MB: Let’s start here:

≪Don’t believe a word edgewise to anyone claiming authorship≫–the ark writes itself.

Can you talk to us about how ARK CODEX ±0 has no author?

DW: It’s not hard to figure out who the “author” is, it’s more that i just wanted to de-emphasize the role of author & give the reader more credit. It seems strange & vain to “claim” authorship of a book, if you stop to think about it. The author is the book, the book wrote itself. If there was human intervention, the author became detached from the book upon completion. From the reader’s point of view, the author shouldn’t matter, it’s just a distraction that leads to prejudice. In fact the reader becomes the author—the book becomes subject to your own interpretation. Any beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

MB: Interesting. And as such, Calamari Press has released ARK CODEX ±0 under a unique structure, one that allows readers to download the dbook (digital book) from the press’s website and donate if they wish. Can you talk to us about the decision to release this particular title in this specific manner?

DW: The primary book object is the physical paper book, but since it’s in color it’s expensive to print, so i wanted to give people that couldn’t afford it a chance to experience it. With the book, you can put a “price” on it, that is at least based on the production costs, but it’s harder to put a price on a digital file. The “pay what you want” model is not really unique, Radiohead used it for In Rainbows & lots of people have done it since. As you might expect, lots of people download it & no one wants to voluntarily pay (in fact, since i posted the link, over 6500 people have downloaded it so far & 0 people have paid—a hard business model to sustain). From the book’s perspective this is  a success, as this is probably a lot more readers than would get the real book. As the publisher, I can only hope that some of those that read the dbook will buy the actual book.

MB: Wow. The news that 6500 people have downloaded ARK CODEX ±0 so far and 0 have donated for that download is both tremendous and horrible: beautiful to have so many readers, terrible to hear that they aren’t supporting it with even just a few bucks. With this in mind, will Calamari Press release more books under the “pay what you want” structure, or does the lack of return on your investment prohibit further use of this model?

DW: Obviously I didn’t start a small press to make money, i don’t think anybody in their right mind would, so I’m just happy to have more readers, that’s what’s important in the end. But yes, it is disheartening, it is disheartening that in the past 10 years people have expected to get art—music, movies & books—for free, & they don’t consider the implications of what the lack of support will do to the quality of art. I think the quality of music has suffered as a consequence—only big commercial acts are able to “make a living” at it. But there is no sense lamenting, it’s just what has become of the world in this digital age, it’s nothing anyone can change. Whether i put out more “pay what you want” dbooks, i can’t say—it depends on the author. As a publisher, it is my responsibility to sell as many books as I can (and also try to at least recoup my costs) & by giving away the dbook, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot as those people are not so likely to turn around & buy the “real” book. But a dbook can certainly be a lot more affordable. And p.s., thanks for being the first to pony up for the Ark Codex dbook!

MB: Our pleasure! What is that rate? Let’s see, 1 in 6500…so now ARK CODEX ±0 has received dbook payment from .0153% of those who downloaded. Ouch. You are right though, this is really just a symptom of our digital world, the ‘something for nothing’ mentality, but we don’t want the art to suffer, so we tackle this new digital environment as best we can. So instead, let’s talk a bit about the artistic approach of ARK CODEX ±0. At one point, I held my finger on the ‘page down’ key and let the images of ARK CODEX ±0 scroll by, and it added up to a kind of strange movie that in fact does tell the ‘story’ of the text, only in a different way. How do text and art meet / function in ARK CODEX ±0 as you see it from a publisher’s point of view?

DW: I’m not really sure how to answer this question. There are images, scanned pages, and sometimes the images have text mixed in, and there’s text too, below the scanned pages. Sorry, I’m just not sure what else there is to say.

MB: In other words, are we meant to see the images as illustrations of the texts at the foot of each page, or are we meant to read them as a conversation between one another? And, as you say, there is also text mixed into the images, and I’m curious if we are to read those texts in tandem with the rest, or…? It may all be unanswerable semantics I suppose, but I basically want to know if you see the  ARK CODEX ±0 as a readable narrative, in the linear sense?

DW: It’s ink on paper, that’s all i can really say. I’m not sure there’s really a difference between text & image in Ark Codex ±0 or how they relate to each other. Any interpretation or meaning is up to the reader, however you want to read it or read into it. In my mind there is a narrative, maybe not linear, but structured—though i can’t speak for how another reader might interpret it.

MB: Well put: bottom-line, it is all ink on paper. Thanks for the time sir – and we hope that the .0153% rate is much higher the next time we chat. ARK CODEX ±0 is well-deserving of the 6500+ downloads, but certainly merits more return. In any case, the people are reading, and as always, we thank you for publishing such intense and brightly burning books.

Download the dbook version or purchase a physical copy of ARK CODEX ±0 here. Read more about Calamari Press here.

In ten words (no more, no less), describe Ayiti.
RG: Love letter to the beautiful ugly land of my parents.

(About My Father’s Accent) – What words do you concentrate on?
RG: Anything involving vowels, especially when the vowels appear at the beginning of the word.

(Voodoo Child) – When was the last time you backed away slowly?
RG: There was this student, you see, and he had a problem with his grade.

(There is No “E” in Zombi …) – How do you save a zombi?
RG: You don’t.

(Things I Know About Fairy Tales) – What are some lessons I could learn in my no-so-fancy clothes?
RG: Any lessons would be better learned in no clothes at all.

(Cheap, Fast, Filling) – Pop quiz: What is the first ingredient listed in a typical Hot Pocket?
RG: That’s a very good question. I have actually never had a Hot Pocket. I am merely obsessed with the idea of them–food injected into a pastry, frozen, and sold for reheating and eating. The future, man.

How long have these stories been in your life?
RG: For the past ten years, at least.

(All Things Being Relative) – What other things bow their heads when passing?
RG: People with long spines, minor prophets, heavy books.

(Gracias Nicaragua, Y Lo Sentimos) – List some things you are because you do not have them.
RG: I’m every woman, it’s all in me.

I always hear about the hardest things about writing. What is the easiest thing?
RG: Writing is the only thing that comes easy to me.

(A Cool Dry Place) – Men fearing their beauty – do you see this often?
RG: Absolutely, and what a shame. There’s so much beauty in men.

In ten words (no more, no less), describe your next project.
RG: A woman wants her daughter; things stand in the way.

Roxane Gay, Ayiti, Artistically Declined Press
bl pawelek, Ten Everywhere

Eric Beeny has released several new books over the past year, and the latest,

MB: Your earlier books – How Much the Jaw Weighs (Anonymosity Press, 2011) and Pseudo-Masachism (Anonymosity Press, 2011) – are not considered ‘bizarro’ books, so how did Lepers and Mannequins come to be a part of the New Bizarro Author Series at Eraserhead Press? And do you now consider yourself, at least in part, a bizarro author, capable of writing future bizarro books?

EB: When I wrote Lepers and Mannequins in early 2008 (while recovering from an appendectomy—fitting, since I, too, was now missing a body part), I actually hadn’t heard of ‘Bizarro’ fiction as a termed genre, though I’ve read lots of fiction that could’ve been considered Bizarro. I sent the book to presses like Melville House (one of their editors wrote a really nice page-long letter about why they liked but couldn’t publish it), Publishing Genius (Adam Robinson ultimately turned it down, but he wrote a really nice, long letter to me about it, and he included some of our correspondence in his recent review of the novel at the PubGen blog), and some other places. Cameron Pierce read the manuscript and suggested I send it to Kevin Donihe because he thought it would really fit in with a series Kevin edits each year for Eraserhead Press called “The New Bizarro Author Series”. Cameron recommended it to Kevin, and told me Kevin was interested in the novel, so I sent it to him and he was gracious enough to accept it. I maybe wouldn’t consider myself a ‘Bizarro’ author, per se—though I’m really excited to be a part of this series. I just like to write, and Lepers and Mannequins is just a book I wrote. It’s just one thing I can do, I think, and I want to keep doing new things with writing (new things for me, at least), if I can.

MB: Lepers and Mannequins opens with much the same structure as Romeo and Juliet – two star-crossed lovers, one on each side of warring factions, brought together by instant love. I assume this an intentional frame of reference, or was it more like an image pulled from the collective unconscious?

EB: Yes, that was intentional. There are archetypal elements to the novel, too, but it’s definitely a nod to/play on Romeo and Juliet, and there are a couple references to it, like when Quall wonders who the author of the play all the lepers are going to see is, and his friend, Farmer, says, “Does a name matter all that much to you, Quall?” and Quall says, “No […] I guess not,” recalling “[a] rose by any other name…” (This scene also hints at the ongoing controversy of Shakespeare’s authorship.) I like the macro- vs. microcosmic elements of Romeo and Juliet, too, how there’s this secret world of love that exists between two people, beneath all the hatred and death. In Lepers and Mannequins, I wanted to focus more on the paranoia between Jaundice and Quall, and how that affects their love, because, despite their attraction, it’s a reflection of how contaminated both of their cultures have become in relation to one another. I wanted to see that private world grow more paranoid of itself out of public loyalty to external forces (this seems to have global implications). It’s very Freudian, the war between the ego and superego. There’s some Althusserian theory in there, too—his ideological state apparatuses (how society [family, media, religion, school, etc.] molds our beliefs) and his idea of interpolation (mimicking cultural behaviors, being hailed by society to participate in society’s expression of its beliefs—which helps construct/define an individual’s identity).

MB: But as alike Lepers and Mannequins is in terms of an opening structure to Romeo and Juliet, I was struck by the way in which you close the book (spoiler alert!), allowing the couple to remain alive when nearly everyone else is killed off – why did you make this choice to pursue love instead of tragedy?

EB: In the middle of the book, as mentioned above, there’s a play within a play, and its actors portray characters named Laertes and Mercutio. Mercutio adheres to the novel’s Romeo and Juliet reference, as he is Romeo’s friend (who, before dying, curses the Capulets and the Montagues), but Laertes is taken from Hamlet, hinting at the novel’s conclusion that pretty much everyone will die by the end. Keeping Quall and Jaundice alive reverses only one of Shakespeare’s tragedies by injecting another into it, in the process killing off only those who cause suffering rather than those who are left to suffer (creating, in effect, a utopia—the stateless society Marx envisioned). Also, Laertes’ and Mercutio’s initials are the same as Lepers and Mannequins, so that was neat.

MB: Also, I was intrigued by your decision, as a male writer, to write from the perspective of Jaundice, the female mannequin, instead of from the point of view of Quall, the male leper. How did you come to this perspective choice and was it difficult to write from a gender point of view that you haven’t experienced firsthand?

EB: There’s always a difficulty in trying to inhabit a world you don’t belong to, one you didn’t come from. But I think I come from a lot of places I don’t write about, and I often feel estranged even from characters I do inhabit/relate to, somehow. This probes the heart of the neocolonial education: How is it possible for a white person to teach African American history or literature? This idea really used to mess with me. I grew up in the projects, went to schools where I was one of maybe three or four white kids, and the majority of my teachers were white. What could they possibly know about their students’ experience (unless they grew up like I did)? The same could of course be said of gender. Being male, how could I possibly know what a woman thinks? I’m not Mel Gibson. I don’t know. I’m not qualified to answer this, maybe, except to say I don’t like typical male things like sports or war (sports, of course, being a microcosmic battlefield, a surrogate bombing range for males to ejaculate their violent tendencies, their unconscious frustrations with the emptiness of their lives). Being male, I see how men treat women. Jaundice is, in the novel, literally made of plastic—a metaphor for how men in ‘real life’ perceive women, how men condition women to behave, how to look (the Barbie doll, while invented by the female Ruth Handler, was designed by the male Jack Ryan). Males bombard women with magazine and television ads, conditioning them to wear certain kinds of clothes to attract a mate, to smell a certain way to attract a mate, weigh a certain amount to attract a mate, etc. Men are secretly telling women all the time that there is a certain mold they need to fit into (a manufactured mold, plastic, concerned only with façade) in order to be accepted by men and even worse: Other women. Men believe themselves superior to women and so allow them as few social, political and economic advancement opportunities as patriarchically possible by conditioning them via all media outlets that they are emotionally hollow, culturally barren, socially inanimate, politically plastic—that they exist only to satiate male sexual desire, to serve men. These were some of the things I thought about while writing Jaundice, and I wanted her to break out of that mold, to discover that she has depth, a history, thoughts and feelings, no matter how she may have been taught to repress them. I think Jaundice represents any oppressed people who are conditioned to think and act against their own self-interests, to adopt a kind of Stockholm syndrome (as seen in so many examples of European colonization of African and other indigenous populations who, after being provided [‘provided’ is too euphemistic—acculturated, forced] a European—i.e., Christian [civilized]—education, adopt virtually all of the colonizer’s cultural mores, eventually learning to hate themselves for not being of the dominant group, believing they deserve what is happening to them). Jaundice wants to “get [her] tits done,” though she’s a mannequin—she already has fake breasts. A breast augmentation to her would be ‘real’ breasts. She wants to be human: The species of those waging war on her people. On the other hand, Quall wishes to be a mannequin. This recalls the tenets of Primitivism, in which the colonizer becomes enamored with the ‘uncivilized’ culture he’s come to dominate, and seeks to appropriate those features into his own art, literature, fashion, etc. Jaundice and Quall are their own dichotomies, and so are able to penetrate and critique the façade of their own cultures’ ideological pre-/misconceptions. These misconceptions are why Jaundice refers to herself in third-person throughout the novel, only breaking into first- during moments either of emotional turmoil or ideological enlightenment.

MB: And when I think of books where the author creates a landscape all his or her own (Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas, David Ohle’s Motorman, Shane Jones’s Light Boxes), I’m always interested to know if the desire to perfect the landscape, to make sure you’ve covered all the loopholes and potential questions the reader might have, slows down or in any way hinders your writing or, maybe instead, makes for a much more focused need on final editing before the submission process begins?

EB: I guess setting is something I focus more on during revisions. For Lepers and Mannequins I didn’t really have to do too much in the way of setting description, being that the setting, as a character, is static. Once it’s been established where the characters are, the rest is just showing their reaction to it. It’s always raining. Occasionally some clouds part, a moment of soft sun, but it’s still raining, and the ground is always muddy and the mud acts against the lepers (which, given their religious views, reflects the puritan view that nature is evil, immoral, and must be conquered and tamed—much like the colonizer’s view of the indigenous savage, or the lepers’ view that mannequins exist only for them to harvest). Hemingway used landscape as a substitute for his characters’ emotions. I like that. I just went with monotony as reflection of plasticity—but also as a substitute for good writing…

MB: So, what else can we expect from Eric Beeny down the line? What new books or projects can we look forward to?

EB: I published two books in 2010 (Snowing Fireflies and Of Creatures), and four books in 2011 (Milk Like a Melted Ghost, Pseudo-Masochism, How Much the Jaw Weighs and Lepers and Mannequins). I don’t yet have anything coming out this year, but I’m hoping. I have three and a half unpublished novels: The Quarantine Ceremony (autobiographical), Mermaid Sackrace (a play on mermaid myths that re-envisions the moon landing), The Immortals Act Their Age (a non-linear novel of surreal tragicomic stories that also deals with issues of gender and socio-politics), and I’m working on another right now called Trawling Oblivion, a non-linear existential novel.

MB: And what else out there in our lit community are you excited for this year, are you anticipating with eagerness, are you already salivating for?

EB: I’m looking forward to the re-release of Ken Sparling’s Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall. It’s one of my favorite books (anything by Sparling is, really), and I’m happy more people will get to read it since it’s been out of print for so long. There’s still books from last year I haven’t been able to read because I’m broke. Mark Leidner’s Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me, Brandi Wells’ Please Don’t Be Upset, Ethel Rohan’s Hard to Say, Noah Cicero’s Best Behavior, Sam Pink’s new books, Heather Christle’s books. So many, there are so many…

Purchase a copy of Lepers & Mannequins here and read more by / about Eric Beeny here.

In ten words (no more, no less), describe Tongue Party.

SRE: A crazy chapbook I wrote published by the fantastic Caketrain.

SRE: Caketrain found it and sent it to me. My first thought was “What the hell is this?”

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I became obsessed with that tongue girdle, I couldn’t get the shape and texture of it out of my head for days. I remember pulling my phone out while I was driving so I could keep staring at it. And that’s when I realized exactly how genius Caketrain really is – they found something so new, something I’d never even dreamed existed, and turned it into something I couldn’t stop thinking about.

SRE: Dan Driscoll is not just a Nantucket photographer!

Dan Driscoll is a professor I freaked out on at Rosemont while I was in grad school. He handed out an Amy Bloom story once that pissed me off for some reason and I spent half of a class period screaming at him about it, then stormed out of the classroom. He didn’t fail me after that Amy Bloom meltdown, and went on to become my thesis advisor while I was working on Tongue Party. He’ll deny it and say Tongue Party was all me, but he really understood what I was trying to do with those stories from the beginning and his feedback was incredible. We’re still good friends and I still scream at him often. But he is not a photographer from Nantucket. 

SRE: Probably a lot of koalas rotting, their flesh being pecked at by various sea birds.

SRE: I’m not sure I’ve ever just eaten cake solo. I don’t think I have. It’s always been at a birthday party, wedding or funeral. Cake is a pretty social thing, now that I think about it. We all have an excuse to stuff ourselves with sugar and frosting so let’s do that together to celebrate or mourn. Maybe we are marking the passing of time and acknowledging our own mortality with desserts. Maybe there’s a giant cake clock ticking somewhere, a giant, delicious, sad cake clock.

SRE: The two sections were just a gut decision, which I know nobody wants to hear. I should say, “Oh, the stories are split like that to show Cassie’s growth as a character.” But that wasn’t my thought process. I just split it into two parts because I wanted the collection to be balanced and never thought of doing it any other way.

SRE: I don’t even know how to open up this can of worms. There are so many varieties of sacrifice, it’s hard to even know where to start about what’s best and worst.

SRE: Pickles. I hate pickles more than anything on this planet. Anything food involving pickles or pickling or being pickled repulses me. God, pickled beets. Don’t even make me think about pickled beets. I’m dry heaving. I officially hate this interview now.

I see you have a Special Thanks going to The Philadelphia Flyers. True or False: Briere is the man! (He used to be the Sabres captain).

SRE: True. Briere is great, although I almost sobbed when he missed that penalty shot during the Winter Classic. He’s always a lot of fun to watch in the playoffs. So thanks for that, Buffalo!

SRE: Probably “Secret Admirer” by Pissed Jeans. I’ve always loved “Secret Admirer” because the lyrics create such an awesome juxtaposition. The concept of being both a nice guy and a stalker is really appealing, unnerving and effective. I think there are similar juxtapositions in the book, odd pairings that hopefully evoke an emotional reaction. Also, I don’t know if any other song I’ve heard opens as strongly as that one – once you hear Matt Korvette start that howl, you can’t really get it out of your head. There’s a terrible desperation in that song and in his voice, but also a softness, a kindness. There’s something terribly romantic to me about that song. 

SRE: Ah, I’m not good at questions like this. I don’t sit around too much thinking about good lines I’ve written. It’s sort of like in hockey when they say you shouldn’t stand around admiring your own pass because that’s when someone is going to slam you into the boards.

SRE: In progress. In progress. In progress. In progress. In progress.

Sarah Rose Etter, Tongue Party, Caketrain
bl pawelek, Ten Everywhere

MB: First things first, I Remember (recently released from Future Tense Books) is built upon a static structure – each segment preceded by ‘I remember’ – creating a vibrant and consistent rhythm throughout the book. Yannick Murphy, our last interviewee here on Monkeybicycle, recently released a novel The Call which is also built upon a rhythmic structure where each section of the book responds to a particular ‘call’. And though we learn from the jacket copy that I Remember was inspired by Joe Brainard’s I Remember, what else drew you to this kind of overall approach to a full-length title, what brought you to force yourself into this Oulipo kind of move?

SA: Well, I didn’t know Joe Brainard ever existed before I took a poetry workshop with David Trinidad back when I was a student at the New School. He was the one who introduced me to Brainard’s I Remember. I really have to thank him for that because I don’t think my book would be out there now without learning of Brainard and how he influenced New York School poets. When I opened the first page of I Remember that did it for me. I fell in love with the book, the form, and his ability to take the genre of memoir and turn it on its ear. So when I got the class assignment to write out my own memories, I jumped at the opportunity. What was only supposed to be a page or two, turned out to be 60 pages of my own thoughts and memories. The process is and continues to be very therapeutic for me. I don’t think I will ever stop doing this. I wouldn’t say that I’m obsessed with I Remembers. I find myself giving it a break, but always coming back to it, each time bigger than before.

MB: I Remember also plays very heavily on pop culture references of the 70’s and 80’s, and so as I laughed at mentions of Pop Rocks and The Jetsons and Bugle Boy jeans, I wondered how this book might be received by someone who was born much earlier, or much later – what will those readers find in this book? Also, say, in 25 years, or 50 even, how do you think the cultural relevance of I Remember will have shifted, and how might it be received and/or read?

SA: When I initially read Brainard’s book, I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to identify with some of his memories being that much of it was before I was ever a thought, but that’s what’s so great too. His book, as well as mine, acts as a history lesson in popular culture. What you can’t identify with, you can respect and find yourself saying, “Oh wow, I remember that happening, or ‘I can’t believe he went through that and lived to tell about it here.” I hope to do the same thing with my book. It’s not just a book in which the readers read about short moments that happened to me, but something where you have bouts of nostalgia. As I continue to write up more of these, I find that one memory triggers another and another and so on. Something as simple as a flower can trigger memories you thought were long buried in your mind.

MB: Another aspect of I Remember that constantly caught my attention was how many specific names and situations from your own personal narrative you divulge. Are these at all changed to ‘protect the innocent’ as they say, or are they rendered exactly as you remember them? And, in terms of this kind of very personal writing, was there any worry, prior to the book’s publication, about upsetting people who are also a part of these remembrances?

SA: In regards to the people I mention, I tried to stay on a first name basis, but many of these people  that I know or have known are friends of mine, so they get what I’m doing and understand that they impacted my life largely.

MB: I was really curious as well about how the book was composed both during the writing process as well as the editing rounds and final ordering with Kevin Sampsell and Bryan Coffelt at Future Tense. First, can you talk with us a little about how you wrote the book – how many of these remembrances were written per day, how much editing was done on each, how much did you restructure or reshape each segment as you wrote?

SA: Well, I had already had 60 pages of material and gradually worked on the manuscript as months and years went on, collecting it all in notebooks and journals and sometimes finding myself remembering things when I wasn’t always at my desk so I would jot things down on napkins, even my hand at times. Kevin was instrumental in making sure that the book was as tight as possible with the best lines. He wanted me to talk more about those that weren’t so quite clear and that forced me to delve deeper into a particular memory. I’m learning to do that with the new material. We both went through a few edits of the book to get it where we both wanted. As for the cover: I really did have this image of me being very young. I thought it would suit the theme perfectly and Bryan turned my idea into reality, which I love.

MB: And in this same vein, when it came time to editing, how did the manuscript re-shape or evolve as you worked towards publication, or is the final ordering and layout of I Remember ordered and structured as you wrote it? For instance, there are several repeats of certain remembrances in the book, and I wondered if this happened during the writing or the editing or both, and what kind of importance those moments then play in the overall narrative thread?

SA: As a writer, I don’t think the editing process ever stops. I think it’s always this ongoing process. There’s nothing in the book that I wish I had have left out. With something like this, I had to decide early on how honest I wanted to be and what I wanted to put out there. You either go big or go home. I wasn’t interested in sugar-coating anything. There are some lines like the more erotic memories that I kind of both cringe and laugh at, but I’m glad I put them in the book. With this it’s all about the good, the bad, the ugly and the embarrassing in one book. I can’t be afraid of being judged. At the end of the day none of that shit matters. Other than the deletion of a few memories, the book was published in the same way I recorded my memories. I wrote what came to me. Memories don’t get filed away in one’s mind alphabetically.

MB: If readers dig I Remember (which they will) and they want to read more from you (which they should) which of your books would you direct them to next, and why?

SA: I have a poetry collection that came out last year called Slut Machine from Rebel Satori Press. It’s a book that had been a longtime coming and I am just as proud of it as I am of I Remember, so check it out as well as the plethora of poems I have online. I also write short stories and edit erotica for Cleis Press, which I quite enjoy, but I’m the type who always tries to move the line. I am gradually moving into novel writing. I am at work on a YA novel as well as a new collection and I’m moving into the next chapter of ‘I Remember’ material for a new book perhaps.

MB: And if readers of this interview haven’t bought themselves a copy of I Remember yet, what do you think their problem is?

SA: I don’t know too many people out here that don’t like me. J Even if you don’t, check out this book anyway. It’s the only book you will ever need if you’re thinking of blackmailing me.

Purchase a copy of I Remember here.

MB: One of the most talked about aspects of your latest novel The Call is its structure, written as a constant barrage of specific call and response, each bit of writing and narrative introduced with its antecedent, for example “What the kids said the next evening” or “What the doctor, my doctor, wore when I went for my exam” or “Who holds my pager while I’m swimming in case there is an animal emergency” Can you talk with us a bit about how you decided to start using this structure and what it was like to write under this kind of controlled arrangement?

YM:  Writing in a controlled arrangement actually liberates some writers much more than if they were able to write free form.  A controlled arrangement immediately sets up a tension, which adds to the entire headlong direction of the story.  The tension is that is revealed is that the writer is always having to struggle with transforming the arrangement so that it’s dynamic at every turn.  The form is always rebuking the writer and making the writer’s job difficult, so it’s up to the writer to try and create the illusion that the story is breaking free of the form without actually breaking the form.  That’s the fun part!

MB: The Call also plays heavily on the emotional impact of life-changing events – a severe injury, a coma, new found family relations, medical uncertainty – is this a planned trajectory of the novel, established before you began writing, or is this focus on emotional intensity more like a thematic pull that only appears so vibrant after you put the book to rest?

YM: Planning novels is difficult, you have to commit yourself to a trajectory, and then you have to be open to taking the risk of swerving away from that trajectory because sometimes literary occasions arise that are too good not to put on the page.  I don’t think I consciously plan novels, but I do think a part of me sometimes looks pages ahead, other times I’m only looking back and trying to find my next sentence in the sentences that came before it.

MB: Another aspect of The Call is a reliance on unresolved elements. For instance, David, the veterinarian narrator, is regularly told to pay attention to “his levels” either via his wife Jen or his doctor or his own slender worry about wellness and longevity, but the reasons for these levels and all the concern is never made explicit. Can you talk to us about why you chose not to divulge many details about this medical aspect, and also perhaps what you hope that does to readers?

YM:  The more an object or element isn’t named, the closer it feels to the reader, and makes the reader’s reading experience unique.  In real life, if something is of importance to us, we don’t name it right away either.  We first know its nature, and the feeling it invokes within us.

MB: But to dispel one mystery for us, your biography says that you live in Vermont with your veterinarian husband and your children, so of course one can’t help but link that to The Call, the veterinarian husband and the children and the maple trees tapped just as we can assume they are in Vermont – so just how much of The Call is your own life rendered into fiction?

YM: All writers borrow from their real lives, especially when some of their real lives happen to coincide or intertwine with the lives of interesting characters.  It’s not always necessary to make everything up, not when such good stuff is right in front of you.  The work is training your ear and recognizing what to include and what not to include from the real world.

MB: And for fans of your other novels – Sea of Trees, Here They Come, and Signed, Mata Hari – can you talk with us a little about the differences and similarities between The Call and those previous books? Where do they meet, where do they diverge, and what kind of progression is The Call in your novel writing experience?

YM: All the novels try and push the envelope a little by using structures that take a few pages of getting used to, but once you’ve read the first few pages, you are immersed very quickly into the mind of the storyteller.  It’s as if the writing in the books is trying to engage the reader in a new language, but the comprehension of that language takes very little effort, and the rest of the reading is as easy as riding a bike, but unlike any other bike you’ve ridden before.  The novels are all similar because they are all written in the first person. (Except for Signed, Mata Hari, which is written from multiple points of view including first person.)  The novels are also all different because the stance from which they are written varies.  Here They Come, for example, is written from a very close stance, you are privy to some immediate thoughts that the girl character has about her ordeal growing up.  In Signed, Mata Hari, the stance is at times a little farther back, and there are more instances where you can tell that Mata Hari has filtered her thoughts on a subject or an experience relating to the events that led to her incarceration.  In The Call David Appleton the veterinarian is also divulging thoughts that seem to randomly pop into his head, and draw the reader in close to his psyche.  However, the effect of these ruminations appearing in an arrangement format like the call log, also work to formulate a kind of distance from the character’s thoughts.  This distance almost creates the illusion of the book being written in third person, giving the reader a more objective perspective on David’s life than a true first person narrative.

MB: Lastly, for people who have not read The Call and need a tiny shove to get them purchasing this novel from their respective booksellers, what would you say to make the case for picking up a copy of The Call?

YM: It’s short!

Purchase a copy of The Call here & read more from / about Yannick Murphy here.

In 10 words (no more, no less), please describe Hard to Say.
ER: My traitorous heart on the page for all to see.

(p8) – When was the last time you suffered from things hard to say?
ER: Minutes ago, when I again listened to the song mentioned below.

(p12) – “Every time I closed my eyes, I saw God pull Mother through a black hole in the sky” … what happened when you opened your eyes?
ER: It remained so dark I wasn’t sure my eyes had opened, but I took comfort in my sisters beside me and the ever present sense as a child that I was never alone, that God was always with me, watching over me.

(p14) – When your dad stared at the ceiling a lot, what did he see?
ER: The ceiling.

How does the cover art fit your book?
ER: The cover artist, Siolo Thompson, is a genius. The cover captures misery, unraveling, and the misshaping of a voiceless child. Note the golden and pretty pastel hues, though, they represent hope and the shiny human spirit.

(p19) – Tell me the best thing about the girl in the moon.
ER: The girl in the moon sings the world to sleep. Those who have had something essential inside broken can’t hear her anymore and don’t sleep well or feel at peace. Those are the people she sings her hardest for, her best for, out of her soul for, hoping someday they’ll heal and recover and will eventually hear her again and sleep like babes.

Are there times when guilt affects your writing?
ER: Interesting question. I’m not sure guilt has ever consciously affected my writing. Guilt sometimes censors my writing. Out of guilt and the worry I would hurt others with these stories, I almost didn’t publish Hard to Say.

These stories are like a continuing narration … do the stories still continue?
ER: Yes. Hard to Say captures the beginning in this continuing narration. Someday, I may or may not write the middle. A biographer may or may not write the end.

(p49) – What was the best thing you heard the sun say?
ER: “I’m untouchable, and that’s my tragedy.”

What song would be a best fit for this book?
ER: Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You.”

Describe your writing process. What is the best and worst parts?
ER: Writing out of me stories I didn’t know I had in me is the best part of the writing process. The worst part of the writing process is failing.

In 10 words (no more, no less), please describe your next project.
ER: A novel set in Ireland in 1980 about a creep.

Ethel Rohan, Hard To Say, Little Books
bl pawelek, Ten Everywhere

To begin with, I read Skin Horse as a narrative or story told in poems – was this wrong? Should I have read this book instead as a poetry collection, as only a loosely threaded volume of like-minded poems?

Well, first I’d respond that I do not believe in strictly right or wrong responses to texts, especially my own. I’d also say that I think that any sort of curated collection, or any bunch of things magically/accidentally thrown together, does suggest a narrative. And third, while I see most conventional narrative as tyrannical (a narrative tells the reader what to do, while I would rather collaborate with the reader in creative exchange/intercourse), I do and did intend to suggest a kind of coherent world where things happen—so, yes, that must be a narrative.

I have, though, just lately, thought much more about narrative than I used to—and the more recent poems in Skin Horse reflect some of what I am thinking. The poems that drop the second person pronoun (I know that this technique is not entirely apparent to the reader) are meant to tug the reader into the scene as an actor and to suggest the flimsy, excitingly thin world of storytelling. The self can split, can contain others, can project, can act voyeuristically and selfishly, can piece things together in pattern where there is none at all, where there could just as easily be recognition of an absolute empty. I favor a reader-centered poetics, and whatever narrative emerges, I hope, is created by the reader’s use of some tools that I pre-manipulated and some other wonderful—and totally unknown to me—tools with which the reader enters the exchange.

There is something about our sense of a timeline and the way we access memory that makes narrative so easy. I am excited by the feeling that this is ridiculous, seeing as we simply impose time on experience and imagine ourselves in a kind of gauzy strip of events that runs from birth to now to death. I like the failure of narratives. I like that narratives entertain; I think that readers should feel inside a poem the way we feel when we watch a film or hear music or eat dinner—inside of something that is outside of something else.

Skin Horse seems to reside, at least in tone if not in more concrete ways, in the idea of small town / farm life. Even when a poem loops out to technology or lasers or anything citified, it revolves right back to the tight fabric of community and rugged pastoral landscape just pages later. How does this extension away from and then retreat back to small town imagery connect with you as a writer? What does it tell us about you?

I adore the pastoral—for tone, for the language associated with land, for experiences in physical reality, for imaginary experiences . . . but, mostly, I just use the pastoral as a theater for other things. It is a place where I can insert electrical lemur-faces and where I can do myself in drag. I grew up very much in the city, went to warm and cheerful YMCA summer camps for my childhood exposure to “Nature,” and maybe I slightly exoticize the world you see depicted . . . ultimately, though, I see the boundaries between these different spaces as barely there. I like that the imagination can bounce and flee through and out of setting. I see a fine floral tapestry pillow on a wooden chair and I feel my grandma’s northside Chicago apartment as quickly and as easily as I feel a long winter walk in a state park, with a dip and a cliff and a deer corpse torn up on the path. These are the same to me, feeling-wise.

And when it isn’t animals pulling us into each moment of Skin Horse, the most constant images are equally nature-bound (trees, weather, etc.). For instance:

as a cougar

in the leaves a mother

in our mouths we called

one another

with black willow lip: Please It.

Or:

There is the wide stone water.

There is my own terror.

The seahorse of all this

is hacking yellow

a dry lung.

Or:

Think of my little albino deer

alone in the winter garden.

The tooth in the sky

making sea around him.

Where do these images come from and how do they manifest themselves as you write?

I often think of words as cheap trinkets that I arrange and rearrange on my dresser. Animals work very well for this. Also, aren’t animals so delightful to observe? It is an ethically appropriate sort of spying on private lives. I like to see what other creatures do, what their mannerisms and facial expressions are, and what tasks they have to complete. So, when I am not just lazily throwing around animal names for aesthetic s, I am writing about animals I have seen or imagined or obsessed over in some way.

Sometimes a poem/a word predicts the event about which it will be. The deer corpse I mentioned in the answer above was probably the result of a cougar attack. I actually saw this with my husband. It was dusk, and we were frightened and thrilled by the shock of it. Of course, I wrote “cougar/ in the leaves” a year before the “real-life” event. On another walk, we had imagined a cougar following us, and I put that in my poem. Later, it was real and the poem’s content, though not its words, changed.

As for seahorses, I just love them; I think they are amazing and alien. I used to play this strange youtube clip over and over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaoLxR9FTwk. I was disturbed by how the filmmaker’s ordinary domestic life created the audio backdrop of this fairly dramatic event in the seahorse’s life. I like the micro/macrocosms. And my friend introduced me to Jean Painlevé’s movies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y79UPfaHgE), where you can learn more about many strange little ones like the seahorse.

Albino deer live in northern Wisconsin. They are ghostly and ghastly. I have only seen pictures.

Likewise, over the course of Skin Horse, a rural accents slips in, as here:

I got deer-injecting to do.

Cup scams to pull.

A whole basket of others.

Or shouts in loudly, as here:

and here comes the thirsty one

a clickin’ away in the night.

A mirror pink locket all broke open

to unfold the awkward beast

a knockin’ in the night.

It’s us born to the weave

of nightmare and prairie and crow

and snow

so so piled plenty—

Why is this accentuated voice only used on occasion and what character or persona does it evoke in Skin Horse?

Like moving in and out of different spaces, I feel free to move in and out of costumes. On one hand, the different accents reflect different periods of writing, where I may have been “doing” a different persona. On the other hand, I find that in my physical life I speak in different voices all the time, obviously—and these can pop up and infect the poem or can be suppressed or mutated. Finally, I like to think there are many selves present in the poems, all very possible at once.

Lastly, there is a collective ‘us’ or ‘we’ referenced throughout the poems in Skin Horse. As in the previous sample, or this others, like this:

In us ‘til ten p.m.

In us like devil meat.

I was saying it

in us.

Who is this ‘us’, and/or what does it represent?

I don’t always know, but sometimes, often, it is my husband, with whom I write and read and have many adventures. Sometimes, it is my brother, my mother, one of my friends; sometimes it is you. And sometimes I am you or the you is me.

Olivia Cronk is making poems that read like vignettes of a total story taken apart and restructured into a new song, the same story but told in razed and rebuilt ways. Having fully eaten Skin Horse, I now know what to expect from Cronk, and it is in line with all we assume of Action Books – constant new titles that shiver and shake with goodness, that make us want to be better poets, better writers, and readers with all the time and money in the world to read books like this the instant they are released.

Buy this book here.

To start with, there must be some deeper backstory to Shot that is not explained or unearthed in back cover copy or a preface. Can you give us the history on how this book came to be, where it comes from?

Shot came direct from my viscera, where I found it buried, malformed, but still alive. I wrote it while straddling three major somatic shifts (1) from being happily childless to embracing (bracing) motherhood (2) from being a major to a minor insomniac (3) from being a serial mover to living in a singular place. These transitions permutate like a pure dopamine drip.

In terms of poetic structure, Shot mostly follows an A/B rhythm, placing spare, line-break poetry between poems made of prose type blocks. What is the reason for this specific construction of the content in Shot?

To evoke the cyclic, and the kinetic engine of ambivalence, I wanted to create an architecture of alternating currents or irresolvable dialectics—yes/no, dark/light, fast/slow, prose/brokenness—as you might find in a prosemitrium, the halibun, or fu, which offer the sensation of moving through, drawing onward.

But sometimes, that rhythm is broken open, as in the opening volley of ‘Incubatory’, where the poems take an interrogative form of question and answer or call and response:

Are you comfortable?

                        I move inside night but am not its insides. I jerk and excise, I do not express. Outside is not made of the same dark as inside.

Can you open your eyes?

                        My looking does not bound back to me. It wanders further circles of eon in attempt to put the moon out of my moth-mind.

Or, as in the later piece ‘Interlude’, which works in the form of a list of pseudo definitions:

MOTHER ESTROGEN: The ultrasound picks up a luminous moon in this gray, grainy corner.

MOTHER BROKER: Looks like an owl killed by lightning.

MOTHER-IN-THE-TREES: An owl reshapes its face to shove a new sound down its ear. When you dream, you do the same. Your face reforms so that you may experience the next day.

How important is this kind of structural variety in your poetry and the books you build?

Maybe the rhythm is not so much broken as played with or swerved. I do love to enter through the doors that form/structure/method can open.

I hear you re: “Interlude,” but I think of it as a play or dialogue with an all mother cast, pregnant and aphorizing.

If we look at thematic content, the notion of clothing or fashion as metaphor recurs. As in ‘Nocturnal Dimensions of the Future’:

I stuffed night’s hem into my mouth

Night also buttoned up when it couldn’t find a thing to adorn

Or as in the opening lines of ‘My Actress’:

Costumed and impostured in her sheet, my actress cues hormonal ghosts with scheming cunts and sequin eyes.

Where does this kind of thematic pull come from?

If I put on my pjs, I might convince myself that I’m a sleeper. Cover myself with a material substance with deviant powers (language), and you misread me. Am I wearing a utilitarian enough language? Can you disguise me in yours? I’m interested in the moral drag everyone puts on or takes off. I’m interested in the fatigues we wear—the battledress and uniforms, the exhaustion and dead-time. My great hope is staked in ontological fatigue. The fatigue of being myself—the larval inaction of certain states of depression, information overload, and democracy’s abnegation of authority (voter fatigue) etc—might make me dress in slowness and self-doubt. Might redress Aristotelian dependency on catharsis, disrobing my impulse to act. In my fashion world, insomnia is the most promising step toward self-knowledge; it is the monochrome that opens up new futures that are not contained in the present; it is a heightened state of consciousness, a wakeful mission to rekindle our contract with ethics. In the insomnia suit, I writhe in and watch my own discomforts.

Another interesting thread throughout Shot is the only slightly perceptible presence of the male, as in ‘Mirabile Dictu’:

You thought he

wanted to be seen

You thought you

thought when you tire

of night stuck

full of eyes

go with him

and he’ll start

you from the start

Where does the male presence figure into a work like Shot?

Wherever he is. This observation might say more about you than me.

Touché.

Shot is really a beautifully thin and tenuous vein of poetry, like the inside of a womb or the outside of being, when we are no longer cradled. These poems rock and joust because Hume seems to have taken such care with each piece, such crafting to make each resound with the pain and outward suffering of being set irrevocably free. Shot is a wonderful book that makes poems from conception, that creates life as only words can.

Buy this book here. Read more from / about Christine Hume here.

Also, if you’re around the NYC area, Emily Books is having a launch party at Housing Works tonight. Should be a fantastic time, so show up if you can!

 
 

Next up is The Pop-Hop: Books and Curio.This is a store that isn’t going to live exclusively online (though I’m sure you’ll be able to order things through their website) , but will instead inhabit a storefront in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles. It’s, well, curious, in that it’s not just a wonderful and supportive independent bookstore, but it’s also going to be a project space that will offer workshops in screen printing, bookbinding, photography, and more. It sounds like it could be pretty amazing, and it’s run by some really great folks. Before they launch in early 2012, The Pop-Hop is looking for a little help to get things off the ground. They have a Kickstarter page where you can spread some holiday cheer by donating a few bucks. They’re almost halfway to their goal of $10,000, so make a donation and help them to the finish line. When you’re able to walk into their store or order from their website, you’ll be glad you did. Donate here.