Ask The Author: Rebecca Hazelton

From the March Issue, Three Poems by Rebecca Hazelton.

1. Where would you like to wash up?

Things that wash up seem melancholy for me, though I suppose it’s all in how you look at it—I could view these items as recovered from a great sea—what are the odds!—but I don’t. Instead, I think of Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic, her face flecked with sand. Of selkies separated from their skins, The Little Mermaid separated from her sense of her own value, her voice. All that said, I’d like to wash up in Bali.

2. Why would a spy access our skin?

Well, I can’t speak for you, but my skin is lovely.

3. Is your Elise influenced by Kafka similar to Robert Smith was influenced by him when writing “A Letter to Elise”?

No, but you’re the second person in as many months to ask me if I am influenced by Kafka in some way. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m Kafkaesque, because that seems to involve being miserable and underfed. Actually, the song I listen to when it comes to these poems is P.J. Harvey’s “A Perfect Day, Elise,” from her album, Is This Desire? Harvey’s music is the perfect blend of Bible, sex, rock and roll, and experimentalism, and I find her

very inspirational. I use music a lot when I’m writing, especially when I am writing a series of poems that I want to have a certain tonal unity. I listened to Joanna Newsom’s Ys on repeat while writing my forthcoming book, Fair Copy, especially her song “Only Skin,” which has an amazing blend of delicacy, over the top lyrics, and gorgeous rhyme. She’s orchestral and wide stretching. The current work is a lot of Explosions in the Sky, which accomplishes similar aims for me in terms of mimicking breadth, and the aforementioned Polly Jean, who in her most recent work has begun to address questions of nation, history, and politics, which are topics I’m just gingerly starting to touch on.  

4. What is the origin of this series of poems?

My friend died.

5. What’s your take on using same sex activity in the presence of an ex? Is it Penthouse fodder or erotic revenge?

Both. Neither. People are complicated, and I don’t think their motivations in moments like these are particularly clear to outsiders, or even to themselves. What interests me is how desire can be created in an artificial manner, a sort of staging of a scene, as with these two women who are, in a way, performing. At the same time, the performance has its own small frisson for the women, whether because of the physical interaction, the sense of transgression, the pleasure and discomfort in being watched, or the knowledge of such a performance’s effect. I’m not interested in setting up clear power dynamics in a situation like this—portraying the women as victims because they are watched or the man as such because he is manipulated by their actions. The camera is the most troubling actor in the room, because it means this performance may be seen again, and in that instance, control slips away from all parties, as the images can be disseminated to a broader audience.

6. How can porn be ironic?

There is a lot of porn in the world. Some of it is made by adults who are fully aware of their participation in a certain kind of capitalist production. There is also porn made under the worst of circumstances, involving people who cannot give consent or give consent under duress or without full possession of their faculties. You can also make the argument that no woman can truly give her consent for participating in porn because we live in a rape culture. I don’t even know if I disagree with that; my personal feelings regarding porn are ambivalent. Yet there are pornographic movies made by women for women, and there are also pornographic movies made by people who are earnestly trying to make sex-positive porn, even to make feminist porn. There are also movies that have none of that social-concern but somehow have a cheerful good nature to them, and even porn that aims to parody (in a loose usage of the word) a beloved bit of pop-culture, such as the porn parody of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” There can be a surprising amount of thoughtful homage there, albeit interrupted by graphic sex. It’s not as easy as saying that if every actor in a porn video is wearing a fedora, then the porn is ironic. Maybe it’s ironic if we’re in a room where porn is playing and we’re pretending we’re not noticing, or not in some way titillated. Maybe it’s irony if you reproduce what you’ve seen in porn without ever thinking what it is you are copying. If we are all copying each other copying each other’s reproduction of a simulation of delight.