TC Tolbert's Interview with j/j hastain

TC Tolbert: The first thing that strikes me about your work is the expansiveness of it (both literally expansive — utilizing the entire page, orchestrating white space in long past the presence of common — and tonally expansive, expansive in address). Can you talk to me about that? What’s it like in your head?

j/j hastain: Sure. I would say that my work is an engagement with expanses — with existing spans as well as with the wanting to exist but not yet existing (which is what a divergent seraph is). Not sure if the work is always expansive (that to me feels like an ethical judgment that can be made / named best by those who are involve themselves in the work based on how it makes them feel — to me expansiveness has to do with an inherent, felt transgression or trespass (by sensation) of given forms and structures / strictures / strictnesses. It has to do with what excess feels like. So there is integrally a pre and a post in expansives (not necessarily linearly) — like “this is the cup” and “this is the cup over-filled by red liquid.” The red liquid is the cup’s (as an element) expansiveness) but my work is certainly not reductive or dogmatic, that’s for sure!

But — I want to thank you for saying that you experience my work as expansive. That is so beautiful to me!

I will speak now to what you refer to as “tonally expansive” and “expansive in address” — I think that what you are asking about is “who” I am talking to and “how” I am talking. The “who” is the the movable site where my you (the elemental that I can continually converge with) can be divulged — can deluge all over me (and you if you want). This “who” is an always future aggregate that is moxie. Mixed. Becoming. A “who” that is dependent on my (and your?) gesture to bring it from states of capacity into extant and autonomous form. Yes — there is alchemical chivalry to this. There is the ongoing impetus of the lover.

Re the “how” of my talking. I am interested in sculpting limitless verse / anti-verse to coax the ethereal swells into material form. I really do feel in my body (which is also a form that I have coaxed into existence in order for it to feel authentic to me) that to coax is to be able to interact well with the materialities as motile-sites that can be turned into suites. Into places we can exert and exercise and exhibit our corpuscle suits and as we strive to make neoteric sutras.

I enjoy working with space as emotio-spiritual content in conjunction with working with the words, the sounds that the words make audibly as linkage, and the way that the words (which are also sounds) look in a space (which is what a page or a body is). So a sensory inebriating aesthetics. I am saying that in a room that has a balance space can be as important as other extant physicalities. Plus, I feel that space is a great ally (always rooted in potential to become________) to already extant forms.

There is also something to say here about the materiality of space already being rooted in mystery — specific in its capacity but indeterminate re its form/s — and so, hopeful for me in my maintenance of identities that are indelibly gestural and based in volition. I am saying selvage as suture. Selvage as inherent impetus toward furthering_______.

TC: There are moments when the breadth of your work seems to have no end, you incorporate photography and collage in at least two of your books, you are a musician, teacher, activist, and a gospel singer! Is there a relationship between your trans identity and movement across genre?

j/j: Thank you for bringing this up. I will talk about this aspect of my work (body, performance and page) in the context of both what I refer to as the inter (between-ness of inhabitations) as well as compositional power to provoke accurate kismet.

For me accurate kismet will always be a mixed zone. I believe that an autonomous mixed zone will always need multiple methods of being coaxed. Instigated. Stimulated. For this reason I try to touch (through and to) page by way of many approaches. Yes, photography, sound, collage, music, bent activisms and even embodied song. Information rubbing against information (non-homogenous-ly) is how monsters, hybrids, gorgons, Frankenstein’s, etc (inhabitants of the inter) are made. I believe in these because they are my offspring and because they are my lineage and because they are my community. We are abiogenetic species — infinitely capable of holding our we. I have guarantee here (amidst the inter) that I will be unconditionally held.

I work with variations in form and genre (visual, audible, textural etc.) so that the work can function less like a line or an apparatus (slave?) to historicities (that in a big way leave the movements and materialities of my queer body out of view / representation) and more like an umbra (the darkest part of a shadow) being fucked (coaxed) toward new versions and variations of luminosity. By luminosity I mean mystical illuminations and non-dogmatic revelations. I mean evolutions and increases in animateness — I mean making queer pages as additives to queer space (of which my body is). When I refer to luminosity, I do not mean polarity or war between traditional representations of dark and light as duality.

Queering language is not a new notion in the context of current socio-cultural and modernist writer-ly conversation. However the ways in which I am interested in queering language emphasize that the language itself have a vigorous autonomy — that it have agency. In this way there is no “use” and much less “refuse”(lost ones) because excesses in the forms, are parts of the now-autonomous bodies that the forms are. They can keep their parts. They can exert cuts over their parts and emerge as blaring powerhouses of authenticity. Autonomy / agency of the language is integral to my gesture because it is a primary way that I can ensure that through the composition processes new materialities are being created with the needed utilities and technology (within their forms) for their own continuance.

I find that autonomous language does lessen my loneliness. Does increase proximities. Does add community to community.

In recent studies researchers of the pineal gland have discovered that in serious seekers the bones in front of the pineal gland become thinner and more pliable, while in usual subjects there is severe calcification on the bones in front of the pineal gland. Many mystics believe the pineal gland to be the third eye. I want my work to instigate orgasmic states for the third eye — to engage deep, beloved relations to the infinite capacity (in the physical body) that the third eye is. I believe that if I can make the third eye’s beloved outside of the body as pages, unforeseen cosmic information might bleed through the merges and ecstasies that occur by way of such feral types of breeding.

My trans / genderqueer identity does have a lot to do with my movement across genre. Across space. My identities and my pages sort of biomimic each other regarding this. They incite each other further. For me, pages are post-human-birth essential organs that appear via mystical holarchies. As interactive kiln. I am happy to attempt to speak more about my trans / genderqueer identity in the context of current societal delineations, but I think I need another question from you in order to do so. For me there is not a general delineation between aspects of my identity. I guess in the same way that I work to stimulate and provoke the mixed zone I spoke of above, I am whole, partial, fractured and endless within the mixed zone of my physiological, psychic and sensory realms.

TC: Talk to me about self-care. And doing vs being. I have a friend who always reminds me, “we aren’t human doings, we are human beings.” I really struggle with this. As an artist, I love and need to create in a variety of fields. As a trans person, I also feel a kind of responsibility toward my community — a need to be visible, and lay whatever groundwork I can. There is also something in here related to Alice Walker’s idea that “activism is my rent for living on this planet.” Do you feel any of that? How do you navigate these things?

j/j: How beautiful is this question! This notion of Alice Walker’s “activism. . . .” All of this makes a lot of sense to me. I hear in this the desire to work to make balances. A sort of living Feng-shui for the selvage and its many relations. There are expectations and there are so many needs aren’t there? Our bodies and their gestures are so needed. We need each other and we need ourselves. Oh glorious myopias of need!

For me there cannot theoretically be a difference between “doing” and “being” because on the level of my body if there was a “being” that could be separated from “doing” I would necessarily have to believe that there is some sort of inherency (state of rest?) that is natural for me. For me that is just not true. I feel the most natural in induction. In engagement. In motion. In morphology. I have actually struggled a lot to work this in my body on the level of cells, because I feel like I am even “doing” when I sleep / dream. So — there are not really states of rest. I guess that this is valuable because stasis is not an option in such exertion, but it is also true that often it makes me feel like I am a bit far off from models of “health” re the human plane. I am aware that much of this answer is because I do not feel like I am cosmically indigenous to this plane of existence. I have always felt disparate here which has meant that I am always in a position / poise of action toward. Composing composite belonging. Reaching for else.

For me, to be in a body as a motile identity, is a constant work and activism.

What I love about the self-care part of your question is how it makes me ponder / wonder about all of the things that self-care could mean. My initial response is something like this — I engage self-care by bridging with elementals from this plane by chord. This is how I can feel myself as part of a reverberative imperative inherently of earth. I am saying that even though I do not identify as inherent to earth until I make myself such, that does not mean that I am not as desperate as anyone who is inherent to earth, to find (or compose) homeland.  I participate in homeland as an always future site, by way of my dependence on “you” in order for me to make harmony with “you.” “You” could be a tree, a bird, a page, an image, a story, a sound, a personage. It is fusion between a you and a you that makes harmonics possible. Harmonics (in the context of my fusions) means offspring. Means a third thing that did not and could not have existed before the convergence of yous.

Then when I think about what you might be asking regarding self-care I wonder if you are asking me if I drink jasmine green tea in the mornings or if I sleep long on the weekends or if Tracy makes love to me in our Beloved (which is our non-dogmatic faith practice) in the ways I need (from kink to role play to extreme emotio-spiritual connection) or if at age 18 I broke away completely from my parents and my Mormon upbringing for the sake of my sanity or if I walk during my quotidian work day in the wild, overgrown trenches of Colorado and to these my answer is yes!

I guess it is that to me self-care does not feel different from care for a you (“j/j, will you write a recommendation of my book for Lit Pub?” or “I have to turn in this paper on hybrid forms in an hour, will you look at it and help me”) or from composition of books or from finding ways to fulfill stages (performance work, political activism) — and all of that extending for the sake of upholding, sits in my body in the shape of the word cull.

I am overwhelmed and overjoyed with the vitality of all that must be done.

TC: Also, I’ve been thinking a lot about Judith Butler — her idea that “gender is performance.” And the theorist in me is really, continually, excited by that idea — but the trans person in me feels like it somehow undoes an element of authenticity in relationship to my gender identity. I wonder how you think about these things — how performance plays out in your lived experience as well as what you hope to accomplish on the page?

j/j: I just want to start this answer by saying how beautiful you are and how this authentic articulation of the complexities of how you can and cannot integrate this particular theory is of value to me. I think here about the beautiful poem (was that in Drunken Boat?) that you wrote about Leslie’s face being held down in cop shit after Leslie had been raped. I think of how gender is existing actively (between Leslie’s F-M / Drag King masculinities (not socially “acceptable”) and the cops’ Bio Male masculinities (socially normed/privileged) and the enactment of de-masculinization) in that situation and I have to say that I do think that gender is performative there but not necessarily “performance” (in the ways that Butler’s quote could connote diminutivity if not careful to clarify).

I am saying that Leslie is certainly not performing Leslie’s gender like a costume is animated when put on, but later taken off. This is not play time. This is not “wow, wasn’t’ that a great show!” It is not trying on divergent forms for the hell of it. It is not entertainment of an audience. This is gender as gesture inseparable from the heart that keeps the body and its gender/s going. Heart in the way that I am referencing it is not necessarily one core of a body. I think that there is literal heart in each of our cells (those nomadic elementals) — a sort of inarguable mystical consciousness — and that heart in each of those cells vibrates and fills the cells with information. I have no doubt that if Leslie tells me that Leslie’s gender (the orchestral relation of Leslie’s cells?) is_______, then that comes from Leslie’s mystical meta-consciousnesses and should not be argued with.

I also think that it is totally appropriate for a person’s gender/s to evolve. With the evolution of genders and identities and anatomies, comes need for accurate application of names. Comes need for accurate pronouns. Relations also have names. All of these are integral in my opinion. I am saying I will call you what you call yourself. Period. And, please call me what I call myself and you will have made a non-debatable home for yourself in me.

So — gender to me is performative but perhaps not “performance” (“performance” which if not clarified could imply a beginning and an ending / a limit). However gender’s performativity does not depend on an audience. Meaning my gender is not something that I perform on anyone else’s stage. It is not something I perform for “you.” In the context of my gender I do not depend on any “you” or social delineation in order to be able to state / enact myself. It is instead “my body is my stage and this is what happens here.” So performative like the bird’s movement of their wings is performative. As in — action is needed. This is how we “do” / “be” what we are. I believe that my gender needs my action in order to specify itself by way of my body. I believe that I collaborate with my gender/s in order to articulate / express my gender/s as authenticities and aesthetics in space.

Judith Butler also said that “there is no psychic core” but instead a “copy of a copy for which there is no original” and that I do not agree with. Though I do agree that it is not particularly useful to try and singularize / limit the mass of any selvage and relations into some demarcating or delineating point — I also believe that in us there are many “psychic cores” and that expression / exhibition of these cores allows (or forces, if needed) socio-cultural forms and strictures to broaden to hold our myriad. I am saying that I do not believe that there is no such thing as authenticity because there is “no psychic core” — but instead I feel that the myriad psychic cores allow authenticity and originality to exist in the future. Post stimulation. Post activisms of naming and touch. How beautiful to think that my gender/s need me. Need my loyalty and volition in order for them induce changes (based in my inarguable authenticities) in outdated socio-cultural strictures, limits and biases.

TC: And finally, it seems to me that your work strives toward creating a textual body, that these are not individual poems so much as they are organisms.  Does this feel accurate to you?

j/j: Yes! That is very true. Not individual poems. Organisms moving together toward (a sort of ongoing chordal politic) species. An open system capable of response to incentive, reproduction, advancement, expansion. Always moving in conjunction. Always configuring and sustaining the milieu and deeply inclusive homeostasis. A dependable, divergent stability.

2.

TC: No, absolutely not — your work is not at all reductive or dogmatic. But you talk about an “inherent transgression or trespass” and that has to do with “what excess feels like.” Keep going here. I’m definitely picking up on some ethical implications of your work. Does your work threaten? If so, what?

j/j: Yes. The work itself is an inherent transgression of normative historical strictures / stipulations — transgresses the status quo in terms of content and poise regarding content (contact).  The work is trespass of the confines and limits of the pre. This may be the pre of my own past. This may be the pre of outdated outlooks or forms regarding social appropriateness in such and such genre or in such and such ideation etc. There are certainly ethical implications in my work — but as my loyalties are not binary these ethics are not nourished by singling out any one aspect of a polarity and siding with that aspect while demonizing another.

I am saying that the work is its own self-induced alterity so that it can engage (and offer) the countless aspects and desperate densities of matter. I guess it is sort of like ‘what are the ethics of continually crossing an infrared bridge?’ — so, those ethics are not currently extant (though they are I think, implied by matter’s current planar configurations and potentials) and must be built built built! The building of the ethics of a continual crossing like this — an elemental that is always flickering both in and out of form — is a cosmic chivalry. Increases portal. Induces slippage and lovely destabilizations regarding what is generally modeled for any being in society / culture.

It is important to me that spaces for new emancipations are continually being generated. This is key to the way that I focus on composition of variant ethics, because I want to ensure that there are emancipatory spaces that will couple with the paces of any accelerated evolutionary processes. I take responsibility for generating these (though I am not the only one doing this kind of work) emancipatory spaces. It is part of my identity to do so. It is important to me that we as beings have the ability to have agency regarding being freed as well as regarding what we are being freed from! I am saying that just because there are groups rallied in support of or against _______ or _______ (without discounting any of those endeavors, here) it is integral to me that a being be able to decide where and how they want their energies directed so that their emancipations can feel most authentic — whether working with Occupy Wall Street, hurling energy toward a socially extant movement or (like the 4-5 million Sadhus of India) sitting near the Ganges nude with one arm held up toward the sky for many years until that arm has become calcified — sweet Sadhus who by Viragya “desire to achieve something by leaving” trespass the limits of the flesh to achieve Mokhsa (liberation).

Regarding “threatens” or not. Certainly my work is a threatening of anything that would cripple the myriad authenticities or impose stasis on the moving cipher — on mystery as a primary, leading force. Certainly there is a threatening of the illusion of collective linearity or sameness / oneness.

I would say that my work threatens but does not need to be perceived of as threatening. As I said in  our bodies are beauty inducers (Rebel Satori Press) you have to want to experience it in order to feel the occult — like on the level of trance or hypnosis, you have to want to be altered in order to experience altered states.

TC: I’m curious about your process of “sculpting limitless verse / anti-verse to coax the ethereal swells into material form.” Because there does seem to be a limitless quality to your work — in that, as I read through your books there are very few times that I think I’ve come to the end of something / anything. And then you talk later about “selvage as suture.” Which, to me, implies that the body is both a site of injury and a site of healing. I feel like the limitlessness of your work has something to do with your body and this “maintenance of identities.” Am I way off here?

j/j: Not way off. You are right on here! Thank you so much for your gorgeous intuitions!  As far as sculpting limitless verse / anti-verse to coax the ethereal swells into material form — this activism of tending to ethereal traits by way of human form is always both disjunctive and intercessory. The process of this involves a sort of divergent divination / haruspex (hence the presence of sound and image conjunctions in the work — these thaumaturgical stirring and strumming wands) working with the thicknesses of phrases and curvatures, then carving them into neoteric shapes by way of a slow whittling (by echolocations / reverberation of many types). So, I would say that there is always this working with an extant bulk (a moment, a feeling, a memory from this plane or from another, a sensation, an idea, a gnawing, a bruise that I cannot remember where I got it from, etc.) and whittling it to a previously unforeseen specificity that allows some sort of crossing to occur. The point though is to get an it specified — not to make a thinness (due to whittling) out of anything, because this work of mystery shares lineage with wishes and a wish is never thin or brittle.

I think that to specify for the sake of ______ is always a loving and generous act.

I appreciate your picking up on the fact that there is no “end of something / anything” in my work. This is true. It is much more about inhabiting the inebriation of the pages themselves. Their shapes are to be considered like any other personages are (having an integral place in the pageant / demonstration that form is). I have a dear friend who cuts up my books and puts them in a locket that is worn over the heart. I have another dear friend who reads them then burns them. I have another dear friend who taught one of my books to her class and when she asked me how I wanted her to teach it, I said that my desire was that the class participants inhabit it as if it were theirs from before. That they not treat it like something of the upper white towers of intellectualization and instead like “your firmament spills into the shape of your room” (Diane di Prima). Like their own satchel. This meant that the members of the class cut up the book. Colored in it. Graffitied. Wept into its pages. Glued in family portraits. Smeared dirt on it. Dirt and fruit pith. It stood in as a compassionate position (rather than imposition) for them. A friend. A holding. And that is so fucking fulfilling to me!

When a you inhabits the pages you are adding ethereal lipids to them which gives them more galactic weight — makes them more existent. Evident to themselves. This relieves them. I am saying that when you enjoin with the shapes that have been whittled to these specificities, there is less lack. Less disparateness. I am saying that the pages are dependent on you and they are dependent on the trees that are their ancestors / predecessors and that they would hurt if they could not have you with them inside of them. Yes, this is a formula for a new eros. A new way to merge.

As far as selvage as suture is concerned, yes — the body is at once a “site of injury and a site of healing” (thank you for saying that. That is so beautiful!) so what is there to be done about that? There is so much to be done! So many fulfilling emancipations to be had and felt! The it is always partially complete and still in need of being compelled — therefore, I believe that to make a layered lace arc that it is not possible to see the beginning or the end of (have you ever seen this kind of a supernumerary rainbow? — constructive interference is what makes the thickness / vastness of the arc so complex and the complexity is what makes the color spectrum so varied and rich) so that healing (suture) can be an activism-continuum that we engage both before and after imposition/ injury (which is bound to occur in form due to chaos). I am saying that to embody selvage as suture is to allow us active stance within the limitless potentials that that non-ending lace arc is — rather than having our senses of selvage be mere reaction to exterior impositions regarding that chaos. Lace is always procreant.

Also the fact that a non-ending arc (like a rainbow is) may or may not actually be a circle, and oh the deific excesses that that mystery makes possible!

The limitlessness of my work is interested in maintenance of the many identities — in constantly fluenting the indeterminacies of  the variations — in spawning a space so vast and intricate that it can hold any of the facets as they spill forth as materiality in need of being specified. This is an ensuring that any of the variegations of identities will be welcome and can have home made for them. I am saying that I will live to construct the garden because I had to make myself belong in the garden, even if I am not entirely Adam or Eve — even if I am not entirely from planar earth. However, this garden is not only mine. It is ours. It is the indelible, life-giving and life-taking situate of a true, admixed collective. Of a we.

TC: You spoke about an “autonomous language” and I’m wondering if you are implying that language is inherently autonomous or if this is the function of queering language? Does it have and exert its own agency and / or desire? Are you concerned that the autonomy of language might actually limit a trans/queer existence rather than expand it? 

j/j: I see this in a few different ways. I think that as a cosmic entity, language is extant (because it has been made and because it continues to make contact possible). For this reason I do think that it inherently has autonomy. I do not think that language is only how it is utilized in any current socio-cultural space or stricture.

I also think that language is inherently dependent on us inasmuch as we engage it. So — language’s inherency is autonomous and dyad. Benefits from bindery with the extensions of another elemental (human, robot, letter dug up from where it was buried hundreds of years before).

But in the context of queering language I think that it is possible to enable / enhance more agency on the part of language. To actually make space for the language to experience / exert its varying emancipations just as we (as personages) seek and provoke them. I think that in the creation of lover-like spaces with language, the language (like with a human lover) will express desires related to the particularities of how it is being merged with. I am saying that I think it is possible to incite (which is co) and then hear (which is experiencing its autonomy) language’s moans and cries. A page is embodied language’s moans and cries made visible and though presented in visual form this information still goes into the body by way of sound and feeling.

In my work with language there is always a sort of disjunctive lyricism that comes forth from these lover-like spaces. There is no doubt for me that this particulate, disjunctive lyricism is the result of an equitable collaboration (merge) between myself and language (both with our autonomies and with our need to converge).

Now, there are certainly animate blends also! Places in the convergence that it becomes impossible to decipher one from another. We must not discount those because they to me are the places of deepest thaumaturgical awe —

I am not concerned that the autonomy of language would ever limit a trans / queer existence. I have only ever felt language enhance those realms for me. I think that the way that persons (with their objectives based in the limits and strictures that are a result of fear) can use language (which is imposition and not inherency) could be the only way that language would ever stand in the way of any (including trans / queer) emancipations or embodiments. I am saying that it is possible to draw a third box and put a check in it and then name that box (“gastropod mollusk”), at the doctor’s office when they ask you to indicate: 1) Male 2) Female re “gender” (we do not even need to go into here, how gender is different than birth sex and how M/F re gender is a ridiculous question for a doctor to ask). That it is possible to shout that the categories that we are given are not enough. To act on what we have given and force it into something vast enough (or specific enough in whatever ways are needed) to hold us. Do I think that bureaucratic uses of language regarding trans / queer identities are profoundly disheartening and revolting in their archaisms and outdatedness? Absolutely. But I am also saying that language itself is in my opinion, a cosmic inherency and there is no reason that one inherency (language) would block out another inherency (trans / queer identity) without it being marionetted by fear or limit, which is really what war is.

TC: I love this: “I find that autonomous language does lessen my loneliness. Does increase proximities. Does add community to community.” I don’t want you to explain it. I just want you to know that I love it. Also, this: “We need each other and we need ourselves. Oh glorious myopias of need!”

j/j: Just something to add here. I see my own gender / embodiment variations as my community — as more than sole or only.  I see your (any you) gender / embodiment variations as community. I am talking about gender excesses and gender ecstasies and sweet supplenesses of embodiment, not about gender confines or binary-based categories. In this way engaging language in order to exhibit / express those variations only strengthens them. Makes them more extant. FYI — I currently identify as a post-embodied-masculine femme queer. Effeminate monstrosity. Post-stigmata vixen / vulpes. Meaning I have had to cross so many times (full transitions) to get here. Meaning trans motilities. All of this always to accelerate and intensify the felt it, by whittle, synthesis and integrations. I believe that these are how vitality is made and I believe that embodied vitality is a choice. Is my choice.

There are yet to be pronounced pronouns that must be mined and mine them, we must!

TC: Also, I love what you’ve said here about the performativity of gender existing outside of audience. That the doing is being made manifest. Is language a part of that for you? Is your language gendered? Can language exist outside of that?

j/j: Yes! Language is certainly a part of the performativity of gender for me. My language is not gendered (I do not think that inherently language is gendered, but instead is galactic in its capacity and so will express itself in many ways including genders) but my language is certainly my gender! Yes, my language is my gender! My language is my future body and its qualities spun by luminous loom now, by way of my own volition.

TC: What is a question you wish you were asked?

j/j: I would love to be asked to talk about my husband-wife Tracy. Or to be given the opportunity (which I now have) to name her here in the midst. I would want to talk about Tracy in the form of a statement of amorous and passionate thanks. To name the bindery that we are in — this profound relation that keeps me here. I hope that this comes off like I am madly in love with her. I hope in it is implied the depth of my commitment to her and to the monogamous relation that we have been upholding and nurturing for 5 years in this life and whole lifetimes in many other planar incantations. It feels integral to name her here because I really think I would have left this planar reality a long time ago were it not for her continual unifying (vivifying of me) with me and opening my spectrum about what it can mean to be in love in the human plane. Oh the reverences and restitutions! All of the ways of being more and more deeply revealed. Flecks of light across the top of a geode. That gorgeous heart sting that happens when we go so far back into fucking that there is literally no longer any back to me (“the miasma of night is between your legs”-Jenny Boully). So many vigorous and radical ways of straddling the threshold between the human plane and the cosmic infinitum by way of co-practicing Chod.

A kismet beast amidst so much kinetic jam.

3.

TC: Alright, I can’t help it — every time I turn to the first page of new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk I laugh out loud. There’s a playfulness (on many levels: visually, sonically, referentially) in this book that I haven’t fully recognized in your other work. Talk to me about the play — where it’s located, and where do you hope it goes?

j/j: Hmmm. It is so interesting to me that you laugh. What a great thing for me to hear! I would say that there certainly is not an intent on my part to provoke a pre-determined response but I think it is true that new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk is an interaction with the libertine and the monk aspects of form, content and embodied movements.

For this reason the first page of the book the alpha and the omega for a cyborg is a sexy and sort of “fuck-you” confidence-based statement that I imagine many queers rooting in as tone related to status-quo expectations and impingements. I can see how this piece would bring pleasurable response. With it (an openness and an admitted origin in the divergent/ deviant—meaning ‘I self-name as such which means if you name me as such the name is already mine so exteriors do not have power over me’) as the starter of the book it becomes possible to feel how Jill Magi talks about the deviantness of the book: “holding j/j hastain’s new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk, I can feel my body push away from its disciplined and well-groomed version of itself; my pulse quickens, readying my system for a revitalizing intake. So as with certain religious reading practices, I take this book [and] open to any page.” I am saying that perhaps what is bringing that response from your body and heart and mind is how the very first moment of narrative / anti-narrative / other-than narrative is a cyborg saying ‘there are phallic cores in the center of the earth that are and are not biological (they come from earth but are not “destined” or stasis as phallus (masculine?) and in fact appear in form by way of a reoccurring and unstoppable dripping (effeminate?) underground. This locates the book in ulteriority from the moment that it is opened and perhaps there is a letting in the body of the reader regarding that. A sense of relief.

All of this makes me think of how George W. Crile insinuates (in The Origin and Nature of the Emotions) how often laughter and crying in somatic realms are interchangeable — “why they often blend.”

Regarding play. I think it is very true that there is play in new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk. In the same way that we spoke of earlier in this interview this is not play that should be disregarded or taken lightly. This is not us trying on our genders for fun. We are not fucking around. It is play / performativity of the movements as we cross. It is embodiment of our bolds. It is keeping ourselves loose enough that the most information possible spins through us (loom). It is shamanic ritualist play. The play of the philosopher’s stone (Cintamani in Hinduism and Buddhism). The play of induction toward varieties of rejuvenation that connect to enlightenments of many kinds. I need to say this again — you have to want the occult in order to experience it. This is the play required in order to inhabit the occult.

There are full sets of chromosomes in each cell in a body. Chromosomes are inherent coils of DNA and they are responsible for animation of cells. There are many genes, sequences and governing structures within cells. Some cells (gametes) are sexually procreant. The amass of information that I include here regarding cells is directly related to my composition process re new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk. These meta-works (cell-poems) are certainly gamete. They function by way of reproductive adrenalines. Impetuses toward constituting new aggregates. The gametes (meta-components within my compositions) mingle (by magnetism and synchronicity) together and deep, recombinant fusions take place. The result? Uncanny collages provoking a new collagen. Nomadic, flexing globes.

TC: One kind of humor I was recently reading about is the humor of the “unexpected future.” I feel like you are mapping out a future of poetry, love, and gender here (no pressure!). Is the future of poetry / love / gender lighter? More fun?

j/j: I would say that the ways that I work with “unexpected future” are not about lightness necessarily but are certainly about letting. About opening the body (as a form) to its many potentials which certainly demands lubrications (the “blend”) of and by way of somatic states.

This “unexpected future” that you speak of reminds me of Lyn Hejinian’s statements about how the brain wants surprise ignitions (this is not exactly how she said it but something to the effect of). I think that there are unforeseen and awaiting successes that become inherencies when we can engage the many aspects that are required for us to stay here in / as the future we pursue. I am saying that a “future of poetry, love and gender” is what I must compose in order that there be space for myself (and thereby others) on planet as future. We are making our we by way of demanding of form, that it echo us. That it have space enough in it that we can be our authenticities here. That it have images of us in it. That it account for our variegations and our imaginations and our bodies. I don’t think that it is pressure to be a part of that evolutionary arc (I think you are doing it in your own way/s as well by way of your amazing projects — Casa Libre en la Solana /  Trans / Genderqueer Anthology / Read Between the Bars/Made for Flight) — I am grateful for your naming your experience of my engagement in that way and I take pride in it.

TC: Is it possible to do a tarot reading for an apparition or a phantasm?  Have you done one?  What is the role of divination in your work?

j/j: I love this question. Thank you for asking it. Divination is definitely core to my compositional praxis. I engage a necessarily (but not in any way that is singularizing) deep, seeping and continual relation to divinities. For me god/s is inherently multi. Non-delineate-able. Does not benefit from being stricted or kept still in any way. The god/s that I work my divinations by way of are variant, inebriated, autonomous ferals. In fact I would say that I am engaging a practice of composing relational gods by embodied metonymy. Think of a creaming accordion that is always making sounds and motions — inherently dependent on its surrounding aspects (other ulteriors) in order for it to make more relational gods. A song is a relational god. A page is a relational god.

As queer querent it is important to me that my pages are oracles. That my books are aggregates of oracles (“beautiful sharks [that] have lace-clogged gills” -Jenny Boully) This is extispicy by way of images. So, not ceremonially slaughtered animals but ceremonially (sonically) disemboweled or enabled (animated re glavanizations) images. Axiomatic intelligences and energetics rendering themselves elementals on an always tilting verge.

Something About Being True to Yourself: An Interview with Chloe Caldwell

Here’s a moment that hit me early, from the end of an essay called “On Snooping”:

“I can accept that all I’ve ever wanted is not very special — all I’ve ever wanted, like most people, is proof of love.”

Chloe Caldwell’s debut, Legs Get Led Astray, is exactly that — a proof of love. Which is what writing ought to be. Be it love of the subject, love of the form, or just plain loving language, the best writing (and by that I mean what you, dear reader, consider “the best”) captivates us because it speaks some kind of truth directly to us. Great writing wants us to believe in it, to love it. I mean love here in the mutual sense. I mean love in the two-way-street sense. The writing we love most, we love because it loved us first.

Caldwell’s essays in LGLA take us around the world as it is in your early twenties. Everything is possible. Everything is art. Everything is as beautiful as it will ever be, or at least it will be when we’re done with it. Friends are family and family is unconditional love. You can become homeless when your apartment building collapses and wake up next to a bottle of gin in what may or may not be the Strand Bookstore. Jobs are not yet careers and careers are for your thirties. Work is the Strand Bookstore. Home is the Strand Bookstore. A friend is anyone with a yellow Strand bag in his or her kitchen. There are housewarming parties with buckets of black paint to make the walls more interesting. There are babysitting jobs with naked little boys as obsessed with their penises as their full-grown counterparts. There is music, so much music. And there is love, love, and more love.

If you couldn’t tell, I loved this book. And I was grateful to get in touch with Chloe over the last couple weeks to ask her some questions about it.

* * *

Joseph Riippi: I’m interested in the role music plays in these essays. Many of the people you’ve loved in your life you associate with different songs — be it your mother and Rufus Wainwright’s “The Art Teacher,” the score of A Chorus Line as a child, or a past boyfriend and Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love.” What is it about music that works to plot point memory so well?

Chloe Caldwell: Music is a very strong trigger for memories because there’s an emotional response to senses. The sense of hearing (music) is much more of a layered and luscious sensation. Also — I grew up in a musical household and now I live above and work at, a music store. And when I first moved to New York, I lived with my brother who is a musician and we’d have lots of conversations, meditating on music, went to tons of shows, stuff like that. I guess it’s just a huge part of my life, so it comes through in my essays, like all of the other reoccurring threads.

JR: You write that most of the people you met upon first arriving in New York City worked at (or lived with people who worked at) the Strand Bookstore, and in Williamsburg you and your brother left a typewriter in the bathroom with “Please continue the story” written in sharpie above it. For all the references to specific songs in specific places in these essays, there are far fewer references to specific books or poems. How is writing’s role in memory different than music’s? How do they complement (or contradict) each other in your life?

CC: I did this subconsciously. I don’t craft my essays thinking about this kind of thing. I stick with what naturally comes out. But maybe music sets the tone more. Books more tell what kind of person you are.

A good example is from the essay, “My Mother Wanted To Be Betty Boop.” I open the essay with “My Mother wanted to be a dancer. In the living room when I was a kid we danced to “Stop In The Name Of Love. . . .” And later in the piece I say, “My mother’s books next to the toilet in the downstairs bathroom: Uncertainty. Anger. When Things Fall Apart.”

Which of these details is more affective? I guess that depends on the reader. Some people can hear the song “Stop In The Name Of Love” more easily than visualize the cover of When Things Fall Apart, and vice versa.

Also, books are maybe more internal and personal to you. Music is more universal or communal. Like, you’re at a party and a song is playing and you get excited. Someone at the same party might be reading a cool poem out loud but that just doesn’t happen as much. Maybe there’s this to consider as well: By the time a person turns 22 (ish), they’ve probably heard thousands of songs. But how many books have they read? It depends. Maybe 10. Maybe 100. But still, that’s like 10,000 songs verses 100 books. I’m just thinking out loud here.

JR: One of my favorite moments in the book is in “That Was Called Love,” a kind of love letter to New York City from Seattle, when you write: “Last night I described New York to a rock climber in Seattle. ‘It sounds like, New York is for you, what the mountains are for me.’” Since then you’ve moved back to New York (but now just outside the city). Have you found for yourself a permanent mountain?

CC: No. I think “mountains” or “homes” are specific to what you need at that time in your life. For a long time, I truly did think you could count on a place to make you happy. Like, when I moved to New York City, I was young and so affected by it that I thought it was alive. Now I see that just like people — there is not one person or place that you can get everything you want from. It’s all about compromise. If I could mix my mother’s backyard, Brooklyn, and Portland together, that would be a pretty sweet home. When I left the city to move to Washington, I thought that Seattle would be as new and exciting. But it was far from it and for a while, that was hard for me to cope with and accept. It’s like this quote by Fran Lebowitz: “When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.”

If you’re asking me what I’ve learned now about finding a “home” within the world, then I would say you have to find it within yourself. This is going to sound new age-ish but in yoga, they say to treat your body as a temple, not a dump. It’s kind of like that. If you keep moving cities or trying different drugs or men to feel safe, it will never happen. You have to look inwards and love yourself. Then you can be (pretty) comfortable anywhere, I think.

JR: I notice you left out Berlin in your answer to that last question, when you say you’d like to combine Brooklyn, Portland, and your mother’s backyard to make a home. You write in “Berlin: Strange Like the Music of the Doors,” that “every day in Berlin is an existential crisis” and you couldn’t wait to get back to “Metrocard land.” However, when I began reading the essay and found you’d gone to Berlin, it made sense: I was struck by the parallel of your falling-apart home at 156 India Street, where “the doorknob was hanging by a thread” and “‘the back wall of your building began to crumble,” with Berlin, a city that is itself constantly in a state of not only rebuilding, but finding a new identity. Your essay is beautiful in describing the “existential crisis” bit of your time there, (the regressing clock, etc) but at the same time I can’t help but wonder what deeper difference drove you away from the city. Was it just the wrong place at the wrong time, or something more? (I should disclose that it’s one of my favorite European cities, so I’m quite curious).

CC: Well, you just reminded me that I left a large component of why I was unhappy in Berlin, out of that essay. The original plan was that I was going to Berlin to visit my brother for five nights. But I never took my flight home; I decided to stay for a few months. That threw everything off. I was there, in Berlin with one pair of jeans, two shirts, one bra, one notebook, no job and no apartment. I totally forgot to mention that in my essay, huh? Whoops! Isn’t non-fiction a trip? So since I had no real reason or desire to be in Berlin, it was completely jarring. I was totally aimless and depressed. I’d also had my heart broken right before I left, so that was more fuel to stay in Berlin, slash, another contributing factor to why I was so upset there.

The thing about Berlin is that it’s amazing. That summer was incredible — we could drink outside, there were playgrounds for adults, the sun never went down, and I met a melting pot of interesting people doing creative things. But yes, it was bad timing and bad decision making on my part. I’d love to try it again at some point.

JR: Also in the Berlin essay is a moment when you ask your brother where he’d like his ashes scattered after he dies. He answers, “I don’t know. I don’t care. But wherever you do it, plant tomatoes. Then I could live inside tomatoes. That would be cool.” I love this moment so much. There is so much siblingness in it, tenderness, emotion. For a last question, then, I have to ask you to top your brother: Where would you like your ashes scattered? 

CC: I love that moment, too. Thank you. I would want my ashes scattered in the backyard of the house I grew up in, where my mother still lives, in the woods, near the dilapidated tree house and swings. It’s where I feel most at home, most like myself.

An Interview with Min Jin Lee

Steve Williams: Free Food for Millionaires is one of the catchiest titles I’ve ever heard. Can you talk a little bit about how you decided on this as a title for your novel?

Min Jin Lee: Years before I started the book, a friend who worked on Wall Street told me a story about how at his bank, after a deal ends, there is usually a free buffet lunch for the deal team as well as others on the trading floor. Usually, the food was thematic to the deal — e.g., Indian food after raising capital for an Indian power plant.

My friend described that at these free lunches, there was one very wealthy managing director who would routinely rush to the head of the line to fill his plate before the more junior, and obviously, lesser paid employees. I thought this was hilarious that a really rich guy, i.e., a millionaire, would lunge for free food and push out the others. It seemed so tacky and ridiculous to me. I grew up in a fairly blue collar neighborhood, and I just remember that it was not cool to be so grubby even when you didn’t have much, and this anecdote made me think more about how poor(er) people and middle class people are often made to feel ashamed of their desires while very wealthy people often feel entitled to get what they want when they want it. I wanted to call the book Free Food for Millionaires because I wanted to write about socially thwarted desires as well as this contrasting idea that grace (unmerited favor) is available to all people.

SW: Free Food for Millionaires takes the form of the 19th century social novel. What appeals to you about this narrative style, and what did you feel made it suitable for your novel?

MJL: The 19th century social novel is my favorite genre so although it was enormously challenging for me, it made sense to try to write one. (“Heck, why not?” she thought.) When I was growing up, I found comfort in the very long European works. I think when the story is good, readers don’t want the books to end; however, today’s reader, assaulted by the immense volume of books to choose from and short on time, is suspicious of the long work, especially when the work’s quality or appeal can’t be verified. That said, I guess, I was faithful that someone else besides my family members may want to read a long book about people I found interesting. I am fascinated by communities, small and large, and individuals in them. I am curious about how we individuals work within communities and without them so it felt very natural to me to pursue this old-school style of writing which allowed for questions, observations and experiments. As a writer, I remain more interested in all the characters rather than one character. I confess that I don’t believe in “a man is an island” or that one man’s fate can be determined in a vacuum so I seek a well populated fiction. As much as I admire the first person voice (see Jane Eyre), I think my work would not have made sense unless it was done in a third person omniscient point of view.

SW: I would imagine one of the greatest challenges of writing about a community is trying to imagine and realize such a diverse cast of characters. Was there a certain character (or characters) that was particularly challenging to bring to life?

MJL: You are generous to say that envisioning and realizing a community is challenging. In fact, for me, it was freaking daunting. I’ve heard some of my favorite artists talk about the image they have in their heads about what their work is supposed to look like. In my image, my story had a lot of strong people and lot of conflicting desire. This picture was helpful for me to overcome the hurdle of the big cast challenges, because I knew I had a book length work. Having a large cast also gave me enormous encouragement and comfort when certain characters would not cooperate. There were characters who lit up the page or tickled me with humor, no different than when I see certain people in my life. This was exciting and lifesaving, because writing requires an unnatural solitude, and I was enduring the absence of society (when writing) through replicating my own society (my characters). As in life, there are people I don’t look forward to seeing, and in my work, there were characters I felt frightened by, or knew there would be danger or injury when they showed up. I had to ask myself why I was afraid or why I dreaded them. When I wanted to write their stories, I had to grant these characters some aspect of myself to relate to them differently. I gave a character my height, or an illness I had once had, my hair color, or an odd interest I used to have in baking muffins. When I did this, it helped me to see my characters differently. The person with whom I had significant problems was Charles, my choir director; so I gave him my sense of failure, my sense of feeling lost in a world that didn’t need my work, my feeling left out in a glittering and imagined New York art world where all the Greats know each other. I was going through a profound and protracted period of sadness during my years of writing my first book, and Charles, a very troubled character who is also gifted, embodied some of that emotion. As I write my current manuscript, I think I may always feel this shadow of melancholy; it feels permanent to me and not necessarily unfortunate. The people in my pages, good and bad, help me with this.

SW: I love the idea that certain characters frightened even you; it’s a testament to how alive the society you create feels. But I want to talk a little bit more about how you give some characters some of your own qualities and quirks. So when you give a character a certain trait of yours, it’s a way for you to begin making them identifiable for yourself? It’s a step towards understanding them?

MJL: Yes, I think when I gave the characters certain biographical traits, it made them identifiable and more understandable to me. If a person tells me that he is from the Bronx, for example, I tend to feel a sense of kinship with him (perhaps irrationally), because I spent four wonderful years in the Bronx attending the Bronx High School of Science. It’s possible that this Bronx native may in fact dislike nerds like me who went to Bronx Science but lived in Queens, but because I associate the Bronx with a place of growth and intellectual safety (really), I identify with him and transfer my positive feelings to him in some measure. I suppose this is why when we attend social events, we ask strangers, “Where are you from?” — it’s a wish to connect through a superficial question, because we want to transfer a personal association (good or bad) to a new person. I suppose it is also a method to infer alleged knowledge from one’s hometown.

SW: You bring up hometowns and kinship. Is the desire to create that bond with your characters a reason you chose to set your novel in New York City?

MJL: I wrote three other (failed) novel manuscripts before this Free Food for Millionaires, and FFfM was the first one set in the boroughs of Queens and Manhattan. I was inspired by A House For Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul, the English writer of Indian descent who was born and raised in Trinidad. Naipaul set his novel Mr. Biswas in “Arwacas” based on the town of Chaguanas (an hour south of the capital Port-of-Spain, Trinidad) where he grew up, and reading that work in particular gave me courage to write about Elmhurst, Queens where I grew up. Naipaul is a controversial figure, and I do not agree with much of his political sentiments, however, I am always amazed by the depth and honesty of his struggle as a writer. I wanted very much to write about this world that meant so much to me, and I think by the time I approached this manuscript, I was much less worried about judgment.

SW: How important do you think NYC is to your work? Or, to put it another way, do you think of yourself as a New York writer?

MJL: I feel most myself in New York City. I grew up in Queens, went to high school in the Bronx, and my parents had a wholesale business in Manhattan’s Koreatown on 30th Street and Broadway. I live in Manhattan now. I feel comfortable around the many different kinds of people in New York, and when I am in a monolithic culture, or a place that elevates homogeneity over heterogeneity, I feel stifled and upset. I think of myself as a New York writer even when I am not in New York, and by that I mean, I think the values and themes of New York — uniqueness, ambition, outsiders/insiders, failure, grandiosity and humiliation — are deeply ingrained in my point of view.

SW: Can you describe some of your habits and practices as a writer?

MJL: Before I write, I read the Bible and I pray. I read a long time ago that Willa Cather did this, and I tried it.

This ritual started out as a kind of curious exercise, and now, I can’t imagine not doing it anymore. It feels very private and quiet to me, and I think I need this before I write.

SW: You come from a law background, attending Georgetown Law and practicing as a lawyer for several years. In what ways do you feel that experience has benefited your writing? Conversely, do you feel there have been certain advantages to never going for an MFA? 

MJL: I think I have a great deal of discipline about work and effort. Many of my friends have MFAs, and they are wonderful writers. I have always wanted an MFA but didn’t have the time or the willingness to change my family life to pursue this. I love classes and studying so I think I would have enjoyed getting an MFA. That said, I don’t think I have any disadvantages from it. I can’t be sure, of course. I don’t know many fiction writers so perhaps this is what happened because I have a very layperson life. I live in a very ordinary way, and I prefer this.

SW: It’s clear that you’ve been influenced by George Eliot and other 19th century authors, but are there contemporary writers who influence your writing or are important to you as a reader? 

MJL: I adore Junot Dîaz‘s work. His work gave me a kind of permission to be honest about the world I loved. Junot Dîaz is a genius.

When I was in college, I read a lot of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Audre Lorde; all three influenced me a great deal when I was starting to put words together.

SW: I’ve heard you and Junot Dîaz talk about writing with a specific audience in mind. From what I understand, the idea there isn’t to exclude anyone, but to give your work a purpose and a goal. To paraphrase something Dîaz said, ‘A comment directed towards someone specific is more interesting to overhear than a comment directed towards nobody.’ When your work reaches that target audience, what would you like him or her to get out of reading your work? 

MJL: I think I would like him or her to feel seen, because I feel like I want to really see everyone. I have felt unseen, and this is a kind of specific condition I have lived with. I think many people feel unseen or in contrast exposed, but few people feel seen for who they are. I think it takes time to see people, to really consider who they are. I hope to do this for my reader through my work.

An Interview with Leigh Stein

Rob MacDonald: Your first novel, The Fallback Plan, is doing very well, and I’m curious to hear how it feels to have your work in the hands of a wide audience. When you put out a chapbook of poems with a small press, you know that a lot of your readers are likely to come from within that poetry subculture, but when you put out a novel with Melville House that gets reviewed in Elle, the audience must cover the whole spectrum. Is that exciting or terrifying?

Leigh Stein: It’s true; they’re two totally different beasts. When I’ve had chapbooks of poetry published, I know who my audience is going to be: my friends in the poetry community, and their friends, who eventually become my friends, too, once we meet at AWP. Not even my family really reads my poetry (my mom and sister have read a little bit), so that’s how small the audience is.

Getting a novel published is bigger; it’s more like being on stage, which I used to love. There’s a distance between you and the reader (I’m not handselling my novel, like I’ve done with my tiny poetry chapbooks), and the reach is, of course, broader.

The hardest part of the experience for me so far has been the public reaction. All the major press I’ve gotten has been positive, but I initially made the mistake of reading all my amateur reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. These can be soul-crushing, personal, and vicious. I didn’t expect my book to elicit such a powerful response: I thought some people would like it, and some people would be meh. But instead, some people love it, and some people despise it (and me). There’s a lot of confusion over who Esther is: is she me? Am I a slacker readers can love to hate? ‘Cause I’m not.

RM: I made the mistake of reading some of those same reviews, and I was surprised to see how often people were getting hung up on the politics of moving back home after college. That aspect of the book felt secondary to me, and I didn’t get the feeling that you were trying to make a big statement about either entitlement or slackerdom — it was just another way of showing how life can fall short of our expectations, how reality doesn’t always live up to fantasy.

LS: The moving back home part felt secondary to me, too, while I was writing it. But publishing is a business, and my book is being marketed as having a lot to do with a particular moment in our economy / culture, so as to sell more units, and make my bed of money even fluffier.

But seriously, you hit on a good point: fantasies and expectations. Esther is an actress; she’s used to playing different roles and imagining fantasy scenarios, and that just carries over into her normal life. There are some fantasies, like winning the lottery, which are totally culturally acceptable. But the darker fantasies . . . that’s what’s controversial. I had a friend who once told me she wished something really bad would happen to her, like her mother dying, so people would feel sorry for her and leave her the hell alone. Successful, ambitious, hard-working people are under a tremendous amount of pressure (I’m including myself here) and sometimes our fantasies are about giving in and giving up. That’s Esther. Her invalid fantasy comes from pressure on the outside (“Get a job!”) and depression on the inside.

RM: Fantasy seems to play a significant role not just for Esther, but for all of your characters, regardless of age — Amy has her art, Jack and Pickle have their video games, and there’s that great scene at the end with May and the cicadas. As I was reading the book, I found myself thinking of fantasy as the element that survives even after we let go of our childhood — sort of a persistent echo of childhood itself.

LS: That’s true! Especially with Amy’s fantasies (or, sadly, memories) made manifest in her art, but also with May’s collection (and even the video games). Fantasy follows us, and I think is also what brings us back to literature (and there’s a lot of Esther going back to childhood books in the novel). Maybe we can’t dress up in capes and crowns the way we used to as children, but we can still read books that transport us.

Laura Miller wrote a book called The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventure in Narnia, which opens with a poignant, shimmering childhood memory: she’s standing outside in the California suburb where she grew up, wishing Narnia really existed and wishing she could go there. “I want this so much I’m pretty sure the misery of not getting it will kill me,” she says. “For the rest of my life, I will never want anything quite so much again.” Bam! That’s the opening paragraph! I loved this book. I read it when I was almost done writing mine (in other words, when I was already deep into my own Narnia fantasy), but it has so much to say about childhood and yearning and magic.

RM: That quote speaks to the danger that comes along with imagination — even though we can use books (and music and art) to hold onto (or reconnect to) childhood, maybe we’re just prolonging the agony. I know that Esther eventually decides to let go of her childhood, but did you find that writing the novel helped you to let go, too, or are you still hanging on?

LS: Am I still hanging on to childhood? Not like I used to. In my early twenties, I was so nostalgic. Is that weird? To be young and nostalgic? I think it’s something I just outgrew, novel or not. The novel I’m working on now isn’t so nostalgic: it’s about girls in their mid-twenties and problems with girlfriends and boyfriends. Maybe it’s immature, or obvious, to write about life as I see it happening (there’s Gchat in my next novel, for example), without more reflective distance, but that’s what I’m interested in.

RM: It’s really interesting that The Fallback Plan is trying to make sense of the present through the lens of the past, but a lot of your poems are looking back at the present from the future’s perspective. 

LS: It’s hard to exist in the “now,” without reaching forwards or backwards, and I guess my writing is a reflection of my personal struggle to stay in the present. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.” This is good advice for living (smell the roses!), but my creative practice is fed, and inspired by, yearning for what is gone and what will come.

An Interview with Meg Tuite

Robert Vaughan: I heard the “Linus & Lucy” instrumental song from Charlie Brown during the holidays. I realized how much I related to Charlie Brown and those characters as a kid. I played piano endlessly like Schroeder. Sucked a finger and carried a dingy yellow blanket everywhere like Linus. Do you have any fictional heroes from childhood? If so, how did they impact you?

Meg Tuite: My mom gave me the book Little Women when I was a kid and said “there’s a Meg in here.” I was mesmerized by Meg March, because she was such a tough ass and said it like it was. She was a writer and extremely flamboyant. I loved her. I read that book over and over. I was blown away when I realized that Louisa May Alcott had brought this fictional character to life. Meg March was alive, for me, and everything I wasn’t. I didn’t want to believe she existed only through the imagination of some woman writer. I was very shy, except at home when I bugged the hell out of my siblings with my endless dialogue to no one. Yes, I was in awe (still am) of the magnanimous Meg of Little Women.

RV: Families, functional or not (and what family is? I want to poke out the eyes of those who say their family was “purrfect!”) seem important to you as a writer. In your remarkable first novel, Domestic Apparition (love that title), the chapters are all little gems, vignettes, each barreling the story forward through complex family incidents. How did you arrive at the main character? This family? What prompted you to tell a story about this particular one?

MT: Oh, Robert, didn’t I tell you? Family Health and Overzealous Mental Balance, Inc. is just now pouring the bronze for the monolithic sculpture of our nuclear nucleus in homage to our raging consummate genetics. (Did that even make sense?)

Domestic Apparition is a novel-in-stories. Most were published individually and then I decided to put a collection together, altering content so it was the same narrator throughout, and the same family. My protagonist, Michelle, was based on many different personages rolled into one. But, most of the chapters / stories are based on a memory, a feeling or a character from my past. I had to put a piece of myself in there to bring this family alive.

My family did go to a Catholic grade school and there’s a hell of a lot of material to work with there. And my siblings are all wonderfully eccentric so I played with some of their idiosyncrasies like the character, Nathan, who had some of the same habits as my older brother, Kevin, when he was a kid. But no matter which chapter / story I wrote, it always ended up fictional, every piece took on a life of its own.

RV: Every piece certainly does have its own breath, and even more so when one collaborates. We have had the great fortune of our paths crossing not only through social networks, but also through the monthly Exquisite Quartet column you write at Used Furniture Review, and your stories appearing on Flash Fiction Friday, which I co-host monthly on WUWM’s Lake Effect. We also had the great fortune of reading our work together, thanks to fellow writer, Susan Tepper, at the KGB Bar in NYC in October, 2011. Then, there are the multiple places our work appears together such as Stripped, A Collection of Anonymous Flash. Can you address collaboration, what you like (or don’t) about it and the impact on your writing?

MT: I am thankful for all of the collaborations with you, Robert! You’re amazing and I love Flash Fiction Friday on WUWM. I was honored that you read one of my stories on air. That was a special occasion. And our reading in NYC was exceptional. I always love reading with other writers and NYC was remarkable because I got to read with some of my favorites. I’ve just worked on two collaborations with photographers and really enjoyed it. Jennifer Tomaloff’s anthology is Bending Light Into Verse. She’s sublime. The other is Lost in Thought Magazine; Kyle Schruder is the editor and the photographer is Valerie Chiang. I was totally inspired when working with someone else’s images. They evoked these whole new worlds for me.

Exquisite Quartet is an extraordinary experience. I collaborate with three other writers on a story each month. I start a narrative and then pass it on. All four of us pull together the strings of a tale and then I do some final editing each month to make sure it works cohesively. It’s exciting to see where each writer will take the story. Some writers really flow with it. The Exquisite Quartet Anthology of 2011 is now available. All thirteen stories were published by the stellar Dave Cotrone, editor at Used Furniture Review. It’s been a surprisingly gratifying year working with all 38 outstanding writers.

RV: I’ve ordered two copies of Exquisite Quartet already — can’t wait to read it. I’m also collaborating on Jennifer and Kyle’s projects, so I relate to that same sense of awe that comes from combining two artistic mediums: photography and writing. The act of writing can be so insular, and that our paths lead us to so many other talented artists is certainly a highlight. Can you tell me about the ways you like to craft? Music or silence, public or office? What is the ideal set-up for your pen to fly (or is it the keypad?)

MT: I am always curious about the diverse scenarios that are necessary for someone to write. Some writers need a TV on in the background in order to concentrate! Wow! While I was writing during NaNoWriMo last November, I met a group at a coffee shop, but all the conversations drove me crazy. I followed them instead of what I was writing. I’m a writer who needs solitude to really focus, go deeply into the story. I prefer to write with a pen first and then the computer to type, editing as I go.

RV: I’m the same way, pen first, then computer. And I know what you mean about too much noise, it can be so distracting. We both have the luxury of quiet space. I have woods surrounding my house, and I don’t take that for granted. I’m wondering if you have any literary mentors, or writers past or present, who you feel may have shaped your writing?

MT: I can’t say that any of these writers have influenced my writing, but I do return to them again and again for inspiration. I love Flannery O’Connor for her inimitable metaphors and her dark sense of humor. I used to study her collection of stories and actually counted how many metaphors and similes she had used. I was obsessed. Bruno Schulz, a Polish writer, only wrote two small collections before he was killed by the SS during WWII, but those two books hold entire worlds inside them. His work is sublime. Djuna Barnes is one of my favorite writers. Her dialogue is genius. Flann O’Brien, an Irish writer, wrote at least four novels and I go back to those repeatedly. A brilliant writer and so incredibly funny. And I’ve always loved to read and memorize poetry: Dickinson, Rilke, Sexton, Dylan Thomas. I could go on and on with this list of writers I adore. And of course there are many current writers out there that I admire: Lidia Yuknavitch, Kristine Ong-Muslim, Michelle Reale, Mary Stone Dockery, Robert Vaughan, Len Kuntz, Jim Valvis, Howie Good, Sara Lippmann, Susan Tepper, Julie Innis. . . . Like I said, it really is endless! I’ll stop now.

RV: I think it’s healthy to have mentors, or writers you like to read at the very least. We share many similar tastes. I know from our conversations in NYC last October that you expressed a desire to write more poetry. Funny how from there, you leapt right into that NaNoWriMo novel writing month! But looking ahead, what writing turf might lie unexplored? You’ve published Domestic Apparition, your excellent first novel, have a chapbook collection coming, collaborate on the Exquisite Quartet monthly column. You are quite the busy gal! Not to mention being nominated for not one, but FOUR Pushcart Prizes in 2011. So, what is the scariest thought of writing you might take on? Is it a play? Non-fiction or memoir? Everyone seems to be dabbling in that currently.

MT: I’d like to finish that novel I started for NaNo. The first draft is almost complete and then, of course, the deeper work begins after that. I have a collection of short stories that I’ve assembled. I’ve never written a play, but was asked to write a screenplay for someone. I didn’t get very far, but will continue to attempt it. I keep dabbling with the idea of memoir, but it hasn’t taken off like I was hoping. I do always come back to the short story. I love writing them and I have a list of magazines I’d like to get published in. I am writing some book reviews also, so there’s a bit of NF writing, but haven’t written an essay in years. I think the scariest notion for me would be if someone asked me to write a sci-fi story or a western. Ha! So maybe I should just go for it and do it! Face my fears!

RV: Yes, the poet Howard Nemerov, brother of fantastic photographer Diane Nemerov Arbus, once wisely said, “The only way out is the way through.” Sage advice. But before we get all scholarly and shit here, how about some quickfire questions . . . our buddy, Anna March has started up her excellent music column at The Rumpus, so in her honor, what are five of your fave songs from 2011-12?

MT: Oh, this is a great question!! Thanks to Anna March for her amazing columns! I’ve picked five, Robert, but now I can’t stop listening to music. And it was a tough choice!!

Amy Winehouse singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” Kills me every time I hear it. I love her and miss her desperately!!!!

Patti Smith singing “Dancing Barefoot.” One of my all-time favorites.

Radiohead performs “Creep.” I love all their work!

KD Lang performs Neil Young’s song, “Helpless.” I get chills every time I hear it!!

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings perform “Red Clay Halo.” I wanted to be Gillian when I first heard her. They never cease to blow me away!

RV: All excellent choices, complete with video links! How about five “secret” celebrity crushes?

MT: Hehe!! Okay!

Any kind of sex with Denzel Washington!

Oral sex with Oral Roberts!

Make out session with Dame Judy Dench (wait, she was already spoken for, wasn’t she? Damn)!

Heavy petting with Dr. Phil!

Missionary position with any Mother Superior!

RV: Oh what fun this would all be! How about . . . I know you are originally from the Chicago area. So five things you miss about the Midwest, or Chicago in general? (And you can’t say Liz Phair because she’s mine!)

MT: Damn, you get Judy Dench and Liz? Hmmm.

I’d have to say I miss the Cubs games. We’d sit in the bleachers, soak up the sun and drink beer. It was the general meeting place before internet dating sites.

Going downtown with my mom when I was kid to see the tree, shop and have lunch at Marshall Fields.

Summers we’d spend in Michigan swimming and causing trouble wherever we could.

I liked that we could walk to school and to our friends house or take the el to get somewhere in the city. We didn’t rely on cars as I do now living in NM.

I miss the great Blues bars downtown. We heard amazing music. Most of the good bands don’t have NM on their itinerary when touring, but always Chicago.

RV: Ahhh . . . the blues, so we are back to music. Which reminds me, there was a recent trend on Facebook: track down the #1 song of the week that you were born. Mine was “Itsy, Bitsy, Teenie, Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini!!!” How perfect for a writer (those commas!) and a poet to boot! What is yours? And how might it relate to you (or not? You can Google it via Billboard or Wikipedia)?

MT: My song was “The Letter” by the Box Tops. Ha!

I love their outfits!!! I have to say it’s all about the letter from his baby to bring him back home. I had no baby. I’ve been traveling forever but never got a letter to come back home. I think I was writing a letter that I wasn’t coming back home!

RV: “My baby, she wrote me a letter!” How cool! Okay, now I am going to give you a first sentence as a prompt. You can incorporate it, and continue . . . or you can take off wherever it sends you:

“A woman fell in love with a man who had been dead a number of years.”(From “Love” by Lydia Davis.)

MT: A woman fell in love with a man who had been dead a number of years.

He was a disappearing act in the cafe they both went to and out on the streets of the city. Once a lady sat right on top of him, drank her coffee, made phone calls on her cell, read the newspaper and then left, without excusing herself or acknowledging him in any way.

The woman loved him for this. He abided many things. He got to the cafe at 9AM prompt for years and she sat at a table nearby. He drank his coffee with two packets of sugar that he stirred in slow methodical swirls while he stared off into space.

The woman thought of approaching him. He wore impeccable suits and his shoes were always scuffed from the long walks he took and all the people who stepped on them. He never spoke to anyone. Death hovered around him like a vaporous camouflage. It was a hazard. He was pummeled on the streets by crowds that ignored him. He never became annoyed.

The woman loved him so much that she would walk in front of him and part people like the red sea to keep them from damaging him anymore than he already was. After all, he was dead. She would sometimes walk backwards in front of him, stare at him intently, but he didn’t notice. He might have been a philosopher or someone who had suffered much loss.

After years of obsession, watching decay fester his eye sockets further into his skull and his rugged skin turn to gray stone she picked up her coffee and muffin and went to sit next to him at his table. His bones swam inside his suits. She was afraid there would be no trace of him soon. She had rehearsed many things that she might say to the man, but now was at a loss for words.

At some point he looked over at her. He smiled. She didn’t mind that his lips were a memory and his teeth were brown as his beverage.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

Her heart was entombed in some kind of mausoleum, expanding with each breath she took. She didn’t know that he saw her too.

“We have a lot to catch up on,” he said.

She merely nodded, buoyant with the potency of the moment.

A loud group of boys came up to their table. One sat on top of the man and another sat on top of the woman and the other two boys pulled up chairs. The one lodged in the woman’s lap was quite globular, but the woman didn’t mind.

The man looked over at the woman and smiled. “You see, nothing is ever as uncomfortable as you imagine.”

RV: You are a master crafter, Meg! I say submit it! One more little glimpse of your talent with another way to open up a flash piece? We’ll play word bank! Here are five words and you use any of them in a piece, 50 words or less (thanks, Joseph Quintela, of Short, Fast and Deadly!) And the words are: loose, coarse, unnecessary, chunk, rope (all taken from From the Umberplatzen: A Love Story by Susan Tepper).

MT: She kept falling. The coarse chunk of a rope was too damn loose. Why didn’t they have some manual on how to hang yourself? This was just embarrassing and an unnecessary waste of time.

RV: Those darn loose ropes, I’ve had a few! Haha . . . now some quickies: Do you sleep naked or in pjs? Boxers or briefs?

MT: I love the pjs in winter and ass to the wind in summer. Would definitely go with the boxers!

RV: No pjs here, naked year round. If you had to live one other place than the good ‘ol USA, where would it be?

MT: You’re HOT, RV!!!! I’d choose one of the Greek islands. Paolo and I like to fantasize about what our life would be like there. We’re still waiting for some unknown rich-as-hell relative to drop a load of cash on us and then will be on our way. Any day now, I’m sure.

RV: Lucky you, Miss Mykonos! Hurry up and move, you two, so we can come visit! Now, tomorrow morning, you wake up and discover you have turned into an insect (a la Kafka’s Metamorphosis!) What insect are you and what is your destructible character trait that might be your untimely end?

MT: No question, I’d like to be a preying mantis. And I must be a male, because once the female mates with me she bites off my head.

RV: Yes, those female preying mantises!!! What supreme power they have. Now we are in sixth grade . . . and all the girls are, well, gaga over you-know-who. But you have a secret crush. Mine was Alex: brainiac, so quiet, nerdy. Blushed during lunch when I stared. Yours?

MT: Gene. He’d come over to my house and sit on the steps. My mom asked me what the hell we saw in each other. I blathered on about god knows what and the poor guy just sat there listening. He never said a word and then after about an hour he’d say “alright then, see you later,” and that was our love thing. He ended up becoming a cop in L.A. You think I pushed him into it?

RV: Maybe he was that cop in L.A. who used to come over and . . . oh, never mind! Say you’re a man, maybe even became one through a sex change. And you’re about to meet your first date from an internet site at a local pub. What happens next?

MT: Oh yeah, I saw that porn flick about the cop in LA, hehe!!

Okay, if she giggles or has stuffed animals in her house, I’m out of there so quick! If we get past that and she has no girly bullshit we order beers and since I’ve had a sex change I’m wondering if she notices my last-of–the-mohican chest that I’ve been working to get rid of with hormone injections. We have a few beers, then decide to go to her place. She’s ready for the action, but discovers I’ve got different apparatus. “Oh no, oh dear,” she cries and then realizes she hasn’t had much happening on e-Harmony and says what the hell. We go at it and the rest is either history or historical.

RV: Or both! So, lets wind this puppy down, even though I don’t want it to ever end. Which brings about this: how do you feel about endings? Both in writing, and in life?

MT: It’s always a great time hanging with you, Robert!

I love to write endings in stories. Sometimes they arrive easily. I’ve also sat with a story for months before an ending erupted out of the fog. I find it satisfying when endings show up as a complete surprise to me.

In life, I’ve dealt with a lot of endings. I work in hospice and so I know that with each person I am spending time with, an end is inevitable. Sometimes I have years with them, but usually it’s less than six months. I’ve met the most extraordinary people over the last ten years and what a gift to hang with them during that time of their lives. They are open and introspective and I get to hear their amazing life stories. I love the work and some of the endings are difficult, there’s always mourning that accompanies it, but there’s so much truth that shines through these wise folk before they go.

Thank you so much, Robert, for a sublime interview! Your questions were exceptional and once again, I never knew what was coming next from you! You are the bomb!!!

RV: Right back at you, Meg. This was a blast.

An Interview with Lydia Millet

I met Lydia Millet in 2009, in a writing workshop at the University of Alabama. I remember grabbing a beer and talking about graphic novels and Friday Night Lights at our local pub, about having children and a job and still finding time to write, and about how nice it was to get away for a weekend. I didn’t even know she liked animals — until I picked up the first book of a trilogy she’s currently working on. 

Lydia Millet is the author of many novels as well as a story collection called Love in Infant Monkeys (2009), which was one of three fiction finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. 2011 saw the publication by W.W. Norton of a novel called Ghost Lights, named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Millet’s first book for middle readers, called The Fires Beneath the Sea. Millet works as an editor and writer at a nonprofit in Tucson, Arizona, where she lives with her two small children.

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Megan Paonessa: First off, how do you like being compared to Kurt Vonnegut on the cover of How the Dead Dream? I like Vonnegut, don’t get me wrong (he’s a Hoosier!), but that sort of blurb obviously colors expectations — and one can’t help but judge a book by its cover.

Lydia Millet: I’m always a bit perplexed by that comparison, owing to the fact that I haven’t read Vonnegut since my teens. Clearly I need some reeducation. In general though, comparisons to other writers are simultaneously flattering and insulting. I don’t know why it’s so necessary to go the Hollywood pitch route to describe literary books. “It’s Writer Brand X crossed with Writer Brand Y.” If I’m doing my job it’s not X crossed with Y at all.

MP: How do you feel about stereotypes? The IRS man. The real estate man. The office affair. The gay Air Force man. The breast-obsessed business types. These are all stereotypical character traits found in your novels, but as I found myself identifying them, I still thought these characters were uniquely interesting.

LM: I love stereotypes — types in general. I’m guessing that’s pretty clear. They are fascinating. Hey, stereotypes don’t kill people. Bad writing kills people.

MP: True! I guess what I’m trying to ask is, do you use stereotypes in order to say something . . . broader (?) . . . about life, the world, people? You mentioned in an interview with Willow Springs that one of the things you react against is the preoccupation with the personal in contemporary literary fiction.  

LM: Well stereotypes are mostly just obvious objectifications of people, right? Partly I want to objectify fictional people because it’s funny; partly I want to objectify them because I like to play with distance — the distance between the reader and the characters, the narrator and the characters, the author and the characters.

MP: Many of your reviewers describe your writing as deeply satirical. How important to you is the insertion of a political / ecological / moral / social stance?

LM: All this talk of insertion! It sounds rude. I don’t think of inserting things.

Not all my writing has a satirical tone. The trilogy of novels doesn’t, for example. But I can never leave the comic aside for too long.

MP: What do you mean by the comic?

LM: The comedic. I always end up returning to what’s funny to me, whether it’s marginal in a book or central. So while I don’t know that my most recently published books are particularly satirical, I do have a book I’m working on that’s more so, if only because I need to get away from the heavy sometimes.

MP: Writing drama carries the hazard of falling into melodrama — as Hal points out at the end of Ghost Lights. From what I’ve read about your work, Hal’s sort of soul pouring wasn’t always common in your characters. Was this trait specific to Hal, or has your writing been influenced in a new direction?

LM: Well, I don’t know that it’s not common — I’ve always been a sucker for internal monologue and so I think there’s a fair amount of soul pouring throughout my books. Ghost Lights is less a new direction than How the Dead Dream was.

MP: Do you think there’s a move in contemporary literary fiction to steer clear of emotional narratives? 

LM: I think the pretense that writing without emotion can exist is funny. You don’t want to go the direction of maudlin, you don’t want to overwrite, but underwriting emotion is a bore too, finally — safe and easy.

MP: So there has to be a balance.

LM: I wouldn’t say balance. Balance implies equilibrium, and I’m not sure how helpful that is in fiction. But I’d say emotion and cerebration are both important and compelling, and either without the other is a bit dull to me.

MP: Lastly, can you give us a glimpse into the last book of the trilogy? Perhaps (!!) which character’s point of view the narration will come through?

LM: My pleasure! The last book will come out next fall from Norton, it’s called Magnificence, and it’s written from the perspective of Susan, Hal’s wife. She inherits a house full of taxidermy in Pasadena.

MP: Taxidermy? Fantastic. I wonder how T. will react to that. I can’t wait to read it! Thanks, Lydia.

An Interview with Ander Monson

Ander Monson and I grew up in the same small community that separates the United States from Canada. I think the title of his new book of poems, The Available World, published in July 2010 by Sarabande Books, is fitting, as the Upper Peninsula of Michigan seems so unavailable to the rest of the world. Ander was kind enough to answer a few question on TAW during his winter break from teaching at the University of Arizona.

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Jeni Jobst: Give me a one-sentence description of The Available World.

Ander Monson: One big constantly-expanding and -contracting ball. I realize that’s not much of a sentence, but then I’ve never been good at those.

JJ: Why was the “paintball” cover chosen?

AM: The Ball of Paint (actually not a Paint Ball — there’s a difference which gets elucidated in Vanishing Point, in which the Ball of Paint features significantly — though I see that it’s credited as “paintball” in the front matter of TAW, which is actually just a function of what I named the file before I understood the distinction, and in this way it carries its own record of error) is an amazing image, isn’t it? There’s one poem at least that refers specifically to it in TAW, but mostly I loved how the image suggests a cosmology, which is something the book wants to talk about or enact too. It also echoes the shape of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula (see also “ball” on the Vanishing Point website, and the idea of muchness and availability. I also dig how it connects the two books, which came out within a couple months of each other in 2010. This networking happened with Other Electricities and Vacationland too.

JJ: You’ve mentioned in a previous interview with The Adirondack Review that you like the topic of isolation. Other than what you told them, about underlying tension surfacing, do you feel isolated? Did you, in the U.P.? Does it matter where one lives?

AM: I’m not sure exactly what I meant by that (it was a while ago; brains change; it’s all flux, which is one of the nice things about thinking/being/writing), actually. But isolation has been and continues to be an important force of my writing process. It’s certainly everywhere in my books, particularly in Vacationland and my essay “I Have Been Thinking About Snow,” both the page and the video version. I think that every artist feels isolated. There’s a reason why most of us who are drawn to making art are outsiders in one way or another. I suspect you have to engage in that kind of retreat from the world in order to see the thing from enough distance to want to talk about or iterate or engage with it in language or image. I find that even the sort of self-imposed isolation of several hours of silence, that is, me not talking, often starts to build up a tension in me that often leads to a burst of writing. Certainly growing up in the U. P. I felt isolated. For me it’s an isolating place. That’s a function of the culture and the weather (and the weather makes the culture, or draws those with a predisposition, maybe, to isolation from other cold climes and isolated, wild places), and much more so when I was growing up than it probably is now (the Internet is a sort of leveler). Even more so, I suspect, for my father, and my father’s father, before the bridge was built to connect the peninsulas. I’m sure that one can find isolation in the flux of big cities too (there’s lots written about that sort of anonymity), and wherever, but Upper Michigan’s isolation seems particular, and particularly interesting.

JJ: Does the title indicate that knowledge of what’s available in the world only enhances your love of isolation?

AM: There’s definitely an interplay in the poems between availability and isolation. It’s a tension, sure, and in my view that’s one of the plots of the book: muchness and diminishing. They crest and trough, a sort of zero sum game. I don’t think that the poems have a collective thesis, exactly, but that they are different ways of exploring a particular digital / analog world and worldview from the perspective of availability and isolation, among other entry points.

JJ: Many of the poems in TAW are “sermons.” Does your love of sermon rhetoric stem from personal religious experience?

AM: You know, I wish I’d had a more interesting religious upbringing. I grew up Presbyterian-Congregationalist in Houghton, which is to say largely unreligious. I remember my pastor saying “well, if there is a God” at one point, and me thinking, hmmm. The sermons I remember were mostly dull, hardly a reason to come to church. I liked the singing and the lemon bars and the pot lucks, but stopped right about when I was confirmed. My interest in the sermon comes out of living in Alabama (I went to grad school there) and being around the culture of the Baptist church, which is a whole lot more exciting. I don’t have any real belief in it, exactly, but the shapes of their services, or the services of, say, some Pentecostals — there’s real fire there. You can feel the rhetoric in your body: that’s what good rhetoric should do: affect the body. I can see a version of myself growing up in a church that was either more demonstrative and performative, or else more invested in its own mystery (like Catholicism or maybe Mormonism) and how that might have held me more closely. So I learned to love the sermon, and I thought well, why not repurpose the sermon, as best I could, for poetry?

JJ: Your “armless brother” pops up more than once in this collection. Why? Do you have an armless brother?

AM: The armless brother character showed up first in Other Electricities, and he showed up in Vacationland, and to a much smaller extent, in one of the essays in Neck Deep. I am not fully sure why he still draws me, but he does. He came from a line I wrote in a failed poem (maybe a story, I don’t remember) in an undergraduate workshop, I think. It didn’t work out in the poem/story, but he became a character of interest in the constellation of my work. I do have a brother, but he has arms.

JJ: How long does it take you to write a poem?

AM: It depends a lot. There are a few poems in the book that were written in more or less a sitting — an hour or two. Sometimes you get lucky. All of them started with a burst of generative something, and then sat, sometimes for five years, at the back of my mind somewhere, undergoing occasional revisions. Most of them went through somewhere between a dozen and twenty drafts. Nearly all of them that were published in journals or wherever were significantly rewritten for the book. One of them, “For Orts,” became a sestina between its publication in Beloit Poetry Journal and its final home in the book. Well, by final home I suppose I mean temporary home. You never know where they’ll end up.

JJ: With what poet do you feel most akin?

AM: You know, I don’t really feel like I’m part of a tradition, or feel a real kinship with a lot of poets. That’s probably willfully naive to say, but it’s true. There are real echoes of A. R. Ammons in TAW, I think, but only some of his work. I have a weird connection with the work of Simone Muench, a poet whose chapbook New Michigan Press, the small press I run, published a ways back. I remember reading her poems and them making my mouth go wow in a familiar way, and recognizing something there. I’m in the middle of reading Julie Paegle’s torch song tango choir which is quite lovely. I read slowly because it’s really working for me, so it tends to give rise to my own language. And Nick Lantz’s We Don’t Know We Don’t Know. I read a lot of poetry, actually, maybe unsurprisingly. Albert Goldbarth’s Opticks, though I wouldn’t put myself in the same league as his work at all. What he does is beyond my comprehension and amazing in its own way, though some of our interests align. There’s so much out there, much of it a crapfest, but some of it remarkable. It’s one of the reasons I continue to edit my small press and my magazine: to stay connected to what others are doing in the world, and to try to publish the work that gets me hot.

JJ: What’s next?

AM: Writing-wise I’m in the midst of a collection of short essays (<750 words as of this writing, though that constraint may go) that start as poems written in response to things (texts, objects, images, conversations, whatever) found in some way in libraries. I imagine it being published as cards in a box, designed to be tucked into books as something for the next reader to find, a nod to the histories and futures of books as objects.