Her sequence “Four Methods” appears in the forty-eighth issue of Touch the Donkey.
Q: Tell me about “Four Methods.”
A: I heard many years ago that Strasberg at the Actor’s Studio by Lee Strasberg, transcriptions of the private acting classes that he taught at the Actor’s Studio in New York starting in the late 40s, was essential reading for writers (I don’t remember why now). So, I dutifully purchased it and put it on my shelf. Years later, I finally read it. In addition to disabusing me of many preconceived notions about “method” acting, it made me appreciate the difficulty of assuming the role of another person, and the effort—expense, even—involved in doing it convincingly. We attempt this all the time in writing—adopting a persona or the voice of “the speaker,” creating characters. I especially appreciated Strasberg emphasizing the strangeness of this impulse, and how drawing a line between the character’s experience and our own deepens what we’re trying to convey and, under ideal conditions, better connects us to ourselves. So the poem is four attempts at inhabiting that strange psychic space, not yet that character and no longer just oneself, preparing to pass from one to the other by way of some sense or emotional memory. This poem and the reading around it also connected me to a broader project, now a manuscript, which is about the consuming nature of being an artist, seeing everything through the lens of creation, the ways it requires a relentless investigation of your past, your interests, even banal daily life for “material.” That makes it sound cynical, but I mean more the unconsciousness aspects. Like great acting, it’s reacting to what presents itself to you and getting involved in it.
Q: How does this poem compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?
A: Thematically related, but tonally different and formally denser. Newer works are a little looser and “voicier,” I think.
Q: What prompts the difference in approach, in your thinking?
A: A higher density of diction can create some welcome distance, which I usually prefer when I’m experimenting with something new or trying to write in a voice other than my own. Sometimes, I switch into that mode almost defensively. In some of the newer pieces, I’m trying to stay closer to whatever is driving the poem and to be a little more comfortable owning an idea or feeling.
Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting? Are there any particular writers or works at the back of your head as you write?
A: Honestly, the biggest one has been Philip Guston, the painter. I’ve been reading and rereading many books about him, his lectures, writings, interviews, correspondence with friends, including I Paint What I Want to See and Guston in Time by Ross Feld. This became a bit of an obsession, resulting in a trip to the UK to see his retrospective at the Tate Modern, one of the highlights of my life. I love his way of speaking and writing about art. It’s gutsy, funny, and most concerned with openness and curiosity. He’s very casual, though intelligent, and a great talker. He wants to bring people in. Finding him felt like the thrill of meeting someone you know you’ll be great friends with. He went through a serious artistic crisis as he was considered to be at the peak of his career, and built a new style from rock bottom that renewed his love of artmaking and redefined him as an artist, even while turning a lot of his fans (including some of his dearest friends) against him. There's something in that experience, I think—the reckoning, the doubt, and, ultimately, transcendence—that made him more comfortable with the mystery of artmaking, the surprise, and to find kinship in trusting what may seem like a mistake. So, I’ve been literally influenced by the way he speaks and writes, which I find so charming, but also by his great capacity to seek and let others into that process of seeking, which is powerful and intimate. While I adore and admire so many writers who seem to drop wisdom fully formed and jewel-encrusted into their works, I discovered how much I like the mess of discovery through Guston.
As for poets, I’ve also been lately influenced by and found a similar kinship with the works of Sara Nicholson, whose first two books (The Living Method and What the Lyric Is, both from The Song Cave) marry the linguistic and philosophical rigour that I love with a humour and casual ease that I aspire to.
Q: With a published full-length collection, as well as your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work has progressed? Where do you see your work heading?
A: I feel my work has deepened since my first collection. It’s still very much me, still my style, but perhaps holds less back, which feels great. There was a lot of nervous energy around my writing in the past; I was afraid my practice would slip away from me, that I wasn't worthy of doing it, not educated enough to write intelligently. That’s gone. Now it’s just a part of my life that grows with me. My next project, which I’ll dig into as soon as this manuscript is wrapped up, is larger in scope, more narrative, more researched, more outside of me, and will, I hope, stretch me creatively and formally. I’m a little bit afraid of it! But I think that’s a good sign.
Q: Do you see your work in terms of projects, then? How did you move from someone who works on individual poems to someone who works on projects?
A: No, I don’t usually see my work in terms of projects, at least not at first. My first book and the manuscript that “Four methods” is a part of came together over time, poem by poem, and became a project as thematic unity between the pieces emerged. I like that approach and the way it allows one’s particular, timely interests to guide the writing. Only when I start to notice a pattern do I narrow my focus and read in a more directed way that will nurture the rest of the work to be written. With my first book, this didn’t really happen until I was at the very end. With the new manuscript, it happened more quickly and was more obvious from looking at the books I was reading—they all seemed to lead me to the same point.
The next book, “the project,” however, requires me to think of it as a unified whole from the beginning because it’s more narrative, adopts a particular form and vernacular, and will require more planning. All very new, exciting territory. I’m not sure why the move to a project is happening now, but I suspect it’s a way to stay interested and not get too comfortable. I’ve also been working on a collaborative novel for the last two years with another writer, and thinking large-scale narratives for so long might have tunneled into my poet brain.
Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
A: There are so many! It’s hard to narrow it down. But the more consistent mainstays are Lisa Robertson’s The Weather, Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette, John Ashbery’s Flow Chart, Elizabeth Willis’ Meteoric Flowers, Lucy Ives’ Orange Roses & The Hermit, Fred Moten’s The Service Porch, and Peter Gizzi’s Archeophonics. I have noticed, though, that I may have greedily overdrawn those accounts and need to start developing a new set of resources for this phase of life and writing I’m in. Reading “forward” as opposed to “backward” has proven useful for me over the last few years, as has trying to broaden my conception of what can generate a poem. In the past, I had to read a poem to write one, and now I can read an essay or academic paper or work of philosophy or a novel and feel equally energized. I also regularly return to Pitch Dark by Renata Adler, my favourite novel. I recorded me reading the first chapter of it for a podcast called Women Reading this spring and it was a totally new way of engaging with a very familiar text. There were so many things that I had missed or breezed by in prior readings! I feel like as I age, I also see new things in my favourite works, so reading them again now is a little like reading them for the first time. They’re speaking to a very different person.
