Lesley Yalen, The Hearts of Vikings

Dad says a Paterson man lost his mind

On the George Washington Bridge

Another urge to span a gap

Another ride along this terminal moraine.

Now I keep an eye on the break-down lane

For people who may need my help specifically

But the edge of the world is speeding (“Causeway”)

Northampton, Massachusetts Lesley Yalen’s first trade collection of poetry is The Hearts of Vikings (Boston MA: Natural History Press, 2015). The author of a small handful of poetry chapbooks, including This Elizabeth (Minus House Press, 2007) and the beginning in (minutes BOOKS, 2011), there have been more than a few of us clamouring for a first collection to appear. Composed in four sections—“Causeway,” “The Beginning In,” “The Hearts of Vikings” and “Kaddish”—there is something of the collected-chapbooks feel to The Hearts of Vikings, which may or may not even be true (a chicken-or-egg idea: did the book structure pre-date the excision into chapbook manuscripts, or the other way around?), but something that my prior knowledge of her work is distracting me towards. Still, such books can make for entirely cohesive collections, such as, for example, Toronto poet Kevin Connolly’s long-ago first, Asphalt Cigar (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1995).

The squares are cut out, so that the

men stand in them firmly.

When you die. When I feel no quivering leaf

or breath. When finally deprived.

And the construction and the process of the proof.

And afraid. And Beethoven composed his

music for his God. When forced to be born

all alone again. All normal and alone. When

without a thought of authorship you slip all

egress from the heavily bolted earth, when

explosions are tearing holes in iron and

balancing on a peg is no option. When tea

is served on a patternless dress, various ladies

introduced to me by name. At the

borderland of grammar. And I can’t seem

to catch their names over the hearing.

Much of what I’ve seen of her work so far (and this book is no exception) seems to favour the sequence, whether constructing a small unit out of untitled fragments, or out of titled poems, both of which manage to accumulate into something larger, abstract and singular. Her poems might be built with a larger framework in mind, but she manages to leave incredible, open spaces between her lines and stanzas, allowing her poems a near-excess of breath, and therefore, life. Yalen’s The Hearts of Vikings writes out a series of shifts, revisions, abstracts and the texture of dreams, set as much in the tangible as in the intangible, slipping even in the grip of her incredible lines. One might say that the entire collection articulates an attempt towards writing out the slippages of identity, from the “Kaddish” that ends the book to the poem “The New World,” that opens the collection: “The passage was a middle whose end was me // let me revise [.]” Does writing out the whom and the what cement, or even reduce, identity, or simply highlight the impossibilities of writing? Who are you, really?

People had texture, dimension, and mass

If you hurled a person at another, it hurt

If you removed a person from a scene, gone.

A person could be embellished, disassembled,

Or held, but it couldn’t slip through fingers

Or be in two places now,

In your lungs or written down,

Sung or eternal or repeated.

Every thing had an inside and a skin,

A face and a tail,

An origin, a due date, an appearance, and dreams.

A box divided all space

Into two areas, no matter where you put it

It insisted on making this distinction.

A person took its place among things. (“The Beginning In”)

Lesley Yalen, the beginning in

The first word was a noun

The first thing was a box                     It was needed

The first feeling was a pre-                  A preposition

It was in                       Before there was anyone

Before there was any thing                          An in

There really needs to be more work by Lesley Yalen books out in the world; who do we need to convince so that will happen? She was good enough to send a copy of her chapbook the beginning in (minutes BOOKS, 2011), a title I wasn’t aware of until very recently, part of a 2011 season of minutes BOOKS chapbooks that included titles by Eric Baus, Geoffrey Olsen, Sam Lohmann, Jacqueline Waters, Matvei Yankelevich, Taryn Andrews, Ben Fama, Corina Copp and Lewis Freedman. Why haven’t I heard of this press prior to this? Yalen’s the beginning in is structured as a single, ongoing sequence of untitled short lyric fragments, held one to a page over nearly thirty pages of text. Less structured as a straightforward narrative, Yalen’s poem does build up in swells, rising and falling away in turns, allowing the flow of the lyric itself to navigate where the poem moves in a sure, steady path. Through returning repeatedly to multiple beginnings, she writes of endings, the structure of cities and the creation of something else, and something more. “The end will be more of a prism and less of a rainbow,” she writes, somewhere in the middle of the sequence. Later on, writing: Skip ahead quite a lot through ages of wood and carbon, metal and velvet [.]” In her poem, lines build upon lines upon pages, shaping into something scattered and formed, yet returning, inevitably, to that origin point. This work reminds slightly of Robert Kroetsch, who revelled in play on beginnings, from the tantric delay to a return to origins. And so, to begin again.

An adjective created the city. It crept into the city. It found the spots for licking salt and slaking thirst.

blue, large, vast, crowded, comfortable, jagged, damp, prior, connected, close, aquamarine, alone, fearsome, fierce, ripe, violet, even, terrible, loud, surprising, shaken, hushed, poised, pregnant, aflame, aligned, faded, tired, visible, awake, old, important, dear, and all their opposites

12 or 20 (second series) questions: with Hailey Higdon

Hailey Higdon is the author of the chapbook How To Grow Almost Everything (Agnes Fox, 2011) and the book-blog The Palinode Project. She runs What To Us (press) and is publishing several chapbooks by emergent female poets in a series called THE DIMES. Some of her recent poems appear in cannot exist. Her home is currently some middle earth between Nashville and Philly.

1 - How did your first chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I made my first chapbook by myself. The process endowed me with a nice sense of power. But what is it Peter Parker’s uncle says? With power comes great responsibility? I say, sometimes power comes with a great addiction to control, which is a hard thing to be rid of sometimes. I guess that’s why it’s difficult for me to speak to that work now. The book was part one of the Palinode Project, the latter part of which appeared only on the web. The entire set of poems was an education. By the end of it, I was taking risks that I never would have considered before. Deciding not to put part two into a book allowed me to relinquish some of that control.

The poems I am writing now are very different than those earlier ones, though I feel a little too inside the process to say how. I suppose in the early poems I was setting the stage for a poem to happen when I set down to write. Now, I feel like I’m just an old plump berry on a tree. My favorite mockingbird will come along and kick me, noodle with me, peck at me, and eventually I’ll pop and everything inside will spill out.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I have been writing poetry more naturally than fiction since I was quite young, however I studied both in college. In the early 2000’s I was living in Madison, Wisconsin and trying to write a novel after dropping out of grad school. I worked at hat shop, lived in a coop, and tried my damndest to write a linear novel. Only, it didn’t interest me. Straightforward narrative has always felt pretty boring for me to write. Eventually, I moved to Philly and started to break down the novel into patchwork—to try to see it geodesically, instead of on a linear plane, but it was hard, mostly because the text began as sequential. All this time I was writing poems, probably with more success than the fiction, though I didn’t considered it my medium. It took a while for me to stop drawing lines between poetry and fiction as if they were land blocks. Once I began to do that, I began to consider myself more a poet. Also, my poems include a lot of fictions, which helps.

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?
Lately I’m a more piecemeal writer. I find time to write often only in times of transit or transition. These scribbles often carry over in complete sections to a bundle document of words and jibberish that all feel related. Most of these notes stay exactly as they were written. Still, I sit down and read them to myself over and over again, editing out the parts that don’t belong, saving them for another poem, and adding more words or sounds. Lots of the transitions in my poems are initially sonic. The language begins as a part of one community, but is not restricted there. Words or phrases travel to other poems, also things mutate, get killed off or born. It’s very biological. Though I am always taking notes, it takes me a while to feel like I have enough material to gather into a poem. Of course, this is not a static answer, this is just the way I write right now.

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?
Right now, I write mostly discrete poems that eventually end up bonding with other poems so I can see some sort of shape around them. The boundaries can be nebulous though. Sometimes one shape can blend into, combine with or overshadow another. For better or worse, it’s like a lot of big banks.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
They are very important for me. I love and fear them. I fear them with love, probably. And yeah, they definitely help me edit and really hear what I’ve made. Currently, I’m trying to overcome my self-censorship with reading though. It’s slight, but I can feel it and it bothers me.

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?
Well, I’m not that deep in the theoretical aspects of writing or poetry mostly because I prefer to deal in real materials. If the question is modified to say, “what concerns are behind your writing” I can point clearly to my chief concern—WOMEN.

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 think the writer’s role is no different than the role of any other person, to live purposefully and not be a chicken-shit.

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

I haven’t had many people edit my poetry. Friends maybe, which is hard, and often I have to wait until their back is turned to accept the changes. I’m stubborn, very stubborn. I imagine if someone else were editing my poems they’d be a lot shorter (the poems, not the person). Also, I am incredibly sensitive, and my feelings get hurt when someone so much as walks too quickly past me.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
A couple of things come to mind.

“Don’t drink cheap beer” is one of them. My dad told me this when he dropped me off at college. Of course, I drank A LOT of cheap beer. But now that I’m too old to just shake off a hangover, I really appreciate that advice.

On a more artistic level, I heard someone once define art as, “something that is more than the sum of its parts.” This has been one of the most informative guidelines I’ve had as a poet.

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 do a million other things besides writing. I wish I were a diligent writer who prioritized poetry, but the truth is, a lot of other things take precedence sometimes. So my writing time is never planned anymore. I write when a feel a certain feeling that prevents me from doing anything else. Often this is during times when my mind is truly not occupied by other things—on the train or the bus, while walking, waiting in line, trying to get to sleep at night, or doing the dishes. I usually hoard away snippets of text in my mental storage space until I can get my hands on some paper.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Usually when this happens it’s because I haven’t been alone in a while. I put on the Hall & Oates song “One on One” and stay home and try to write a short story. This is always a failure. But I am really good at writing opening paragraphs. I usually come running back to poetry.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
All my favorite flowers—peonies, lilies of the valley, hyacinth, honeysuckle. Also some foods, pork chops, pot roast, mac and cheese with garlic salt on it, like my grandmother used to make.

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?
Oh yes, very much so. The truth is, I am a troublesome reader. I read very slow, start too many books at once and give up on many of them about a third of the way through. So lots of other things seep in. I love to watch modern dance. I just filled out a survey at a dance performance and had to rate myself as a “dance fanatic” because I’d been to so many performances in the past year.

In the fall I’m going back to school full time to get my masters in Speech Language Pathology. Studying neurolinguistics, aphasia and observing speech therapy treatments has really really changed everything about the way I think of language and syntax. Plant and animal biology has definitely informed my use of language too. There is a lot of talk about the close parallel between grammar and DNA sequences because both are discrete combination systems. I am currently reading a Steven Pinker book that goes there. Also, I am heavily influenced by my environment and location. I think every love poem I’ve written in the past five years has been addressed to Philadelphia. You can gather language everywhere in this city. I am nosey and often transcribe conversations I hear on the bus onto scraps of paper that end up crumbled in the bottom of my purse. Usually when I find them again, I can’t read them, so I have to gather the information I can and rewrite them. This really gets me going.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I love what other writers do. A lot of people come to mind, but probably the most important influences for me have been Joanne Kyger, Juliana Spahr, and Alice Notley.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I am embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest. Never been to San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, anywhere near there. It’s domestic to say it, but I would really like to see that part of the U.S.

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 wish I were a brilliant scientist doing innovative research on the brain. Funny, I have a very good friend who IS a brilliant scientist doing innovative research on the brain. I’m not certain, but I imagine she’d probably pick “poet” as her alternative occupation. Perhaps we should freaky friday this shit.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was much better at it than anything else. Also, I never could feel truly creative in any other medium, and trust me, I tried a lot of them-- years of dance, piano, theater, ceramics, etc. The only other art form I feel creative in is gardening.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Eh, let’s see, some of my recent favorites are Lesley Yalen’s The Beginning In and Rachel Glazer’s Pee On Water. I am really into some of the stuff that’s coming out of the Northampton crowd these days.

I just saw The King’s Speech and enjoyed it. I watched Altman’s 3 Women again not that long ago and sickly love it.

19 - What are you currently working on?
For the past year or so I’ve been collaborating with a painter named Nicole Donnelly. We travel through Philadelphia, and I take notes and she sketches, then we separate and make poems and paintings. We have a free poetry hotline you can call to hear the poems, though I definitely need to make some new recordings. We call the whole thing The God-damn Placefulness.

Lately, I’ve been preparing to move to Nashville for a couple of years and all the details of the move are taking over. I am going to spend some time in the country writing before going back to school though. I’m not sure what I’ll write yet, but I have some feelings toward things. Maybe I’ll write a children’s book or start a YA novel. Or maybe, some poems.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 questions: with Lesley Yalen

Lesley Yalen is a poet and writer whose work has been published in Invisible Ear, Skein, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, This Elizabeth, was published by Minus House Press in 2007. She is a member of Agnes Fox Press, a new chapbook publishing collective that's going to knock your socks off soon, and she lives above a neurologist's office in Northampton, MA.

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

First chapbooks are so wonderful, I think, because for many writers that's the first time they've seen their work as part of a cared-for and physically beautiful object. Before "This Elizabeth" it was pretty much all 8 1/2 X 11 print-outs for me. There is a whole additional level of aesthetic engagement added when the poems are laid out and bound in a book. When I first received a box of my chaps, I was just so into how they looked and felt. I kept stroking them.

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

Actually, I didn't. I started in the MFA program at UMass, Amherst as a fiction student. After a while, I switched to poetry. I've always loved both, and I think it was probably some contemporary lyrical fiction writers I was reading in my mid-20s--Jamaica Kincaid, Amos Oz, Michael Ondaatje-- who got me back into thinking seriously about writing. At some point, though, I just realized that my mind does not really work in terms of story. It works more in terms of sound, idea, and emotion-- and, yes, narrative-- but not story.

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?

My work is always a slow process. I tend to write long, interconnected sets of poems and it takes me a while to figure out what the arc of a given piece is going to be. There's a lot of reconsidering and revising and reconsidering and revising. It's not the poem-as-spontaneous-miracle paradigm, where the poet just sits down and it all comes out like a shining gem. Of course, I often wonder if I'm ruining my poems by overthinking them, but then that's like wondering if I'm ruining my personality by overusing it, and I just can't think about that.

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?

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

I definitely enjoy giving readings and also going to readings. I'm going to one tonight in fact. I live in Western Massachusetts and we have a fantastic poetry community here. There seems to be almost non-stop readings, often in non-traditional venues (a field, a rare Judaica shop, a living room), and they are often put on by people with creative visions for what a reading can be (I've seen a stand-up comedy routine, an acoustic music duo, and visual art paired with readings all in the past few months!) Readings are the best way to build community among writers. That said, I shake in my boots before I go up there.

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?

Oh god, let's see:
*can there be any truth given the relativity of everyone's subjective perspective?
*if so, what would that truth possibly mean?
*how are my most intimate emotions and experiences intertwined with the political, social, and historical context in which I live?
*how does my position in those contexts affect my vision, my ability to empathize with others, my language?
*what is the meaning of an individual's physical and/or spiritual limitations? In what ways are the limitations assets?
*how can contradictions and paradoxes become a site for unsticking things?
*what happens when I try to think through another person's language?

You know, fun stuff.

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?

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

Definitely essential. It can of course be difficult because my ego is always involved (read: entrenched) in my writing, but once I get over that I realize how lucky I am to have a not-me person's perspective on my work. What could be more valuable to me than a not-me? Nothing. Especially when that not-me is a caring and careful and engaged reader and writer. I've been very lucky to know and share work with several of those.

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

I'm paraphrasing my grandpa here: when deciding which room to sleep in tonight, pick the one with the best dreams.

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?

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

Alice Notley; Marlon Brando; Harpo Marx; the guy who walked the tight rope between the World Trade Center towers; Sam Cooke, Anne Carson, Inger Christensen, Juliana Spahr to name just a few. This week, I am also borrowing Mariano Rivera from my husband.

12 - What do you really want?

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?

(See #11.)

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

Well, it just so happens that many of my dear friends and loved ones also happen to be the most influential and important writers working today. I'm talking about famous writers like Brian Baldi, Seth Landman, Natalie Lyalin, Joshua Bolton, Lewis Freedman, Marie Buck, Jason Schwartz, Sara Veglahn, Leni Zumas. I am so incredibly lucky that these famous and influential writers just happen to be my friends (and, in one case, my husband.) Their work never stops urging me onward.

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

Speak/write another language fluently. I've studied Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin, but never achieved fluency with any of them. It's the typical American regret, and also mine.

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?

As uncool as it may be to say it, I think I would have been a therapist. I've always been really into thinking about people's motivations and frustrations and the choices they have as they face the things that come at them in their lives. I also like to sit in a comfortable chair. Who knows, I might still be one someday. Kim Rosenfield is a therapist and a badass poet, so I know it is possible.

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

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

Book: I just read a chapbook called Cymbals by a poet named Ben Estes. So good.

Film: Sherlock Jr., a Buster Keaton movie. I watched it on the Turner Classics network with my grandpa.

19 - What are you currently working on?

A few months ago, I wrote a series of poems which took language from Helen Keller's memoir and explored a relationship to language and self and people and ethics that I imagined as being both hers and mine. That is to say that as I wrote the poems, sometimes I was trying to access her and sometimes I wasn't, and in the end I feel like I created a kind of shared brain for the two of us. I'm doing the same thing now with St. Augustine's Confessions. He is an incredible person to be in communion with (pun intended). He is so meticulous and so heart-wrenching.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

Ongoing notes: late late September, 2009

Please remember what Susan Sontag said: be careful talking about meaning in literature. It’s always one step away from sociology, the lowest form of measurement.
-- Barry Callaghan, as quoted in Walrus (October 2009)

Why is it that I’m predominantly getting chapbooks from American publishers these days? Don’t Canadian publishers make chapbooks anymore? Will we see you at our ottawa international writers festival, happening this month, or the ottawa small press book fair, happening next, or the Toronto one, happening in December this year? And are you finally going to subscribe to above/ground press this year? And did you see this piece, the beginning of my “toronto memoir” (remember I kept posting bits of “McLennan, Alberta,” one I attempted from Edmonton, moons ago) on Open Book Toronto? I’ve been so damned insular lately; can anyone out there, perhaps, tell me anything going on that I might be missing?

Denver CO: Something that appeared recently in my mailbox is Lesley Yalen’s This Elizabeth (2007), published by Eric Baus’ minus house press.

Answering the phone is like having your
ticket torn. Having your ticket torn is a
dramatic act of entrance. Inside the
telephone is a tiny talker, a husband
who is not able to be desired and who
does not desire his wife though she is
able. The wife needs to be pressed upon
as she dies. The husband needs to stay
in Antarctica doing work that will
benefit many. Actors and actresses are
desirable because they are needless.
They are commonly up on screens that
don’t touch. (from “(three)”)

Writing ten extensions/sections, what makes this poem is how she doesn’t hold herself to spacing or structure, weaving and blending from section to section, a wandering decalogue of extravagant voices. Who is this Lesley Yalen?

This kitchen person spares some change for the street people who squat beside the health food store.

The street people dumpster-dive to supplement memory.

Pass and be passed, spare and be spared.

This kitchen person is sporadic, sometimes carrying so many shopping bags, sometimes concentrating on sidewalk cracks.

Sometimes she starts a conversation but skips out quick.

Other times she just clicks on by.

The specialist tells her he is not going to lie down when he discovers her cells are
dividing unchecked.

(It’s going to hurt.) (from “(One)”)

Athens GA: I like the small moments that come out of American poet Lily Brown’s new chapbook Old With You (Kitchen Press, 2009).

I NAME

something something,

to understand. A

temporary piece.

Thought, images

repeat. I skim

for feeling, no

literal intent.

But where are all these small moments going, heading? Poems of breath and halting thought, pushing ahead by going thoughtfully slow. I am intrigued by the poems of this Lily Brown, and am intrigued as to what she might do with a full collection.

To find out more about this title, author or press check out www.kitchenpresschapbooks.blogspot.com

South Boston MA: I got some lovely little chapbooks some time ago from Rope-a-Dope Press, including Mark Yakich’s What, Friends, Is A City? [see my review of his most recent trade poetry collection here] and Kate Schapira’s Case Fbdy., each small chapbook produced in numbered editions of less than one hundred. They’re lovely little books; should I just let the poems speak for themselves?

At night
one wants
what everyone
else has. At dawn
thousands of
legs will scissor
together and apart
and a couple
will be crushed
by a harried
ambulance.
It will not be
sad, true or false. (Mark Yakich)

Girl aged eight years

Old enough to swallow herself
girls seem to be prone
with heads downward. Attention
transfixes across the lumen
her obligations. Chores.
Like on Little House
on the Prairie Sundays
no work as possible
as folded stillness.
Staring. Aged. Enough.
Cure. Inhale one every
year for the rest of your
life. See how you’ve grown. (Kate Schapira)