like butterfly wings

to rest calmly

on the hearts of poppies and blossoms.

The softness, the quietness,

is this moment now.

While body is here, my mind

is irrevocably there—

here is where the word cannot be spoken—

there—

the white, empty walls.

Gloved hands,

mouths, muttering at crucifixes for hope—

moths, fluttering for escape on the dusty windowsill—

my mother,

asleep between cool, starched sheets.

10E

Sacy-le-Petit

I, the vapor.

In this little village of

nothing happening,

my cold hands dig into the earth

to uncover Jerusalem artichokes

as my moan of remembering

is betrayed by a cloud in

the thin December air.

I am already forgotten

as I finish the last of

the morning dishes

and look out of a dewy window

at the sun just rising

over a frost-covered garden.

There is an inevitable invisibility,

as I watch the bread being delivered

to the gate

and hear the kids

screaming from the school courtyard

and the boy next-door raking a

pile of yellow leaves away

with an alarming screech.

We are the many voices

that speak the nothing to the universe—

the women bustling in the street,

moving mouths of occupied attention,

Italian friends speaking the silence

in hand gestures and smiles,

the grocer stocking bottles of red wine,

the baker crafting pain d’épices,

the biker puffing up the hill,

the mailman licking a sour stamp,

the Orthodox priest muttering the Jesus Prayer—

vapors and invisibility,

in this brief sewing-string of light

before the overwhelming void.

January 8th, 2025

California Poets Interview Series:

The Life and Work of Tenny Arlen — Interview with Dr. Jesse Arlen

Director, Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America

interviewed by David Garyan

To describe Tenny Arlen (1991-2015) as a trailblazer would be to bestow that term upon the artist without exaggerating its definition. A word that must never be utilized lightly, it represents, here, the poet’s struggle for self-realization and her search for truth—less because it is what a writer must do, and more because of some inherent desire to embark upon that search. Though it may seem hard to believe, the 2022 publication of Arlen’s collection Կիրքով ըսելու՝ ինչ՞ու հոս եմ (To Say With Passion: Why Am I Here?) marks the first time that a full-length volume of creative work (whether poetry or fiction) written in Armenian by a US author has ever been printed. It is hence a great privilege to present this interview with Dr. Jesse Arlen to bring greater visibility and awareness to his late sister’s legacy.

DG: It’s an incredible honor, Jesse, to do this interview and I would first and foremost like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss Tenny Arlen’s life and work, both of which are truly powerful. Though she was born in Riverside CA, the environment didn’t prevent her from discovering Armenian—the language of her ancestors, the tongue she would not only go on to speak but also end up writing in. Can you talk about this process of discovery and what factors influenced it?

JA: Thank you, David, for your interest in Tenny’s work and for doing this interview. Mine and Tenny’s journey is so intertwined that you will have to forgive me in advance for sometimes talking about her in the third person and for sometimes using the first person plural, when certain experiences apply equally to her and me, or sometimes even the first person singular when my own experience seems relevant to also understand hers.

Tenny was born in Riverside, but our family moved to San Luis Obispo, CA when she was just 2 years old and she lived there until she transferred to UCLA at age 21. Growing up in San Luis Obispo (which does not have an Armenian church or much of an organized community), we were not connected with other Armenians. Our conception of our Armenian identity came entirely from our father (our mother’s side is American) and his parents. Grandpa Arlen died when Tenny was only 4 and Grandma when she was around 12. We were not too close with our extended family, nor did we see them very often growing up. Despite being rather isolated from the Armenian community, our Armenian roots (as we understood them then) were an important factor in our self-understanding. We had an unusual childhood (more on that below) and it was easy to attribute any difference from our (American) friends to the fact that we were Armenian (even if that wasn’t always the primary reason). Somehow this strengthened our conception of ourselves as Armenian.

Many times in childhood, our Dad (Timothy) in vivid detail told us the stories about the tragedy and misfortune his grandparents experienced during the Hamidian massacres and the genocide, which resulted in them coming to America. He also talked often about his childhood and his Armenian family members (his grandpa, Vartan Moomjean had founded a protestant Armenian-speaking church for Armenian immigrants in LA and my Dad grew up in that church) and was a very colorful storyteller. So those stories also made a big impression on all of us. And, of course, Armenian food, especially on birthdays, Christmas, and Easter, which my American mom (Tammy) learned to cook from our Armenian grandmother (Jasmine).

When Tenny was in high school, us kids all got in a phase of reading lots of pre-revolutionary Russian literature (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, etc). My brother and I even got Russian textbooks and started teaching ourselves Russian. Before we could finish the alphabet, my Dad got annoyed thinking, “We’re Armenian, not Russian,” so one year for Christmas he drove down to Abril bookstore and came back with stacks of English-language books on Armenian history, church, literature, culture, etc. giving them out to all of us as gifts and telling us to read this instead of all that Russian stuff. I remember reading Passage to Ararat by Michael Arlen (no relation to us though a significant coincidence in its own way) and Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian and personalizing their stories as my own, deciding I would learn Armenian and set out on my own quest to reclaim what I understood as a birthright that had been stolen. Before Tenny, my brother Tim and I had decided to learn Western Armenian at UCLA as an effort to connect with our roots and ancestors. Tenny was very close with me and my brother and so heard all about this language and family quest through me and started to make her own plans. One time, she visited us down at UCLA for about a week and sat in on the Armenian classes taught by Hagop Gulludjian. She then began teaching herself the alphabet and working through some of the lessons in the textbook on her own (by contrast, when I started, not only did I not know the alphabet, I did not even know the word parev). So when it was Tenny’s time to transfer to UCLA, she knew all about the classes and what to expect and could hit the ground running. Those classes of Prof. Gulludjian’s are what had the biggest impact on her process of discovery- the rest was just preamble.

The classes were not just about teaching the language but were a systematic introduction to, and history of, 19th-21st century Western Armenian literature, in conversation with the literary movements in Europe that impacted those writers (classicism, romanticism, symbolism, mysticism, etc). Readings also were taken from the Classical Armenian writers of the 5th century onwards, including especially St. Gregory of Nareg. Tenny also took all the Armenian history classes with Prof. Sebouh Aslanian and all the topical classes that Prof. Peter Cowe taught: drama, nationalism, and especially modern Armenian poetry. She earned a minor in Armenian studies. I thought I put a lot of work into those classes, but when I look at her notes and coursework, I am astounded. For every poem that Prof. Cowe assigned (all the readings were in Armenian), she made her own translation into English, which sometimes necessitated looking up 75% of the words (since her vocabulary at the time was so limited). Ditto for the readings in Prof. Gulludjian’s classes. Her college friends talked about how many times she, instead of hanging out with them, would shut herself up in her room to read and translate her Armenian assignments and to write the drafts of the poems that comprised her posthumous book.

DG: How would you describe Tenny’s childhood and upbringing? Was it very similar to your own?

JA: I’ve shared some details already. To this I would add the following: our Dad was a pastor and he and our mother had six kids, all of whom they homeschooled until high school. So we all grew up very close with one another with an unusual childhood environment. It was very conservative, very religious, and very full of art, literature, and imagination. Because our father was so strict, we were often stuck at home instead of out spending time with friends. We passed many hours at home reading. We also played make-believe games instead of video games or TV, which was extremely limited.

You’ll notice how many of Tenny’s poems are set in a bedroom, a bit like Emily Dickinson. Tenny had an especially vivid imagination and was especially devoted to literature. Certain works stand out as having a major impact on her literary and imaginative life. In addition to the Russian authors mentioned above, The Lord of the Rings (movies and books) and Homer, especially The Iliad, were the most important in her childhood. Tenny essentially had the entire movie of the Fellowship of the Ring memorized and would play the scenes in her mind and recite the lines to herself every night before falling asleep.

Something about war and valor attracted her - for years, she would wear mostly an Air Force sweatshirt she got on a family trip to Colorado when we also visited the Air Force academy in Colorado Springs and I remember in freshman year of high school (when I was a senior), she would wear an army jacket almost every day and talk about joining some branch of the military service when she was older. Her knowledge of Greek mythology was encyclopedic, mostly from her readings and re-readings of Homer. The church we went to for many years growing up was a Bible church with long sermons (45 minutes). I would glance at Tenny sitting beside me drawing in the pages of the bulletin reserved for sermon notes. She would be drawing scenes from The Iliad, battle scenes as well as stories about the gods. My mom tells a story about her crying in bed one night and my Mom asking why and her replying that she was sad that God was real and the pagan gods were imaginary. You can picture now her experience when she read Daniel Varoujan’s Pagan Songs (Հեթանոս երգեր) for the first time in Armenian class at UCLA. 

Finally, I’d mention that in our high school, there was a student-run Shakespeare club that put on one play a year. Tenny was the director of that club from Sophomore year through Senior year, directing each play herself, as well as playing a significant role in each. The club was student-run because the school considered Shakespeare too difficult for high school students to perform. The club’s faculty advisor told Tenny when she began as director that it was too difficult for high school students to do the tragedies as the content is too mature for them, so they should stick to the romances and comedies as had been done in previous years. To this, Tenny responded by choosing her three years to put on Macbeth, Hamlet, and then King Lear.

DG: When did you first notice Tenny’s aspirations to become a poet?

JA: I’ve talked a little about the important place literature and reading had in her life. Art and writing was also a major part of our childhood. There were very formative years when my older sister, Faith, me, and Tenny spent a lot of time together and the oldest of us, Faith, has a very strong personality and has always considered herself an artist. Both Faith and Tenny were very gifted at drawing and painting and spent many hours doing that growing up. All of us were also often writing - I remember fake newspapers we made with news from the neighborhood and the wider world as we imagined it (we had no interest in the real news). We also were always writing stories, character sketches, and poems. I lived in Faith’s artistic shadow and poor Tenny lived in both our shadows. She never thought of herself as a good writer, always thinking that she could never be as good as Faith or me. In reality, she was a much better writer, especially poet, than either of us. By her college years, she began to taker her poetic vocation more seriously and began sending poems out for publication in literary journals.

DG: Which poets were Tenny’s biggest inspirations and how did her time in France further influence her development?

JA: In English: Cummings, Eliot, Dickinson, Wilde, Poe, Keats, and Donne. He’s technically not a poet, but I also have to mention Salinger, since she read everything he published countless times and he impacted her writing considerably, although more in her letters and prose than her poetry. I also would mention Flannery O’Connor, who was one of those who taught her how to deal with religious material, even if the way that manifested in Tenny’s works were very different than hers.

In French, mostly the symbolists and decadents, whom she read in the original: Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine.

In Armenian, also read in the original, the three biggest were Medzarents, Indra, and Varoujan.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, Rilke, whom she read in Stephen Mitchell’s English translation.

France had a big impact on Tenny. It deepened her knowledge of French for one thing, but also impacted her considerably on a spiritual and personal level. She spent that year dealing with separation from a boy she loved in college and struggling with the loss of their relationship. As always, she turned inward. She spent weeks on different organic farms (wwoofing) across France and at the end of her year there spent over a month walking the Camino pilgrimage in Spain completely by herself and without even a cell phone. Tenny’s inner resources, her personal and spiritual life, were profound. Her life was infused with prayer and keen attention. She identified closely with Simone Weil, especially the way the latter lived out her ideals even to a point that bordered on folly.

When she returned from France she knew she wanted to continue to graduate school and she was accepted into the Ph.D. Comparative Literature program at University of Michigan with several scholarships. She was to write a dissertation on the French and Armenian symbolist poets (named above).

DG: How would you describe her personality as a writer? Did she prefer to write in one place or did she compose everywhere? Did she have a fixed writing schedule or work on her own terms? Did she edit a lot or go with her first impulse? Did she keep a journal or rely more on her memory?

JA: She did keep a journal, and it was more of a personal spiritual and prayer journal than a writing journal, however, in all her journals one comes across poetry mixed in with the other material.

Most of her poetry she wrote on her computer. She edited it a lot. She wrote much more in English than Armenian. Almost all her Armenian poems were written as assignments in her classes at UCLA. She was always writing poetry and stories (most of the prose is unfinished and reads more like a scene or character sketch). It was such a natural part of her that she didn’t really set a schedule. From youth I would say her default activity was reading and writing and this only solidified in her young adulthood. She spent countless hours alone in her room (at home and away at college) reading and writing. Her main writing place was her bedroom, alone.

Tenny Arlen Writing in Her Room in San Luis Obispo, CA

I would describe her personality as a writer as quiet, the opposite of noisy and showy. She was certainly more akin to Emily Dickinson, writing her poems and hiding them in her desk drawers, than like many writers today that look for any chance they get to read and show off their work.

DG: To what extent did she share her work with you and ask for your feedback?

JA: Hardly at all. She was actually extremely private with her work and also (wrongly) considered her work both inferior to mine and less important. Obviously, this was a psychological complex she had of being behind me in the birth order and especially being in my shadow in high school when every teacher on the first day of class would say, “Oh, are you Jesse’s sister?” (I excelled academically in high school). The person she shared her work with most was actually my mother, who herself writes poetry. Tenny and my Mom were extremely close. Tenny was attached to her as a baby and remained so into adulthood. You’ll notice if you read her poetry how important the mother figure is in so many of her poems.

DG: Because of your tireless efforts and the support of colleagues, it was possible to publish Կիրքով ըսելու՝ ինչ՞ու հոս եմ (To Say With Passion: Why Am I Here?). This posthumous collection contains some of Tenny’s most powerful pieces, written in Western Armenian. Though sadness is a recurring theme in the works, every piece contains great resilience—symbolic of that language’s continued presence. Her poetry hints at the fact that the tongue itself—the act of writing in a language­ so connected to loss—influenced the trajectory of her work, but to what extent was that disillusionment also something more personal? Loss not only in the sense of genocide and land, but of linguistic status—to speak a form of Armenian no longer the dominant one and certainly not the official language of any state.

JA: First, I want to mention that 90% of the effort in producing this book posthumously was thanks to her professor at UCLA, Hagop Gulludjian, who is the book’s editor and wrote the afterword.

Certainly, loss plays a significant role in some of her work. Nevertheless, if you read carefully, you’ll notice there is nothing defeatist or cynical in the poems. I also don’t consider her work sad, though it is emotionally heavy, which is easily confused with sadness. So you are right to pick up on what you are calling “resilience,” which I would maybe just call “life.” Western Armenian was alive for her, its literature, its writers, its history - with all its attendant suffering, loss, beauty and joy - were as real and significant and actual to her as the English and French writers she read.

Her experience and ideas on Western Armenian, its status, loss, the genocide, was very personal to her. She knew as much as she could of her family history. The rest she imagined. On the wall of her bedroom, she hung pictures of her deceased Armenian family members. She read her grandma’s letters to her brother when he was in World War II. All this informed her creative work, were elements she played with.

As I said, there is a kind of heaviness and even darkness that shrouds some of the works, but it is the darkness necessary to appreciate the light. Citing another genre, I would compare this to the role of silence in the music of Arvo Pärt, which heightens the experience of sound. Light and joy are magnified in Tenny’s poems because of the presence of darkness and sadness. This is a feature of her work not unlike the (often misunderstood) poem-prayers of St. Gregory of Nareg, which Tenny also read and loved.

I don’t think Tenny had any sense that Western Armenian was, as you say, “no longer the dominant one” compared with Eastern Armenian, the de facto official language of the Republic. Tenny never went to Armenia - I never even heard her mention wanting to. The Armenia she knew was in books (not unlike most of the great Mekhitarists on San Lazzaro, I might add). She could say with George Steiner, “Our Homeland, the Text.”

It didn’t matter to Tenny that Western Armenian didn’t have official status or wasn’t officially the language of a country. Here it might be significant to remember that we were all homeschooled. Being on the fringe, marginal, unofficial, minority - that was the normal everyday experience for us in our own unpolitical or even apolitical and thus deeply personal way.

DG: Seven years after Tenny Arlen’s untimely passing, the Armenian Department at UCLA organized an event in collaboration with the Promise Institute to honor your late sister’s work, and in addition, to celebrate the publication of her book. The department, along with the university itself, were instrumental in Tenny’s personal and creative development. What was she like as a student? What aspects of student life did she enjoy most, and how did her writing habits change in college?

JA: She was a very serious student. She began as a Near Eastern Languages & Cultures major but switched to Comparative Literature with an Armenian minor. Her first year at UCLA (junior transfer) she lived in an off-campus apartment with her best friend Genevieve. The next year she lived in one of the co-ops and there developed a close circle of friends and a boyfriend with whom she spent a lot of time and with whom she discussed all the things that college students have discussed for centuries (preferably over drinks): philosophy, politics, ideas, life’s deeper meaning. I mentioned that her friends talked about how often she would leave them to go into her room to read and write the drafts of the poems that became this book. She graduated summa cum laude on the dean’s honors list with all her school paid for by merit-based scholarships.

I didn’t talk about her first two years at community college at Cuesta in San Luis Obispo. There, it’s important to say her writing developed significantly and she experienced her first major successes: winning first place in the category of fiction and poetry in the 2011 issue of Tellus (the college’s literary journal) and having her first pieces published. She also had some work published in Westwind (UCLA’s literary journal).

DG: In addition to the poems that were written in Armenian and translated into English, Tenny also composed poems in English, and some of these are published here for the first time. Given the great number of works, are there plans to release a full collection of English pieces, and would translation into Armenian also be a possibility?

JA: I appreciate this question. Tenny wrote much more in English than in Armenian and there are 3 or 4 times the amount of finished, publishable poems in English than Armenian. Certainly, those English works need to be published and an accompanying translation into Armenian would be very special. I’m wavering on the particulars, for example, whether to do English only or a dual language edition and also whether to seek a publisher or to do a form of self-publishing. But the time to make this decision was yesterday or, in fact, several years ago, so I know I need to move forward with this. Currently, we’re preparing a second bilingual edition of the first book, this time published with all her English translations, lightly edited by me. That will come out later this year, 2025, in the ten year anniversary of her death. Publishing the English poems are next.

DG: In her poem, Անվերջ սկիզբ (Endless Beginning), Tenny writes “My life’s story will not end with my death.” Is there something, perhaps, you’d like to say about her that her poetry may not immediately reveal?

JA: It was not unusual for Tenny to think about death - not in the despairing, nihilistic way of Woody Allen and the pseudo-existentialists, but closer to the wisdom tradition of the stoics and monastics (memento mori), as well as the artists and writers seeking to create something that will live on after them. Many of the poets and writers she loved, like her, died young: Medzarents, Rimbaud, Weil. Perhaps God impressed her mortality on her heart from a young age so she would be prepared for her death when it came. She lived her life with an intensity and fierceness, neither worrying about the ’morrow nor putting off for the ’morrow what belongs to today. Thanks to this, she reached an inward maturity in her 20s that most do not reach in their 80s. When reading her work, it is the inward life and experiences of the poem’s speaker that seem most important. Tenny lived that inwardness, and I would say her life was more preoccupied with the internal than the external. Likewise, the preoccupation both with writing and with religious themes that one sees in the poems were the preoccupations of her life. And her attentive observation of others, especially the internal suffering and emotional experiences of others that she always observes but cannot penetrate, as it often seems that between them and her there exists some invisible and sacred wall that cannot be breached. As she says in one of her poems, "The faces, faces, faces... and the quiet, the solitary 'I.'"

But you asked for something about her that her poetry does not immediately reveal. Tenny had the most beautiful eyes. She was quirky and funny and made hilarious videos with finger puppets and by dancing on photo booth with her younger sister Chrissy. Tenny had a love for justice and truth that one does not often come across today. She lived her life with gravity and seriousness. In one of her darker moods and one of my more flippant - during the last year of her life when when I was at Notre Dame and she was living with me and my wife - I told her that maybe she needs to lighten up and not take her life so seriously. Later that night, she wrote me an email telling me that what I said was wrong and that life is nothing if not serious and explaining to me why I was mistaken. I’m still learning from her.

Cover for Tenny Arlen's book

Purchase Tenny's Arlen's Book To Say With Passion, Why Am I Here?

An article about Tenny Arlen in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator 

Video recording held in honor of Tenny Arlen's book release organized at UCLA

More about Dr. Jesse Arlen