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1. How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Writing this book changed my life, I think. Or my life changed as I wrote this book. When the earliest poems in the book were written, I was exiting a period of my life that was dense with gendered trauma that I wasn’t able to describe or investigate—in my writing or with my loved ones. By the time I finished the book, those experiences became less charged and more articulable. I’m not sure whether that happened because of the act of writing or whether those traumatic experiences just aged out of their charge. Either way, this book was there as my life changed. People who know the undergraduate writer I was or the MFA student I was or even the early PhD student I was might say the work in this book isn’t trying to gesture at experiences, to suggest things, as maybe I did previously. Instead the book clearly describes. I think that’s a change—a habitual gesture of new poets is to always find ways of saying without saying. This book taught me (or told me) not to do that anymore.
2. How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
As a kid, I was actually much more interested in fiction—it’s what I read and could imitate—but it quickly became clear that I was never going to finish anything that required any real follow through. I wrote a lot at school when I was supposed to be paying attention, and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for completing longer work. I’m not sure what my first encounters with poetry were, but I started writing it in middle school. I kept trying to write short stories into my first years of college, but completed them the way I completed other assignments—they were all last minute and half-assed. And it just never stuck like poetry did—I could write and complete poem after poem and fix them up later. That way of working was just more suited to the type of writer I am.
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 think, usually, when a project is beginning, I don’t realize it’s a project at all. I’m just thinking, “Well, this is a new kind of poem!” And the newness piques your interest a little, so you try to do something similar in the next poem and the next and on and on. And that becomes a project—or something like a project. Usually, in that stage of my writing process, I’m excited and poems are easy to produce. They might be the jankiest versions of the new work you’ll do, but they’re the most excited to you, so they’re quick. And those poems might need a lot of work later, but the poems that come after them, once you’ve learned whatever new mode you’re working in, need a little less.
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’m never really thinking about a book when I write a poem. I’m writing single poems that hopefully will connect to each other thematically or by their voice and sound. I recently described the process of writing a poetry book as making and then collecting—you create and then curate your own work, which means you have to treat it like you’re an editor looking in from outside, deciding what’s good enough and what goes well enough with what you already know you want. I’ve had to write many more poems than can fit in a poetry book so that I have choices between them, so I can make a book that feels cohesive and sturdy, as a piece of art.
5. Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love readings because they’re one of the only situations when writers witness the unvarnished reactions of their audience. I’m greedy for feedback, so I read poems that I expect will make the audience laugh or otherwise express themselves. I wouldn’t call this a part of my creative process, per se, but it is something that keeps me going, that inspires me and makes me feel I’m a part of a community.
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?
It feels like a lot of writers are asking why we write at all, in the face of the serious global concerns we all feel too puny to change. Does it matter whether you write the great American novel if our way of life is obliviated by climate change? If entire civilian populations are being obliviated by war? Writing as an art and a profession is having to deal with the ways it’s obsolete culturally (Americans read an average of 12 books per year and many read none at all) and obsolete functionally (can books be used to affect a cultural or political climate that requires massive corporate interests to funnel money toward or away from any cause or value-system or politician in order for that cause or value system to succeed or fail?)—is it callous to keep writing your little poems knowing they’re not for anything? Of course we can’t help it—humans are built to make stuff. And poets were more likely than money-making writers, I think, to know that their art doesn’t have to be for anything and to already have bemoaned their lack of impact, but I know I’m not immune from asking why, crying over it, and trying to address something in the art I make. Usually those somethings are the concerns I brush up against in my own life (I always think of the title of a poem by a friend, Sara Sams: “But Think, Are You Authorized to Tell It?” she asks). It often depends on the identity and the perspective of the reader, though, whether those concerns are considered political and theoretical rather than interior, personal, or private.
7. What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Poems are speaking to very few people, which means they can be as frank as they want. Maybe our very small role should be to speak very loudly, and in an annoying voice? I think of Solmaz Sharif’s amazing poem “Patronage” all the time, in which she critiques the system by which poets have to build careers (and depend, largely, on universities for support) and the ways it limits what we think we can say: “They [poets] step/in as one steps in/to a nursery and//quiet//calms the tantrum/attempts not to wake/the sleeping, the milkdrunk//and burped babe.” Of course, Sharif is a writer who is a great counterexample for that ultra-quiet, apolitical poet she describes.
8. Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Are people reticent to edit poets? I don’t think I’ve had an editor suggest large changes to my poetry. Maybe they know poets are especially prickly and will use our genre to justify even our most unhinged choices (speaking from my experience as a writer, not my experience as an editor—at The Iowa Review, our contributors in all genres are universally lovely).
9. What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I was just at a reading and conversation between Sally Ball and Ellen Bryant Voigt and Voigt said, to revise, make the poem ugly. If it’s ugly to you, you’ll be able to change it. I think this is a brilliant idea—and we really do depend on our impulse to “fix” the “broken” poem to fuel our revision efforts—but I also just liked that piece of advice on its own: “Make the poem ugly.” Why not? There’s nothing “good” (in any innate, intellectual, or moral way) about writing a pretty poem. We write pretty poems to show that we know what pretty is and to show that we can be pretty—and because we believe beauty gives pleasure. But I (we?) get pleasure out of ugliness too. I’ll be working on some ugly poems this year, I think.
10. How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
These genres serve such different purposes for me. Lately, I’ve been telling people that poems are a place of internal quiet in which I get to explicate what I think and feel without the invading presence of another mind. In conversation, I often (always?) feel myself distorting in order to serve what I believe the other person thinks and feels. This often gets me into trouble, as whatever I’m reflecting to them/expecting of them isn’t always (is never?) what they meant or wanted. In the poem, I’m in conversation with myself and am following, to me, my most authentic intellectual impulse instead of serving anyone else. Writing critical prose, on the other hand, feels like I’m applying my mind to someone else’s work and should, on some level, be serving their work first. I like writing criticism because it gives me an occasion to think really deeply about a book or poem—but it’s less about finding out what I think and more about practicing a kind of attention that I love to give to writing and art.
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 wouldn’t say I have a routine. Instead, I will beg, borrow, or steal any moment during which a poem arises. And the impulse to write a poem comes and goes. Over the last year, I wrote, maybe, the fewest poems of my life. I work from home and I suspect I just encountered less stuff, fewer things to make an image out of or to spark a bit of language. Since January, I’ve been writing about two poems per week. They happen when they happen—and that’s the luxury of being a poet rather than a prose writer—I scrawl something down in the car before going into the grocery store, if needed.
12. When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’ve been feeling devoted to Terrance Hayes for a little while—his new book, So to Speak, has taught me a lot about patterning and repetition, a lot about using pattern and repetition to make an impact on the reader (see his “American Sonnet for the New Year,” which begins the book). The speed and funniness of poems like that one inspire me to get going again when things stall out. I’ve also returned to Frank Bidart this year—he’s another favorite, and I’ve been reading a poem a day from his collected since January. I think having a practice like that helps poems come a little more easily—like priming your mind for later poetry use. Also, walking—writing and walking are accessory activities.
13. What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of rain in Arizona reminds me of my childhood in southern California.
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?
I really am a one-form girl, and mostly books made my book, but I also think my book came from the people—and the animals—that live alongside me. I also didn’t think I was engaged with the natural world, but since coming back to Arizona, I’ve been lucky enough to experience awe in the face of natural things. I think books come from that feeling too.
15. What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I always come back to Anne Carson, who I was introduced to as an undergrad and who I still love to think and write about now. Sylvia Plath was an early influence who is always popping up in my poetry. As I said above, Terrance Hayes is really important to my ideas about how poems work, why they work. Ghost Of is also a book that influenced me really deeply (I don’t say Diana Khoi Nguyen because I haven’t read her new book yet)—her ability to create a voice that exhibits to the reader/generates in the reader a certain emotional mode. Tommy Pico, Rachel Zucker, Bernadette Mayer, Morgan Parker are all swimming around in the same brain pool, for me. Mary Ruefle, Chelsey Minnis, Jay Hopler, on and on…
16. What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Everything, it still feels like! Invite me anywhere! I’ll be happy to get out of the house!
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 think I’d be a lawyer or in some other wordy job. Getting a JD and using it in the much more urgent ways one can use a law degree (vs. an MFA, which feels very useless at the end of the world) still sometimes seems attractive to me.
18. What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Really, there was nothing else. I don’t think there was anything else I wanted, or that wanted me.
19. What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Favorite books I encountered for the first time last year: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, Just Us by Claudia Rankine, Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party by Chessy Normile, Blackfishing the IUD by Caren Beilin, Repetition Nineteen by Mónica de la Torre, Aug 9 – Fog by Kathryn Scanlan, Spectral Evidence by Gregory Pardlo, and Person of Interest by Susan Choi. It’s still too early to tell about this year’s books. I also recently encountered Taste of Cherry, the 1997 film by Abbas Kiarostami, for the first time. I’ll take that one with me wherever I go now.
20. What are you currently working on?
I recently started writing poems in a more associative mode that are starting to cohere into something like a manuscript—many of the poems have ended up called “The Internet.” I’ve been thinking on those and trying to keep that impulse going. And I’m working on a review of a new novel for the Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin. And I’m trying to decide whether a verse novel I was writing is really a verse novel or if it’s just a book of poems. Lots of little things to tinker with. Lots of things to keep me busy.
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