The Lightning Room With Caleb Kaiser

From our September issue, swamps and storms from Caleb Kaiser.

1. These two poems both have water as a central element; tides, swamp waters, river-waves. What do you draw from the water?

Water obviously has a universal quality to it. Constantly present and always being recycled through various areas; it’s a sort of universal medium for life. More relevant to my writing, though, are bodies of water. I’ve always been drawn to creeks, rivers, tides, etc. because of the sort of eternal movement they possess. I spent a lot of time playing in the creek and the ocean when I was young(er), and the feeling of being immersed in something that is fresh and new, but still massive and old, is a recurring theme in my writing. I try to write the way I feel, which is that every moment and sensation is something vibrant and new, yet part of something older than I can completely grasp. Working with something you can’t completely see, for me, is where the magic happens in poetry.

2. Generation after generation seems to be drawn to the swamps, to shores, where they are inevitably taken over. What’s the most unusual place you’ve found a body?

My dining room. When my father passed, he had one of those sick papery hospital beds set up where our cheap dining room table had been. In a sense, I left my own body on the floor next to his. I broke into that house a few years later. No one has lived there since (it’s a rundown house in a shitty housing market), and the room was exactly the same minus his bed and body. I could smell both of us rotting there.

3. If you had to take a piece of music to approximate the song taught by the Girl Who Prays for Storms, what would it be?

I’ve always seen it as something more primal than what most music is. Like a fireside chant with moans instead of words, and soulful music. Gospel music from before God, I suppose.

4. What phenomena do you pray for?

Windstorms are the most beautiful things. I see the woods as the setting for my childhood in a lot of ways, and watching windstorms in the woods is the most amazing thing. Two unbelievably massive things, the woods and the wind, dancing and fighting in that friendly way that brothers wrestle. There aren’t words for how humbling and connected you feel when you’re in the middle of that. I’ve also always said that I want to die naked in a tornado, and that probably has something to do with my obsession with windstorms.

5. Which side of the Ohio River do you prefer?

That’s tough. Most of the experiences I had as a teenager (my closest friends, being blessed enough to work with the amazing artists at Able Projects, getting involved in publishing, etc.) all happened in Cincinnati, on the Ohio side of the river. However, I still have to say that nothing beats the beauty of Kentucky. Bourbon and dancing have no better place than Kentucky, and I never feel more at home than I do in those hills.

6. What is the flower you take most seriously? 

Lilies. Their shape is odd on its own, but they’ve always seemed like the powerful and lovely loners of the flower world. They never look out of place anywhere, but you’ll never confuse them with another flower. Also, this is off-topic, but girls with flowers in their hair will never stop being gorgeous. It might be cliché, it might be ridiculous, but if I see a girl with flowers in her hair I occasionally start stammering and proposing marriage.