Rae Gouirand, The History of Art

I am terrified of the renderings of developing female bodies—the books my friends have in their houses, the figures that grow taller as they transform into something sexed, seemingly more naked as they age in the diagrams, as hair grows, as lines change. What is it that shows through, by 18 or 19, that is readable on the ideal? Some kind of musculature, some kind of possessedness. Underneath my clothes there are bruises from her hands, the angles of the walls in our house. My best friend can change her clothes in front of me. I do not want anyone to see my body, my acceleration towards something I have no model for. What is a woman? I was supposed to be a boy. My name was picked out.

I am fascinated by the prose and the prose explorations of California poet Rae Gouirand, through her chapbook The History of Art (Madison WI: TAR Chapbook Series, 2019). Composed as a suite of untitled prose poems, the fifty pages of The History of Art is a deeply intimate lyric essay-poem on beginnings, loss and the physicality of sex, gender and the body, written as a raw and precise exploration of how emotions are tied to the body through thoughtful, meditative passages. She writes:

The first weekend she stays, still trying to figure out whether she can make me shy, the question: what is sex about for you?

How I float—

the truth

There is something comparable to Anne Carson in how Gouirand approaches writing the physical, sensual and sexual self, and her connection to both a lover and to language itself: “It is incredibly important to draw lines around words.” Gouirand’s work is both clearly narrative and lyrically musical, set in stunning passages of prose that can’t easily be described but can only be absorbed. In an interview conducted by Annah Omune Sidigu for ZYZZYVA: A San Francisco Journal of Arts & Letters (posted February 26, 2019) around Gouirand’s full-length Glass Is Glass Water Is Water (Spork Press, 2018), Sidigu writes that Gouirand’s work “explores relationships, intimacy, the body, and the tension inherent in wanting to be understood without having to be explicit.” That description could easily be associated with this work as well, as Gouirand writes:

It’s impossible to enter eros without entering loss, A. suggests—something about the erotic and the beautiful being contingent upon inevitable break. I expect to make some kind of deeper sense of this beneath my skin. Where I used to make circles between my thumbs and forefingers and overlap them to draw how much of a circle erupt between two things, I now avoid reaching into the air to gesture. It’s like I reach a place where I expect a loss, expect it to repeat itself, stop reaching for its opposite. Do I even understand what language is? If a word is not a hand, what reason have we to speak?

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Roberto Montes

Roberto Montes is the author of I DON'T KNOW DO YOU, named one of the Best Books of 2014 by NPR and a finalist for the 2014 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from The Publishing Triangle. His poetry has appeared in The Volta, Guernica, The Literary Review, Whiskey Island, and elsewhere. A new chapbook, GRIEVANCES, is forthcoming from the Atlas Review TAR chapbook series.

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

Publishing has so little to do with poetry it is important to undergo it every once in a while. I don’t mean this to sound negative; it was mostly a positive experience for me. But there is so much push and clamor for publication in the culture of MFA’s and fellowships that we never have any time to discuss what it actually means. Both for the work and for the poet. What do you gain and what do you lose? The most concrete thing I gained was the muted respect of my psychiatrist after my book showed up on the NPR end of the year list. A person stands to lose a lot if they allow that kind of valuation to swallow them. I’ve seen poets win an award or get a publication and then begin chasing that same kind of success by reproducing the works that got them there. Some people call this ‘finding your voice’ but, in my opinion, the voice you find in those situations is rarely your own.

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

By accident! I took an introductory poetry workshop in undergrad taught by the amazing poet Rebecca Morgan Frank. My original concentration was fiction but after that class I switched to poetry. It helped that my fiction was terrible.

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?

You’ve hit a sore spot. For the first book all my poems came in short bursts nearly fully-formed. Over time I began to write longer, sprawling pieces that drag on for days. I tend to edit as I write so it’s sort of a back-and-forth as the lines go on. It is like a colony of ants building a bridge with their bodies. I oftentimes have no idea where a poem is going until I hit the other shore. And then, just like that, it’s over.

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?

In the past I’ve stumbled upon engines more so than single poems. For example, I became infatuated with spam for a period of time—the way they so expertly prey on our insecurities and clotted hopes—and that led to 30 or so poems. In the first book I happened upon the phrase “One way to be a person is” and that led to a few poems. I’m in an awkward in-between, really. I write series that are too short to be books but too numerous to be one-offs.

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

I am a ham so I love reading. I do admit, however, that when I read I view myself as first and foremost a performer of sorts. It’s not that I think “serious” poetry can’t be shared in a public space but when I always choose poems to read that I think are engaging and can be performed. It is strange because I have a few poems that I genuinely like but will never read because I don’t think they’re suitable to that environment. The written word plays with a different affective space than something spoken. I think both are interesting and have their merits. But they should not be confused.

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 do not think poetry can answer anything. Not to be gooey, but, I think poetry operates in purely in an interrogative affective space. I try not to engage in theoretical concerns because I believe that can lead to a strangling of that space in a way that helps no one. The closest thing that I have to a theoretical concern is the belief that good poetry exists in such a way that it saps power from the powerful and gives power to the powerless.

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 should write. I privilege poetry over the poet so I don’t concern myself so much with how an individual should act or what role they should occupy. As a rule, though, whatever role a poet feels they should have in the world is probably the wrong one and I encourage them to avoid it at all costs.

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

A good editor is invaluable. The further from you they are aesthetically the better. When you are reduced to pleading “but that’s not what I was going for” it really forces you to view the work in a manner you wouldn’t have if your editor just ‘got it’. Sometimes I think I use aesthetics as an excuse for laziness or to enter the poem and ham it up. Someone who doesn’t share your inclinations can bend your poems in really interesting and necessary ways.

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

            “Another poet’s success does not take from your own. So fuck it.” (paraphrasing)

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 write in-transit, mostly. I used to have an hour train ride to and from work every day that I dedicated to writing and editing. It was amazing! I recently moved, however, and my commute is much shorter so I’m having difficulty writing as much as I used to. Writing is such a superstitious act it is so strenuous when you are forced to change your rituals!

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

            Fear.

What fragrance reminds you of home?

There’s a particular dish my grandmother would make: picadillo. My partner and I are vegetarian so when we make it we use veggie ground beef but, somehow, the smell of the spices still rings true.

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 have a great interest in the lives of mathematicians. I feel a strong connection with those who work for years to discover the mechanics of reality using only inscrutable symbols.

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

A few poets who invigorate and inspire me: Jenny Zhang, Natalie Eilbert, Wendy Xu, Sara Woods, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Eduardo Corral, Carrie Lorig, & Rigoberto Gonzalez.

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

Realize myself in such a way that, when I’m done, I can simply unlace my body of existence.

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 have no idea. From a very early age writing was something that I bent toward. I cannot imagine an existence other than the one I have. Sometimes I imagine what it might be like for people who don’t have poetry but then I freak the hell out and am forced to imagine something else. 

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

            ^ ^ I never had a choice.

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

            The Feel Trio by Fred Moten helped me greatly during a difficult time.  

What are you currently working on?

            I am working on a full-length manuscript and editing a chapbook, Grievances.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

short story: Character sketch

             The days dragged on, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

                        Paul Auster, Man In The Dark

1.

What frightens us most isn’t death, but its result: absence. Memory shapes and makes us, constantly shifting and changing. We are never the same for very long. If humans the only animal with a connection to even the concept of history, how couldn’t absence overwhelm? We dream up vampires, ghosts, the zombie apocalypse.

The dark side of longing. We won’t allow our dead to disappear.

From Romanian folk tales, we learn that suspected vampires were buried in rice-packed coffins. If the dead were to rise, they would first be compelled to pause, to count every grain. The cemetery caretaker would have time to act, decapitate the corpse with a shovel. Separately, bury the head.

These stories fail to explain why vampires have such innate compulsion, or how a craving for blood relates to numbers. A possible blood count. On Sesame Street, the purple-skinned Transylvanian, Count von Count, rolled numbers off his felt tongue with ease. More often, without invitation, or ability to stop. Obsessed.

For the record: I hate the zombie apocalypse. If there is an apocalypse, it will come from the living.

2.

At the National Gallery, I stare into the skin of a painting. I stare into layers of oil.

The landscape inside a cat’s head.

Delilah’s scissors and Samson’s hair. Like St. Patrick’s snakes, his hair may have been metaphor.

I ease toward the basement galleries, the permanent home of the Inuit exhibits. A hand-held knife swims through the flesh of a harp seal, providing not just for the hunter, but for the village. Black face and silver-grey, the seal bleeds, pencil-drawn. Fixed.

Neil Armstrong, who takes that first step on the surface of earth’s moon, now and forever. Our sun, Sol, most likely knows it’s a star. It’s we who have skewered perspectives.

Small, so small, so very small.

3.

I have yet for my father to offer his take on the birds and the bees. Thirty years late. Now that my son is eleven, I want to have an idea of what I should tell him.

            A knowledge discovered through trial. I don’t want to frighten the boy.

            On my usual Friday, I collect him from day-camp, held at a youth centre deep in the village. This was his mother’s idea. When I arrive, twenty-five children are jumping in place, singing songs about Jesus. The young woman in charge wears a hula skirt over hers, and one of the teenage staff is dressed like a pirate.

            What have hula skirts and pirates to do with Jesus?

I’m uncomfortable with such blatant indoctrination. Shouldn’t one be able to impart a moral centre to children as example, and not through repeated folk tales of a Jewish man some two thousand years ago who may or may not have existed?

I wouldn’t exactly offer you up as example, his mother chides.

4.

Moira, my second wife, hand-picks a paperback copy of How to Take Charge of your Fertility. I wonder, who is in charge of it now?

She responds: this is entirely the point. Her eyes sing: shut up, now.

This, a position I did not expect to be in, twice. The distance is startling. The distance one travels and has travelled.

I want to have a baby, she punctuates. What I already knew.

5.

A single newspaper column announces that Jim Henson puppeteer Jerry Nelson, the voice of Count von Count, has died. One more.

In a box by his half-a-week bedroom, books my son has outgrown. Goodnight, moon. Moira says we should keep them.

In Drowning by Numbers (1988), Peter Greenaway wrote that after the first hundred deaths, they begin to repeat.

We refuse to allow the dead their rest. Respite. An urgency, as Greta Garbo’s final possessions fall into auction, selling her intimate fragments, twenty-two years after her death.

Perhaps we never die. Perhaps this is the point.

6.

My grandfather, who carved pieces of wood into smaller, smooth pieces of wood. By the end, we were less sure what he was making.

Perhaps so in love with the form that results weren’t as relevant. The hours he spent on the front porch.

Within his carved bubble, my grandmother called it.

Reading my late afternoon newspapers at the pub, I see the sweetest looking young woman in a floral print dress stroll past bay window. She is summertime, blissful. In her left hand, fresh broccoli.

7.

8.

A future in which, Lynn Crosbie writes in the Globe & Mail, people would die again and again, only to live forever. An elegant thought, excised from a longer quote.

Sesame Street, ad infinitum. Late-night Turner Classics, Garbo smiles, Garbo stares and Garbo laughs. Garbo withholds, for her protection.

            At the coffeeshop, the remains on the bay window of what I can only hope from a spray bottle. What could be a sneeze.

The night of the August blue moon, Neil Armstrong’s funeral. Later in the evening, a television commercial for memory foam, the effect of a right hand pressed into a mattress. Memory foam was invented, narration tells, after the first man walked on the moon.

Neil Armstrong, forever taking first steps on the dusty surface.

            The world shapes itself to your absence.

[originally appeared in Atlas Review #2]