Tramping through, hunting in, being hunted in the many woods (“dark” “Horrible”) that are the terrain of this book, Drescher finds/makes a clearing where a “gwhirl” is “breathing freely” and speaks in blood. Here she, who is at once many female-marked speakers, whirls, turns back on, turns her back on the usual tellers, or hunters, in order to open the epic.
– Susan Gevirtz, on Open Epic by Julia Drescher
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After finding ourselves graduated from the MFA program at Texas State University, Julia Drescher and I spent the next two handfuls of years teaching there. Most every day we'd meet by the brick wall outside and talk. About the rain, about teaching thesis statements, about the state of the world, and words, too, sometimes.
Once, I found her hand-stitching cover artwork for a book her press was preparing to launch. Another time, she showed me the wallpaper samples she'd gotten from Kiki Smith, and I ordered some, too, immediately drawn to the work.
For years our friendship went like this, sharing cigarettes, miseries, teaching tips, and jokes, before we each moved to states further north--her to Colorado, me to Washington. And while we've both left teaching, we're still connected, somewhat like telephone poles thousands of miles apart. From time to time, we remember and write. More often, we forget but then, out of our blue, we'll exchange interesting objects.
Most recently, a package appeared on my doorstep containing Drescher's newest book of poetry, Open Epic (Delete Press 2017).
It's a handsome book: cover, shape, and binding. And what lies within is a rattling play of thought and language, of fairy tale but not. Of anger but not. A hunt, torn apart. Like kathryn pringle and kari edwards, Drescher moves through the atmosphere of language and meaning, questioning--and asking us to question--where language and meaning intersect, deteriorate, and shift like so many pieces of earth in water.
After reading Open Epic, I sent Julia a list of questions and asked if she'd answer them. She did. That is what follows.
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What interests you
about the edges of language and meaning?
JD.
Right now I am listening to Julius
Eastman’s “Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc” & I can’t tell if
what word’s being sung is “said” or “sad”. It’s awesome.
It
seems like the typical turn in poetry happens in the line, but your poetry
turns within the collision of language itself, which isn’t made to seem like a
collision but almost part of a stroke—the reader swimming from word to word,
made to trust but not trust what the next word will do to the previous. The
experience of reading Open Epic, for me, is like swimming underwater above
sharp rocks.
JD. The trust-not-trust of language – I
have never thought of that before (for myself) but I can see it as perfectly
true. I must get this from my mother, I think.
I do sometimes think of lines in (my) poems
as wrecks – sometimes what gets in the
way of the poem one moment & then is
the way of the poem in the next (the former having to do with my tyrannical
tendencies, I think, & the latter is maybe when the poem can exceed these)…As
a reader, I can’t help but be absorbed by misreadings/mishearings &
interminable associations (polysemy etc.) & that makes its way into my
writing.
Too, I guess the ‘wreck’ of the line is
tied to sound & rhythm – like, I am always off-beat, can’t quite get the senses of the sound
arrangement to “come out right” etc.
This happens, as well, in reading the poems out loud – the voice in my head is
not the voice that comes out of my mouth (sometimes, this is very frustrating &
sometimes I find myself super-interested in this ‘gap’ more generally).
“Hilda’s Hunting,” the
first movement of Open Epic, reads as a mourning song to a heroine
who has been displaced by a (historical) focus on the men and their doings
while simultaneously examining-through-fracturing The Hunt as a traditional,
patriarchal activity. Was this originally your intention, or did one appear as
you worked on the other?
JD.
I very much began writing this poem
from the line “Hunting is about / Completing the sentence”—& then, in some
ways the poem develops out of a refusal of that construction (i.e. the reliance
on – even faith in – sound & the slippery-ness of language as the means for not ‘completing the sentence’ (&, therefore, not ‘hunting’?) —
‘Hunting’ being, anyway, not quite the word for not having a wor(l)d that speaks to what’s going on, where it’s
trying to get to, get out of, etc.
So—displaced in a certain sense, yes,
& anger/rage (mourning) about that – but more so, I think, about being
angry at oneself for being angry about
that situation of being ‘outside’ of some (heroic-historical –therefore
“important”, “legitimate” etc.) focus– like, what’s so great about it anyway?
& then, too, that it feels like you are forced to continually inhabit that
anger because, you know, the very real effects of other people acting out/on
this fantasy of “placement” won’t leave you alone…(&/but then doesn’t the
position of “displacement (from)” provide some things that are vital to living,
that are absolutely invaluable, that the “(historical) focus” won’t/doesn’t?)
I would say (& other people have
said it before & better than I) that one of the insidiousnesses of any—particularly
white, particularly western—“patriarchal activity” is the fact of my own
varying complicities in it even as, let’s say, I never gave (& never could
give) consent to it being in the
first place— which is the situation of everyone to a certain extent, just some are more invested in it continuing to be the normative
situation etc.
& so, then, thinking about whatever
benefits befall from that when my whiteness is added to the mix, the
construction becomes also how to give
away, or refuse, what you have but never wanted in the first place…
I think the Hilda poem doesn’t seem to
actually present, let’s say, “Men” as a completely physical presence as such
(or, if they are there, they have already been consumed) – the speaker &
Hilda are saturated in & saturate the “traditional/patriarchal” violence,
trying (& failing) continually to find an out-place from that.
Do you think that a
questioning of tradition/history, without a re-examination of language itself,
is authentic? Is questioning itself limited if language itself isn’t also part
of the questioning? It seems you’re after both these questions in Open Epic, if not to answer them then to
raise them.
JD. I
can’t answer this directly, I think.
(It would go into that too-much-&-not-enough territory).
So how about this:
- After the “election” in 2016 (&
surely some version/the same version of this has always been around) I saw a
sign that said “IF YOU DON’T VOTE, YOU DON’T COUNT”. & it made me so very
viscerally angry & exhausted at the same time. While
understanding (perhaps) where it’s coming from, I find it just a completely
horrible & brutal expression – As the list could be endless (&,
frankly, does include most who do
vote): “illegal” immigrants don’t count,
trees don’t count, children don’t count, mountains don’t count, refugees don’t count, oceans don’t count etc.etc.etc.(
don’t count)… all of which is unbearably true, has been true, under
particularly political modes -- &
so, to *repeat* this ‘logic’ of *literal & figurative* value like it will
get you anywhere close to whatever beautiful better world you imagine -- is
just fucked-up-sad to me…
- I recently sent a friend of mine who’s
a poet/lawyer the following query:
There's
a lawyer here who's trying to get the Colorado River (I think) legally
classified as a person (much like New Zealand, or that guy who's tried with
chimps etc.) & I wanted to know: Has anyone ever tried to get themselves
(re)classified legally as, like say, a *river* (or something)?
- Just yesterday I heard a story on the
radio about a “Southern Accent Reduction class” being offered to workers in
Tennessee. Its purpose was to help them acquire a “more neutral American” sound
in order to ensure that people would “pay attention to what you say, not how you
say it.” Being from Texas (& being a person who sometimes “loses” my
accent, sometimes “finds” it (&, unintentionally, others!) – usually
depending entirely on what person or people I am around), I cracked my ass up
all the way home.
- I think I have been in love with the
word “ain’t” since before I was born.
I
Without knowing whose
body the ghost belongs to, would it be difficult to discuss the ghost?
Sometimes I feel this way in trying to write about your work, ask you a
question about it, though when I am not searching for language, I do not feel
at a loss in the same way. Respond how you will.
JD. It
is
difficult to discuss! So here is a (perhaps heavy-handed) collage:
(From
Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects): “A
bird detects the quantum signature of an electromagnetic wave, not the wave
itself, by means of a quantum scale magnet in its eye. Birds perceive not some traditional
material lump, but an aesthetic shape.”
+
Is
there a “quantum scale magnet” in our ears, in our tongues?
+
(From
Barthes’s “The Grain of the Voice): “am I hearing voices within the voice? but isn't it the truth of the voice to be
hallucinated?”
x
Ghost
= guest + host?
The
roots being ‘fury, anger’, ‘ugly’| ‘to wound, tear, pull to pieces’ | ‘to give
up, give away’
/
How
it feels what it means to love ferociously
+
(From
an interview with Clarice Lispector):
CL:
I’m a little tired.
Q: Of what?
CL:
Of myself.
Q:
But aren’t you born again and refreshed with
every new work?
CL:
Well. For now I am dead.
We’ll see if I can be born again.
For now I’m dead.
I’m speaking from my tomb.
x
(Barthes
again): “(it is not the psychological
'subject' in me who is listening; the climactic pleasure hoped for is not going
to reinforce – to express – that subject but, on the contrary, to lose it.)”
+
(From
Baraka’s “Hunting is Not those Heads on the Wall”): “And even to name
something, is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass.”
.
. .
Part
of the visceral pleasure in reading your work is the rhythms that the language
takes in/falls into, often through repetition of fracture:
she
holds like these her hands
she
holds
these
like
her
hands
hold
like
is to
pretend
as
& in her hand some shine & in her hand some bruise
So
not just repetition, but using repetition to cause an expectation and then,
once the expectation is formed, avoiding resolution by making the language
blossom differently—but then the pleasure still comes from this, from being
denied resolution of our (readers’) expectations as created by repetition. Do
the conventions of poetry hinder or help the questioning of language? Or is
questioning itself unable to be done as thoroughly in prose? I guess I’m
wondering how the conventions of poetry limit even poetry, limit language—if
pleasure is a limitation. Perhaps it isn’t. Or is pleasure what is used to move
the reader through the questioning, as plot is often used in prose? Your turn,
speak however you will to any of this.
JD. I
am glad if it does what you say.
I
think very interesting things can generate & move in limits (which are or
can be shape-shifting things themselves).
In
terms of pleasure, this recently came out of (seemingly) nowhere:
It is as if we live
with other words—true
pleasure is always
disturbing. That feeling
a body gets wanting
to follow the eyes
over a ledge – no –,
I could not write a
poem
to save my life. But
poetry (what’s
disturbing)
is not for saving
life—
it’s for giving it
away
For the past several years, when I write, I’ve been in
conversation partly with Flannery O’Connor. This hasn’t always been true, but
it has been of late. Is there a writer you are partly in conversation with in
your writing right now? What writer, or work, do you return to again and again
as the years pass?
JD.
It really is quite hard for me to
separate or delineate reading & writing so I combined two of your questions
because of this & I thought it would make it easier to respond. However,
because I could go on forever about reading (who what when where why),
combining these questions doesn’t make it any easier! The works I return to
again & again (i.e. the writers who, when I first read them, I knew I would
be a reader of theirs forever), I think, would be who I am always in a
“conversation” with (though most, probably, would want nothing to do with me!)
The people I quoted in the ghost
question are the most recent writers
I have been reading/returning to, but with a few absences:
Literally every day I am lucky enough
to be in conversation with C.J. Martin & his work.
I have been reading Akira Lippet’s
books & also re-reading Lisa Robertson (& pretty soon, Norma Cole)
& then, of course, for the last 10 years I am always reading/listening to
Fred Moten.
How would you describe your relationship with words?
JD. My
relationship with words is atmospheric, I suppose.
Since writers often
find themselves in a writing workshop, whether that’s in a classroom or coffee
shop, and the workshop has the possibility to humiliate/harass/wound writing
that defies/questions/wonders about language and how it moves, what advice
would you give writers who are compelled to write outside of convention, or in
unexpected ways? Ideally, the workshop’s goal is not to humiliate/harass/wound
writing, no matter its form/path/appearance, so what advice would you give
readers who come across such a writer in a workshop?
JD.
Workshops are weird, at best. & who
am I to offer ‘advice’!!??
I can only say that my experience
didn’t happen to be as horrible as I
know they can be, probably because:
- The teachers I had always encouraged us to read read read – which I interpreted as
permission to continue to be interested over & above being (or presenting oneself
as) interesting. I still think this is something to “live up” to. Also, making
friends with people who were interested in reading, learning constantly, treating
other people with respect etc. very much helped.
- When
I was a kid & visiting extended family (which we did quite often), the
general rule was that my sisters & I were to be seen & not heard—which
meant we had to remain present at the dinner table long after we had finished
eating, listening to the adults talk. On the one hand, I think this was
actually really good training just generally for reading & studying, &
then, more specifically, for having my poems “workshopped” (…the
on-the-other-hands, I don’t even have time to un-pack:)
- I
am stubborn as fuck. This isn’t a brag – it has caused me lots of problems &
it is a problematic characteristic etc. but it did, sometimes, help me—I guess,
in terms of deciding what not to listen to or, better yet, how to listen to someone
who might be using the workshop to “humiliate/harass/wound”. I mean, really, it
just boils down to the fact that if the position you have taken in a workshop
is to be the one to “humiliate” etc., it’s just beyond pathetic & not
helpful to anyone.
[&, as a silly side-note: given the
*academic* workshop set-up – wherein no one has a clue as to what they’re doing
most of the time but everyone feels like they have to act like they know
*exactly* what to do etc.—aren’t workshops kind of like (in their best &
worst senses) parenting advice books? LOL.]
What projects are you
working on in either your writing, reading, or press-publishing?
JD.
Through Further Other Book Works, &
in conjunction with Cuneiform Press, C.J. Martin & I just published a book
of the poet Helen Adam’s collages (The Collages of Helen Adam). I just
finished a long poem I had been working on awhile, so I got about a day of
feeling something close to satisfaction & then I am flailing again. So now
I’m in some sort of hibernation pattern (which involves lots of reading &
collaging).
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| Julia Drescher |
