Anna Vitale is a poet, a writer,
and host of the freeform radio program The Tenderness Junction on WGXC
90.7 FM (formerly on WFMU). She is the author of Detroit Detroit (Roof
Books), the pamphlet Our Rimbaud Mask (Ugly Duckling Presse), and other works
including Different Worlds (Troll Thread) and Unknown Pleasures
(Perfect Lovers). She earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.F.A. in Writing from the Milton Avery Graduate
School of the Arts at Bard College. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her
husband.
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?
I wasn’t sure I would
ever be able to make a book. Everything felt small or in pieces. I liked having
chapbooks and those were easy-ish to write. I could conceive of something that
size. It took me almost 10 years—of
having dreams about Detroit, recording them, and transcribing them—to realize I
could make a book “about Detroit.” And saying this—that the book is about
Detroit—always feels like it’s an insufficient description, which is why I like
the title.
Some of my recent
work is very much of the present. Several poems from the last couple years are
journal poems where I create a sense of order through the repetition of dates
and times, and there’s a wildness or looseness to the free-flowing associations
and line breaks. I am trying to keep track of something new or, if it’s not new,
at least it appears new as a result of the form. Other poems—poems I typed from
my journal today (3/7/20)—remain, like the writing in Detroit Detroit, indebted to music, listening to words and their
song, and I am dropping the dates so the poems can float, unhinged from the
date I composed them.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or
non-fiction?
Through poems my
mother read to me, songs my mother sang to me, dancing and the phrasing of dance
(tap dancing especially), and rap music. My father also plays the piano. So
really the short answer is my deep love for music and dance and my parents’
love for these things—they led me to 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?
I want to say “all of
the above” to this question, and I think that’s because it all feels true. For
example, I’ve had in mind for a long time that I want to write a book about my
mother. I have probably written half of it, or a little less than half, and I
still feel like I haven’t started it at all, which is simply not true. I wrote
the first 40-some-odd pages very quickly, and I don’t think I’ll edit them much,
but it feels like it’s taking forever and that there’s so much more work to do.
I also keep journals, always, and I forget that I write anything of value in
them. It’s possible that I have finally realized I can turn what I write when
I’m not thinking into poems relatively easily. I wonder if I hold onto an idea
that being a writer is really, really hard when, now that I’ve done it for so
long, it’s quite easy. Maybe the part that is hard is sharing the work and
finding a place for it beyond my journals and files.
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?
With the book about
my mom it is clear: I have to write this book. With the poems I’m writing now,
I had no idea that anything was coming together, but today—because I was
feeling desperate and on the border, once again, of being certain I’m no longer
a poet—I found a couple poems that I wrote that I like in my journal. I typed
them up and now I see that I could be writing another book, a book of poems,
about love, humiliation, wounds, and the desire to forgive.
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. The poems are most alive for me in performance, in relation to a live
audience.
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’m curious about
what we need to have a good enough life. This phrase “good enough” often comes
along with the idea of “the good enough mother” from the psychoanalyst D.W.Winnicott. I’ve read a tiny bit of Winnicott, but I’ve been in a hell of a lot
of psychoanalysis in order to figure out how to have a good enough life, and I
think poetry helps with that, too.
In my essay “The
Tenderness Junction,” published at Full Stop, I write about listening in the context of being a freeform radio DJ
and being in psychoanalysis. I’m certain that listening and living a good
enough life have something to do with each other and so, again, poetry has
something to do with those things, but I don’t think I can say what.
One more thing I can
say: how do we enjoy each other’s company without trying to make each other
into people we are sure we will like more? Maybe that seems like a crazy
question, but if it does, then it is, and that’s what I’ve got: crazy
questions.
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 probably have lots
of different ideas about this at different times, but since this is the time of
writing—now—then my answer is writers have a ton of different roles they can
play and as long as we don’t think our job is to hurt people—even though we surely
will because there’s no way around that 100%—we can do a lot: educate, play,
preach, mirror, expand, contract, hide. I think writers should try to appear as
often as they can—whatever that means—and I think that’s really, really hard.
Or maybe I just mean “show up.” It’s a writer’s role to show up.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult
or essential (or both)?
I think conversations
about my work are essential for me to becoming a more interesting writer and
thinker and person. I also know I need a very generous and thoughtful editor.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given
to you directly)?
It’s worth it.
(Leslie Scalapino wrote that to me in a letter. She was writing about being a
writer.)
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to
performance)? What do you see as the appeal?
At first, it was easy
because I never felt a distinction between poetry and performance. I was on the
youth poetry slam team in Ann Arbor when I was a senior in high school. (I
didn’t live in Ann Arbor; Jeff Kass—who’s a well-known teacher in A2—was extraordinary
and adventurous. He was our coach. We had so much fun.) Later, it was hard
because I felt like no one expected me to think about performance and I was
confused. I realized—but have had to keep remembering it—that you have to
educate people about your work if they don’t know how to read it or hear it.
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?
I commute to NYC from
the Hudson Valley two days a week to adjunct and my husband Bill Dixon makes me
breakfast on Monday morning so I don’t feel like garbage before the long
commute. I write in the thin Muji notebooks because they don’t make my pack
weigh a lot. I write when I can right now. Suddenly, I’m trying to do so much
more personally than I ever was before: be a good partner, buy a house, have a
family, start a new career (to get out of adjuncting)—writing is both on my
mind a lot but I’d like my mind to be more of writing than on writing.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for
(for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I let the blank page
do the talking: what do I see? what do I feel? what’s there? I can start
anywhere. (It doesn’t always work, but I go back to that always.) This is,
perhaps not surprisingly, very psychoanalytic! And, happily, it often leads to
surprises—not like jack-in-the-box surprise, but mild, subtle, informative, and
pleasant enough surprises.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Today? Pork chops.
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?
See #2.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or
simply your life outside of your work?
Adam Phillips, the
British psychoanalyst and writer: he’s very interested in what interests him
and he makes a point of conveying how important it is to let ourselves be
carried away by what delights us, not what we think should delight us or even
the ways in which we can delight ourselves with the lies we tell about what
delights us, but what do we actually get pleasure from? Also, I have some very
good friends that are writers whom I love who talk to me on the phone and when
we talk I think it feels like we are writing our lives together. I am thinking
of Lewis (Freedman) and Rob (Halpern) in particular. I love the way they think
and write and their courage often renews my own.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Finish my book about
my mom and write a book with these newer poems. Then, I’d like to write a
children’s book. I’d also like to write something with Bill about bridges. Very
early in our hanging out, we had an exciting conversation about Marilyn Monroe,
Heidegger, and bridges.
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?
I’d like to be a
modern dance choreographer.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
My mom got angry and
took me out of my dance school.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great
film?
I really enjoyed
reading Anne Truitt’s Daybook. She made me want to be with process,
made me feel envious, in a good way, of artists with daily practices. She’s
always looking at what interests her.
Last night, Bill and
I watched The Shape of Water, finally!
It’s so good. I want more movies about surprising kinds of love.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Trying to learn how
to relax. Oh, you mean in terms of writing? Trying to find ways to surprise
myself and everyone else.
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