Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, SIR

 

Granny mama said that you wanted to name him Master.

Master never came outta my mouth. I always knew his name would be Sir. I named him Sir to honor my lineage, so that it would not be disrespected. The carrier of the name didn’t matter anybody could have been named Sir. You could have been Sir if you were first.

I’m fascinated by Berkeley, California performer, writer and artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle’s book-length poem SIR (Litmus Press, 2019; now available only through the author’s website). SIR is structured as a collage of image, text and archive to explore family, power relationships, segregation, racism and inter-generational trauma. Through a scrapbook of lyric prose, archival material, including family photographs, Hinkle writes on the histories and implications of being black in America, specifically her eldest brother, named “Sir” by their mother at birth (full name: Sir Antany Marquis Lavonne Hinkle), so anyone speaking to him would have to begin with respect. Hinkle explores the history of Louisville, Kentucky and her own brother’s name, including his own discomfort with it, referring to himself, instead, as “Anthony.” She writes: “His pants sag low as if he has a sack of shit in them. He wears a huge watch. His eyes squint when he is amused. He walks through life like anyone else. One step at a time. You would never know that his name is Sir and sometimes neither does he.” SIR exists as an expansive, loving and critical portrait of a name and a family, a time and a place; citing family photographs and a family shaped through and by an ongoing history. She writes archive and theory, trauma and naming, and how the name their mother gave her first born child both revolves and responds to elements of power and disparity:

They have been calling him by a name that is not his name and furthest from his name as his name can be. He hated Sir and still does. Even as I write this sentence he navigates the world with it under his skin. Tucked away in the cotton fibers of his birth certificate. Scared to make it emerge. Is it really fear I wonder? Is its use no longer needed? Fear comes through power. Power is the result of fear. What if he were named Power? Would he tell people his name was Strength, or even better same ole same ole same ole Anthony?

Opening as a map of his name, she evolves into an exploration of self and her larger family, including the lineage of her own given name. She explores her family’s history and genealogy. She writes of Louisville slave owner Captain Aaron Fontaine (1753-1823), from the park that bears his name across his former landscape, through her attempts at researching the names and details of the slaves he owned, and any potential descendants. She writes of the difficulty of a history she can’t fully research, and fully articulate. “I romanticize about a place that I cannot name. It is always on the top of my tongue but gets lost in the slippery saliva,” she writes, “and drifts back down my throat. Forming a knot, walking a fine line between choking, loving western shoes that hurt my feet and running around barefoot on the hot Kentucky cement.” Hinkle’s SIR is multi-faceted and expansive, with a lyric heft created through the deep dive she takes across her research, from the framing of her brother and her brother’s name into numerous acts and individuals that brought their mother to that point, and continue to affect their entire family. Hinkle’s SIR is framed very differently than, say, Charlottesville, Virginia poet and editor Kiki Petrosino’s White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia (Louisville KY: Sarabande Books, 2020) [see my review of such here], a book that covers a similar geography and history. SIR is far more intimate, more personal; writing her brother and his discomfort, and their mother’s discomfort. If White Blood is a book about how history impacts the present, SIR is a book about family, and how history impacted them and still does, directly and in an ongoing way; how their mother chose to respond, as an exploration of how that response ripped outward.

If we had a grandfather and a great grandfather would they have named him Sir? Would he have been a Jr.? Would Sir have been needed? If we all had arms and muscles to swing from, to laugh and cry with us, to have their two cents put in and have it be the final word would Sir need to be named Sir? If in our neighborhood the S.W.A.T. team was not kicking down doors left and right because young men had taken over whole apartment buildings for drug houses would Sir need to be named Sir? If we didn’t care about black men at all in the world and wanted hate to eat them up, with he need to be named Sir?

Kiki Petrosino, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia

I reviewed Charlottesville, Virginia poet and editor Kiki Petrosino’s fourth full-length poetry collection White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia (Louisville KY: Sarabande Books, 2020), over there at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Although there's lots of other cool stuff there also, which you should be looking at as well.

Kiki Petrosino, Witch Wife

Study Abroad

No chance you’re pregnant the English doctor asked. No chance you repeated slowly, then added No chance. That was the summer all Tuscan girls wore green cargo pants & orange camisoles. It looked one way, shopping at Esselunga, & another in the piazza with your tumbler full of strawberry liqueur & the first blue stars catapulting over the Arno. The doctor resembled a townhouse, his hair peaked narrowly in the middle. Your fingers, in their closed fists, made a subtle heat exclusive to your experience. You took the green-yellow pills, thinly coated with sweetness & punched into a paper card. Weeks later, you let your companion take you into the woods by the beach. In his family’s summer house, you broke some old chairs to feed the fire, & then stem of your body unspooled in every room. Then you slipped your long feet into the green sandals you hadn’t realized were python leather until the scales had already kinked & dulled. You will never have another pair like that. Not real python.

I’m intrigued by Louisville, Kentucky poet Kiki Petrosino’s latest, the collection Witch Wife (Louisville KY/Brooklyn NY: Sarabande Books, 2017), a book that follows her two previous collections (also published by Sarabande Books): Fort Red Border (2009) and Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) [see my pathetically short review of such here]. Dedicated to her two grandmothers, Witch Wife is an album of ghosts, examining her own influences, history and experiences. Her poems unearth a moment and then focus its full gaze upon it, pulling the memory apart and composing incredibly precise poems that use the details of those memories as both intense study and jumping-off point. “My exes shall rise up from their Mazdas,” she writes, to open the poem “Afterlife,” “& adorn themselves in denim.” Part of what is so compelling about this collection, apart from the lyric density of the poems, is the variety in form she plays with, moving from the more traditional lyric of line breaks and stanzas to prose poems, a structural play that becomes more obvious in a recent interview with her in The Iowa Review, conducted by Sam Leon:

This third book is sort of my meditation on poetic form, whereas the first book certainly was about introducing myself to whatever reading audience is going to be there for poetry and introducing my themes and concerns. I still adopt quite a few forms in that first book, but many of them were occasional forms. So in that first book, I had like ten poems that were called “Valentine” that were all this form I created that was this title and a big sort of address that reminded me of a valentine address. Maybe it was referring to the rhetorical surface of the poem. But in Witch Wife I have nineteen villanelles or villanelle versions. I have a pantoum, I have a sestina in there. So I’ve been looking at traditional forms and thinking about my relationship, my ethos with those forms. I also think that this book is a very personal book, since we’re talking about where I am personally, emotionally, and language-wise.

I’m impressed with how Petrosino utilizes the details of her own history, her ghosts, to explore, but it is her language—rich, vibrant and incredibly compact—that propels her poems into magnificence: “I keep time traveling / back to the noon of my birth.” she writes, in the poem “Contagion”: “Worse than a war zone/ that Sunday, that night, when I wept in the War / of myself. That’s the first war I knew. It was worse / than a war.”

Lauren Haldeman, Instead of Dying

Instead of dying, you move in with us. We fix the basement up with a shower & a small area for your bed & you come to live. I help you carry boxes down the stairs. We set up your record player. We hang up your old poster from 5^th grade that says “Save the Wolves.” Once a week, you make grilled cheese for us in the upstairs kitchen. Instead of dying, instead of being stabbed on the street in Denver, instead of bleeding to death surrounded by strangers neither you nor I will ever meet, instead of all that, you get a job at the local grocery store, stocking the shelves, watering the produce: collards, endive, grapefruit. Your face stays your face & your pain gets better & you swim at the Rec Center in the early light of spring & you are so not not not dead. (“One”)

American poet, comic book artist and illustrator Lauren Haldeman’s third poetry title, after the full length collection Calenday (Rescue Press, 2014) and chapbook/artist book The Eccentricity is Zero (Digraph Press, 2014), is Instead of Dying (Fort Collins CO: The Center for Literary Publishing, 2017), published as part of the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Composed as a sequence of seven extended poetic suites/sequences, Instead of Dying writes, as Kiki Petrosino informs in her back cover blurb, “a series of intricate afterlives for her lost brother, braiding these memorials with poignant lyrics that chart the personal outlines of grief.”

While searching for information about Haldeman’s work online, I discovered a 2016 interview with her conducted by Vancouver poet Rachel Rose that speaks to her first collection, Calenday, which also included some poems on the same subject, that of her brother Ryan’s death. She writes in the interview: “It was right around this time that I lost my brother. I stopped everything at that point and just sort of disappeared into that haze of grief. When I resurfaced, had had written a few things about Ryan -- poems that acted as a sort of working grief machine, poems that I actually used as tools during my early grieving to help me process what happened. Somehow, those poems found a place in the book too.” Further on in the same interview, she writes:

Ryan died in November of 2012 – he was was stabbed to death late at night on a street in Denver. It was a random act of violence. My parents called me the next day. And I just … well, the whole mourning process was very foggy, intense, muddled and strange. I actually can’t remember a lot of it. But about five months after my brother died, my partner Ben and I had scheduled to re-do our kitchen. We were doing a lot of the demolition work ourselves: taking crowbars and sledgehammers to the cabinets and walls, ripping out wood, paneling, metal, etc. I had been processing Ryan’s death in many ways – through counseling, exercise, over-working, and just flat out weeping – but when we started that demolition, I don’t know, there was something about the violence of the actions that struck me right to the core. I thought “This is what happened to my brother’s body.” And one morning, in the middle of the demo, I went to work, sat down, and wrote “Demolition” in one go. It just came out, as it was, like some sort of strange vomit or expulsion. And after I wrote it, I felt much better. It was as though writing the poem revealed something that my brain couldn’t approach.

I like the idea of this, of composition revealing something that the “brain couldn’t approach,” and acknowledge the ability and impulse to write through the difficulty of grief. While this collection might write through grief and her brother’s death, I wouldn’t call this a book about those subjects, instead directing the energy and impulses of grief to explore what might not have been otherwise reached. This is a difficult book, and it is meant to be, unapologetically so, albeit writing one that writes not a darkness but occasionally from a dark place, seeking and searching for answers that might not entirely be possible. Instead of Dying writes out the what-ifs and whys, as well as to the deeper questions of living and being, and of dying and loss, and of the closeness of siblings, as well as a section of short lyrics composed on and for those throughout history who have searched out the heavens for their own answers (there really aren’t enough poems for Nicolaus Copernicus or Johannes Kepler). As she writes to close the third section: “Before the thinking is the knowing / The thinking is added to the knowing [.]”

Nicolaus Copernicus

Let us say the sun. Quiet.

Quiet. Let us whisper

the sun. Secret. Hid.

Concerning the orbs /

The whole revolution /

Let us bypass the fact

it’s completely insane.

So take up your palm

and move the sun.

Move it to the center instead.

What does it mean?

Now we are turning

Lonely and neutral /

We are turning instead.

Ongoing notes: late April, 2016

Given our new baby distractions, I thought it might be worth going back through the past few months and acknowledging the books over the past two years-plus that I started to review, but, for whatever child-related reason, I wasn’t able to complete as a longer, full-sized review. Here are some notes, if not even regrets, on a couple of books that I wish I’d more time and attention to properly discuss (as they each, obviously, deserve).

Kiki Petrosino, Hymn for the Black Terrific: American poet Kiki Petrosino’s second trade poetry collection, Hymn for the Black Terrific (Louisville KY: Sarabande Books, 2013) is part of a vibrant, aural tradition of poetry that can’t help but lift itself from the page. Her poems run the range of questioning, arguing and speaking clearly, and are best experienced out loud, in a collection where her voice is clearly there, inside your head. This is truly a remarkable collection by a remarkable poet.

Ariana Reines, Mercury: There aren’t that many 240 page-plus contemporary poetry collections, but American poet Ariana Reines manages such for her third trade collection, Mercury (New York NY: Fence Books, 2011). The author of The Cow (Alberta Prize/Fence Books, 2006) [see my review of such here] and Coeur De Lion (Fence Books, 2007), Reines’ Mercury, with its silver reflective cover, is an expansive, sexual, highly charged and even perverse collection, collecting five incredible sections: “LEAVES,” “SAVE THE WORLD,” “WHEN I LOOKED AT YOUR COCK MY IMAGINATION DIED,” “MERCURY” and “O.” There is something about Reines’ new collection I haven’t seen in serious poetry before, that level of personal, physical and sexual openness, and the text rocks with a physical urgency that propels the poem forward. Her second section, “SAVE THE WORLD,” is composed as an essay/rant against the film The Watchmen (2009), and its conflation of sex and violence, as she writes:

This movie is about evil

What its woman wants

Is love and respect

She does not care that the world is ending

And that the superhuman man is trying to save the evil world

For humanitarian reasons. He is not paying attention to her.

She wants love

And respect.

She wants his thoughts.

Jubilee Hitchhiker: the life and times of Richard Brautigan, William Hjortsberg: After years of rumours, William Hjortsberg’s incredibly detailed biography of the late American writer Richard Brautigan was released a few years back, the 852 page Jubilee Hitchhiker: the life and times of Richard Brautigan (Berkeley CA: Counterpoint, 2012). And, after three long months, I have finally finished reading it. In Hjortsberg’s biography, the detail is absolutely incredible. In working up to talking about Brautigan’s association with the hippie period of Haight-Ashbury, a whole chapter is dedicated to providing a backdrop, with the same treatment given to the earlier period of the Berkeley Renaissance. Brautigan managed to become a leading figure in American writing [see a recent piece I wrote on his work here], called “the last of the Beat poets,” connecting the beat writers to further literary and cultural movements, including the Diggers and Hippies (he was part of the former, but less the latter). One of the most striking, and thoroughly-researched, biographies I’ve read, this is a fantastic biography of an American writer often dismissed by serious readers unable to read past the surface elements of his ‘hippie-surrealism,’ misunderstanding the depth of his work, and the place he should hold as one of the most original American writers of the second half of the twentieth century.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kiki Petrosino

Kiki Petrosino is the author of two collections: Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009), both published by Sarabande Books. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Louisville, and co-edits Transom (http://www.transomjournal.com), an independent on-line poetry journal.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, Fort Red Border (2009), was the culmination of a four-year project that I began as a graduate student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. My latest book, Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013), was written in a much shorter timespan and entirely outside the workshop environment. So: while I had shown versions of almost every poem in my debut collection to other readers as part of my workshop time, the poems in Hymn belong to a much more private experience. This is how I write now: privately. On my own time, and not "in time" for a workshop session. It feels right. As a young poet, participating in workshop trained me to read carefully and to comment in substantive ways about poetry. It was an invaluable experience that prepared me for my current writing life, one in which I have to rely on my own "toolbox" of composition and revision.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I've always written poetry. For me, it's a genre that's able to accommodate a variety of forms and modes. While I do write the occasional lyric essay, poetry is the art form that best satisfies my storytelling impulses and my need to craft compelling images.

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?
All of this depends on the project. I tend to write in short series of 10-15 poems that share a form, addressee, occasion, or some combination of these. Both the concept and the poems seem to build organically as the project develops. It's difficult for me to sit down and say, "OK, I need to insert a poem into the series that does X." The poem will just refuse to follow my agenda. Sometimes all I have to do is formulate the title at the top of a blank page--as I would do while composing the "Valentine" series in my first book--and the poem spins itself from that. There has to be some kind of generative "hook" for the poems to latch onto. But I can't tell the poems what to do.

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?
See question 3.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
The act of reading aloud is integral to my writing process. For me, a poem doesn't become truly "real" until I've shared it with an audience. I love hearing an audience laugh or sigh at particular lines. It helps my ear. And while I'm writing, I always read my work-in-progress aloud to myself. It's FUN.

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?
I've studied critical theory as part of my graduate work (I hold an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago), but I wouldn't say that those conversations are exactly running through my mind during the composition process. At the same time, as a woman writer of color, I'm definitely interested in the formation of identity. The speakers in my poems tend to be female, and alienated in some way from the larger community. This alienation doesn't have to be traumatic for it to be generative of language. On the contrary, I like to think of my speakers as sensitive, observant instruments. They speak of grievance, maybe...but are not, themselves, aggrieved. They're having fun. They're singing. It's OK.  

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?
The writer is a public intellectual. I know we're in a cultural moment that values other, non-literary, vocations, so we don't always hear from the "writer qua writer" in the public sphere. The stereotype is that the writer works within an ivory tower, or from a lonely garrett room, disconnected from the hustle going on right outside the window. But just open any book--a novel, a collection of short stories, a book of poetry. You find a deep engagement with language there. Contrary to the stereotype, writers are trying desperately to be heard and understood by the audience. Their creations enter the stream of pubic discourse and have the potential to open minds. I value every opportunity to interact personally with readers--not only readers of my work, but just People Who Read.    

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have had very positive experiences working with editors. Sarah Gorham, President and Editor-in-Chief of Sarabande Books, has worked with me since 2007 on shaping my books for an audience. Her touch is light, and her advice is always given with the best interests of the poem or project in mind. I couldn't ask for a better guide when it comes to preparing my manuscripts to meet the world.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
The best piece of advice I've heard is this: "Be a good friend to your friends, and a good colleague to your colleagues." Over the years, I've interpreted this as an argument against the hyper-competitive loops we poets can sometimes lose ourselves in. Example: when you hear that a friend has won a contest, a prize, or a book contract, you should be the first to send a message of congratulations. Not the second in line--really strive to be the first one. By reaching out with that kind of goodwill, you will receive that blessing back. Simply put: it makes you a better person to be generous. Even when you do feel envy, behave with kindness to those around you. Say the word, "congratulations." Feel your heart and your soul grow larger.    

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 tend to write in fits and starts that do NOT match up with any sort of daily routine. During the summer, I might be able to write a few lines in the morning and work from there into a finished piece. But during the school year, when I have a full teaching schedule, the stanzas arrive as they will. I keep revising a poem until it stops bothering me, which might take a few "days," or writing sessions. I can go for very long periods of time without writing anything, though I'm always reading one or two books for "fun," i.e., aside from teaching prep. As long as I'm feeding my imagination, I feel pretty OK about my writing life.    

12 or 20 (second series) questions;