… I worry about you, puckerdash. You were my favorite
while you lived, and now that I wait until sunset
to congratulate our fathers killed, smokes another
so pearly you lost a car accident image “node” to claw
waiting to light the candles with a triggering glare
you’re crossing the road to post and might find
a common mind eating eggs alone to survive. Empty
pockets. Back readies weekend not that personally,
a master form so long as you keep us real from
dome kin post-address play toms on lock wrestle
when I wait for bad faith morphology graphs a play …
J. Gordon Faylor, Phone and Pencil, p. 67
The cover of this new collection allows the reader to
enter the text seamlessly. Brett Goodroad’s Expressionist monotype is
reminiscent of an Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painting or, better, of Edvard Munch’s
famous artwork, “The Scream.” Angst is the prevalent mood, possibly,
symbolizing the human condition, itself—reflecting subjective emotion rather
than “the thing itself.” This subjective perspective is woven throughout the
text that follows the haunting cover image—including, occasional insertions of
referential elements [Gompers; Nina], radically distorting what may be the
author’s intended meaning or creating a carefully crafted, indeterminate long
poem for the reader’s emotional effect and evoked responses.
Phone and Pencil
is the most compelling full-length collection that I have read in recent years,
and J. Gordon Faylor proves himself, once again, to be a seasoned writer whose
practice has not settled into a predictable style—linguistically, in terms of
structure, or with regard to content. His brilliant 2016 novel, Registration
Caspar [Ugly Duckling Presse], is a haunting, futuristic tale of a humanoid
whose end is near. Faylor, now living on the East Coast, has been called a “Bay
Area Beckett.” In addition to writing, he is a museum curator, and, as a
publisher and editor [GaussPDF], has highlighted the experimental, often,
hybrid, work of seasoned, as well as, early-career artists. Faylor mines the
potential of the personal landscape with particular regard for understated,
respectful communication with his reader in a way that is, at once, intimate
and detached. The rare nod to the lyrical “I” or to overt statements never
detracts from the author’s resistance to the literal or the didactic, even
though political motivation is a constant undertone throughout his oeuvre.
Indeed, the expressionistic sub-text of Faylor’s new
long-poem is, itself, political, the modernist artistic movement,
Expressionism, having been a rebuke to Impressionism active on the artistic
scene in Europe, more or less, from before WW I to the start of WW II. Phone
and Pencil disrupts our understanding of what the mainstream regards as
conventional verse, employing “language games” and other innovative compositional
features in the service of what is often termed, “associative poetry,” possibly
derived from Surrealism’s “automatic writing,” but, crafted with the skills in
Faylor’s “toolkit,” an automaticity that has been refined and tempered by an
apparent intentionality that, nevertheless, preserves the experiential “flow.”
A good example of the author’s facility with quiet
referentiality is Faylor’s use of “Nina” as a repetitive element throughout the
text. Nina, the name of cartoonist, Al Hirschfeld’s, daughter, was embedded in
many of his drawings as a hidden element or concealed message, not unlike the
veiled verbal techniques employed by Faylor that, at once, hide truth and cloud
perception. These methods land Phone and Pencil squarely in the domain
of postmodern poetry that rejects grand narratives to adopt a tentative and
fractured world view. In addition to “Nina,” the collection includes several
references to [Samuel] “Gompers,” the famous British-American labor leader
active during the late 19th Century to mid-20th Century
period.
Like John Ashbery, Faylor’s occasional references to material
that the reader may be uninformed about does not interrupt focus—an effect that
is very difficult to master. Indeed, once I began reading this book, it
sustained my attention in a manner that stimulated my emotions and my
intellect. Faylor’s methods of concealment do not deceive or foreclose the
receiver [interpreter?] of the literary composition
whose effect is balanced and understated—even though I would speculate that the
author’s act of creation must have involved a fair amount of
“free-association.” Each word seems to have been carefully selected as a
stand-alone, as well as, a companion to other words and phrases. Faylor’s
expert use of monosyllabic, “hard” words exposes the hand of a mature poet,
enhanced by the characteristic that the composition is not self-conscious or
studied.
Other features of Phone and Pencil make this a singular literary experience that all readers of innovative poetry will value. Furthermore, anyone curious about experimental writing will find this volume a stellar vehicle for entering the sub-genre. This brief review is an inadequate introduction to the many techniques employed successfully to create a work that is, at once, accessible and challenging. Among these techniques are repetition; neologisms; infrequent, though, effective use of [apparently] “found” phrases bounded by quotation marks; humor; image; music; rhythm—yielding a text that is cohesive, though, non-formulaic. I am, particularly, struck by a playful conceit that enhances the depth, complexity, anticipation, & enjoyment of the experience—that many phrases and sentences appear, upon first encounter, to be sensible, yet, provide a pleasurable, “Ah, hah!” phenomenon upon realizing that veridical meaning is only apparent. Even if you are not a regular consumer of poetry, I recommend Phone and Pencil enthusiastically. This book deserves a large audience, and any new collection by Faylor is to be celebrated.
—
Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA.
J. Gordon Faylor, Editor-Publisher of the
online platform, GaussPDF, is the author of several books, as well as, a few
collections in association with his colleague, Brandon Brown. Of particular
note is Faylor’s 2016 novel/long poem, Registration Caspar (Ugly
Duckling Presse), a collector’s item and a brilliant example of innovative
writing that is, at once, a “transrational” experience and a psychological
journey for the main character and the reader, alike. In my review of this book
I asserted that, “The interpretation of Registration
Caspar that I advance…represents my subjective experience as a reader of
the novel. I do not claim to understand Faylor’s serious or playful intentions;
however, I am of the opinion that the book is both serious and playful as a
work of art.” I would make a similar claim about Antoecians, Faylor’s
new volume of experimental poetry. Asked to reflect on his collection, the
writer stated [via email], “I suppose I’d just note that it’s very much a work made in a
state of quarantine, and which comes out of protracted solitude and frustration
in and with that solitude, but which I also see—however abstractly—as the kind
of concluding book in a trilogy that also includes People Skulk and Want [both
available from Lulu.com]. Hesitant to speculate more on how they’re connected
beyond sheer chronological proximity….” Herein, I will provide obligatory commentary on what I mean
by “experimental” poetry, as well as, discuss
Antoecians as an exemplar of Postmodern innovative, avant
garde writing that expands our understanding of what associative,
“collage,” and political poetry entails.
The word, “antoecians” can be [over]simplified to mean
entities existing in separate, though, not
unassociated, spatial domains, like the discontinuous yet distributed
landscapes that the collection under review represents. In a 2012 essay, the
Stanford poetry critic, Marjorie Perloff, a promoter of literary
experimentation, advanced the idea that, “in recent years, we have witnessed a
lively reaction” to the culture “of prizes, professorships, and political correctness”
by a growing group of poets “rejecting the status quo.” In
characteristic fashion, Perloff goes on to create a binary between poetry with
and without traits that we generally attribute to the lyric, in particular, the
personalized, “I,” as well as, music. One might argue that the poems in Antoecians
lack the formalized musical elements that the mainstream reader expects [but,
see below]. However, such an assessment—a standard—begs the questions: What do
we mean by “music?” and Can we re-frame “music” in a manner that is consistent
with poetry as an artistic enterprise rather than as an “ism” with invariant
definitions and boundaries? As a student of experimental literature who regards
Formalism highly, I am always curious about the seeming “tug-of-war”
between conventional poetics dominating
our narratives about “good” poetry, on the one hand, and poetry that
challenges, even, opposes, received wisdom about what a poetic masterpiece
should be, on the other.
In her consideration of a lyrical : experimental divide,
Perloff highlights questions fundamental to the ways that form, content, and
meaning are understood as literary criteria. For example, the esteemed critic
raises these questions: What makes a lineated text a poem? Does a poem require
some sort of closure or circular structure characterized by a beginning, a
middle, and an end? Should the poet speak via her/his/their own “person?”
Should the poet divulge intimate, autobiographical details? I suggest that,
like the poems in Antoecians, the avant garde poem can meet
formalist standards [if that is a valuable pursuit at all] if we view words,
phrases, sentences as units of wholes [whole poems, whole compositions, whole
structures] capable of standing on their own not only as units subordinate to
and secondary to the whole. Such a re-framing of what we mean by a poem raises
elements, components of the whole to levels equivalent to the whole that exist
on their own terms capable of standing alone or as parts—in combination with,
even, greater than, the sum of the parts of the whole—a [literally,
politically] radical transformation of a hierarchical into an egalitarian form
or structure. Such a redistribution of the power of parts—of words, phrases,
and their additional combinations [and re-combinations]—provides a bridge from
the grand conceptual frameworks of Modernism [Marxism, Psychoanalysis,
Capitalism, “Genius,” Utopianism, Idealism] to the “fractured,” fragmented,
even, relative, realities and landscapes of Postmodernism, as exemplified by the
poems in the volume under review.
Importantly, if we are to argue that Faylor’s compositions are not inconsistent with—if not, actually, continuous with—the poetry of Modernism and the rules of Formalism, and that Faylor’s text is anti-establishment, but not a rendering of anti-fascist or anarchic literature, it is necessary to demonstrate that Antoecians is a collection of rule-governed poems—a formal property that can be viewed as choices and as “intentional,” to employ Perloff’s term that she used to argue that Conceptual poetry is not “uncreative writing.” This perspective is not intended to suggest that Faylor selected or wrote each word, phrase, etc. in a conscious, aware manner. However, it is to suggest that Faylor’s consciously or unconsciously positioned elements, components lend cohesion to the composition itself—a form of literary integrity. In experimental writing, repetition, classically represented by the writing of Gertrude Stein, is widely acknowledged to be the most recognizable “glue” or technique unifying an experimental, avant garde collection. Faylor’s repetitive method is apparent on every page, in every stanza, of his new volume—repeating words comprised of double-letters, resolving what might seem to be a paradox between whole and part or between unfragmented and fractured. Perloff might see this as a trait or flavor analogous to what she calls “circular structure,” characteristic of conventional writing [see paragraph 3 above]. However, though I am in constant search for evidence of formal characteristics in experimental writing, Faylor would probably discount or, even, dismiss, any significance such comparisons may seemingly embody.
Other intentional or “rule-governed” features of the compositions in Antoecians, permitting fracture to coexist with unity, are word play [Ludwig Wittgenstein], including, the creation of neologisms, methods employed—apparently, but, not necessarily, consciously—to generate novelty, expanding parts and wholes—virtually, creating new forms and meanings. Thus, “Windatry Dontcry. Your amyxial Slaty-Gray;” “Was the leg-dump Thermaltake;” “the dim boat Scramsilence;” “the planet ruined people I saw as empaths.” Off and on throughout the text, Faylor repeats sounds: “godwit;” “sunlit;” “unlit.” With these and other techniques, Faylor combines and recombines form, content, and meaning—creating independent, as well as, interdependent, functional units. Other traits include the occasional incorporation of conventional elements, components—possibly self-referential material—[“As before, as foretold, I doze off at work. I make less money than I did before.”; “an already simple Oakland worry makes”]; beautiful images [“imagination gone corpulent”]; emotion, including, loss and love [“couldn’t read that for years after you left”]; and, on p 14, lines can be found that approximate music—or, rhythm, for sure.
Other features of the poems in Antoecians expose the hand of a professional, rather than, an amateur writer—a serious, highly-evolved poet with a mature, “intentional” poetics. In particular, not only, repetition, but, also, one- and two-syllable words, as well as, hard consonants are employed to full artistic effect, resolving—or negating—another seeming paradox between balance and skew—again, whole : part or unfragmented : fractured. I find Faylor’s deference to the political to be, particularly, noteworthy—the establishment of an understated, non-intrusive, respectful relationship with his readers by placing “interpretive power” [as per Formalist, Helen Vendler] in the reader’s person—a solidly Postmodern methodology. To the extent that Antoecians can be said to embody [fractured] content, as well as [fractured] form, meaning, also, is a function of the beholder’s body and mind via sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, images, associations, and abstractions stimulated through interactions with words on the page—not necessarily contiguous elements, components on contiguous pages. Finally, though I recommend Faylor’s new book, especially, to those who are experts, students, or consumers of—or who are curious about—experimental writing, broadly defined, this collection will appeal to any reader who values literary invention and an opportunity to engage with art of a high, though not rarefied or pretentious, order. In addition to Faylor’s other works, Antoecians deserves a wide audience.
—
Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA.
Chris Talbot-Heindl is a leader in the movement to ensure LGBTIQA2+ rights and to promote those interests in the marginalized, as well as, the mainstream, art and literary communities. Editor and publisher of the zine, The Bitchin’ Kitsch[The B’K], and, recently settled in Colorado, their Twitter profile states, “…just another trans, nonbinary, pansexual, mixed-race, separated-Indigenous (probably Huron-Wendat), artist, & comics creator”— and, I would add, educator, advocate, activist, graphic novelist, and chapbook contest sponsor. Talbot-Heindl acknowledges that they produce polarizing, political commentary and art so, in 2010, with their husband, Dana, Talbot-Heindl “brainstormed” about possible projects that would highlight their creative energies, and serve as an outlet for their beliefs and values. “The zine started out as a joke idea – a late night brainstorm that ended with, ‘…and we could totally call it, The Bitchin’ Kitsch—like, it’s totally rad junk!’ The next morning, when the idea didn’t sound half bad, we decided to ‘go’ with it. We wanted to focus on people who normally didn’t get to have their work out there – pieces with a little grit, things that were slightly subversive, or had a level of kitschiness or silliness that ‘traditional’ publications would reject.” They planned to emphasize creativity, inclusivity, diversity, & respectful discourse. The B’K, then, is an extension of Talbot-Heindl’s long-standing concern for justice, their personality, and their self-presentation, and this interview, conducted via email and barely edited, reflects that interdependence. As a personal disclosure, I have published poems and reviews in The B’K several times and won the zine’s chapbook competitions in 2015 & 2017. My motivation for choosing them as an interview subject, however, was based on their commitment to LGBTIQA+ issues and the ways in which they balance and integrate identity, work, life, beliefs, attitudes, opinions, values, and community. Most important, perhaps, I find Talbot-Heindl to be a generous and pragmatic social commentator who makes a lot of sense, and I want to share their “voice” with others.
Chris Talbot-Heindl
Clara B. Jones: Imagine that you are having a dinner party and that you’ve invited three people. Who would these three persons be, why did you choose them, what would you cook for dinner, and what would you talk about?
Chris Talbot-Heindl: The first person is going to sound hokey, but it has to be Dana, my spouse. We’re ridiculously co-dependent and introverted, so there’s no way I could get through a dinner party without his assistance. The other two would be incredibly hard to pick and would likely change day to day. But if I had to choose two living individuals based on today’s mood, I would choose Indya Moore and Lilah Sturges. Both of these individuals work hard in their respective fields to make the world a better, more loving place for trans people (Indya Moore is a trans nonbinary person starring in the television series, “Pose,” who speaks their truth on social media; Lilah Sturges is a writer who hosts Trans Pizza, where she makes sure that trans people are fed!); both focus on intersectionality, and both have beautiful, eloquent, affirming things to say on Twitter daily.
I would likely serve nori rolls and loaded miso since it’s
the only dinner-party style food I can really do any justice to (I am not a
very good cook, truth be told). I would hope we could talk about trans
inclusion issues, brainstorm solutions, and talk about using art as a medium to
raise awareness. But honestly, I’d be up for talking about pretty much anything
with either of them! I have a feeling that any topic they wanted to talk about
would be interesting and informative.
CBJ: What is your earliest memory, and is it still significant to you in any way?
C T-H: I have a problem with memory, honestly. Most of my childhood is a blank, and the memories I do have may be genuine or may be creative fictional amalgamations of stories I’ve heard about my childhood mixed with legitimate memories. Of those possible amalgamations, the earliest one I can think of isn’t super significant other than as an example of my sense of justice and my stubborn insistence of it. Picture this: my family and I are at a martial arts tournament – I think it was the Diamond Nationals in Minneapolis – and I’m “little Chris,” seven or eight years old, trying to sleep at the hotel after the first night. My sister, Michelle, is crying because she can’t sleep. The adults in the next room are partying pretty hard and are too loud. So, I march into the hall to the next room in my pajamas, knock on the door, and, when my instructor opens it, I put my hands on my hips, give him a stern look and tell him he was being rude and to keep it down. Apparently I also told him he was a bad man (for other reasons), but I’m not sure if this was the same night or a different one. I have tons of story-memories like this – me insisting there was a moral imperative to behave a certain way and demanding it be so as a child. Most of them involved hands on hips, stern looks, and demands. I was, apparently, a bossy child.
CBJ: I gather from one of your online interviews that you scan every submission to The B’K for “racist, sexist, or homophobic,” as well as, triggering content. However, your new submission form asks each artist, including, writers, to answer a long and broad range of questions—many of which would be considered illegal in other contexts [e.g., on employment or educational applications]. Can you describe this submission form in detail, discuss its rationale, and tell us what prompted your creating it and using it as a criterion to publish in The B’K? How do you use the information, and what are the most disqualifying answers?
C T-H: Our submission form gets a lot of pushback, but all its rules and questions have been informed from 10 years’ experience in what we don’t want to receive and/or publish. Every time we add something, it’s because we’ve gotten dozens of submissions that included it [e.g., the undesirable topic, practice, or appropriation], and we feel we need to explicitly tell people not to. We once got an angry email from someone who was offended that we included so many guidelines because she didn’t want to “read an essay” just to submit, and she stated all the things included were minimum requirements for a decent submission. She was floored when I told her everything prohibited was something we’ve received many times over.
Our form asks people to self-identify their intersections,
including race, gender, sexuality, ability, and religion, but makes it clear in
the submission guidelines and the submission form itself (because we’ve found
most people don’t read the guidelines) that this is for our information (to see
whose voices we might be missing) and won’t be used to evaluate the work unless
someone’s identity makes their submission inappropriate or constitutes
appropriation. We further explain that “appropriation” means writing about what
it’s like to be part of a historically marginalized community you don’t belong
to rather than just including people from marginalized communities. We go even
further and have podcasts for people who find these rules and terms confusing.
Really, we’re trying so hard to help – we may have gone overboard and made it
all too cumbersome.
For some people, being asked to self-identify is really
upsetting. We get a mix of angry emails each month calling us “fascists” or
saying that white cisgender heterosexual abled men aren’t going to submit
anymore. But for us, these questions are about equity and “who” should tell a
story. We want people from marginalized communities to speak to that
experience; we want all people to include people from marginalized communities
in their work. Too often, we get someone who’s well-meaning but writes a
micro-aggressing interpretation of what it’s like to be someone from a
different background; and, too often, we see other publications publish these
stories. We are interested in people being able to decolonize their own stories
and tell their own stories.
And truth be told, even with these rules, the majority of our submitters and
accepted submissions are white cisgender heterosexual abled men, so there’s
nothing to fear in answering the questions. No identity is disqualifying, but
your piece may be rejected if your identity makes your piece problematic.
CBJ: Besides publishing the zine, The B’K, you hold a yearly chapbook competition, as well as, produce a Podcast Series and an educational series, Chrissplains Comics—both of these latter initiatives are about gender & race. In the current, Winter Issue, 11.1, you present the Chrissplains Nonbinary Advocacy to Cisgender People comic—“Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is a FART Myth” [FART= Feminism-Appropriating Reactionary Transphobes] that “attempts to show why the rhetoric, advanced by FARTs, of ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria’ is harmful and explains to parents and therapists why it isn’t a ‘thing’ to worry about.” What feedback have you been receiving about your podcasts and comic series? Can radical Art, including, literature, change society, or is it influential only at the individual and subjective levels?
CT-H: The feedback I’ve received from The B’K Submitters’ Guide Podcast and Chrissplains Nonbinary Advocacy to Cisgender People have been mixed (and very telling), according to identity. In general, the people advocated for in the podcasts have appreciated them, thanked me for making them and for centering equity and affirming representation, and have sometimes provided me with information I didn’t know (which I then update people with on the next podcast). Allies have thanked me for telling them something they may not have known. But I’ve also gotten angry people sliding into my emails to tell me that I’m being ridiculous and taking PC culture too far. I don’t really sweat that feedback because in my mind that means I’m doing something right. These tend to be the same people that I’ll get an email about informing me that they’ve published elsewhere a story about trans identity being a mental illness and supporting a trans artist or writer means you’re fueling their mental illness (yup, really happened!). If people aren’t willing to learn better and, then, do better, I’m not interested in their listenership or their continued presence in The B’K. We’re on a journey to do better together, and they’re not ready to join us.
For Chrissplains, it’s been nearly the same – nonbinary and
trans people have thanked me or provided me more information from their
perspective, allies have thanked me, and FARTs have harassed me. I also had
someone, who claimed to be an ally, clamoring against one of my comics and
telling me what was best for me, which was interesting. I tried to explain that
nonbinary and trans people will let people know how to best advocate for them;
we don’t need to be told by cisgender people what is best for us. But she
wasn’t ready to hear it.
I believe that radical art is one of the only things that
influences certain types of learners. I originally made all of it – the zines,
the comics, and the graphic novel I’m working on—to help my family and friends
understand me better. That’s it. I didn’t have some grand scheme for it. But in
the process, I’ve had many nonbinary and trans people tell me that it helped
them understand things they didn’t have words for, educate their family and
friends, and made them feel seen. And that’s amazing! On top of that, the LGBT
Center for Excellence at Denver Health is using a partial chapter from my
graphic novel about nonbinary life to help people understand the importance of
LGBTIQA2+ affirming care. You never know who will be touched by your art and
who will be swayed by your art. But, it does provide an avenue for education
and change to people who are visual learners.
CBJ: Off and on for many years, I have been absorbed by reading literary interviews in Paris Review—most of the subjects might be described as members of the literary “canon,” so to speak [Eliot, Didion, Hemingway, Capote, Ralph Ellison, William Carlos Williams, etc.]. Perhaps, I am reading too much in; however, I am drawn to the details of houses and apartments—books, paintings, magazines, rugs, “kitschy” things with historical import, etc.—many of these objects seeming to have a sense of permanence with an intimate story, a detailed provenance attached to each belonging. I have often been reminded of something Paul Fry [Yale] said in his online literary theory course,—that “preservation” is a purpose of great literature, which I interpreted as saying preservation of Western Civilization or, perhaps, bourgeois culture. Is this a project that you would oppose? Is your mission intended to disrupt or intervene in or mediate the neo-capitalist, Western project—or are you about something else? In other words, what are you trying to achieve as a change agent?
CT-H: When we started The B’K, our one goal was to provide an outlet for those creators who are generally overlooked. When we started 10 years ago, there weren’t a ton of online publications with completely open and free submissions, and the ones that were set up like that did seem homogenized to me. I don’t fault them; I think that for the most part, we are trained to believe that the Western style of writing or art and subjects that center white Western ideas are the “greats.” I remember when I was briefly an English major in college, I enrolled in a Masters of Literature class and quickly dropped it when I saw the syllabus and realized it was entirely comprised of works from Western white men. We are trained to think of this ideal as “normal,” and to think of marginalized works to be “specialty” things that we box away in specific courses like “Introduction to Ethnic Literature” – also a class I took despite its micro-aggressing title, and one I truly enjoyed. Sometimes, after we realize that we aren’t going to get validation, acknowledgment, or publication from white institutions that have built an aesthetic—either purposefully or by accident – that leads to our exclusion, we have to decide to build something for ourselves that is built around inclusion and equity.
In my mind, I thought I was writing coded language for those
excluded, but I was also happy to provide an opportunity for the white
cisgender heterosexual men who submitted. I was happy to publish the weird
kitschy stuff, the subject matter that seemed taboo, as well as the
marginalized people I was originally hoping to amplify. Now that we’re farther
into the publication’s life, I find myself wanting to pointedly say, “This
publication is meant to provide inclusion and equity to people who have been
shut out from traditional publications, because traditional publications have
deemed their voice and their stories to be unimportant, ‘specialty,’ or not to
their Western aesthetics, because that’s where I would prefer my free labor to
go toward.” But, maybe, that isn’t as needed as it once was, seeing all the
new, marginalized-population focused publications out there!
CBJ: The Harvard poetry critic and Formalist, Helen Vendler, once said of Adrienne Rich’s poetry—after Rich came out as a lesbian—that Rich was writing “Sociology,” also stating that Rich’s early, lyrical poetry showed promise—implying that the radical feminist poet surrendered good poetry to politics. Given that the Formalist criterion is that content [e.g., politics] is subordinate to form [e.g., lyric, music, color, rhythmn], do you have any reaction to Vendler’s point of view about political and, perhaps, radical, Art, including, writing—that it is “Sociology,” not, Art?
CT-H: I had this same critique in my senior art thesis project, although not worded quite as nicely. One of my professors critiqued my thesis project as “political propaganda,” “low-brow,” and not to the level of fine or academic art. My art used traditional printmaking methods as well as animation to show the atrocities committed by each US President during their time, and it was interactive. Was it impeccably made? No. The printmaking was done well, the rest of it was…honestly, what I could afford to make at that point in my life. But, that wasn’t what he was critiquing. In his mind, the idea that it was political art was what made it not academic, fine, or high-brow art. I think that’s crap, honestly.
First, claiming that something that involves a different identity than your own becomes “sociology” is to fully center your own identity as normal and create an “other.” If you decide that poetry from the lens of a lesbian makes their writing “sociology” rather than poetry, then you’ve decided that poetry from the lens of a heterosexual person is normal, and poetry from a non-heterosexual lens is specialized or politicized. That’s a personal failing of the reader, in my opinion. Yes, our society in the US does cater and normalize white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled identities and stories; but art, and what is considered art, should be more nuanced than that.
I prefer the César
Cruz quote: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Art
has multiple purposes, including, providing a comfort and catharsis to those
suffering under a white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled-centered society, and
there’s value in disrupting the beneficiaries of that society a bit so they can
see something beyond what is immediately visible through their lenses.
CBJ: At least in the modern and contemporary period, small and alternative presses have been venues for experimental or oppositional or political or other non-traditional or radical or alternative artists, including, writers, of course, to publish successfully or to bypass the mainstream literary community and its institutions. What are the major challenges associated with small-press publishing? Is it a viable alternative to publishing in the mainstream? Can work published in small or alternative presses stand the tests of time?
CT-H: I
can’t really speak as a submitter, as I’ve only submitted a handful of things
to a handful of publications; but, from an editor’s point of view, the major
challenges with small-press publishing are finding the audience you want and
finding money and time to make it happen. We had a hard time filling The B’K
when we first started, and often resorted to begging our friends to send us
their artwork and writing and padding the publication with our own work. There
were issues we had to cancel because we didn’t have enough pages filled.
Money has always been an issue. People seem to think there’s big money in this
sort of thing and get shocked that we don’t offer payment to our submitters.
While we would love to, the publication loses money every year. We don’t charge
for submissions, we don’t have angel investors or grants, The B’K is free to read online, we offer the printed
copies at what it costs to us to our submitters, and very few people buy copies
beyond submitters because the zine is free to read online. Our goal is to put
pieces and creators out there, not necessarily to have a thriving business.
I think
it’s a viable alternative – I hope so; I hope people find value in it and enjoy
both submitting their pieces in print and reading people’s work in our publication.
As far as the work standing the test of time, I know it won’t have as long of a
shelf-life or as big of a readership as publications on actual shelves at the
library or in museums, but I hope ours has some longevity. All the issues are
available in the archive section of our website, and in Stevens Point,
Wisconsin (where we originally published), I know that an archivist from the
city’s preservation society has been squirreling old issues from the local
coffee shop that houses our community copies since the beginning. Back issues
are, of course, available to read at the Denver Zine Library. While it isn’t
the same, it has its own value and audience, I think.
CBJ: Have you received any negative reactions, or have you been ostracized by any members of the artistic, especially, literary, community because of your gender identification or your mission?
CT-H: Whew! I have absolutely had pushback. I think you will if you make art or amplify subjects that push boundaries. I was banned for life from a local small town Wisconsin Art Board because I proposed a show that included photographs of a (fully clothed) gay couple. They took the benevolent stance that it was for my own safety and well-being. An art curator for a museum once told me that I needed to start using my intelligence and gifts for “good rather than evil” after I gave her a rather scathing review of an art show she put on that was incredibly racist in nature. I’ve also gotten a lot of dismissal, from people saying that I shouldn’t make affirming artwork for LGBTIQA2+ people and amplify it when I am an LGBTIQA2+ person who will directly benefit, which is…certainly words in an order. I’ve not understood that stance personally – who better to talk about being a thing than a person who is?
I’ve been somewhat surprised and pleased that – especially when I was in a small town in central Wisconsin – all the pushback and burned bridges happened in relation to things I was doing rather than who I was (although when you get critiqued for queer art, it can feel like it is about who you are). But regardless, I’ve never let that stop me. I actually got that same show that the Board banned me from, at the Board’s standard show locale, by reaching out to the owner (who was a personal friend), instead. Whenever there is a white, cisgender, heterosexual-led institution saying “no,” there’s a person of color or LGBTIQA2+ person who got tired of hearing “no” who has made an avenue of opportunity for themselves and others. You just have to find it.
CBJ: Are there any emerging writers that you would recommend to readers? Are any of them bringing something new to the table?
CT-H: So, so many! I want to shout out many of The B’K writers, but I don’t want to play favorites; so, instead, I want to talk about three amazing authors. Tommy Orange, Mason Deaver, Mariama J. Lockington are three novelists I would highly recommend. They bring themselves to the table and write from a perspective all their own, and that’s what I value so much with their writing. Orange’s novel, “There There,” shows different Indigenous people as they prepare for a powwow for different reasons. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and created all kinds of characters with different attachments to their own Indigeneity, including Indigenous folks who are finding their way back to their roots through the powwow after being separated generations ago – which is my situation and which spoke to me. Deaver’s debut novel, “I Wish You All the Best,” introduces a nonbinary individual who is thrown out of their home when they come out. It’s heart-wrenching and provides a snapshot into the nuance of living that identity while still a minor – something I can’t even imagine. And Lockington’s novel, “For Black Girls Like Me,” tells the story of Makeda, a Black girl adopted by a white family, and what navigating that world is like for her.
In all three cases, the authors belong to the identity they
are writing about and can provide real-to-life perspectives for. They aren’t imagining
from a place of privilege; these are real stories with real nuance, despite
being fiction.
CBJ: Expand on a topic such as whether trans activism constitutes a movement; or whether trans writers & editors & publishers should attempt to enter the mainstream literary community; or what “allies” can do to facilitate success in visual and literary practice & publishing, including, small press publishing, by trans artists; or maybe you could discuss the merits of political art as it pertains to trans artists & writers.
CT-H: I feel like too many cisgender people believe that there’s some sort of organized trans agenda that trans activists are fighting towards that would demand people give up their personal identities and assume some sort of gender fluidity. But all that trans activists are asking for is the right to live their lives in peace as the gender they identify—without experiencing job discrimination, housing discrimination, humiliation in public restrooms, and hate crimes. That’s it; that’s the grand trans agenda. There was this great Tweet thread going around about how the TERF version of a martyr is someone getting kicked out of a gay bar for wearing a hate group’s shirt and spouting transphobic slogans while trans people are busy sending each other the same $20 for fundraisers necessitated from lost jobs, housing discrimination fallout, and non-trans-inclusive health insurance. Trans people are just trying to live.
Trans writers, editors, and publishers are attempting to
enter the mainstream literary community – to have increased visibility and
reach beyond the “choir” – but we don’t really have a lot of control as to
whether or not the mainstream community will have us, which is why we often
have to make our own spaces. Eventually, we get chastised for having our own
space at all – from the mainstream communityclaiming we are being
exclusionary—and from our allies claiming that we’re separating ourselves and
causing an “elite,” secret collection of knowledge.
It reminds me of that Alex Norris webcomic ( https://tmblr.co/ZJf5Lg2irxa_D).
The first cell shows a grouping of gray blobs approaching three pink blobs
saying “You do not fit in here.” The second cell shows pink blobs in a smaller
enclosed space saying “Okay, we will make our own place.” In the third cell,
gray blobs approach the smaller space saying, “Why are you excluding us,” and
the pink blobs respond “Oh no.”
Often cisgender writers will be published telling trans
stories, and they’ll be heralded as brave and insightful, heaped with praise.
When transgender writers try to publish and tell our own stories, we’re told
there isn’t an audience for our stories. You see this play out time and again
in Hollywood for movies as well.
But, trans artists and activists continue to do the work,
because we need to. It’s necessary to tell our stories and demystify our
existence, for our survival, when the opposing viewpoint is that we shouldn’t
exist and that our existence is dangerous. We make our own publications, zines,
chapbooks; we self-publish and attend zine fests and spread that information as
much as we can without the acceptance or help of the mainstream literary
community.
The good news is that I’ve seen a bit of a shift with the
smaller mainstream publishers. There seems to be more of an effort to pay
attention to who is telling the story and more of an effort to bring in
creators from historically marginalized communities in general. I think the
biggest things that allies could do is ask for those stories and encourage that
change; show there’s a market; prioritize and amplify stories written about
trans people by trans people. If our allies show there’s a market demand and
that those who tell the stories matter to them as readers, free-market
capitalism says that those in decision-making positions in the literary
community will have to supply.
CBJ: Thanks for sharing your vision and mission with us, Chris. You, your peers, and your allies are changing narratives about LGBTIQA2+ realities, having the potential to change society, including Formalist aesthetics and the literary establishment.
—
Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other writings, she is author of /feminine nature/ [Gauss PDF, 2017]. Clara, also, conducts research on experimental literature, Surrealism, radical publishing, as well as, art & technology.
Writer Nora Collen Fulton lives in Montreal where she is a graduate student studying English literature. Recently, I received a copy of her new book, Presence Detection System (Hiding Press, 2019). Hiding Press publishes “new works of experimental literature as well as neglected older work in the same vein.” Publisher Andy Martrichn describes the work Fulton does in Presence Detection System as “refracting a dynamism of language wrapped up in a sort of codified imagery. Where are lines drawn? I think that Fulton leaves that up to us to decide, and for that reason there’s a good amount of space to move around, engage, and change one’s mind from within the text.” My interest was piqued. The following interview was conducted via e-mail; only minor edits were made by me.
As cat behaviourist Jackson Galaxy
points out, the ally figure reoccurs elsewhere, in two passages
from Mom’s work which both, interestingly, concern music.
We are further indebted to Galaxy for tracing this theme
to yet another PDS, this time by Keith the Chocolate Shaman—
A Rug Suspended 1,000th / 1mm Of The Ground—which, as he notes,
explores “the monocameral walled wall’s petition-like dream”
(Toward the PDSs of My Mother, 98). From this point of view,
the golden dude bargaining with his own complicity and privilege
in the presence detection system’s lines symbolizes the camp itself.
CLARA B. JONES: Imagine that you have invited three persons to dinner and the four of you are discussing PDS. Who would your guests be, and what would you serve for dinner? Why these three individuals, and how does the food relate to your book?
NORA COLLEN FULTON: I love this question! I think anyone who has some familiarity with the way I present myself to the world knows that I love making food, especially for other people. I’m kind of good at it too. I’m going to be a bit liberal with your question and say that the three people I would invite are Laura Riding, Alain Badiou and Bertolt Brecht. The reason being that Riding is my favourite poet, Badiou is my favourite philosopher, and Brecht is my favourite short German revolutionary playwright. I think that Riding and Badiou would probably have really steamy chemistry with each other, but they would get constantly cockblocked by Brecht all night, because Badiou would hate him and Riding would secretly like him… But he would openly dislike her. I also think even though I love these three so much they probably are/would be pretty shitty about trans people. However, I would use my feminine wiles, self-deprecating charm and homey cooking skills to woo them over to the ways of trans-allydom. I would make the thing I always like to make for people when they come over, which is some kind of whole fish, Greek sea-bass probably, maybe pan-fried in oil with a cilantro sauce and tomatillo filling. The topic of my book probably wouldn’t come up.
CBJ: When did you begin to think of yourself as a writer? Who have been your greatest influences?
NCF: The first time I thought I might really want to keep writing poetry was in a class about contemporary Chinese poetry taught by a visiting professor and avant-garde poet from Beijing named Xi Chuan that I took when I was around 22. I remember one day he said: “Many people can be a poet for five years. Many people can be a poet for ten years. Many people can be a poet for twenty years. Many people can be a poet for forty years. Many people can be a poet for sixty years. But do you really want to be a poet for eighty years? Many people can be a poet for eighty years.” I thought that was fucking hilarious. I don’t really know what I think about my influences anymore. Of course, there are writers and thinkers who have impacted me greatly through the years, but today it’s actually friendships with poets and people engaged in the kind of thought that I’m trying to engage with that is more influential. Which reminds me of another thing from Xi Chuan’s class, since I brought it up, where he was describing this poem (I can’t remember by whom, perhaps this is anachronistic, it was a long time ago now) in which the poet is traveling through the snow at night with a lantern, on a journey to see another poet and friend who lives in a distant place. And the idea is implicit in the poem, like, “I will only be able to make this trip a few more times in my life.” The finitude of that. Those kinds of connections are the best part about poetry and thinking and are essential to it, I think.
CBJ: How does your gender identity influence your practice? Has the style or content of your compositions changed since you transitioned?
NCF: I’m not sure whether there has been a stylistic change in general, and it is not like transition has a clear end date or finish line, so I guess we’ll have to see. But PDS did change after I began transitioning. The book’s composition began before I came out, and it spanned an extremely difficult period of my life where I felt like I couldn’t transition, and I guess I was writing through that, through my having given up on myself. I had an extremely hard time finding a publisher for it – it was rejected by every remotely “experimental” press in Canada – so when I finally did find a press who saw some worth in it elsewhere, I was already well into transition and I returned to the book and did modify some things. I added some new work and cut some old work, and I restructured both the first and last poems in major ways, in terms of both form and content. And even more changed during the editing of the book for publication. But I didn’t want to change it too much: as corny as this sounds, I wanted to honor the person who started this book, even if that meant leaving in things that even now can immediately bring me back to the pain and hatred and hopelessness I felt in the past. This process felt like being the editor for someone else’s posthumous collection, which I’m sure is something that other writers whose transition interrupts a major writing project can relate to.
CBJ: I read PDS more than once, finding the hybridity between-sections effective and powerful as, perhaps, an underlying statement about the fractured nature of psyche and perception, in particular, and of society and reality, in general. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the collection is open-ended, in form and in content; in other words, there seems to be no conceptual framework or marker [e.g., repetition of one or more than one element] unifying the text. Now that I reflect, however, perhaps, the technical meaning of “presence detection system,” as a coded sign of sensation or perception, is a metadevice running throughout the book. In any event, keeping in mind Marjorie Perloff’s idea that an author’s “choices” or selectivity can, themselves, unify a volume, how intentional were the formal features [e.g., “splicing” of sections] of PDS—more specifically, what is the text about, and what motivated you to write it?
NCF: I think that if there is an idea that I’m committed to as a poet it is the idea of the multiple, or the way that Badiou has described being as a “pure inconsistent multiple.” This isn’t the same as multiplicity (diversity) and it’s also not the same as multitude (manyness), because there is no “one” and are no “ones” in being. Yet, paradoxically, for Badiou being is also “univocal” – it somehow always ends up speaking and appearing as one. The contradictoriness inherent in this view of being says something about poetry, I think. I try not to read a poem more than once. I try to not write the same poem twice, to never use the same form twice, to avoid making the same book twice. But in that, there is something speaking, I hope. I don’t see what I do in terms of composition as selection or curation, so much as decision. A decision isn’t a choice. Decisions are in a way made for you, and only then do you decide upon them. You don’t decide upon what to bring together like a curator, i.e., one who cures, who picks out the pieces of meat that are going to be good for curing and makes jerky, a kind of deferred sustenance – you decide on which gaps in the multiple are the most essential to keeping the multiple multiple, and you build around those.
CBJ: Kenneth Goldsmith has said, “Conceptual writing obstinately makes no claims on originality. On the contrary, it employs intentionally self and ego effacing tactics using uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as its precepts; information management, word processing, databasing, and extreme process as its methodologies; and boredom, valuelessness, and nutritionlessness as its ethos. Language as junk, language as detritus.” Do you identify with these propositions in any way? Do you consider PDS to be an example of “conceptual” poetry or writing? Do you intend PDS to be read? As an aside, I hope you intend for at least parts of the text to be read—I think “Coat” is excellent, “Prose” is fascinating, though I am not clear about whether the sections are appropriated material—if one needs to know that at all. In any event, what are your thoughts?
NCF: I appreciate you asking this question, because it’s a question that surrounded me as I was beginning to think about poetics, and it’s currently a question that most people consider to be passé or obsolete or closed. I have never identified with Conceptual Writing, and I despise it and its figureheads. My first book, Life Experience Coolant, was published in 2013 when this was a more timely conversation, and it includes a long poem that I described as a “conceptual memoir,” which looks like (and pretends to be) that kind of doctrinaire conceptual text but is in fact almost all “original” writing, made to be an imitation of appropriation. (Actually, one of the only sections of that poem that isn’t of my making is a transcription of a recording in which Marjorie Perloff awkwardly and unsuccessfully tries to get some kind of PowerPoint presentation to work for about five minutes.) One thing that this conceit allowed me to do, besides make fun of these kind of people, was talk about my first attempt to transition and be open about being trans in a way that was in fact the exact opposite of an “effacement of the self.” The joke was that if I came out within a poem that people thought they shouldn’t read, then I wouldn’t have to actually come out. No one got it, but it is still extremely funny to me! Which is another way of saying, yes, you should read things. In my view, Conceptual Writing constellated an array of techniques and methods – many of which I do still use and am interested in – but it also attributed fixed meanings to them, this “ethos” in the quote above which in the end is nihilistic and fascistic and born of privilege, which I disagree with on every point.
At the same time, I feel that in the wake of the well-deserved death of Conceptual Writing there has been a reaction that has uncritically swung poetics back into the realm of naturalism and lyricism. Rather than looking ahead, poets are now looking and identifying backwards, as if searching for a way forward through older aesthetic formations and oppositions. This is not a bad thing, but it has its risks. Now you have to confront the increasingly popular idea that poetry can only be political when it says that it is political, when the new “communist” poetry collection from the new “communist” press has poems in it with lines like “Gee I sure do enjoy partaking in the global proletarian uprising, comrade,” and the poet has a hammer and sickle in their Twitter bio. And when you’re a poet whose identity is in any way “marginalized” you also have to confront the increasingly popular idea that avant-garde and experimental practice can never be as expressive of or as true to your identity and experience as writing that is affectively direct, affectively recognizable, semantically communicative, semantically didactic. I was recently invited to an event for lesbian writers (where I would have been the only trans woman present), and the organizer asked me if my poetry dealt with lesbian or trans identity, because she “couldn’t tell by the look of it.” I have a poem in this book that is just a bunch of puns on Ja Rule’s name and various rule-based systems. Guess what: either that too is a lesbian poem and a trans poem (and a communist poem) because I’m trans and I’m a lesbian (and I’m a communist), or it’s just a poem because poems aren’t trans and poems aren’t lesbians (and poems aren’t communists). This is truly an open question, though, and it is one that I think should be left open because it is generative only when it is open.
CBJ: Writing on your Concordia University profile page, you state, “My research is concerned with the ways contemporary philosophical understandings of ontology and temporality as fundamentally contingent can inform the contested positionality of transgender life, subjectivity, and being. I am interested in how this contestation (and conversation with philosophy) expresses itself through literature and other media.” Can you expand on this statement for non-specialists—giving examples from the real world?
NCF: Some of what I’m thinking about in that statement and my research is probably already apparent in this interview. But I guess I just happen to think that trans people exist, that it is possible to be trans – you know, mostly because trans people exist and being trans is a real possibility, which for me means that insofar as sex and gender and identity exist, and this existence is not anywhere nil, it is possible for sex and gender and identity to change, not just in terms of becoming, but in terms of actual being, to change in a radical way (rupture, not emergence). Among other things, I’m trying to articulate that view of transness in a different philosophical register than it is usually articulated within.
CBJ: In part, due to my interest in Surrealism, I am wont to employ psychoanalytic paradigms in an attempt to mine unconscious motivation of the artist manifested in creative works, including, literature. Based upon my online research about you and your writing, it is my impression that you consider Psychoanalysis to be opposed to your project. If I am correct about this, please discuss your opposition to Freudian and, I would assume, Lacanian and, possibly, Kleinian, formulations. Surely, you understand that some will consider your work, your gender identity, as well as, your typological use of “mother” to be mediators of or, perhaps, to be erasures of, Oedipal constructs? Also, transgender identity might be interpreted as “identification,” in the Freudian sense—interpreted, further, as “twinning” [Lacan] or “doubling” [with both father and mother, male and female, subject and object].
NCF: I like to strew those things around as bait for the psychoanalysts. When I catch one I keep them in a jar in my basement. I’m running out of room in my basement!
CBJ: It is my impression that many young, and not so young, radical poets are averse to the academy and to theory; however, that posture does not seem to describe you. Is this something you’d care to comment on?
NCF: I think that there are two importantly different tendencies of this ‘aversion,’ and as a result we can talk about two different groups arising from them. I think that the first group comprises people who truly do reject any kind of value or potential in the academy and in theory. For them the university and anything resembling a tradition or canon of knowledge can only be the enemy. This first and more militant group either wants to destroy the institutions in which this kind of knowledge production takes place, or they simply want to exist fully outside of them; they have various reasons for this that you can contest, but they have reasons. The second group, however, comprises people who often come from the academy at some point or have some kind of orbital relationship to it; an open relationship. These people turn away from academia and theory due to an apparent disagreement about “tactics,” but they still share the same “strategy,” to evoke that old distinction. These people choose a different tactic – which today might take the form of autotheory, for example, or popular criticism, and is found everywhere in culture writing – that pretends to disdain the elitism of academic specialization and high theory, pretends to orient itself to an imaginary “mass audience,” but really the strategy is the same, in that it just lets one middle-to-upper-class subject orate to other middle-to-upper-class subjects, forming a kind of therapeutic relationship that enables those subjects to find catharsis for their horizontally-mobile guilt and bad faith.
This group of pragmatists dilutes the exact same kinds of knowledge produced in the institutions of scholarship and theory, and they use the exact same tools, hidden behind the curtain of style, but they do so in a piecemeal fashion that is loyal to nothing, as if one can treat the history of thought as a kind of Build-a-Bear workshop that will allow one to make intellectual history and truth about the world as it is conform to one’s ideological goals. (This also takes place within the academy, and always has, of course.) I disagree with both groups. But I respect the writers and thinkers who can be placed in that first group a lot more than the “public intellectuals” of the second. At least the militants have made a real decision about where and how thought should proceed toward an emancipatory and revolutionary project. I’ve just made a different decision. Making a decision, one which can’t be retracted is difficult no matter where and who you are. And I think that as the university and institutions like it wither away (and they are clearly withering away) the position of people like me who think something can still be done with this where and how will converge more with that first group than the second.
CBJ: What are you reading now, and what authors would you recommend to your audience?
NCF: In terms of theory I’ve just started reading Calvin L. Warren’s book Ontological Terror, and in terms of poetry I’ve just finished reading Catherine Christer Hennix’s new Selected Works. In terms of authors to recommend, I will just list some poets (some of whom I know, some of whom I don’t) whose presence has inspired me in the last year: Anne-Marie Albiach, Bianca Messinger, Simone White, Mark Francis Johnson, Ted Rees, Stephanie Creaghan, Will Alexander, Diana Sue Hamilton, and Nicole Raziya Fong.
CBJ: Can you share anything about your future projects. What are your post-doctoral plans?
NCF: I have another book of poetry coming out in 2020 called Thee Display, which is about astrology, communism, my dead dog, transition, the sea, and some other things. It’s going to be published through the Documents series with Anteism Press, a Montreal publisher. As for post-doctoral plans, I have no idea. It’s a long ways off. I hope I can find a way to keep doing what I’ve been doing so far: reading, thinking, living, working, the usual.
CBJ: Is there anything else you’d like your audience to know about your identity and role as an experimental writer, about your practice, or about other matters?
NCF: You first.
CBJ: I’ll take you up on that by saying I intend to appropriate your notion of “imitating appropriation”—the phrase has so much “interpretive power,” as Helen Vendler would say. Thank you for your many cogent insights and opinions expressed in this interview, Nora.
—
NORA COLLEN FULTON is a poet living in Montreal. Her first book, Life Experience Coolant, was published by Bookthug. Presence Detection System is her second collection of poems, and her third, Thee Display, is forthcoming next year through the Documents Series, co-produced by the Center for Expanded Poetics and Anteism Books. She currently occupies herself with doctoral studies; her research attempts to apply debates in philosophy regarding the relationship between ontology and mathematics to the ontological stakes of trans studies.
CLARA B. JONES is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other writings, she is author of the poetry collection, /feminine nature/ [GaussPDF, 2017]. Clara also conducts research on experimental literature, as well as art & technology.
Ugly Duckling Press sponsors a Lost Literature Series that “publishes neglected, never-before-translated, or scarcely available works of poetry and prose.” Painter and writer, Alejandra Pizarnik (1936 -1972), is among the avant-garde writers highlighted—a daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants to Argentina who died from an overdose of Seconal while on furlough from a mental institution. Most of the online and textual sources that I consulted label her death, “suicide.” It is well-documented that Pizarnik endured challenges growing up, particularly problems affecting her physical appearance (acne, weight gain) and social presence (stuttering). However, she coped sufficiently during some periods as a young adult, living and studying in Paris for four years and traveling widely on Guggenheim and Fulbright awards. I first became familiar with Pizarnic when conducting research on Marosa di Giorgio, another South American poet resurrected in Ugly Duckling Press’ recovery project. Marjorie Agosín’s edited volume* provided useful “portraits of Latin American women writers,” documenting that, of the sixteen included in the book, six died tragically—among these, four poets who died by suicide.
The Last Innocence/The Lost Adventure comprises two poetry collections, published 1956 and 1958, respectively, of mostly short pieces revealing Pizarnik’s self-absorption and dark mien, presented in styles that are difficult to classify, though she is generally placed among the literary Surrealists (unconscious motivation, dream analysis), with a current of Romanticism (inner world, feelings, emotions). Like her noteworthy visual art, however, Pizarnik’s poetry demonstrates an affinity to Expressionism’s emphasis upon emotion, exaggeration, anti-realism, and psychological reality. It was also an important movement in the fine arts in Argentina during the 1960s, according to Edward Lucie-Smith (Thames & Hudson, 2004). It is not clear to me why Pizarnik switched from literary studies to painting and then to writing; however, an online source suggested that she considered one of her teachers—“pre-Surrealist” Giorgio de Chirico— to be a poor artist, and therefore possibly a source of disillusionment for the young student.
Argentina has the highest per capita number of psychoanalysts in the world, and one online report is titled, “Almost everyone in Buenos Aires is in therapy.” In addition, Argentina has high rates of depression and suicide. Pizarnik wrote in this psychosocial milieu, combined with a political context characterized by authoritarianism and military dictatorship. Although Pizarnik was a lesbian (or more probably bisexual) the scholar David William Foster pointed out that, “Her poems reveal only scant same-sex markers,” a characteristic that Foster attributed to the need to remain conventional under repressive regimes. On the other hand, a 2015 article by journalist and editor Emily Cooke demonstrates that, in letters to her analyst, León Ostrov, to whom The Last Innocence is dedicated, Pizarnik spoke openly, even flirtatiously, about her sexual attractions and fantasies (especially in Letter #10 dated 12/27/1960) and that she was consciously aware that she (and, he?) had entered the Freudian stage of “transference,” where unconscious sexual motivations transfer from patient to therapist and vice versa.
Indeed, the letters discussed by Cooke suggest to me that Pizarnik’s correspondence to Ostrov may have been manipulative, though, to what end? The letters leave the impression of a playful girl, and Enrique Vila-Matas, writing in Lit Hub in 2016, states, “The dark force of her Immaturity produces an irresistible attraction,” different from today’s “academic lyric poetry.” Pizarnik had a history of rebelling against the academic establishment, a characteristic that she shared with the Expressionists. But The Last Innocence/The Lost Adventures, collections written before her residence in Paris (1960-1964), has more affinities to Surrealism as compositions representing the poet’s unconscious psychological states of being and deep motivational drives (e.g., epigraph poem).
Vila-Matas refers to Pizarnik’s story as “an unstoppable myth,” and much has been written about the themes of childhood, not-belonging, woman-as-hostage, and silence in her oeuvre. In 2006, scholar Susana Chávez-Silverman referred to the poet’s “complex textual self” expressed in “a variety of…voices”—dolls, little girls, “automata,” animals, the wind, etc. Pizarnik’s writing has often been compared to that of Silvina Ocampo, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath—Ocampo because of the tendency to “decouple emotion and action”: “…a dead bird / is flying toward despair / in the midst of music / when witches and flowers / cut the hand of the mist. / A dead bird called blue.” (49); the other two poets because of an emphasis upon death, dying, and interiority: “…there is something that tears the skin, / a blind fury / running through my veins.” (21).
In a 2019 Bookforum article, Cooke discussed Plath’s letters to her (female) therapist, showing the poet to be supplicatory, demanding, desperate for attention and aid, and, in the words of poet Vijay Seshardri, “psychologically sensitive.” While Pizarnik’s letters to Ostrov are clearly attention-seeking and, possibly, unconscious cris de coeur, she performs her writing with vigor and feigned or exaggerated self-confidence rather than Plath-like neurasthenia. Nonetheless, some psychologists speak of the “Sylvia Plath effect”—the purported association between creativity and mental illness. Indeed, following an American Psychological Association article, Aristotle wrote “that eminent philosophers, politicians, poets, and artists all have tendencies toward ‘melancholia.’” It is a simple point to observe that Pizarnik’s persona is consistent with the Plath effect; however, unless I am mistaken, the validity of the hypothesis is controversial among psychologists and feminists—open to interpretation, gendered, and lacking hard evidence.
In a recent New Yorker interview between editor Kevin Young and Seshadri, Plath was discussed in terms of several traits, some applying readily to Pizarnik. For example, in contrast to the classicism of Elizabeth Bishop, Seshadri pointed out that Plath’s writing is “absolutely individuated—it’s very hard to see Plath as an exemplar of anything but her own situation and condition.” One might consider this characteristic to be an artistic limitation; however, both Plath and Pizarnik have proven to have lasting popularity, particularly among women and the young, raising issues of “gendered and sexualized” self/ other contrasts as well as spectors of “power and powerlessness,” topics discussed in numerous scholarly and critical papers available online. Seshadri goes on to point out that both Bishop and Plath wrote poetry that communicates “wildness” and animality, also features of Pizarnik’s writing as noted above.
To speak of self/other raises questions about “alterity,” a topic fundamental to the Lacanian psychoanalytical traditions in Argentina. For Lacan, the Other is the subject—symbolically and metaphorically, and the role of the Other is to mediate its relation to the unique, “individuated” subject in a dialectical manner. Thus, Pizarnik’s “you” may be understood to be herself: “this dismal obsession with living / this distant madness of living / it’s dragging you down alejandra don’t deny it” (17), suggesting a circular, internal, “individuated” relationship of the poet to the environment that is, presumably, unconscious– “I must go / but on you go, traveller!”(25). Perhaps this characterization of Plath and Pizarnik relies too heavily upon a conceptual framework implying narcissism; however, more than one scholar has interpreted Pizarnik’s self-absorption in this manner (see, for example, Stephen Gregory, 1997, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 74). To speak of self/other or subject/object incorporates another of Lacan’s essential ideas—“mirroring.” the process of objectifying the Ego, typifying “an essential libidinal relationship with the body-image”: “alejandra alejandra / beneath I am me / alejandra” (29). Pizarnik entered psychoanalysis at a relatively young age, demonstrating a precocious grasp of its canon in letters to Ostrov; thus, authentic and accurate critical scrutiny of her oeuvre must include evaluations of Lacanian psychoanalysis on her state of mind, behavior, socio-economic-political contexts, values, attitudes, opinions, and writing.
Vijay Seshadri noted that Plath’s poems are “not just held together by form.” Similarly, Pizarnik’s compositions rely not only upon innovative uses of lineation, punctuation, and other grammatical conventions, but also upon complex semantic, imagistic, and musical features transmitting powerful emotional content open to multiple interpretations, including possibilities for identification—no doubt major determinants of Pizarnik’s appeal and endurance, particularly for women and young adults. Cecilia Rossi’s sensitive translations will widen Pizarnik’s readership and contribute to the increasingly common recovery projects of female writers and visual artists forgotten, lost, passed over, overpowered, or dismissed. Too many of these women lived or died tragically; the least we can do is to honor their work.
*Borinsky Alicia. Alejandra Pizarnik: the self and its impossible landscapes. pp 291-302 in Marjorie Agosín, Ed. A dream of light & shadow: portraits of Latin American women writers. (1995) University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
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Clara B. Jones is a knowledge worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other works, she is the author of Poems for Rachel Dolezal (Gauss PDF, 2019). Clara also conducts research on experimental literature and art & technology.
“[Elon] Musk holds a substantial monopoly on the contemporary gaze.” s. maynard, musk (musca\muscus\mus)
Stella Maynard is a writer in their early 20s living in Australia, “interested in attending to things that sit at the intersection of gender, queerness, technology, the law and desire.” Their pamphlet, musk (musca\muscus\mus), a semi- “found,” appropriated, collaged, and annotated document (difficult to classify within literary categories or genres), was longlisted for The Lifted Brow‘s 2018 Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction. As the title indicates, the text addresses various philological roots of the word, “musk,” as if they were derived from the person [and, persona], Elon Musk [the subject], the billionaire “techno-capitalist.”
Though unpaginated, the verso-recto format of musk is integral to the pamphlet’s symbolism, significance, and validity as an example of “experimental” and Flarf-like composition since left-hand pages present copies of internet-based material related to Elon Musk—tweets, Google and Facebook entries, photographs—that, in most cases, echo topics addressed on the opposite page. Right-hand (recto) pages present Maynard’s running essay or, perhaps, their long-form prose poem that, because of copious footnotes on virtually every page, reinforces the importance of “found” and appropriated images and text, bringing to mind a comment by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet, Susan Howe, “I love the play of footnotes.” By relying upon “found” and appropriated material, Maynard places their work in the company of female writers, such as, Katie Degentesh, Sharon Mesmer, C.D. Wright, and Juliana Spahr.
For purposes of discussion, musk can be divided into five parts—an introductory section, a section on each of the three sub-topics [musca, muscus, mus] and their metaphorical relationship to Elon Musk, as well as, a final, brief conclusion. In the first section, the subject is introduced as “a Man of textual superabundance” due to his constant exposure via social media, the press, advertising, and the like. Maynard goes on to say, “Fundamentally, Musk is infrastructural: a man of tunnels, cars, batteries, energy grids, high-speed trains, giga-factories, wires, and inter-planetary transport.” These associations highlight, not only, the protagonist’s masculinity and phallic display, but they, also, imply his access to power as a symbol of patriarchy. Just as significant, Musk is a powerful figure with whom many men identify and through whom many live vicariously, leading me to consider the manner in which Musk’s attraction may be viewed as a kind of homoeroticism.
The next section expands Maynard’s discussion of Musk “as a trace or index of masculinity” by highlighting the relationship between the subject’s defining characteristics and “musk” (musca), technically defined as testicle, scrotum, as well as, a male sexual hormone. Iterations of the subject on the internet are, in Maynard’s words, “instructive in illustrating the ways in which Musk and his vernaculars of techno-masculinity are habitually taken up, reproduced, and updated, eventually becoming naturalised forms of embodied subjectivity.” This techno-male, then, is a mytho-poetic construct—part real, part fake, part object, part copy, part fantasy—“ready-made” (Marcel Duchamp) for an ubiquitous “neoliberalism.” Throughout their text, Maynard extends their analysis to the roles played by Musk and other techno-masculine figures in perpetuating the destructive, mediating, and dehumanizing effects of Capitalism.
In the third section, Maynard employs the idea of a moss plant (muscus) as an interface between “the plant, animal, and human worlds.” They transfer this fundamental, and powerful, function to the subject, stating that, “Attending to our ‘mossy’ networks necessitates an engagement with the ways in which Elon Musk’s infrastructural developments are changing the present and future organization of life.” Maynard introduces Naomi Klein’s term, “philanthrocapitalism,” referring to “a billionaire class who posit themselves as the problem-solver of crises that have been historically (un)settled through collective action, dismantling or the public sector”…representing “a form of corporate environmental paternalism whereby the ultra-rich ‘generously’ tackle some of our greatest crises using their loose change.” Though it is easy to sympathize with Maynard’s concerns and to validate their analysis, the statements may be problematic for some readers since, from a purely artistic and formalist perspective, their didactic, literal nature potentially detracts from the otherwise seamless flow of the text (which should be read at one sitting for maximum effect) and since the overwhelming scale of current global crises, such as climate change, ecosystem collapse, and poverty, all but require solutions produced by concentrated wealth. Nonetheless, in musk, Maynard presents themselves as a political poet concerned, as Adrienne Rich was, with using the “oppressor’s language” [Rich] in revolutionary ways.
The fourth section addresses “the index of ‘musk’: mouse” [mus]. Again, the philanthrocapitalist is presented as a mytho-poetic symbol of power. Maynard writes, “In August, 2017, SpaceX delivered 20 mice to the International Space Station. In fact, Musk’s desire to make human life multi-planetary began with the dream to send mice to Mars; his intention was that the mice would procreate in space, and return to Earth with interplanetary offspring.” Maynard advances Nathan Eisenberg’s notion of a gendered subjectivity, “discursively infused with a system of values that would reinvigorate the men of the nation to deliver salvation.” Invoking the Futurists as representatives of “the Modern fascist man” (e.g., Ezra Pound), Maynard does not mention the paradox that the Futurist movement, though short-lived (~1909-1920), was noteworthy as an artistic project and was the source of some of the creative techniques Maynard, herself, employs (e.g., verbal collage, “found” material: see Marjorie Perloff, 2003, University of Chicago Press). Nonetheless, philanthrocapitalists are empowered by unregulated markets and [masculine] competition, and, as Maynard puts it, “The quest to make humans multi-planetary represents a kind of pseudo-colonial environmental-fatalism whereby men of the capitalist elite give up hope on their environmental survival, and quite literally abandon the planet they have all but destroyed.” Related to this, the author suggests that these men are having unfettered fun at the world’s expense by way of “a pervasive youthful playfulness.” Power play, then, is a gendered game.
Maynard ends their text (each page paired with one or more found images referencing the subject) implicating “white masculinist possession,” calling, instead, for Jordy Rosenberg’s plea to “summon the counterforce of our own desire.” Presumably, this is a statement concerning the power of feminist principles to forge solutions via a “collective state of lived resistance…founded in scenes of ambivalent desire and intimate attachment…beyond (and against) the pheromonal energies of Elon Musk, directed towards new discursive formulations.” In the final analysis, then, Musk is not a fantasy, or an abstract case, but a real threat, and Maynard focuses their creative abilities upon using art in the service of feminism and politics—nationally and internationally. This debut pamphlet marks this young author as a writer to watch as their artistic talents and political sensibilities expand and mature. I recommend this volume to anyone interested in a creative activist, feminist, and civic voice deserving a wide audience. musk (musca\muscus\mus) provides its readers with a unique visual, symbolic, and literary experience, a worthy example of avant garde collage, conceptual, and appropriated composition, and I look forward to reading Maynard’s future work.
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Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other works, she is author of Poems for Rachel Dolezal, published by Gauss PDF in 2019
Speaker 1 : Taylor, hi! I haven’t seen you in ages! What are you up to?
Speaker 2: Dylan! What a surprise! I’m off to a new bookstore on 57th Street. I’ve heard they have a great selection of Postmodern poetry. How about you?
Speaker 1: I’m going to a poetry reading by the philosopher, O.B. Bassler—a new discovery. His debut collection is a hybrid book—poems in a variety of forms on recto pages only. I am writing a paper about the relationship between poetry and philosophy for my Innovative Literature class. Do you have a minute to talk?
Speaker 2: Ummm, sure, I’m curious! I’d like to know more about Bassler. Maybe I could borrow his book when you’re done with it? I am reading the Romantics, now, but am almost ready for something different.
Speaker 1: Bassler’s favorite poet is a German Romantic, Friedrich Hoelderlin; but, he progresses from beautiful lyric poetry to experimental writing—all displayed on recto pages. I think you would find his work interesting. Here’s another passage:
“one life is enough
and sometimes it is more than enough
sometimes it is more than enough
to make it through the day or hour or minute
and that is why what is painful
demanding excruciating even torturous
is so close to what is beautiful
that I can easily mistake the intensity of flight
for the intensity of any pleasure real or unreal
and hang onto it for dear life
unto the cleaving from life itself
if such is necessary”
Speaker 2: Definitely, lyrical, but with Modernist overtones, too—especially, repetition, like Stein.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Bassler uses other Modernist techniques—no titles, no punctuation, no capital letters. But, experimental methods, also—lots of white spaces define those particular poems. But, more than that. Some of his devices remind me of the ones often used by James Joyce—flow of thought and feeling, metaphor, symbolism, ambiguity, subtle overtones evoking history, myth, and the complexities of life. These conventions, appearing throughout the collection, bind the book together, as they do in Ulysses.
Speaker 2: I am curious to take a look at the book! My boyfriend is studying concrete poetry and visual experimentation this semester. He read an essay by Joe Bray who said that white space can be sites of humor, gravity, play, and reflection. I think of white spaces as erasures or ways to disrupt reading. Does Bassler use white space in those ways?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, in some ways, but there is not much humor or play—much reflection, though. The poems have lots of “interpretive power,” as Helen Vendler would say. Bassler is writing about the human condition over time—Time in the sense of Physics…
Speaker 2: …what does he mean by that?
Speaker 1: I can’t say, exactly, what Bassler intends to say, but I conducted a bit of research when I was reading, Operating Manuals in the Dark, and I learned that, just as Time is an indefinite process of events as a whole, Reality can be viewed in a holistic way. Listen to this:
“…the ultimate coincidence of the metaphysical and the physical is the greatest madness of all
now that the metaphysical clock keeps perfect time I should go back and read a number of books
starting with the ones that move forward and returning to the ones that move back
I’ll make a list of one hundred metaphysical books and one hundred physical books
and the two lists will be the same list”
Speaker 2: I never studied Physics. Do you think I’ll understand Bassler’s work?
Speaker 1: Oh, definitely! Music, image, rhythm, form, and language outweigh any particular message; and, you will see that Bassler’s poems include many iambs and that they become increasingly minimalist. In fact, if I have an opportunity to ask him a question tonight, I want to know whether his black cover and blank verso pages are references to Kazimir Malevich’s paintings and to his theory, Suprematism—Bassler may be trying to move as far as possible from objects—maybe, even, from objective reality and reductionism! Analyzing metaphysics seems to be his ultimate concern. Let me read one more quote: “the metaphysical clock/the metaphysical clock is not dead it is dying one second at a time/the metaphysical clock runs fast it must be corrected to match real time/not the same backwards and forwards and not the same as metaphysical time.”
Speaker 2: Ummm, I’ll have to think about that when I have the text in front of me. It’s 4 o’clock, and the bookstore closes at 6. I need to catch a bus. I’m so glad that I ran into you! When can we get together for lunch?
Speaker 1: I’ll e-mail you. You can borrow Bassler’s book, and we can discuss his reading. I hope he publishes another collection!
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Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other works, she is author of Poems for Rachel Dolezal, published by Gauss PDF in 2019
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NORA COLLEN FULTON is a poet living in Montreal. Her first book, Life Experience Coolant, was published by Bookthug. Presence Detection System is her second collection of poems, and her third, Thee Display, is forthcoming next year through the Documents Series, co-produced by the Center for Expanded Poetics and Anteism Books. She currently occupies herself with doctoral studies; her research attempts to apply debates in philosophy regarding the relationship between ontology and mathematics to the ontological stakes of trans studies.
Indeed, the letters discussed by Cooke suggest to me that Pizarnik’s correspondence to Ostrov may have been manipulative, though, to what end? The letters leave the impression of a playful girl, and Enrique Vila-Matas, writing in Lit Hub in 2016, states, “The dark force of her Immaturity produces an irresistible attraction,” different from today’s “academic lyric poetry.” Pizarnik had a history of rebelling against the academic establishment, a characteristic that she shared with the Expressionists. But The Last Innocence/The Lost Adventures, collections written before her residence in Paris (1960-1964), has more affinities to Surrealism as compositions representing the poet’s unconscious psychological states of being and deep motivational drives (e.g., epigraph poem).
