The Lightning Room With Jenny Sadre-Orafai

Welcome  to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

Today, Simon talks with  Jenny Sadre-Orafai, who brought two poems to our February issue earlier this year, about burning young things.

1. “Biography of Teenagers” seems to explore, in part, the fumblings of adolescence as a substitute for later, averted maturity, a desire to concretize things before they happen. What do you think drives our desire for the past over the present?

Perhaps we spend so much time with the past because it’s what is known. We have been there. We know how it all happens. We lived it. We can’t know what will happen this second. There’s a sense of control, ironically, in the past.

2. Both “Biography of Teenagers” and “Treasure in Timber” explore burned-out or elided history, post-dated moments: can you share another moment of deleted history?

I visited Seattle and British Columbia when I was seventeen with my parents and sister. I remember feeling like we would never get back home. I was an anxious teenager who missed her boyfriend and listened to a cassette he made over and over again. Before leaving the Seattle Airport, the news reported that a body had been found in Kurt Cobain’s home. That’s what I remember most from the trip and not how much I was missing by just being there. I would go back to Seattle eighteen years later. I wore flat shoes and walked everywhere. I watched giant seagulls strut and the water shine around them. I didn’t waste it the second time.

3. I seem to be conflating biography and history here – can you explain the difference between writing about a person and writing about time?

I don’t know that there’s a difference when I write poetry. There isn’t an obligation in poetry to tell facts or to be accurate necessarily, not like there is in biography at least. One of my favorite quotes to give creative writing students is from Nicholson Baker—“There’s no either-or division with poems. What’s made up and what’s not made up? We don’t care.”

4. These two poems also have a motif of wood (or, at least, faux-wood, in the case of “Biography of Teenagers”). As a material, it’s so versatile: use it to build something, or (then) use it for fuel, and it has so many different names. What draws you to timber?

I am drawn to what humans sacrifice (trees) for those things we need or think we need. Then, in thinking about the production of what has been sacrificed, I consider how we make replicas of nature, like the log boat. These complexities are initially what drove the poems.

5. Was the log chute always your favorite ride? I liked the ones where you got wet, but not soaked-wet, although I mostly preferred rollercoasters. What is it about the log flume that brings up such intimacy?

The log chute is pretty straightforward. You see where your body will travel. It is more difficult to anticipate and see where your body will go on a roller coaster. I don’t like dangerous surprises. I suppose this is a lot of why the log flume is a ride that I will get in line for. So much of the intimacy that the ride affords comes from facing one direction in the dark, right beside one other person. There’s a shared vulnerability and anticipation even though you know what’s going to happen.

6. How do you imagine being old and blind, now that you’re past the log chute phase and have a history of your own?

Being old and blind will be like a rollercoaster. I think my life as an older person is going to be a little more unpredictable than my younger life. Not so clear-cut. Most of my life I’ve ridden harmless rides. Being old is the roller coaster, it’s living with less barriers. It’s dangerous surprises. It’s letting go.

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Simon Jacobs curates the Safety Pin Review, a wearable medium for work of fewer than 30 words. He may be found at simonajacobs.blogspot.com.