Posts Tagged ‘Zachary Schomburg’

Snapshot: Amy Lawless

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

I first met  Amy Lawless in 2005. She had recently moved to New York City from Boston and I from Portland. We were both entering the MFA program at The New School. It was exciting and terrifying in all the best ways. Post-graduation we eventually found ourselves living in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. There were brunches, late nights, and a seemingly endless amount of readings all over the city. Amy now lives in the East Village and I in Miami. Time passes; things change. Earlier this year, Amy’s second collection of poetry, My Dead was published by Octopus Books. I decided it was time to catch-up with Amy via email to chat with her about the transition between first and second books, working with Paul Violi, where her poems originate, and a host of other things. Enjoy.

“See The World For What It Is”*

 SK: Hi Amy, sometimes it seems like it was only yesterday that we were sitting in Paul Violi’s workshop. Other times, it feels like that was a lifetime ago, you know what I mean? So much has happened since then, like the unfortunate passing away of Paul, as well as the publication of not one, but two poetry collections by you. Thanks for agreeing to take the time out to answer some of my questions.

AL:  Thanks Steven!  I am delighted that you asked me. Yes, I think you were one of the first people I met in NYC.  You may not know this, but Paul’s wonderful workshop was the first poetry class I’d ever taken in my entire life.  I had moved to New York one week beforehand from Boston. I was very scared.  I didn’t know how to act in a workshop.  You, however, didn’t seem scared.**  You seemed chill.  Yes, so much has happened since then….

SK: You recently had your second book, My Dead published by Octopus Books. What was the biggest difference between writing and publishing Noctis Licentia and My Dead?

AL: They were two somewhat different experiences.  I wrote about half of the poems in Noctis Licentia while in graduate school. The poems took shape during those two years and the year that followed.  I had that built-in community of readers (like you!) in classes and informal friendships.  I cared A LOT about what people would think.  I thought I was a funny poet. That I had to write funny poems. But life was funnier then.

Writing My Dead occurred from 2009/2010 – 2012.  I certainly showed my poems to a lot of friends, curious what they would think and say and react, really curious, but this time the fire came from within and not without, that is without a formal structure of being in a school setting.  I had to write these poems, this was not school, this was survival.

SK: Since your book is titled, My Dead let’s talk about death for a bit. The first section of your book “Elephants in Mourning” was written after the passing of some of your relatives. Can you talk a little bit about the creative process of dealing with the grief and sadness that comes with losing family, that is an extension of your blood?

AL: Sure. Between 2007 and 2009, my uncle Ed died of emphysema at an age too young, my grandmother Evelyn (my mother’s mother) passed away, and my step-grandfather Marty died (Evelyn’s husband).

I eulogized each of three family members in the churches attended by family members. I was the “writer” in the family.  I felt I did a good job, I wanted my family members to be honored with my words. I worked really hard on these eulogies despite the short period of time one has to do these things (like 48 hours).

Of those three family members, only my grandmother Evelyn was related to me by “blood.”  However, Marty was my grandfather – he married my grandmother, my Nana, before I was born.  I always thought he was so damned cool for insisting we (my sisters and cousins and I) call him Marty. Felt adult. He was really smart, kind, and had great stories about World War II, monkeys, the radio, Mohammed Ali, the U.S. Government, where he worked for a long time.  I respected him, and loved visiting him and my grandmother in both their house in Jamaica Plain (Boston), and their house in Cape Cod.  My very image of the beach has been formed and informed by these summer trips.

After Marty died, after the third of these three deaths, the third of these three eulogies, I cried a lot. I couldn’t sleep. I went to my doctor and said I wasn’t sleeping.  She asked what was going on. I told her the third of three deaths.  She put me on a low dose anti-depressant.

I didn’t write a poem for a whole year. Or more specifically, I wrote two poems.  I was totally blissed out, checked out.  I read, attended poetry readings, I covered my sorrow with a pill every day.

After a year, I went off of the drug.  I was happy to do so.  I wanted to know what feelings felt like again.

A few weeks after I went off the drug in the summer of 2010, I was just sitting home watching nature documentaries and Youtube videos. I watched elephants mourning other elephants and I came to feel an overwhelming feeling of empathy and sorrow.  I wrote the whole poem in that one day.  (However, I edited it for a full year.)

I’m glad to have my feelings back.

SK: Paul Violi was a special poet who cared about his students and the poems they wrote. What was it like having Violi as a mentor and what has he meant for you as a poet?

AL: Paul was the most generous of mentors.  He was kind, wry, hilarious, and we got along famously.  A kindred spirit. We would meet every other week at the New School in the courtyard where people would smoke cigarettes.  I don’t smoke cigarettes, but we’d usually just shoot the shit and catch up for a while.  He would tell the most amazing stories.  I’ve written on Paul and his impact on me before. Then we’d wander over to Murray’s Bagels on 6th Avenue.  Drink espresso, talk about poems, laugh our asses off.  Well that’s how I remember it.  After Paul died I went through some old emails.  You know, almost afraid to let the tips of my fingers find them.  And guess what? He was far more critical than I remembered. He wanted me to be reading more poetry, and he was totally right! He didn’t think I should use any pop culture references in my poems, and wasn’t afraid to raise his eyebrows at a poem that had no business existing.  He was able to say so much without saying anything.

So basically, it was the best mentor experience possible: inspiring and generous.  I still sometimes have conversations with him about poems in my head.

SK: Those of who have been lucky enough to know you are quick to realize that your poems really do feel like Lawless children ushered into the world: they are witty, quirky, funny, smart as hell, mischievous, do not shy away from uncomfortable “truths”, and are aware the world is a messy and often awful place, yet remain cautiously optimistic. So tell us, where does a poem begin for you?  Do you set out to write “funny poems”, or do the poems take on a life of their own?

AL: This is a really wonderful question, Steven, and I’m humbled to be characterized as in any kind of close proximity to my poems. I never set out to do anything.  My chest opens up and the alien babies come forth. I am only a shell for some monsters.

I have a little nephew named Freddie.  He’s 17 months old and he does this amazing thing where he points to things that are out of place: a flower without half its petals, an owl picture absent of its head, a lamp not in use, a book not being read, a star not in the sky.  I sometimes do that too, but my pointing might be sitting down and writing a poem.

SK: Since the release of your book you’ve managed to hit the road and do some readings. Where did you go? Do you have any upcoming readings?

AL: Oh holy shit I did.  I had two readings at AWP Boston.  Then I went to Portland, Maine with James Gendron, whose amazing and hilarious book Sexual Boat (Sex Boats) came out from Octopus Books the same day as My Dead, and Zachary Schomburg. Mathias Svalina also came with but he didn’t read poems.  Mathias and Zach made me laugh so hard I almost wet my pants in Maine.  They’re a real comedy duo.  Then all four of us read for the Triptych Reading Series with Brandon Shimoda and Dot Devota. Dot read the most amazing poem I think about rather often. Then James Gendron and I drove to a bunch of places in a rental car. We read at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly in Montreal, Flying Object, in Hadley, Massachusetts with Ish Klein.  Then we came back to Brooklyn and read at the Stain of Poetry Series hosted by the lovely Jenny Zhang with Nadxi Nieto and Leopoldine Core.  Then we drove to Providence and read for the Kate Shiapara’s Publicly Complex series. Then we read in Philadelphia, hosted by Daron Mueller at Molly’s Books.  Finally, we read with Matthew Zapruder and Sarah Rose Etter at Three Tents in Washington, DC. It was really fun going on tour with James. I feel like he’s the brother I never had, and he’s a damn amazing poet.  Since then I’ve had some readings in NYC that were really great.  All told, I sold some books and met some really interesting characters and I slept on some couches.

Upcoming: I am going to North Carolina to read for the So & So Reading Series hosted by Chris Tonelli on Saturday June 15 with Lauren Hunter, Christine Kanownik, and Alina Gregorian.  I’m also reading for something Book Camp somewhere in either Oregon or Washington from August 16-18, also with James Gendron.  After that? I’ll be reading a collaborative poem with Angela Veronica Wong at the Best American Poetry gala launch on September 19.

SK: What’s next or what are you currently working on?

AL: I have been writing prose poems with the same title, “The Secret Lives of Deer.”  I also have a manuscript called “EMPIRE” that’s not so much about Roman Emperors as it is about me. I should probably send it to some friends to have them read it.  I am writing some book reviews and essays.  Oh, I am also collaborating with the amazing Angela Veronica Wong.  I recently reviewed Ben Fama’s Mall Witch for BOMBLOG, which was an interesting intellectual exercise. It’s fun and sweat-inducing to write essays and reviews, so I’m doing more of that.  I want to sweat more.

I decided it would be fun to do a second Snapshot with Amy, asking her primarily silly questions, because why not?

Snapshot with Amy Lawless pt. 2

“I Refuse To Be The Joey Tribbiani Of Anything”

SK: Would you rather be in the cast of Friends, Gossip Girl, or Cheers?

AL: That’s a trick question.  You know I’m from Boston so I’d say Cheers.  However, the idea of living or constantly inhabiting a BAR is icky.  Having everyone know your name is lovely but too intimate. Therefore, I’d like to say Friends because everyone falls in love in the water fountain during the opening credits, and I want to fall in love.  Oh wait. Joey Tribbiani, voiced by Matt LeBlanc, doesn’t find love.  I refuse to be the Joey Tribbiani of anything.

SK: Amy, you caught me! It was totally a trick question. I thought for sure, you’d say Cheers- haha!

SK: Who or what were you in your past life?

AL:  I have no idea.

SK: What is your spirit animal?

AL:  Crow.  Read about it and find your spirit animal here.

SK: Would you rather be a puma or snow leopard?

AL: Snow leopards are prettier.

SK: If you were in a band would you be the lead singer/rhythm guitarist, lead guitarist, bass player, or the drummer?

AL: All the instruments.

SK: Ideal vacation? Cabin in the mountains or luxury hotel with beach-front access?

AL: Can it be a cabin on the beach instead?  I’m always at a luxury resort in my own thoughts.

SK: Would you rather be Wonder Women, Supergirl, or She-ra?

AL: She-ra?

SK: Would you rather be a famous unicorn or salty old dragon?

AL: Dragons know a lot.

SK: Romantic lead in a comedy, crazy killer in a Tarantino-type flick, or that “one” in a sci-fi feature who inspires hope by swearing earth is out there and you’re going to lead them to it?

AL: You must come with me.  The meteor is going to hit. This is your last chance. Don’t you see? Don’t you see? ….[heaving heaving breaths] Tell me. Tell me when was the last time you saw the sun with your own eyes?  [Slaps giant steel goggles off of the head of Krinld] THE EYES IN YOUR HEAD!  You’ve all been under the thought-blasts of Gzianz for too long.  We have to get out of here. USE YOUR EYES.  We have two hours to get to the ship. After that it’s over.  You can kiss your sweet leach stars good bye! 

SK: Astrological sign?

AL: Pisces, the astrological sign closely associated with death. It is the last sign.

SK: Final question, if you were a tree would you be a deciduous or a coniferous?

AL:  I don’t believe in coniferous trees.  I would have to be a deciduous tree because I believe very much in the changing of the seasons, in leaves falling.  These leaves turn red and yellow and orange and brown and express their death in ways I can’t deal with—it’s too beautiful and poignant. When leaves fall we can look at them on ground and know that the passage of time exists and is real, and oh look you have a grey hair.  Oh look your time is limited. Oh look, the water in the glass I’ve left on the counter is lighter because the water has evaporated.  Oh look.  Coniferous trees don’t provide ME this kind of opportunity for self-reflection.  After all, it’s all about me.

 

* The title comes from a line in Amy’s second book, My Dead (formatting mine).

** I had taken some poetry workshops at Portland State University, thanks to the kindness of Michele Glazer, but was also very scared, just better at faking it (ego and all that stupidity!).

 

Amy Lawless is the author of the poetry collections Noctis Licentia and My Dead. She has been named a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She teaches writing in New York City and blogs at amylawless.blogspot.com.

Steven Karl is an editor for Coldfront Magazine. His first book, Dork Swagger, is forthcoming from Coconut Books in the fall of 2013. He lives in Miami, FL.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in features


Snapshot: Jenny Zhang

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

SK:  Hi Jenny. Congrats on your first book, Dear Jenny, We Are All Find. How long did you spend writing this book?

JZ: Hi Steven! It took about two years. The first half of the book was mostly written when I was finishing up my MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the second half of the book was written when I was living in the south of France.

SK: If my memory serves me correct, you attended Iowa’s MFA program for fiction writing? Did you also take poetry classes there? Was there much of an overlap between the poets and fiction writers?

JZ: Your memory is a fine servant! Yes, I went there for fiction. I took a few poetry seminars while I was there, but being the lazy and easily intimidated person that I am and always have been, never took any of the seminars very seriously. I also took a translation workshop at the International Writing Program (IWP) and spent much of the semester translating the poems of the brilliant (& under-translated) Chinese poet, Han Bo.

If you go to Iowa for fiction writing, you can’t take poetry workshops, and vice versa, but I don’t get the sense that a lot of people would want to take workshops in the other genre. When I was there, it felt like there was a sharp split between poets and fiction writers—both intellectually and socially. That’s kind of a grand statement, and maybe a damning statement too. Then again, my powers of observation may be mutilated by my own lack of imagination. Maybe other fiction writers at Iowa had secret poet lives that I didn’t know about, just like I had a secret poetry life that no one knew about when I was there.

SK: I love thinking about mysterious people carrying on secret poetry lives! Speaking of not-so-secret poetry lives, many poets struggle to find a home for their first books; did you enter a contest? Or if not, how did you find a home with Octopus?

JZ: I did! I submitted a manuscript during Octopus Books’ open reading submission period in April. My boyfriend at the time—who was/is a poet—was doing it, so of course, I wanted to do it too. It was one of two places I submitted my manuscript to, and the first poetry contest I had ever entered.

SK: Many poetry books that attempt to deal with identity and ethnicity seem to encapsulate a particular narrative which sometimes falls prey to over-telling. Identity is at the core of this book and what makes it so interesting is that being Chinese functions as a “fixed” identity, but this gets mixed up and complicated within the identity of “female” and how one, in turn, identifies and/or rejects an identity which makes your book of poems a wondrous mess that feels so alive, unique and fresh. Can you unpack some of these narratives and ambitions of your book?

JZ: You know, this thing happened to me when I was living in Iowa City that was really upsetting. I was at a Melt Banana concert with my boyfriend and at some point when Melt Banana was setting up, these two drunk girls started talking to me and asking me if I was in the band. It probably seems like a totally innocent question, but the thing was that Melt Banana is a noise rock punk band from Japan, and my mind started immediately cataloging and whirring through all the times when someone asked me an “innocent” question like, “But where are you really from?” or like, “You’re Japanese right? No? Chinese? Korean?” And in the context of feeling like my very existence was an invitation for strangers to comment or to make assumptions about me, it was annoying to have to talk to these two drunk white girls, who were like, “Are you sure you don’t play in the band?”

I wanted to be like, “No bitch, do you think I’m in the band because I’m Asian?”

But of course, I was a coward and just said, “Nope,” and then immediately turned to my boyfriend and made some remark like, “Oh my god, this racist girl just asked me if I’m in the band because she thinks all Asians know each other,” or something like that. And from that point on, it was ON. These girls started shouting at me and saying that they weren’t racist and that I was the fucking racist and that I deserved to be punched in the face for calling them racist. It kind of went on for a long time. At some point one of the girls started drunkenly shoving me.

A few nights later, I was at a bar telling this story to these girls who were first year poets, and they were like shaking their heads and being like, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, that’s awful. That’s truly awful,” and instead of feeling better, I felt creeped out. Like I had this feeling that they were treating my little story with too much reverence. And it made me feel like when we are dealing with things like racism or identity as forged by race and ethnicity, we’re not allowed room to feel more than one emotion. We can’t feel disgust AND delight. We can’t take something seriously and joke about it without one reaction canceling out or beating the snot out of the other. And that shit is alienating.

But at the same time, I acknowledge that this stuff is hard to navigate. In that particular example I just mentioned, I didn’t want to be treated like the victim of a racist attack, but I also did want the acknowledgement that violence had been done to me. I know this anecdote doesn’t reflect very well on me because it probably makes me seem bratty and inconsistent, but I also feel like brattiness and inconsistency has to be granted to people who are also “victims,” and I use that word with some amount of disgust because I don’t want to draw a dichotomy between “victim” and “perpetrator.” “Victim” implies that someone needs to be saved, and I don’t personally need to be saved, but at the same time, I need and want everyone to save the world so that this world can stop hurting people.

I think, as a society, it makes us uncomfortable when the wretched and the dispossessed, when indigenous people and oppressed people, when people who have traditionally been understood through the lens of victim-hood act like brats. You’re not supposed to be sassy and ungrateful when you’re a victim. Victims can’t be cunts. Or if they are, then they aren’t victims anymore. And that’s really messed up. That’s a non-wondrous mess.

That’s my oblique way of getting at the “wondrous mess,” as you have so sweetly coined it. The mess of existence and identity, and how when you’ve spent a significant portion of your life trying to reject the story or stories that other people impose on you, the sad, twisted coda to all that striving and rejecting is that by spending so much time dismantling other people’s stories of you, you can end up inhabiting and becoming those very stories. The more other people make me feel “other,” the more I want to have control of my “otherness,” which is something I wasn’t born knowing, but now I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know it.

Sometimes, it feels like being a woman, and, in particular, being a woman of color means that my very existence is provocative. The body that carries me out the door, that other people get to see first before they see anything else, is, by its very existence, already antagonistic. I find myself apologizing a lot in my head. Like, “I’m sorry you like my body but I don’t like you.” Or, “I’m sorry you are interested in my ‘culture’ but I’m not interested in you.”

I don’t know if these ideas live in my poems, or if my poems live in these ideas. Or if my poems even live!

My poems are sorry and not sorry. When I imagine someone reading the poems in my book, I think, “I’m sorry I made you read about my cunt so many times. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And then I think about all the times someone—whether it’s a total stranger or someone I know— has made me feel unsafe or powerless or disgusting or worthless or beautiful or godlike or powerful or unbelievable because of this thing that I am so ready to apologize for, that I can’t stop writing about, that I want to keep writing about, that I want to write about and then apologize for, and when I remember how infrequently anyone has apologized to me for the discomfort they’ve caused me because I have a vagina, because I have a face that looks the way it does, when I think about that, I’m not sorry. But now, having written that, I feel apologetic again. I’m sorry!

SK: Your book feels like a perfect mixture of both the sincere and the ironic. The flippant and the fabulous, as well as, the wounded and weary-eyed. Your use of humor enables us the ability to relate to and embrace both the ugly (thinking of ugly more in the tradition of Sianne Ngai’s book, Ugly Feelings) and the beautiful. Can you talk a bit about this?

JZ: O wow, this is one of those questions that is so exquisitely conceived and constructed that it has the effect of beatifically elevating my poetry just by allowing my poems to associate themselves with your question! Instead of thinking up my own words, I’m going to use your words because they already exist more perfectly than ones I could conjure. To go back to the Melt Banana story—when I told those first year poets about what happened to me at the concert, I felt like their reaction reduced me into being nothing more than “wounded,” when I needed to be wounded and flip and weary and fabulous and everything.

Humor is alluring but it’s also tricky because sometimes not everyone is in on the “joke.” Wanda Sykes does this amazing bit about how she wishes women could have “detachable pussies.” There are some people who will only hear the word “pussies” and be immediately turned off and disgusted. The word itself is a provocation, it’s an antagonism. But of course, the real horror is that we live in a world where women live in fear of being assaulted, attacked, and raped. That there are people who sincerely think there is such a thing as “asking for it.” People who truly think, “if you act/dress like that, what do you expect will happen?” That’s the tragedy. That’s the outrageous part. So if you’re in on the “joke” then talking about detachable pussies is a beautiful thing. And it’s also an ugly thing—not the detachable pussies themselves, but the world in which such a thing would be useful! If you don’t get the joke, then detachable pussies is just another example of poor taste.

I don’t know when someone reads my poems, whether or not that person is in on the “joke.” Sometimes, I’m not sure I’m in on the joke. Talking about genitals makes people laugh (it makes me laugh, at least) and I write about genitals a lot in my poems, but I don’t think they are the joke. Maybe they are a way of setting up the joke. Maybe they are a way of testing the joke—like are you going to be able to focus on what this poem is saying if it has the word “cock” in it? I mean, one would think, “Of course! Did you really think the cocks in your poems would distract me?” But then again cocks have so much clout in our culture. Vaginas have so much clout in our culture. As a poet, I wonder what power I have to transform power? My body gives me power and it also takes away my power. My body can be violated by someone but I can also violate my body. My body can also violate someone else just by existing. Like the time when I was twenty-one and working my first job as a union organizer and my supervisor told me to cover up my midriff because showing it was a violation of company policy. So my midriff violated her and violated the other people in my office. By being visible, my midriff was violating other people.

My body is funny because it smells bad and does things that people don’t want to witness. My body is heavenly because it has allowed me to access holy and beautiful things. When I write a poem I am both aware and not aware of my body. I cannot write a poem without a body. I cannot live in my body if I can’t joke about it. I cannot live in my body if I can’t take it seriously.

Racial stereotypes are funny not because they are legitimate but because they are both absurd and grounded in reality. I wrote a poem about having a sideways twat because someone once told me that Asian vaginas grow sideways. That was a joke but to me the joke was that something like that could actually be funny to someone. Words are a joke because they mean nothing and have no intrinsic value but they have so much power. There’s some Tumblr that’s like “emails my immigrant mom sends me!” And if I posted my mom’s email on there, some people would find it hilarious. Some people would find it sweet. Some people might find it endearing. Some people might find it sad. Some people might be indifferent. If I always found my mom’s bad English hilarious then I would never be able to stop laughing. She would become a humor machine. But despite that, I do laugh at my mom’s bad English sometimes. I do find it cute. Sometimes I jokingly say that if someone told me that my poetry was “cute” I’D CUT THEM. But I’d also thank them.

SK: Since the unofficial and official release of the book, you’ve managed to do a few readings. Where have been so far? Any upcoming readings planned?

JZ: Stain of Poetry was my first poetry reading. It was the first time since I was an undergrad in college that I have read my poems publicly. It was one of the happiest nights of my life. Did you know when you asked me to read for Stain that you priming me for one of the happiest nights of my life?* You must have known on some level.

I’ve done some readings in New York that have been wonderfully fun. Reading at Public Assembly for Hatchet Job when Ben Fama was curating was a night of trembling fun. I went on a few out of town trips—reading at the Boston Poetry Marathon after listening to Dorothea Lasky and Eileen Myles was an exercise in not heart-exploding. I drove down to Atlanta to read at Emory thanks to Bruce Covey, who rocks a thumb ring like no other, and whose generosity made me feel as vast as I ever could. I read for Dana Ward’s reading series in Cincinnati and got Graeter’s ice cream afterwards. It was the graetest, I mean greatest. On that particular trip, I also read for Big Big Mess, which is a really cool reading series at a really cool bar in Akron—when you read the lights swirl behind you and make you feel like a star.

I also did a house-warming reading in Columbia, Missouri for Andrew Leland, who edits The Believer. In Kansas City, I read at a cool little coffee shop, where, it just so happens, Dan Magers’ little brother works at. Right when my book came out, I was lucky enough to go on tour with Zach Schomburg, who is my editor and publisher, and the boys and girls of Manual Cinema, a multimedia puppetry performance troupe based out of Chicago. Manual Cinema adapted Zach’s newest book, Fjords, into an amazing live-action puppet show with an original musical score that makes me grow tiny, unflappable wings. We went to Philly, Baltimore, Richmond and Raleigh.

I just got back from a mini-Midwest tour with Zach. We read in Iowa City and did karaoke afterward. We read at a brewery in Minneapolis for Our Flow is Hard, a new reading series that some kick-ass MFA students started not too long ago. We read in Racine for Nick Demske’s Bonk series. That was kind of an incredible night. This one woman came to the reading and told me that she was a single mother of two who had just moved out of Chicago’s Southside to give her children a better life, and that she had read about the reading in the local newspaper and decided to get a babysitter and come see Zach and I. I was moved and we talked about how she was on an “artist date” and how the man she was dating was jealous. He was like, “who’s this art fellow you’re going to see tonight?” We read in Madison with Adam Fell and Anna Vitale and ended the tour in Chicago at a beautiful, sweaty, packed house reading for the Dollhouse Reading Series.

This month (October), I’m going to be reading a poem I wrote about The Empress for this jam-packed tarot card poetry reading that Melissa Broder is hosting at the Cake Shop on Sunday, October 28th. Lots of poets who are more interesting than me will be reading.

On Monday, November 26th, I’m gonna read with Aracelis Girmay for the Poetry Project’s Monday night reading series curated by Simone White, and then that Friday, the 30th, I’ll be reading with Jason Bredle and Jennifer Knox for Jason Koo’s Brooklyn Poets reading series. Sometimes I update my website with details about upcoming readings, but actually, if I’m being honest, I never get around to updating it. I can’t believe I wrote all that. I need to shut up.

SK: I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you read a couple of times and you definitely seem comfortable on stage. You also do some improv work. Do you feel like your work in improv has helped you as a performer when you give readings?

JZ: Ok! I’m not going to answer this question only because it’s just too much of a stretch to say that I do ‘improv work!’ I’m such an amateur and I don’t have a smart or funny answer to this! <3

SK: What’s next or what are you currently working on?

JZ: I’m writing poems whenever I feel like it. Usually when I’m bored or feel like it’s time to say something and then move on. More twat poems because it’s a subject of endless investigation which leads to infinite mystery, at least, for me. More death poems because I can’t stop thinking about it and it’s good to have some control over things that have control over you. Who knows where these poems will one day live. These ‘lil movers can go wherever they want, be whatever they want to be.

I’ve been writing a lot of essays for teen girls at Rookie and I’ll keep doing that. I might take a hiatus from all of it and finally finish my novel, which I’ve been working on for three years. It contains the usual smutty spread of family, sex, immaturity, childhood, displacement, identity, and death.

A lot of the poems from my last book were for my ex-boyfriend, partially because I was so in love with him and partially because he was the one who got me to write poetry again. Now I can finally write poems without thinking about him and thinking about his poetry. So that’s a whole new freedom that I have. I finally have friends who are poets, so I’ve been writing poems for my new friends. You were my new friend last year and I wrote two poems for you after reading your poems. It was exhilarating and now I feel like I’m humblebragging. Zach and I did a radio show for KRUI in Iowa City with the poet Dan Poppick, and he asked us if friendship can be a lyric form? At the time I was like, um um um um, hmmn, hmmn uuuh well uuuh. But now I’m like, yeah. Duh. So I’m writing some friendship poems. Poems about being happy. Whatever that means. Whatever that is.

 

Jenny Zhang interviewed by Steven Karl via email.

* I did not know that Stain of Poetry of was one of Jenny’s happiest moments, but here’s a video from her reading that evening.

Photo of Jenny Zhang from Mandate of Heaven Clothing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in features


spotlight: Vouched Atlanta

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Interview by Jenny Sadre-Orafai

I recently caught up with the always delightful Laura Straub of Vouched Atlanta. Vouched Books seeks to “promote small press literature.” Their strategy is three-pronged. First, they are masters of the guerrilla book store. They set up tables of books at various craft, art, and literature events. Here’s the catch:  They only carry books that they have read and love. Prong two is Vouched Presents, their reading series. Vouched brought Tyler Gobble, Melysa Martinez, Christopher Newgent, Amy McDaniel, Brian Oliu, Jesse Bradley, and Matt Bell to Atlanta last month. And, finally, is Vouched Online in which they keep Vouched followers in the loop with where they’re setting up and when readings are. They also maintain a consistent ethic in promoting work they enjoy online. Vouched is a real gem for both readers and writers.

***

JS: How did Vouched Atlanta get started?

LS: Vouched Atlanta officially launched last July. After the success of the first Vouched table in Indianapolis (operated by good friend and Vouched Founder, Christopher Newgent) I began to toy with the idea of launching my own table–a desire rooted in wanting to become more involved with Atlanta’s lit scene as well as wanting to help independently published literature in front of new audiences. Christopher agreed it was time for Vouched to colonize and Vouched Atlanta was born!

What are some poetry titles you carry? And, can you review each of these in one word?
The Trees, The Trees (Heather Christle, Octopus Books) — Incantations.
Correct Animal (Rebecca Farivar, Octopus Books) — Sinewy.
I Don’t Mind if you are feeling Alone (Thomas Patrick Levy, Yes Yes Books) — Distressed.
We Take Me Apart (Molly Gaudry, Mud Luscious Press) — Enchanting.
Bend, Break (Robert Pfeiffer, Plain View Press) — Honest.
Where We Think It Should Go (Claire Becker, Octopus Books) — Instinctive.
Just a Little Piece of Heartburn (Tom Cheshire, Safety Third Enterprises) — Debauched.
People Are Tiny In Paintings of China (Cynthia Arrieu-King, Octopus Books) — Delicate.
The Difficult Farm (Heather Christle, Octopus Books) — Whimsical.

Promoting online publishing is important to Vouched. Are there any specific presses and journals that can do no wrong?

Wigleaf really busted out some hefty goodness recently with their top 50 list this year. PANK, the Collagist, and Elimae never fail.

Can you tell us about Vouched Presents?

Running the reading series is one of my favorite parts of running Vouched Atlanta! At Vouched Books we joke that we are “where literature goes to shake its ass,” and the reading series is a testament to that. It is wonderful to host and promote touring/visiting authors when they come to Atlanta and introduce them to the Atlantan literary community, which is really booming right now. I hope to have more and more visiting writers in this year’s readings. That being said, Atlanta has a wide variety of incredible wordsmiths and I’m excited and honored to continue giving them a venue to share their work.

What new titles does Vouched plan to offer?

I have some really great stuff coming to the table: False Spring by Gina Myers (Spooky Girlfriend Press), Poetry, Poetry, Poetry by Peter Davis (Bloof Books), and Fjords Vol. 1 by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean). I’m also introducing a few new prose titles: Falcons on the Floor by Justin Sirois (Publishing Genius Press), Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell and [C.] by Various Authors (both from Mud Luscious Press).

Where can we find you?

Write Club Atlanta, True Story, and Solar Anus reading series have all been kind enough to invite me to set up the table at their reading series regularly, which I am eternally grateful for. On June 2nd I’ll have a booth at Artlantis–an arts festival organized by Mark Basehore and the folks at Beep Beep Gallery. There’s the possibility for more readings to come about in the meantime, but right now the next reading I have scheduled is the first annual Very Vouched Birthday Party at the Goatfarm on July 18th. That reading will serve as a fundraiser for WINK and the Wren’s Nest Kipp Scribes tutoring programs. More information about that event can be found at Vouched in the upcoming weeks.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in features


Atlanta: Arrieu-King, Cronk, Jimenez, Schomburg Read at Emory

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

Emory University’s What’s New in Poetry? hosted Cynthia Arrieu-King, Laura Cronk, Megin Jimenez, and Zachary Schomburg Friday, March 23rd in Atlanta.

Laura Cronk, winner of the 2011 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize for Having Been an Accomplice, read work from the soon to be published collection (Persea Books). She described some of the poems as “dream-inspired.”

Poet and co-curator of the Monday Night Poetry Series at KGB Bar Megin Jimenez (left) read “A Reader’s Guide to Exile,” “Copywriter,” “They Were All Love Stories,” and “Love Story,” in addition to poems from her chapbook, Arcana, based on major figures of the Tarot.

 

Cynthia Arrieu-King (left) read selections from People Are Tiny in Paintings of China and three new poems. Her second book, Manifest, was selected by Harryette Mullen for the 2012 Gatewood Prize and will be published by Switchback Books in 2013.

Zachary Schomburg read poems from his third collection, Fjords Vol. 1. Author of The Man Suit and Scary, No Scary, Schomburg is currently giving readings across the country, and his fourth book, The Book of Joshua, is forthcoming.

Missed the reading? Listen up here.

–Jenny Sadre-Orafai

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in news


3rd Annual Chapbook Festival, NYC

Monday, March 7th, 2011

The Third Annual Chapbook Festival was held last week at locations throughout New York City, with the CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for the Humanities serving as home to a bookfair featuring chapbook publishers from around the country.

“I love the composition and texture of chapbooks, and I love that they can be a single-sitting read,” said Sampson Starkweather, who organized the event with Festival founder Ana Božičević. “They stop time a little bit more.”

The Festival, which also featured workshops and readings, was designed to “celebrate the chapbook as a work of art and as a medium for alternative and emerging writers and publishers,” according to its Web site.

In addition to selling chapbooks, representatives from Belladonna Books accepted donations that will be used to reprint Akilah Oliver’s chapbook The Putterer’s Notebook. Oliver died unexpectedly in late February, and there are only “two or three copies” of her chapbook left, according to the press.

Jamila Wilberly, a Belladonna Books intern, studied with Oliver at Eugene Lang College. She expressed that Oliver’s death means a big loss for the literary community, and a bigger loss for those who knew her.

“It makes you feel almost angry, because you want to know more about her. We’re really sad,” she said, noting that hearing Oliver read from The Putterer’s Notebook was a one of a kind experience. “Nobody can quite read like her.”

Anyone interested in donating can contact Belladonna Books here.

The bookfair recalled last month’s AWP Conference in Washington DC, except that AWP’s sprawling, convention-style bookfair was replaced by a single room of chapbook vendors.

“It feels like a little family room,” said Starkweather, who also is an editor for Birds, LLC.

Zachary Schomburg of Octopus Books said it was sort of like an AWP “aftershock.”

“In poetry, geography doesn’t matter,” said Schomburg, who was passing through on his way back to Portland after spending three weeks reading and writing in Weld, Maine.

Chapbook publishers and authors agreed that the proliferation of chapbooks signals a vibrancy in the contemporary poetry community, especially since bookmakers are typically poets themselves.

“Poets are so D.I.Y. [do it yourself],” Starkweather said.

Chapbooks also provide a useful forum for younger, unpublished poets.

“You can introduce a young poet to a reader in more than a single-poem format,” said Brett Fletcher Lauer of the Poetry Society of America. The PSA publishes four chapbooks each year as part of its annual Chapbook Competition.

Nate Pritts of H-ngm-n Bks thinks chapbooks are as important as traditional full-length collections, finding it is not always necessary to distinguish between the two formats.

“It’s all poetry,” he said. “It needs to get out there whether you publish a book or staple it and mail it to a friend.”

The Festival, designed to “celebrate the chapbook as a work of art and as a medium for alternative and emerging writers and publishers,” also featured a roundtable and launch of Series II in Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Documents Initiative.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in news


The Man Suit

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

by Zachary Schomburg
Black Ocean 2007
Reviewed by John Deming

8

“who…who…”

man suitWith the exception of some asshole who told me the other day that nobody reads James Tate anymore, I think we can generally agree that Tate’s in the handful of vital figureheads in American poetry. And it is also true that if you read the plethora of books that emerge from new writers each year, you’ll find Tate everywhere.

I bring up Tate in order to offer you my only criticism of Zachary Schomburg’s first book: Tate, one of his three blurbers, has wielded an extraordinary amount of influence here; the notion of setting up a narrative prose poem one way, then turning another way and maybe another before all is viciously surreal and the poem turns on its head (or elbow or cashew) is something that Tate has completely mastered. At times Schomburg’s poems take refuge here; on other occasions, he shows he’s capable of much more.

Because bland guesses at Schomburg’s giants notwithstanding, I should mention The Man Suit is the best first book I’ve read this year.

The Tate near-imitations are underwhelming and a handful could’ve been left on the cutting-room floor. Nevertheless, The Man Suit is a mystery; everything is connected and yet not, every character is suspect. You’ll make connections here and there, but plot is seldom the point. Schomburg’s surreal little world is bent on imagination as an escape from fear, and on his sky-capped romantic twitches. He’s also willing to make you chuckle. Take “A Band of Owls Moved Into Town.” In the beginning, we’re told that upon moving to town, owls simply “shopped for groceries and ran for office, that sort of thing.” Slowly, the owls take over—new construction until the town “developed a night life and the constant buzz of yellowish electricity.”

1984 fans won’t be surprised, then, that the poem’s narrator meets and falls for a woman named Julia. It’s them against the world:

She was incredible—the most amazing eyes. We stayed awake through most nights holding each other beneath the moonlit window. We talked about everything, but mostly our disdain for the construction and the flood of immigrant owls.

And because I can’t resist, I’ll ruin the conclusion for you:

I told her, We seem to be the only two who are concerned, who notice. The only two who want…

Who want a simpler life, she said. The only two who…who…

Forget that it’s a pun. It’s hilarious. Their transition from people to owl-folk is underway, and the sideways idea that carries the poem—owls taking over—is qualified by more than just the “nightlife” they imposed. Make metaphor of the owls if you will, but the romantic relationship is the most fascinating part, as it’s squared where all fascinating relationships are squared—in the midst of turmoil and change, however absurd. A cartoon Casablanca.

Elsewhere Schomburg continues his willfully mysterious world and his inclination toward spooky romance. He is deft at pulling off what actors are trained to pull off: being real in an imagined world. There’s vulnerability at the center of the book, accounted for by the straight face the poet holds when painting a surreal or absurd premise on a canvas of romantic largesse. Look at “The Lung and Haircut,” which opens: “At a Halloween party, a lung went as a haircut, and a haircut went as a lung.” Inevitably, the two meet and become inseparable. Any time two people/lungs/haircuts become inseparable, inevitability looms large—all of their time is spent together, and losing each other is a fate worse than genocide. Back to the moonlit bedroom:

Once, when the lung got sick and couldn’t go to work, the haircut stayed home too and they watched a half-dozen movies. They discussed their biggest fears one quiet night beneath a golden moon, black clouds shifting and giving chase, planes landing carefully in the distance, one right after the other, in perfect intervals. The haircut’s fear was to be eaten by a shark, but he was lying. The lung knew it. There was a long silence between them. The blinking lights of another plane slid across the black sky. The lung said timidly, losing you.

You could argue that simply labeling one party “lung” and the other “haircut” doesn’t necessarily justify the subsequent romantic clichés. Fair enough. But by the time this poem comes around, you’re so steeped in Schomburg’s world you’re willing to take it.

Because what drives this book, what it reminds me of anyway, is the ever-dominant presence of “inverse.” The inverse of being with someone is being without them. The inverse of being alive is being dead. To have things one way is to have them the other way eventually; everything will be reduced to sand. If you’re alive, you will die, and you know it; in this way you’re already dead, so put on your “man suit” and live out your days—life as essentially comic.

The character “Carlos” comes and goes, provides some fear and stasis, especially during the scary black-and-white telephone sequence; is he alive or dead, is the narrator Carlos, no he isn’t—which phone will kill you if you answer it, which will mean everlasting life—does either mean either, does anything mean anything—and where does “Marlene” fit in? You’ll want to reread this book, and the more you do, the more different pieces fit, while the puzzle itself has no clear margins.

The Man Suit is nevertheless the result of a singular vision. The quirky section “Abraham Lincoln’s Death Scene” works on its own terms, for example, but the use of the character “M” keeps begging the question—is it Mary Todd, is it Marlene from elsewhere in the book, is it something entirely other. The Man Suit keeps us asking and keeps us pretending, and it never assumes itself an authority. To live in a world where people write and publish books of poetry is to mean the opposite eventually, is in fact to mean a planet with no people at all. Change, it seems, is what defines nature, nature is always in command, evidenced with jokey symbolism when a man has “chainsaws for arms” and when a girl opens her mouth and “crows and doves are making a nest in her throat.”

Vulnerability in the face of inevitability, and imaginative invention—which is keenly human—as the antidote: the sense that some kind of doom is impending, that “the things that surround us” may or may not mean to menace us, but will nevertheless equalize us in the end. To be romantic is to imagine; to impose thought on anything is to imagine. Do Jane and Winston stand a chance against the owls? Nope. But that’s not to say they shouldn’t do battle. The same can be said of the impetus for any poetic/artistic act. To be surreal, to invent new worlds, is (to borrow a Simic image) a way of threatening the stars with a wooden spoon, and to delight at the hilarity of the attempt. In The Man Suit, the reader is left to genuinely dissolve these matters, if only at the instant of a much-needed guffaw or at the soft transcendence of obeying Stevens and succumbing to our imaginative capacity as though it were a religion: “Tell me you hear laughter and the shuffling of feet as the townspeople dance in the street because of these notes and not in spite of them.” Indeed. Now get me a cup of coffee and a pen.

Of course, inverse being what it is, our narrator is so comfortable in his imagined world that he’s helpless to avoid leaving it in the end. He eats the apple, as it were, by blowing through a voice box that Carlos finds in the throat of a dead sheep: “[I take a shallow breath and blow]. I am dying, so cold without wool, and afraid.” Our poet has shed his wool, and now we can hope for something equally invigorating, even more detached and—ideally—fiercely original.

*

Tags: , , ,
Posted in reviews