Ask The Author: Caleb Curtiss

We brought you Caleb Curtiss’s “A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us” in June. Below, Caleb discusses poetry’s fascination with death and time, amongst other topics.

1. Your essay begins very poem-like but then transitions into an essay. Why did you structure “A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us” in this manner?

Perhaps obviously enough, “A Taxonomy…” started off as a poem. I didn’t have any aspirations for it to be anything more than that, but then, after sitting with it for a while, I decided to annotate it as more of an exercise than anything. Pretty soon thereafter, I realized that I needed to get out of the way and let it become an essay, which it apparently did.

2. Why is poetry so fascinated with death and time?

I don’t know, although I suspect it has to do with how poetry, perhaps more than any other literary form, deals with documenting the moment and its passing. That’s obviously a bit reductive, but it seems to me that most memorable poetry asks its reader to step outside of time as she or he experiences it and into the order of its aesthetic. By its very nature, poetry examines the relationship between language and meaning, which is absolutely a question of order. It makes sense, then that the space opened up by the temporal schemes we see in aesthetically successful, and therefore highly influential work (think Dickinson, Stevens, Moore, or more contemporarily, Carl Phillips), should examine not only the possibilities of the moment, but the logical outcome of what gives the moment its meaning. Or maybe talking about death just makes poets feel more important. Which is silly, because ultimately, they’re all going to die anyway.

3. Whose grave would you dance on? What music would you use?

I don’t know, man. I’m not sure that I could dance on anyone’s grave. Maybe Ke$ha’s, assuming she met an untimely demise (which I certainly don’t wish upon her). If that were the case, I’d probably ask the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to do an a capella rendition of Tik Tok. She’d want it that way.

3. What would you like to cut?

Honestly, I like to cut lots of things. When I was a kid, I’d sit on my front steps, whittling sticks that had fallen off the redbud tree just outside of my house into fine points. These days I’ve graduated to cutting fence posts with my circular saw and pruning back the pain-in-the-ass mulberry tree in my back yard. Presently, I would like to cut a nice ripe avocado so’s I could eat it, one delicious slice after the other.

4. What is your theory on string cheese?

It is much more delicious after it has torn into small ropes of uniform length and thickness, woven into little cheese braids, and savored while contemplating the all of the mistakes one has made in one’s meaningless life.

5. Where would you like to travel back to? What would you change?

What a thought-crippling question this is. I guess I’d probably go back to a few minutes ago and change my answer to this question into one that wasn’t so shitty.