On Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson’s Rendered Paradise

My review of Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson's collaborative Rendered Paradise (Berkeley CA: Apogee Press, 2024) is now online at Seneca Review.

essays in the face of uncertainties

One element I’ve appreciated is how well our two young ladies play together, making up games and stories and songs. We knew of this prior, but our appreciation deepens. Once we wrestle them off the tablets, our first couple of weeks included the television on in the basement, which quickly became background to their attentions. After a while, they stopped even bothering going downstairs at all, unless they were wrapped up in some complicated game involving forts or babies or Cinderella. How many times has our dining room table become centre-stage for one of their structures, or where they’ve self-determined a Lego city, a mound of drawings or some other invention? Today, self-slathered in sunscreen, they navigate the hose and their wading pool out in the backyard, occupying themselves for hours. I grew up on a farm, after all, so I very early on learned the benefit of managing my own time, wandering the fields and collecting stones. The last thing I want to do is micromanage the young ladies, although I do attempt to get Rose to draw daily in one of her notebooks, and report on her drawing. We’ve only managed this once, but I keep trying her. I check in on them, regularly. Or they come inside, seeking freezies. Little wet footprints on the floor of my office that run down the hall.

Another element is the array of stories that have drifted up, out of the ether, of comparable stories from days-gone-past. This is not the first time in memory that those in the world have lived through such a situation, even if some of the details might be slightly different. Public television offers a small tale of a centenarian who is living through the current pandemic, born during the lock-down of the Spanish Flu, her mother somehow managing solo throughout birth and her newborn daughter’s first few months. You can do this, the piece offers. You can get through this. In the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine, Emily Moon writes “How the U.S. Fought the 1957 Flu Pandemic.” Her short article begins:

In April 1957, a new strain of a lethal respiratory virus emerged in East Asia, caught local health authorities by surprise and eventually killed masses of people worldwide. Today, in the age of Covid-19, that scenario sounds frighteningly familiar—with one key difference. Maurice Hilleman, an American microbiologist then running influenza monitoring efforts at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, saw the problem coming and prepared the United States ahead of time. “This is the pandemic,” he recalled saying. “It’s here.”

This is not historically abstract in the way the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic might appear to us, but something, for numerous people, that occurred within living memory. To remember the 1957 pandemic, one might say, would put you disproportionally right in the path of Covid-19. Back then, there was notice, notification and response, and 116,000 Americans succumbed to the disease, although far more could have been killed. Over email, Bay Area poet Susanne Dyckman offers her own:

When I was a baby I had scarlet fever, and the Chicago Board of Health tacked a quarantine notice on our basement apartment door.  My mother’s not alive (gone too early) but I so wish I could talk to her about it, how she managed with an infant and a five year old, even something as basic as how she got groceries. All she ever told me was that we, as a family, were under quarantine (of course, somehow my doing?)  Later, still being a kid when she told me the story, I didn’t think to ask questions.  Now I’m beginning to see what it takes to manage.

According to family lore, my mother caught scarlet fever while babysitting, although I’ve no clue if there were any quarantines for her, still living at home with her parents, and four of six siblings. It was this that, according to family lore, affected her health and began the eventual loss of her kidneys, and her inability to have children of her own. Isolated incidents are never that, and there are lessons to learn from any situation. And yet, we can watch in real time as segments of the population refuse the lessons and warnings of history.

It is hard to look at those numbers and see, on the other side, individuals holding up hand-made signs with “I want a haircut!” With fear comes desperation. And there is little logic to, or argument against, desperation. Someone on Twitter suggests that of course there are those who consider haircuts, the casino and other short-term pleasures worth the risk. Because they’ve no hope for anything else.

essays in the face of uncertainties

Spotlight series #31 : Susanne Dyckman

The thirty-first in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer and Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber.

The whole series can be found online here.

Susanne Dyckman interviews rob mclennan at OmniVerse

I was interviewed recently by American poet Susanne Dyckman for OmniVerse. Thanks so much!

My ongoing list of interviews conducted with over the years (at least, the ones that live online) now lives here.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Susanne Dyckman

Susanne Dyckman is the author of equilibrium’s form (Shearsman Books), and three chapbooks, Counterweight (Woodland Editions), Transiting Indigo (EtherDome),and Source (above/ground press).  Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, most recently Touch the Donkey, Pallaksch, Pallaksch, and on the Kelsey Street Press website. She’s taught poetry at SF State and the University of San Francisco, and has been a finalist for the Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the EPR Discovery Award. Though she has lived in Chicago, Philadelphia, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Oakland, she now calls home Albany, California, where she hosts the occasional Evelyn Avenue summer reading series.

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 book changed my life in a very good way for one short evening. When my box of copies arrived at my doorstep, on the winter solstice of that year, I was thrilled.  Once that sense of euphoria passed (“It looks beautiful! I have a book!”), I had to go about setting up readings, sending out copies, and addressing all the business of book promotion, which was much less fun for me.  I would rather have been writing. But, there is deep satisfaction in having a first book appear.  There is a feeling of having more formally entered a writing community.  And, there is the hope that some one person will come across the book and find it of value.       

I see my current work as a continuation of what I’ve written in the past, sometimes surprisingly so.  I turn outward now more than I once did, though turning outward inevitably brings me back to an internal viewpoint. I have come to feel a bit more at ease playing with a variety of forms. At one point in my writing life it was important to spread my work across the page, using the page as a canvas.  More recently, I have used a variety of shapes for my poems.  Some work is scrunched up in a block-like form, some is left-justified, and other work again uses the whole blank of the page.  I don’t feel I need one signature. 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
My first memory of writing a poem is from a grade school assignment, but it was really in high school that I started to dedicate myself to the work.  My parents had taken me along on a visit to the home of one of their friends, and, incredibly bored, as teenagers so often are, I picked up a poetry journal that was in a basket by the side of a chair.  I read it, enjoyed it, and thought to myself, yes, I can do this too, and I want to do it.  That began my serious reading and writing of poetry.

I never felt much interest in writing fiction, though I have tried to write short stories and a memoir, with the result that both ended up feeling more like prose poems than anything else. I like the open-endedness of poetry.  I find it spacious.

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?
Writing projects generally start for me in a serendipitous way.  I’ll run across something, an image, another’s book, or, though less frequently, an idea, and feel compelled to respond. I have many false starts, but eventually find a project that is satisfying. 

Sometimes a first draft is just right, or only requires a bit of editing.  Another poem may have to go through several versions before I discover where I want it to land.    

I have taken notes, but never copious ones.   A line or two may come to mind.  I’ll write it down and save it, or discard it all together. I trust that even a promising line that eventually gets discarded is useful, and will reappear in another form at another time.  For one project I did some historical research so I could carry an understanding of the period into the work as I wrote.  But that was a first for me.  Generally I write from what I know, observe, or question.

My writing happens both slowly and quickly.  I can take forever to finish one poem, and then write several more in a very short period of time.  There is nothing consistent in my process.   

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?
I’ve never started writing with the idea of a book.  I might write one poem and find whatever image or impulse sparked it to be useful, and so I’ll write a second and third, ending up with a series.  But after a certain point I stop, not wanting to force the process, or to write more simply for the sake of volume.  Generally, when I’ve completed a certain number of pages, say 10 or so, I feel I’ve finished.  I don’t want to over-work what I’m doing.  I do admire poets who can put together a book-length manuscript that sustains one structure or theme, but I haven’t been able to do so.  That is, unless one considers theme in the broadest sense, that is, what my overarching poetic concerns are, and in that case, yes, I trust that somehow the work will come together.  It is in the process of arranging a manuscript that I most often see how seemingly different projects can be integrated into one book.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?   
At my first public reading my legs shook so uncontrollably I didn’t know how I was going to be able to finish.  Happily, that doesn’t happen any more.  I always agree to read when asked, and, as the day approaches, always wonder why I did so.  I am at heart very shy, so presenting to a group of strangers (or even not-so-strangers) can be challenging. Over time I’ve learned that a public reading has nothing to do with me as a person and everything to do with the poems.  That understanding frees me.  I am offering the poems to the audience.  And, if I feel the response is positive, I am pleased and encouraged. 

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?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a theoretical concern?  It sounds so compelling.  But what I am trying to do with my work is curiosity-based and intuitive. I am stringing together words (and sounds) in the hope I can convey something that is often pre-verbal.  We experience an instant response to the “other”, whether a person or image, that I am interested in exploring through poetry.  How many, or how few, words might it take to achieve that? 

In a broader sense, that is, of poetry as a whole, and if poetry can be spoken of as one thing, I can’t say that I believe there is, or should be, one current question.  The world is big, there are many poets, and poetry is plastic – it can be made manifest in different ways. I am not very interested in arguments as to it needing to have a specific concern or form, but enjoy, to varying degrees, the variety of approaches there are to putting words on a page, or to words spoken aloud.  Some, yes, I enjoy and appreciate more than others, but that doesn’t diminish those I like less. Debates about what constitutes poetry are often impassioned and interesting to read, but it seems to me we are promoting an economy of scarcity when we demand that one poetics be superior to another. 

A current question that comes to mind is the place of politics in poetry. Poetry that is overtly political can be important and move us and make us aware.  I also believe that I carry my politics into my writing whether or not the subject of the poem is political.  I think the same is true of spiritual views. That is, the poem comes from the poet and holds all the poet’s concerns.  A poem is likely not able to be all things to all readers, but then the same is true of other arts.  I can appreciate the art of both Monet and Eva Hesse, the writing of both Shakespeare and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.  Artistic skill and effectiveness come in different forms, or are apparent in a number of different forms.  

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? 
Yes, I think a writer has an important role.  But the term ‘writer’ encompasses a variety of genres, making the role not a singular one. I find the larger US culture (and perhaps those beyond the US as well) to be increasingly frenetic, and while I’m not at all opposed to a good frenzy every so often, the constancy of that pace impacts how I/we live.  A writer can stop time, in that the reader can take a moment to consider a story-line, our relationships with one another (specific or general) or simply experience pleasure.  Poetry in particular is a way to pause and step out of one’s self before stepping back in, and in the best of poetry, that stepping back in is of a slightly changed being. 

On a larger scale – that is of the whole planet – I do think a writer can broaden views, impart important information, and, hopefully, if this isn’t wishing for too much, sensitize us.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I don’t have an outside editor, though I have many poet friends who are kind enough to read my work and comment on it.  Am I missing something essential? 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Keep a sense of humor. And that was advice given to me directly.
                          
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
Critical prose is a bit daunting to me, as I do it so rarely. Since I do not, for the most part, exist in the academic world, my assumption is that there are others who do and who are writing plenty of thoughtful, critical pieces. The appeal of a well-written critical piece is that it can make you think deeply about a subject, or understand something you may not have prior to the reading.

I do think it would be good for me to try more critical writing, to make time for it. Yet, if I were to actually admit how ridiculously long it is taking me to answer these 20 thoughtful questions you’ve posed, I think I’d be well-advised to forget about taking on any writing projects of that sort.
  
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My son is grown, so I can now skip the morning challenge of making breakfast, packing a lunch, and getting him off to school. My day begins when I get out of bed and head straight to the kitchen to make coffee.  Once that’s done I sit at my kitchen table, look out the window, check my calendar (what am I forgetting that I have to do?), read the daily headlines, turn on the radio to check traffic and weather, and then open my journal to start writing.  I have a day job managing grants and contracts for a department of a local children’s hospital, so on weekday mornings I also watch the clock.  I give myself five minutes to write, which usually turns into 10 or 15, at which point I look at the clock again and start to feel pressed for time.  There is a glass door leading to my backyard, and a fig tree grows on one side of the back porch.  I stare at the tree, which I love, check the clock once more, and then get ready to leave the house.

I try to allow for some writing time every weekend, though that tends to happen in sprints, rather than as a set pattern.  

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Reading poems, so I can re-experience the pleasure.  Then I will look around my small office at art books, or some book that is not about poetry, and see if it might be a prompt.  If I’m still stuck, I will likely turn to a friend who knows my work and ask if she or he has an idea for me.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Coffee and sandalwood, with a hint of mildew (though California is experiencing a drought, I live in a perpetually damp area).

14 - 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?
Visual art, especially photography, has a strong influence on my work.  The challenge of translating a response to a visual piece into language is intriguing to me.  I am not interested in describing the visual itself, but rather using my reaction to it as a means to entering a poem.  The artist has created something that my eye takes in.  How do I move from what the eye sees to words on a page?  I don’t only write to the visual, but I do find it one way to begin working.

I don’t write much about nature or science, though there is a lot of work that beautifully incorporates both.  There are times when a natural setting can take my breath away. Still, I’m more drawn to the urban, both the internal and external life of a city.  And water.

I know that music has a strong influence on many poets, which of course makes perfect sense, as a poem is a type of song.  I love music, and might listen to it to feel enlivened, but I won’t listen to it as I write.  I have a worry that it will somehow interfere with what I am doing.  I think music is important as a way to attune the ear, but I’d rather carry the memory or echo of it with me to the page.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Two very different questions.

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kung Cha opened to me the remarkable possibilities of what a book can be, and articulates how I feel about language.  “Bit by bit. Commas, periods, the/ pauses.  Before and after./After having been.  All./Before having been.”  I recommend the book to as many people as possible.

The one poem that has been extremely important to my life outside of writing is Wallace Stevens' “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard”.  While Steven’s work has long been an inspiration, this particular poem is where I go for comfort.  I’ve revisited it, recited it in my mind, many times when I needed encouragement.  “After the final no there comes a yes”.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
What a lovely question. I’ll first give my fantasy answer.  I would like to live in a warm place by the ocean, to fall asleep listening to the sound of waves, or wake in the morning and see nothing but water on the horizon, sunlight bouncing across it.  The ocean is both comforting and fierce, and I would like to be right on its edge.   

On a more probable note, I’d like to do some work with literacy.  Reading is such an important part of my life, and I remember my excitement when I first deciphered the code of symbols printed on a page (yes, it was Dick and Jane). I think navigating this world without being able to read, or read well, must be incredibly frustrating.  Could I impart some of that excitement (and practicality) to others?  I don’t know for certain, but I imagine it as being satisfying.       

17 - 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 a child I thought I’d grow up to be a social worker.  I had read a children’s biography of Jane Addams and was inspired.   Having parent who were teachers, I thought that might also be a good path to take. As an adult, I have done some teaching, but no social work, though I’ve been working with social workers for a number of years.

If I were to do something else, were to have a completely different occupation, I would be a photographer.  I find photographs to be like poems, an attempt to capture something and hold it for a moment, to make the intangible tangible.  So, maybe that wouldn’t actually be an entirely different occupation, but it would involve a very different skill-set.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I always thought to have a signing voice like Aretha Franklin’s would be heavenly.  But, that’s apparently not in my cards.  The beauty of writing is it can be done anywhere, at any time.  I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to “be a writer”, though I did make a conscious decision to write.  What I might not be able to say aloud I can try to say on paper.   

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Great is a big word, and has me running to my bookshelves to look.  It’s too hard to choose, as if I’m being asked “which of your children do you love the most?”  But, to answer your question, the novel I’ve read most recently that I’d recommend is Lila by Marilynne Robinson.  

And the last great film?  That too is a tall order. I don’t go to movies on a regular basis, but not long ago I saw Birdman, and I thought it was very good. 

20 - What are you currently working on?
My latest work is what I think will be a long poem that comes out of daily morning writing.  It began as an exercise, another “let’s see what happens if…” adventure.  The process, so far, requires extensive cutting and editing, reducing several pages to one or two. But I’m enjoying it, if only because it is a new approach for me, something different from what I’ve been doing/have done with my other poems, and remains very open-ended.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Touch the Donkey supplement: new interviews with Pirie, Clark, Carr, Holbrook, Dyckman + Wagner

Anticipating the release next week of the third issue of Touch the Donkey (a small poetry journal), why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the second issue: Pearl Pirie, David Peter Clark, Julie Carr, Susan Holbrook, Susanne Dyckman and Catherine Wagner.

Interviews with contributors to the first issue, as well, remain online: Gil McElroy, Camille Martin, Pattie McCarthy and Eric Baus.

The third issue features new writing by Gil McElroy, j/j hastain, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, Susan Briante and D.G. Jones. And, once the new issue appears, watch the blog over the subsequent weeks and months for interviews with a variety of the issue's contributors!

And of course, copies of both the first and the second issue are still available. Why not subscribe?

We even have our own Facebook group. Isn't that grand?

Donkey photo kindly provided by Deborah Poe.

new from above/ground press: Ursuliak, Baus, Dyckman + Touch the Donkey

Braking and Blather
Emily Ursuliak
See link here for more information
$4

THE RAIN OF THE ICE
Eric Baus
See link here for more information
$4

Susanne Dyckman
Source
See link here for more information
$4

Touch the Donkey #2
featuring new writing by Julie Carr, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Pearl Pirie, David Peter Clark, Susan Holbrook, Phil Hall and Robert Swereda.
See link here for more information, as well as a direct link for ordering
$5

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.