American poet Malinda Markham was just 44 years old when she died in September 2012. I didn’t know Malinda intimately, but she and her intense, quiet poems made a deep impression on me. Possessing a singular voice and style, she struggled with debilitating depression for much of her life. We can only wonder what she’d have gone on to create had she lived. Malinda was not one to self-promote, but those who knew her work championed it. “A breathtaking debut, Malinda Markham’s poems bring with them an exquisite poise and restrained—yet sensual—elegance that is truly remarkable,” wrote David St. John about her first book Ninety-five Nights of Listening, which Carol Muske-Dukes selected for Bread Loaf’s Bakeless Prize and that was published in 2002 by Houghton-Mifflin. Bin Ramke wrote of her second book Having Cut the Sparrow’s Heart (2010 New Issues, winner of the Green Rose Prize): “No one else writes poems anywhere near these in felt intelligence, in glorious sensual detail.”
I met Malinda in 2005 in a Bay Area poetry group. She was bringing new poems for the group to discuss, several of which she included in her second collection. Although I didn’t connect with everything of hers that we read, I recognized her gift and creative ambition. Malinda had previously lived in Japan for several years, teaching and translating the work of contemporary Japanese avant-garde women poets. My mother was Japanese, so we shared a love for Japan and its culture. I liked Malinda, but she was private and we rarely socialized outside of the group.
A few months later, Malinda moved back to Tokyo to work as a financial translator for a Japanese securities firm. With an MFA from Iowa, a PhD from the University of Denver, and a prize winning first book, Malinda had decided early on that she didn’t want to teach in academia because it was more important to her to maintain close contact with the Japanese language. She saw translation work as a way to do this. I respected her courage and determination to carve out this new professional path while continuing to write poems when and as she could. It was not an easy path: the work was grueling and her hours were long. She was lonely in Tokyo, despite being immersed in the language and culture she loved.
In the spring of 2007 I traveled to Japan to visit my family and met Malinda for dinner at a Spanish restaurant in the Tokyo neighborhood of Tsukishima, at the edge of Tokyo Bay. We talked at length over paella and Spanish red wine. Malinda seemed upbeat and laughed frequently. She mentioned her loneliness, but said work kept her busy. We barely talked about poetry. Afterward I walked her to the subway entrance, where we said our goodbyes. I thought she looked fragile and a little unsteady as she descended the stairs, although the wine might have had something to do with that. It would be the last time I’d see her.
Three or four years later Malinda moved to New York City to continue her financial translation work. She wrote to me in January 2012 that she didn’t like New York; it was too cold and she felt more isolated and unhappy there than she had in Tokyo. She wondered if returning to San Francisco might help. I suggested ways she might connect with others. In February she wrote that she’d started a meditation class and loved it, so I felt hopeful for her. We continued to correspond sporadically. Her emails were always thoughtful and encouraging. In June a brief message from her was supportive of a career change I was considering. I checked in on her again at the end of July, but received no reply. The news of her death saddened me, but I intuitively understood that she’d exhausted her options and could not go on. “The glass island I called my own did not shield / the waves from me.” (from “What Gravity Demands”).
I think of Malinda often and keep her poems close to me. Her efforts to persist despite her pain were heroic. In an email written exactly eight months before her death, in which she enthusiastically agreed to recommend me for a summer conference, she wrote: "’Trust’ is really a key word right now, isn't it? I'm struggling with it, too, trying to trust that there's ‘something’ out there (the Universe) that wants me to fit into it and will help show me how. Cheesy though it sounds, I tell other people whatever I've learned along the way, so I'm hoping to get a positive stream going, if that makes sense. I mean, I hope for fulfillment, but I want to share it, too. If it comes. I mean, when it does.”