Stephanie Anderson, Lands of Yield

03.12.14

In the dream, I talk them out of sacrifice. In the dream, exterminate and flood. The suits got on the wrong train. No contractions.

Side zip seems so practical. She’s all worked up. Think before search. At the Kewpie Hotel, the bike lot is full. Did I miss the stop?

The bulbul is shrieking love, enough smart line. I get Bar Ber now. A yoga truck as we walk to the aesthetic farmer park.

Our first close bamboo grove, maidenhair and apricot. Stand inside the yellow line to ride the robin. The frog won’t eat the fish.

She goes to the train university, capital king line. The turnstile got tired. Nine percent was you. Kit Kat quest bust. (“THE DITTIES”)

Until I went through American poet, editor and publisher (currently studying in Beijing) Stephanie Anderson’s If You Love Error So Love Zero (New Orleans LA: Trembling Pillow, 2018) a while back [see my review of such here], I had no idea that she’d had another poetry title out, only a year prior: Lands of Yield (Horse Less Press, 2018). She is also the author, by the by, of In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments (Horse Less Press, 2013), as well as a small handful of chapbooks, so I feel as though I’m just behind on everything about her work. Subtitled “A Poemlogue,” Lands of Yield is constructed in the tradition of the poetic diary or “daybook,” similar to New York poet Stacy Szymaszek’s Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals (Albany NY: Fence Books, 2016) [see my review of such here], the ongoing work of Alabama poet Jessica Smith [see my review of her latest here], Robert Creeley’s infamous A day book (1972), or even the life-work of the late Vancouver poet Gerry Gilbert. Akin to Gilbert’s works, Anderson’s book-length poem is continuous, albeit sectioned, and responds to the immediate of her day-to-day, but more abstract than Gilbert might have written: “I wake still aching but / clearer from dreams of cats / & time travel & codes / he sees an owl in bamboo / goes out to buy provisions & / comes back with bracelets wall hanging / scarves bought from Mih & Jin / my necklace purple rose” (“05.07.14,” “THE SINGING GERUNDS”). Lands of Yield is set in six sections—“TOKYO STORY,” “THE DITTIES,” “THE SINGING GERUNDS,” “MORE DITTIES,” “BINGE-READING MYSTERIES IN BED” and “MORE DITTIES MORE”—with the individual poems including date-as-titles-only, as well as set as a continuous roll of poems, beginning with “1.26.14” at the opening, and ending with “09.01.14.” Structurally, the poems in her first section appear in accumulated couplets, while the second section, which begins on the day immediately following the end of the prior section, is set in longer stanzas of short lines:

04.15.14

first sights overload, beeps

like bats using echo-

location a high chair

on a motorbike including

baby incense burning

at the tree base all are staring

Ave Maria in neon

what do the license plates say

from the pink church the men chanting

plays the lily pads like

trampolines in the park

thank you is like with one

chopping a big bag of onions

we last maybe an hour out

at the opium re-

finery, team building

information on demand a

mosquito coil at our feet

this plate like the one at

home after the lunar eclipse

professional smile

kids with bright lit bubbles

one Vinasun tows another

the night market full of headlights

Anderson’s “poemlogue” exists exactly as it describes, poem-ing her way through a travel that doesn’t exist as straight travelogue; a journal that doesn’t exist as a straight journal. For Anderson, the poem is the thing, allowing the lyric to propel the movement around and through information gathered, utilized and processed. “B writes to talk / about hours. It’s / sixty-nine years / since the bomb. F / to Z I repeat.” (“08.07.14,” “MORE DITTIES MORE”).

This is a hefty and impressive volume, and one that exists as a worthy travel non-travel exploration of self and of skin and of the intimately immediate, whether home or abroad. Still: I’m curious about the structural shifts, as well as those of the sections; do the different sections suggest a shift in geography, or of thinking? What do the differences hold between sections? Are the differences less overt, and one of thinking or approach, which allow for the shift, also, in structure? I am curious about these differences, and yet, am satisfied with the answer not being obvious; or perhaps I am simply thick-headed, and missing something right in front of me.

Tokyo is our sleep trembles

They heckled her until she cried

Tokyo is this form is an avoidance

The cause of the delay is confirmation

Tokyo is the glasses keep falling (“06.20.14,” “BINGE-READING MYSTERIES IN BED”)

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Danny Caine

Danny Caine is the author of two books, Continental Breakfast (Mason Jar Press 2019) and El Dorado Freddy's (collaboration with Tara Wray, Belt Publishing 2020), and the chapbook Uncle Harold's Maxwell House Haggadah (Etchings Press 2017). His poetry has appeared in Barrelhouse, New Ohio Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, and other places. He hails from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in Lawrence, Kansas, were he owns the Raven Book Store. More here.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first chapbook, Uncle Harold’s Maxwell House Haggadah, opened a few more doors for me as a writer. For instance, it’s a bit easier to book readings when you have a chapbook or book out. But the biggest change was the conversion of a group of poems, previously private to me, into a more public realm. Only two of the poems had been published from the chapbook before the whole thing came out. The rest had been ping-ponging exclusively between brain and laptop for years, and all of a sudden many more people could get their hands on them. It was a bit scary.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I really love novels as a fan—I read more novels than anything else. I cannot imagine the work that goes into a good novel. How horrific! I really admire novelists for this reason. Writing a poem, with its sensible size, seemed like a much more manageable task. I’m sure my motivation when I started writing poems was that pragmatic. Now, I’ve come to love the task of telling a full story via little shards of poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

The line between “starting a project” and “working full-speed on a project” is nebulous to me, especially since my large-scale projects reveal themselves gradually. Continental Breakfast started in November 2013 and is coming out now, five and a half years later. If I had to pick a point it went from “project I’m starting” to “project I’m working on,” it was maybe halfway through. Until then, I was just writing poems about stuff I thought was funny. Sometimes they come out almost finished, sometimes they’re revised for years.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Continental Breakfast is mostly poems that I wrote individually, which eventually came together to form a book. My second book was a Project Book from the very beginning. Perhaps that’s because the more I write and read poetry, the more I understand how a poetry collection works.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love doing readings. I help run a reading series in Lawrence, Kansas with Megan Kaminski and our events start with a short open mic. If I’m at all unsure of a poem, I take it for a walk at the open mic and it quickly reveals its true colors to me. I enjoy doing readings, in part because I try to write poems that work well out-loud (I try to write poems that work well out-loud because I like hearing when other people have poems that work well out-loud).

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Every poem I’ve ever written is about what it means to exist in the suburbanized and/or gentrified Midwest during brand-centered late capitalism.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I always circle around two lines line from Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland:” “the poets down here don't write nothing at all / They just stand back and let it all be.” For my whole life (well, my whole Springsteen-listening life) I’ve had a single interpretation of that line. Then, I recently discussed the line with my friend Morgan and she had a totally different interpretation. Then, I saw the amazing Hanif Abdurraqib speak and he had a still different interpretation. Should a poet down here write anything at all? Should they just stand back and let it all be? Is the answer always the same? I don’t know. My mind changes.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Every editor I’ve worked with has been a delight, specifically Aaron Burch at Hobart, Michael Tager and Ian Anderson at Mason Jar Press, and Martha Bayne and Anne Trubek at Belt Publishing. So, as long as this luck streak continues, I declare it essential.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I started my post-college life as a teacher. At the end of my student teaching, one of my students told me to stop teaching if it stopped being fun. It did, I did. Good advice.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I have a full-time job and a nine-month-old son, so I need to be purposeful in carving out writing time. Monday through Thursday I spend the last hour of my work day writing. I also have a writers club that meets every other week. When I’m feeling very ambitious, I have a daily writing accountability group that I join for a month at a time, where the expectation is producing a poem every day. Without these structures, I’m sure the other busy-nesses in my life would swallow my writing.  

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Reading. Always reading.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza heating in an oven, ready to scald the roof of your mouth.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Many of my patron saints are musicians (the Sufjan Stevens Christmas albums, for instance). But the richest cross-genre inspiration for me has come from photography. I first learned photography and poetry can inform each other when I read Erika Meitner’s great 2014 book Copia, which draws from the work of Alec Soth and Brian Ulrich, two photographers I’ve come to love too. Then, one day out of the blue, the great photographer Tara Wray emailed me asking if I wanted to collaborate. Long story short, we’ve got a book coming out soon, and it’s been one of the best collaborative partnerships I’ve ever been a part of. Her work is incredible—look up her #TooTiredProject, a crowdsourced initiative which employs photography as a method to explore issues of living with depression.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I’ve already mentioned Erika Meitner and Hanif Abdurraqib, but they deserve another shout-out here. Here’s an incomplete list, in no order, of more writers who inspire me: Philip Metres, Zadie Smith, Chris Bachelder, Ilya Kaminsky, Morgan Parker, Becky Mandelbaum, Elena Ferrante, Fatimah Asghar, David Sedaris, Danez Smith, Paige Webb, Harvey Pekar, Rebecca Makkai, Paul Beatty, Alissa Nutting, Stuart O’Nan, Megan Kaminski, Tommy Pico, Sally Rooney, Jericho Brown, Jennifer L. Knox, Tarfia Faizullah, L. Anne Wheeler, Craig Santos Perez, and Roddy Doyle.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I’d love to fly in one of the first class pod things that recline into a bed. I’d also like to get something at a restaurant that sizzles on its way to the table.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I’m a bookseller now, I already tried being a teacher. Those two, plus writer, were my only three ideas. I’m glad at least two of them worked out.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

An obsessive reading habit.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

It doesn’t come out until July (#BookstorePerks), but The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is simply stunning.  A brilliantly crafted novel that knocked me over.

19 - What are you currently working on?

At the moment, I’m finishing edits on the first draft of El Dorado Freddy’s, my collaborative book with photographer Tara Wray that’ll be out in 2020. My portion is 30 poems, each one functioning as a poem on its own, but also as a review of a particular chain restaurant. Tara’s part is a color photo portfolio in featuring the buildings, people, and landscapes of these restaurants.

I’m also at work on a third manuscript called Flavortown that investigates and challenges narratives of authenticity via a series of speculative poems about a Guy Fieri-inflected culinary paradise called Flavortown. The whole thing is in its nascent stages, but right now Flavortown also has poems about fatherhood, Christmas, and a crown of sonnets about the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;