Transcript
Unpublishables: Hi, I'm Mark DaSilva. This is episode four of Unpublished Rules. um I'm very pleased. Yeah. with today's guest. um A writer I hold in very heart high regard.
Unpublishables: um He is, uh... Published A. over the last 30 years a quite slim uh volume of work. ultimately And it when you begin to read it, you realize.
Unpublishables: the level of polish and refinement and and the the degree to which things have been considered is is um Ah. uncommonly high. and And so it makes sense why it would take 30 years to produce this. That's how much.
Unpublishables: uh care one can see in it so um he he's both a poet and a fiction writer. Uh, But his first book, which is called Annotations, is... uh essentially a hybrid of so in a way that i i think you can sort of see the seeds of later work um which we'll get to.
Unpublishables: in this first one. So I'm going to have him read an excerpt. This is John Keen. Thank you so much for being on.
John: Thank you. Thank you so much Mark. um Okay, I'm gonna read a... section. Annotations called a Fathoming. Beneath a flourish of notes and exegesis.
John: And as Mark mentioned, this was my very first book.
John: is the fourth little section in the Second.
John: the the book is divided into three parts and so in part two this is the fourth section A fathoming fathoming. beneath. A flourish of notes and exegesis.
John: Desire among other things derives its force from repetition. or so your general pattern of behavior. would lead you to believe. Neither parent had initially expected such a fragile character.
John: though they hid the disappointment. beneath a flurry of activity. Ut natura poesis. Autumn arrived to our wonderment. Introduced by the Rivers Murmur.
John: Stands of birches poplars shuddered with delight as the park glimmered with the embers of Indian summer. Quran delay. His hopes and dreams were maturing with each subtle change in the weather like the peppers she had suspended from the gas pipe.
John: Ambivalence towards the cool and fleeting day, towards the cold and stolid night hour. Play your number. Your mother was extraordinarily attentive to gradations of demeanor, which allowed her to catalog to cope with the frequent shifts in attitude.
John: Comprehension does not hinge upon an image. The view beyond the patio too was transforming as though through a kaleidoscope changing daily its array of colors of moods and colors into ever more awe -provoking patterns.
John: our dreams. are but holes for our souls. Every house had a dog. but only one dog had a doghouse. We would leap Upon the car hoods, when a mad dog came charging or failing this, we shimmied up the telephone poles.
John: The authority inherent in each of these words never exceeds the dictates of practical truth. Then they would put on the albums or 45s and dim the basement lights and begin to perform the newest dance.
John: such delivery. a diva Everyone studied their moves with care so that at someone else's house, they would not slip up. In this way, a sense of tradition was nurtured, which others wrongly attributed. to their nature.
John: He was afraid of standing with his back to the curb for fear that the unknown might seize him. scaredy cat scaredy cat too scared to know where your shadows at after a certain age it was not considered proper to sew just as it had never been appropriate to knit and yet in late adolescence and adulthood he would require these skills as well as the ability to darn The cooler boys built their own go -karts, while the wealthy ones received scooters or velos.
John: but for him a bicycle or solos But for him, a bicycle would have to suffice, even though it devoured his mother's entire paycheck. With glee they assembled the roadster the chief pleasure coming from the effects of the glue.
John: Bokai. Brief observation of any personality. proves that human existence cannot be reduced. to a science. Quote,
John: Fat meat is greasy. Dark meat is sweet. which always induced a burst of laughter since they were expecting what they had been promised. A few lines from an Augustan.
John: By choosing and extolling certain models to the exclusion of all others, he sought to deny the impending crisis of his own self -representation. Beneath the brown -black thicket of your hair, a trove of information lies waiting.
John: Then they remembered how after supper their parents had read to them slowly, which taught them to taught them to appreciate the oral potency of words. Analysis entails... a sudden mode.
John: of seeing. The concatenations. a concatenation of names, rose like a conjurous prologue. Brazil, Liberia. nigeria cuba Eritrea.
John: Silence poses a unique dilemma. Language leads to one bank. knowledge to the other. Yet little prepares them for fording the teeming river of expectations.
John: Who would say bed? when grave was more accurate. Who denied a distinction between naming? and calling. Yet a great fear adheres in much of what was discussed, for something points to behavior that was trifling.
John: The dyspeptic confederate doctor, however, consequently wanted no part of his son, and so he named him after the demoted Union General before abandoning abandoning him. altogether.
John: Later, the mythology would fulfill itself, creating a whole new myth. of their paternal origins. Soulard Market. Of course she was overjoyed. that she could pass as a Filipino. or when tanned as a product of some quote, Caribbean islands gentry, unquote, a fact.
John: which they derided with snide remarks. but they secretly envied her, quote, passport, unquote. In D .C., or Atlanta is where you'll find a real landed Black gentry. black society his father he recalled his father preaching and scorn of the rivertown's provincial elite And don't you get no airs.
John: Because ain't nobody studying you. Advice will sound. than whosoever might whisk. denying it. the threat and the promise. Paul Maris. Our generation lacks more than the cursory sense of the world that our ancestors faced, which surprises no one cognizant of the attempt of the contempt in which the nuances of history are currently held.
John: The function and effects of function and effect of titles, as in most cases of naming, however, depends upon one's ability. to differentiate sides. or an ecology.
John: And so, in an effort to make so many shorter stories richer. These overtures are to be read. It's a series. of extended annotations.
Unpublishables: Thank you, John. Um, i I wanted to start with a ah sort of a formal comment of of the way syntax and and substance sort of joined together. in in in throughout this book in a sort of distinctive way and i think a way that that um We're both sort of reinforce each other. well One of the things i I noticed is there's a kind of.
Unpublishables: telegraphing of events. and a telegraphing of syntax where there'll be bits of fragments essentially Pros. So nothing too wild or... or um unintelligible or kind of impressionistic but There's a sense of...
Unpublishables: Events have been compressed. uh And you're getting like a... Uh... a kind of hurtling forward. through a ah ah lot of time. very quickly, because this is a 94 -page book, I believe. And and we sort of...
Unpublishables: carry through from the the boyhood. um in st louis through to uh as he matures and it seems like he's I thought on the substantive level.
Unpublishables: It felt like reading it that he's he's bombarded with so many um tensions in his life. racial, class. gender and sexuality all these things it's almost as if the narrator um Doesn't quite have time. There's no time to tell the whole story. I don't i have too much going on.
Unpublishables: But here are the notes. here here Here's what I can sort of... um pull out from that. And I thought... It... it ah How did you settle on that type of... um It's just syntactical structure. I was i was interested in that.
John: Wow, okay, that's ah that's a fantastic question. So. poop. I think of this. But ah events it's been, it's been so. Oh, yeah.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: It's almost 30 years, right? Over 30 years since almost yeah over thirty years since i since i yeah the book came out. um And so sort of thinking back to it from what I can.
John: but call I mean...
Unpublishables: Mm hmm.
John: several things. First of all, um when i began writing annotations this was not I was trying to write a more conventional novel. Um, Set eyes. during the early 90s and grappling with the AIDS pandemic and some of the things I was seeing around me that were happening in the larger society. of course i mean dealing with you know race and class and gender and politics, sexuality, politics. um
John: ah And I was struggling. to do it right because i felt uh overwhelmed and i think you know One of the things that... one of the places where I found a means of Of.
John: addressing some of that was in my emma and in in the poem the the early poems and sort of that, that. that uh Later. uh come to fruition as part of um Punks.
John: boy
Unpublishables: i ok So you you had already been... uh, publishing poems at before annotations, is that correct?
John: oh well right yes writing publishing for you reading i was part of the dark a group called the dark room Collective in Boston.
Unpublishables: Right?
John: and um I was writing fiction at the time. So I was writing short stories and also writing poetry. um And I thought, okay, I'm going to try to write this novel, but it it just, it it just. I couldn't, I just. was not able to do it again i think i was just felt so overwhelmed and uh i mean One of the things I was saying to...
John: ah friends, it's to you know colleagues, students, is that you know when we went through the... COVID -19 pandemic, those those early days, particularly that first year 2020 into 2021, it reminded me in some key ways of the AIDS pandemic, right you know the lack of government response.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: this really kind of this sense of um you know, mass death and, let's get you know, the the the sort of weird media non -response, but also kind of, you know,
Unpublishables: Right.
John: now. It was also matched with a kind of hysteria, right?
Unpublishables: Mm -hmm.
John: So anyway, so... so but But I found it overwhelming. But I was writing being able to write poems. right So... you know so I think at some point, and I had read um books like, I read, you know, um symbol delaneys I think it was The Motion of Light and Water.
John: and his other work, I read. um Linda Jennings, My Life. um i had read uh think I think it's maybe some of ah Mary Baraka's tales.
John: some of his
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: marvelous pieces and his poetry. I read, of course, you know, John Ashbery's Three Poems. so i So there were these, there was there were sort of various templates in my head. And then the Ntozake Shange. Another one.
John: was very important to me um so anyway so so the the language started to come to me And I thought rather than fighting it, I'll write it down.
Unpublishables: rather than sort of trying to make it God. Sort of. formally and conventionally prose. you allowed it all right
John: Right. Exactly. and i allowed so i And so I basically just began to write. And then I found that the more I did that, the more came. And then, of course, the sort of structure. ah became clearer as i was working on it and i showed it to the writers in the dark room i remember one uh one workshop we did week because we we did our own little workshops i these weren't workshops in the because most of us had not gone to.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: Uh... graduate school at that point. I think well well one of the... the the few people who've gone to graduate school, was that i i say one few people but at that point, I think early on, Carl Phillips had gone to graduate school in the classics, I think. And he may have ah also taken creative writing, a creative writing class. But um but ah he you know he was, I think, one of the few people who was in graduate school. and um so So it was like our own sort of... you know, ah
John: collective little workshop. And I showed it to them and they were very encouraging. And so I decided to start sending bits and pieces of it out. And, it but you know, a few places like the Kenyan Review, which was at that.
John: point I think edited by the great Marilyn Hacker. and They took a little snippet of it, I believe.
Unpublishables: okay
John: I want to say Hambone, which is, of course, edited by Nate Mackey. Nate took up a little snippet. um I think a a selection of it appeared in Kalaloo. So it appeared in a few places. But it was funny because I i was trying to get... to you know, um some kind of funding to complete it.
Unpublishables: Yaya.
John: you know and then the responses were like no we don't know what this is like okay so anyway long story short uh but i i decided to stick with it and um
Unpublishables: Yeah. Yeah.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: And then I... realized that, as I was saying, and there there is there is an underlying order here. And what I also began to realize is it is, on the one hand, um a memoir.
John: It's a work of fiction, right? because there are
Unpublishables: I was going to ask you That it it is indeed.
John: Yes.
Unpublishables: um autobiographical in that way, telling your story, but fictionalized.
John: Exactly. So it personalizes my autobiography.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: So I guess it would have been. considered would be considered an early version of autofiction.
Unpublishables: i I, that's actually, we'll get to that, but that's one of the interesting things. Let let me also interject. um Another thing, I think it's also an early version in the American tradition.
Unpublishables: And this goes back to a formal element in the book. Let me go. I'll do two, actually. they're both One is just the title I thought was interesting, Annotations, because as I went through, you know typically an annotation right is...
Unpublishables: There's a primary. uh textual object a manuscript something like that so at first i was sort of casting around for thinking where where he is this a idea of that that text is uh off stage in some way and only by the end one realizes that in a sort of post -structuralist way the text is his life right and and these are the notes coming off of it so that That's one element. And this leads into my other thought.
Unpublishables: When I think of post -structuralism and critical theory and cultural studies, stuff like Stuart Hall and those things. The way that... ah Okay, I said. you're sort of hurtling forward through events they're sort of flying by with the compression But...
Unpublishables: In between, dropped in, there are these more general philosophical types of statements which are kind of the breaks it's a kind of pause to you know, that you get to taken, oh, is this a way of understanding what's going on in this part of the text, as it were, and then you ah sort of accelerate away. So.
Unpublishables: Uh... What I'm wondering is... Isn't it? Wouldn't you say it's also an early version? of um auto theory. Yeah.
John: yeah
Unpublishables: Along with Chris Krause, I Love Dick, that came out around the same time. We hear a lot about... but I love Dick, but we I don't hear as nearly as much discussion of the fact that, wait, annotations is also right there.
Unpublishables: constructing this tradition and especially in the american form yeah
John: Yeah, no, i i amm I am very impressed and amazed that you said that. I mean, I don't think it's ever been discussed that way.
Unpublishables: i
John: I mean, although, interestingly enough, I will let me sit i will say that there there I have had some readers, you know, say to me directly, right, you know, um ah this is a fascinating theoretical text, right? because So.
John: What tends to happen with me is that you know i'm not a I'm a slow writer, and as you pointed out, we all have our moments of sloppiness, but I tend to try to be fairly meticulous.
Unpublishables: Go. Mmm.
John: And um and and I think. So. On the one hand, there is a sense, you know, almost, you know, like you like someone like... who I, of course, greatly admired um and read quite a bit of, like Alice Walker, you know talking about you know the voice comes to you hear you, you listen to that inner voice. On the other hand, I think, you know and this is like a kind of... um You know, Bart was a... Barthian or Barthesian formulation that, you know, um
John: basically there is, you know, there is no single author, right? You know, there it could there is a consciousness here, um you know, a guided consciousness, but you but but all these sort of threads are woven in and i will say you know i mean at the time that um i was writing this book Uh, I had worked. uh, had left the left the job in banking it was awful you know and um I was doing a lot of temp work and I would spend a lot of time.
John: And then I got a job at MIT and I would like, you know, sort of haunt their library and then the bookstore. Right. You know, and you I mean, i it's hard to even.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: and Just... It's hard to even encapsulate. how thrilling it was to you know go to the MIT, I'm so nerdy, right?
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: I'm so geeky, right? But to go to the MIT Press bookstore in the uh late 80s early 90s when they were published i mean just like so many fascinating books, right?
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: okay so i would you know i would haunt the bookstore and i had a buddy who worked there and you know i would get discounts and sometimes they would have you know overstocked books he and say, hey, you know just check this out. um But so I was reading everything.
John: I was reading a lot of theory. um You know, I was reading people like Stuart Hall. I was reading people like Jacques Derrida. I was reading, ah Black Hall makes a number of appearances here.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: You know, and grappling with, you know, people like. you know just to think about like Wittgenstein right so thinking about like language of this idea of naming and calling um Kripke I mean just you know like you know and then you know um
Unpublishables: e
John: like any number of theorists. like bell hooks right so all these all these folks are this is all kind of underpinning this text that's also a work of poetry right because the other thing too is this thing like what does it mean to you know
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: what does it mean to write poetry and in prose, right? and and so there is this way in which it's very interesting when this book has been translated.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: And what I've often said to the translators is, you know, um Yep. what I would would much rather you do is that that rather than sticking to the you know kind of uh to a sense of being as faithful as possible.
John: to to the text. Think about the the sound. Think about like, what is it? what is it, an approximate um let's say you know like Frasor.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: or or or idiom. in your you know, in the target language, right? and and because because what i also was trying to do was to be as open as possible to
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: these kinds of you know echoes and shadows and um you know kind of resonances like what my flow. out of as opposed to you like you know and like a strict text that is really trying to present a kind of coherent um set of theories about something.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: right you know i wanted this to be much more open and free form because it suggests that you know in in in the process of of a kind of self -formation right um uh you know uh all these all these different threads are you know are coming through One last thing I just want to say about all this is.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: This was also the moment, as you but you might remember, probably younger than me, but this is a moment of this the centering of the text.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: in post -structuralist thought. And I mean, this was a constant. kind of um refrain and so i i wanted to capture a good i wanted to capture that in different ways and one way of course is as you say annotations to what right you know maybe texas all perform
Unpublishables: Yes. Yeah, that's it.
John: Okay.
Unpublishables: That's yeah.
John: which is like a wonderful moment.
Unpublishables: It's a great question that hangs in the mind as you read.
John: What?
Unpublishables: okay so you know because that's one element of auto fiction right auto fiction proper rather than any type of uh fiction that draws on autobiographies is usually Thinking particularly of... um the French autofictional tradition of Jacques Drubot and those others.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: um is that generally the the book in your very hand. its composition in some way is is referred to along the way. in the text right that that that there's the metafictional or reflexive component and so i one thing i wanted to ask you is did that French tradition.
Unpublishables: ah but So you've you've told me about the theoretical influences.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: but What about in terms of... autofictional influences. were Were those French writers, Annie Arnault and these other writers? who were drawing a lot on their lives and fictionalizing them.
Unpublishables: Who were the figures that maybe were playing wrong? And maybe there's some American examples too. I don't know.
John: right Well, I mean, I think... you know So, for example, and no i i I didn't know her work at all. i mean one of the people that was Um, you know, that I sort of fell in love with as an undergraduate. I mean, you know, Chris, There were all kinds of...
John: problematic racial aspects to her work and everything. But i just in terms of the sheer lyricism was Marguerite Dura. Wow.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: You know, I thought Dura was... And I remember I had a... one of my professors, he was wild sort of wild situation uh he was my undergraduate TA and then I had him as a graduate professor.
John: And, um, at NYU, Glenford Parker, right? And he was like, he said to me, you know, he said, John, you can't take this person, talking about Dura, you can't take her seriously, right?
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: yes You know, when I was like, come on, you know, but same I didn't read anything. I mean, you know, I hadn't read any work like that.
Unpublishables: yeah
John: like DeRozan. But I mean, I think, yeah, there were a number of, as I said, I mentioned. For example, like... ah
Unpublishables: So, I mean, where did the idea of fictionizing your life rather than writing a straight memoir, where did it come from? I'm just wondering, you know.
John: Well, so I think, but you know, so one as I said, one example was, you know, reading the poetry of Baraka. mayor barack you know um like you know uh the dead dead lecturer and system of dante's hell because it became very clear you know he's writing about himself right um but in this very sort of avant -garde ah
Unpublishables: Okay.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: ah um a manner and then of course i think i then i think i looked at tales i think uh one of the dark room members gave me a copy of tales and then i think later i read some dante's hell So that was one example.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: You know, and of course, then, you know, when I i think. We went. The darker we came, to New York and saw Greg Tate's version It was at the kitchen of. um Dutchman.
John: And of course, you know now, I mean, I've taught this you know this play.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: umpteen thousand times but of course what becomes very clear is that, yet again, this is Baraka. Baraka is the... you know, the clay character Clay is the bourgeois postman's son, you know, postal worker's son, ah you know, wannabe poet, wannabe, you know, Baudelaire, on the train, in the city, trying to be a bohemian.
Unpublishables: Yes. Yes.
John: And know of course, you know he encounters this, you know, white liberal who I won't give it away.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: yeah
Unpublishables: hey Yeah.
John: Well, you know, but there's the sexual tension and everything else. But, you know, there's that moment where he says, um you know, if if we Black people, ah speaking for Black people, if we and Black people did not, you know, sublimate this rage at at our oppression, you know, it would turn into something really ugly and bloody, right?
John: So, so I mean, so Barack was one, you know, um I think, as I said, Alice Walker was another person, um you know, I think.
Unpublishables: Right.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: As I mentioned, Lynn Hagenian, someone like Marguerite Dura. um I mean, there were a number of figures.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: There were a number of people I was reading. um
Unpublishables: Can I ask you about... um ah so a substantive issue, a thematic one, about St. Louis as a literary origin because I couldn't help but think of Elliot and Burroughs and all, there's a lot of, there's that there's the sort of St. Louis to Harvard pipeline and it takes a lot of forms. And I was. I couldn't help but think.
Unpublishables: knowing certain biographical facts about those other ones about your story as it were going through what do you think of st louis as a as a in the ah american consciousness as as a sort of literary origin it's in the midwest it's not really it's you got to leave in some way to ah become this other type of person and then but it nonetheless it's there as a core and maybe it's a call back later i'm curious what you make of it as a
John: that's I mean, that's a great question. And so I would say, you know, I mean... I mentioned Entusaka Shange. I mean, she... she uh spent part of her uh teenage years i think in st louis right and um you know she At one point when I was in college, I was in the play, and her play is spelled number seven.
John: And she, you know, she has, you know, she she actually says, and I quoted in the annotations, you know, she has a whole little section about St. Louis, right? And growing up in St. Louis. But, you know, there people stocker Tennessee Williams was another one. um You know, Peter Taylor was... more more complicated character. Of course, Elliot.
John: you know um et cetera. Ah. You know... South Toulouse is a very interesting place. It's a...
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: It's a combination of a lot of different aspects of the country. It's very Midwestern, but it's also very Southern. right it also has these aspects you know uh like Washington University, that feel almost very East Coast.
Unpublishables: Okay.
Unpublishables: Okay, right.
John: Right. But then it's also it was the gateway to the West. You know, so so. it's it's
Unpublishables: I remember driving through a few years back and thinking... very much of like It's a crossroads of a million aspects of America all stitched together. like And it's it's very interesting.
Unpublishables: Go ahead. Yeah.
John: Yeah. And I mean, the other thing too, I mean, we were, i so growing up, I was very conscious of the fact that, you know, on the one hand, Missouri was a slave state, you know, out mean it was. I think the the the Confederacy wanted it very badly because you know it it was what are they becoming an industrial powerhouse around the time of the Civil War, but it still was a slave state. you know but but the the the st louis and the state of missouri uh they had two government two governments one a confederate government in texas but the the main government the state you know It was...
John: part of the union so it is so again so there's there's this this interesting tension there always um
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: Amen.
Unpublishables: Did you think of of any of those? other people who had made that same sort of exodus in ah in ah the sort of Bildungsroman sense. These other characters that... of of great literary significance in ah american history i'm just wondering it may be that they they never crossed your mind while you're writing but that did you Did you think that you were writing a story of...
Unpublishables: you know of you know coming from the midwest and taking that somewhere up that i need to go i need to To develop the way I need to develop. I can't just stay here in some way or
John: Well, yeah. I mean, I think part of it is, you know, some people can write in the place where they're from without a problem.
Unpublishables: Mm hmm.
John: But I think a lot of writers need to get ah get a bit of distance, especially when you're young, right? And um I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. know I'm talking banalities, right? So forgive me. but but i you know i did think so on the one hand i was thinking you know I am writing in the tradition of some of these people, right? um you know uh and each writer grapples with.
John: some of the major subjects of their their time in different ways i mean some some people are like live in their own little you know bubble so they don't They're everything.
Unpublishables: Completely.
John: It's all of kind of fantasy, right? Though though the real reality is is always somewhere, you know, either inside or out you outside.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: Edges. but i think yeah i think i was i wanted to sort of encapsulate st louis in a certain kind of way growing up in the midwest i'm growing up in the upper south you know, in a way that was distilled.
John: like ah So I think the other thing about annotations is it's a distillation. like personally.
Unpublishables: that exactly That's why I refer to it as sort of telegraphic. It seems like a ah lot has been put into these 94 pages. And that if you, as it were, the primary text must be thousands of pages, his life, as it were, yeah you know.
John: Right, right. It's like the anti -Tom Wolf.
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: boom But one of the things I will say is that, um you know, the writer christopher sackhouse we we did a book or second book of the second book, We did ah this book together. and But Chris was telling me that, you know, um when he first picked up Annotations, and he's originally from Michigan, um he said, you know, there was so much...
John: and he's about to think about five years younger than me. He said, there was so much. that spoke directly to My. life experience right it was like you know because so going up black at a certain time I mean that's I think a
Unpublishables: Right.
John: me aspect of this book because you know i was thinking of like most of these pick i mean shawnee of course is one of the great you know african -american experimental writers of her generation but i mean it's the you know just like look what would it look like to tell this life story. um in a way that was that was somewhat oblique or as phil brian harper's described it yeah abstract or abstracted but also in some ways,
John: like almost like you know so specific Those names are like shards, right?
Unpublishables: Right.
John: You know, so.
Unpublishables: Absolutely. The the details. aura. are very concrete there's just the as it were the ellipses between them and and and one in one's mind
John: Right.
Unpublishables: what as it were fills in the the larger world from that picture i i also thought it was interesting because okay so race is one thing but what's interesting about your story and and the the narrator of the book is There's also the matter of gender.
Unpublishables: going on i thought there was a very interesting Switching. In general, there's very interesting switches between pronouns throughout the book.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: that sort of shift. the picture slightly sometimes it's a collective sometimes individual but the shifts where he feels under uh a certain scrutiny that he he he feels feminized in some way and there's then suddenly we have a she and you're so wait who's this well no this this is you know i i really loved the way that was very in a very light touch that was sort of weaved into
Unpublishables: And what prose poetry sort of allows for is that flexibility that in a more traditional narrative, it it would be sort of jarring. But here you're like, okay, I'll go with this. And then you later maybe understand what's...
Unpublishables: you know happening
John: Exactly. well And you you captured something I think really important, which is this even the question of pronouns. I mean, one of the things that I was thinking when I was writing this book is I do not want to, because I sort of said to myself that, you know, I'm not going to write an autobiography.
John: My first book is not going to be an autobiography.
Unpublishables: i
John: And of course he was, you know, because, you know, when you make pronounces like that, you know.
Unpublishables: No, as an artist, you you that can't be yeah that's like ah a step back from the... the big leagues in a way to a memoir should be later like yeah
John: i you know or even art you know even autobiographical novels like i'm not going to do that i'm going to you know i'm write about. What's up, Seth?
Unpublishables: Oh, I always see.
John: Yay. But as it turns out, of course, it is highly autobiographical. But I thought, OK, you know. one way one thing i'm one of the things I want to try to do. writing this book is to avoid using I. when a few of the critics i think earlier i mean had their edit book wasn't You got...
John: they got group of very good reviews, I'd say. There weren't tons. There were just a small number.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: um But, you know... i think maybe one of maybe someone did point this out that you know that i don't i don't use the word i You can use the point on I until the very end of the book.
John: Amen.
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: But I mean, there was another. Um, it might've been like an online comment. I don't think it was real criticism, but they, the you know, the person said, you know, There's there's there's no, you know.
John: um presence of the feminine here. And I'm like, no, I actually do that.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: She, because I thought, you know, what does it mean? But truly. This is the other thing I would say is yeah When I was writing this book, It was, of course, it was the period of high theory.
John: And remember, you know, the sort of theory of wars were underway.
Unpublishables: Yes, yes
John: And of course, all the various theories, you know, the like psychoanalytic theory and deconstruction and but and, you know, Black feminist and Black feminist theory. and um you know and and then of course it was you know the right this is a moment where you know sort of lgbtq studies were coming into their own but also like really you know nasa queer theory
Unpublishables: Right.
John: And. um And I thought, you know, I mean... so yeah so what would it sort of in in a sense a kind of Like, what is it? sort of queer this text in that even this question of gender.
John: that The question of identity, identification, and gender is destabilized, right?
Unpublishables: Hey, hey, hey. to use a another term that you have. Yeah. syntactically made made it the fluidity.
John: Right.
Unpublishables: very clear by by you You slide into... the rather than it be it's becomes spectral rather than discreet i think it's beautifully done yeah
John: Looks bad. Wonderful.
Unpublishables: ah ah so So I was thinking, shall we turn to counter narratives?
John: Sure.
Unpublishables: Okay, so I'll just say a a little bit about it. you could We'll talk about it more, but you know these are our short stories. about you know um essentially the settling. of the americas that they are already settled of course but but by the europeans the um imperialism and colonialism there And I think they're set as far back as the 17th century.
John: yes
Unpublishables: whether brazil Santo Domingo.
John: New York?
Unpublishables: uh york of course and all these areas um And ah so I want I want to. to get a flavor of it i throw it to john to set up a little excerpt
John: Okay, so I'm going to read an excerpt called the Spree. Titled Spree. And this is from one of the early stories. uh in the text an ideological Sir. An Outtake from the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, which plays on the famous title of the pem study.
John: titled The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn, though you don't need to know anything about that to appreciate this story.
Unpublishables: Okay. yeah
John: so And I will just say that Zion is... An enslaved person in... pre -revolutionary Massachusetts, right? It's the 1700s in Massachusetts. and Zion is enslaved and he uh continues to Escape.
John: Spree. After settling this most recent plight, the Middlesex County Magistrate. Job Hollis arranged to place Zion on board a vessel bound for Virginia.
John: where he would be sold at auction. and his wildness might finally be whipped or worked out of him. Only under such conditions could the slave learn respect for the common and hardworking citizenry.
John: and whose colonies he had been fortunate enough to dwell. Hall is reasoned. And if Zion continued in his ways down there, The penalties would be swift. and ultimate.
John: Hollis walked Zion. Hands bound. the requisite papers pinned to the slave's tattered coat, all the way to Hancock's Wharf. with a south -going vessel with Sadak.
John: I wish the young bondmen a safe passage to the southerly port. saying a prayer for his soul as they stood before they open water. to drown out his master's voice.
John: Zion began singing. On this note of defiance, the exasperated Hollis departed. For an hour or so, the slaves stood there singing and whistling on the wharf as the bailer and a customs official sat lubricating in a nearby alehouse.
John: When the ship A frigate did not arrive at the stated time. Zion charmed a Dutch whore strolling by to untie his bindings. Whereupon he set off to find the first... loosely hitched horse.
John: As he ran, He proclaimed himself free. Under duress, one's actions assume a dreamlike clarity. I just have to say. That sentence when that came to me, I was like, oh my God. Okay.
Unpublishables: ah
John: An unattended nag stood outside a tavern and off Zion Road. After a spree would stretch from the city of Boston west to the edges of Middlesex County, the slave played his words. played his worst hand when he committed lascivious acts just across a crowning line the county line on the person of a sleeping widow.
John: Mary Schaff spoke. near Shrewsbury. having broken Having broken into her home and reportedly taking taken violent liberties with her unaccountably zion did not flee the town but entered a nearby tavern and began a round of popular songs to the delight of a crowd of locals and the horror of the violated woman.
John: The sheriff arrested him without delay. When he realized the notoriety of the criminal he had in his hands, he suggested to the local magistrate that Although this most recent felony had occurred in Worcester County,
John: The criminal ought to be returned to the general court in Boston. which had the apparatus to deal with such evil. The magistrate responded that given the current worsening political situation in the Capitol, and as I said, this is on the eve of the revolution. It appeared unlikely that the slaves' crimes would receive rapid adjudication.
John: Mrs. Shaspone, demanding justice or at least compensation, therefore had word sent to Job Hollis, who was joe hollis who was negotiating the sale of his business in the anticipation of an assault against Boston's northern waterfront.
John: The violated widow suggested a cash settlement with the proviso that Hollis sell the criminal out of the colonies, preferably to the French West Indies. Hollis, who still held his title to Zion, agreed to this arrangement and collected him, now restrained in wrist irons, from the town jail.
John: They rode westward. where Hollis' real plan was to sell the slave down at Albany to assure a good price and guarded transport down the Hudson. But on the way...
John: and the town of Pittsfield. they encountered the hampshire county sheriff who claimed to possess warrants for the negro from war from worcester and suffolk counties in the confusion arising over the validity scope and authority of the documents zion as if aware of the tenuous state of justice for blacks in new york state Seize his mask at master's musket.
John: knocked both men out. mounted the sheriff's horse, and rode back eastward.
Unpublishables: Thank you. um i okay i wanted to Okay, first of all, a little sort of point of... of politics and language. ah ah And speaking about this, I hope you won't find it a problem.
Unpublishables: both because it's the terms of the book. ah And also in my personal usage, I i prefer to highlight. the barbarism and dehumanization, I'm just going to use the term slave rather than enslaved person.
Unpublishables: So you can you you can speak your own way, of course.
John: What's your spot? Right.
Unpublishables: ah and um I also use homeless rather than unhoused. It's it's my own thing. Anyway, okay.
John: No. What is it for?
Unpublishables: um yeah okay and um well And then I want to say that I'm going to go on a little bit because I want to use this excerpt. Tip. introduced some themes in the whole book. So if you don't mind, I'm going to sort of set the table and then I'll throw it to you to...
Unpublishables: dispute or do whatever you want Okay. Okay. so i I want to confront this idea, of just start with the idea of this, you know, the counter. encounter narrative.
John: Mhm.
Unpublishables: and with a particular shading or valence that's being given here. Because, you know, when one thinks of, I think this word is ah particularly appropriate, ah a master narrative. and a counter narrative uh the typical terms of that will be You know, especially in the historical context we say Uh, history is written by the winners, right? By by the victors. and and What that generally means is that uh in the in the master narratives the the victor comes out looking
Unpublishables: ultimately virtuous noble, heroic in some way. decent and good. And the the losers are in some way seen as, let's say, in in a broad sense. bad, deficient.
Unpublishables: in need of civilizing or whatever it might be. And this is the way it's... you know, the typical master narrative operates to to make the winner. look good. uh there's one type of counter narrative i think a more classical traditional one that sort of just inverts this.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: Okay. And so what what it ends up saying is. Well, actually, not only is... the the the the The master narrative, the the subjugators, the the power players, not only are they bad and and problematic and evil in various ways. that's Fair enough.
Unpublishables: But. that the The subjugated turn in It turned into the heroes or the virtuous. or the good in a certain way. And I was thinking just in terms of... the history of slavery.
Unpublishables: instances of that would be where that would be exactly the correct narrative would be when you think of like um abolitionists. uh constructing movements to protest and overturn these things or if you think the Underground Railroad.
Unpublishables: Hey, here's a system to fight back against this.
John: isn
Unpublishables: And so in those cases, that inversion... It works perfectly.
John: mm -hmm
Unpublishables: But of course, I think in your book, this is what i found so interesting and we can talk and you can see I want to throw this against what you think. ah Not only in this, but in the broader, the other stories, the the countering.
Unpublishables: has a kind of anti -heroic element in that that the... the the the the the subjugated the the the lower term in this. is doesn't come out as a savior or a noble, you can't 100 % sympathize.
Unpublishables: So in this case of Zion, This is why I selected this.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: the in the No one can approve of... ah ah rape, or no one can approve of those kinds of things in the abstract. And the second part is this though. His behavior, unlike the abolitionist, Or like ah someone working for the... um Underground Railroad and assisting.
Unpublishables: it's not It's not deliberate. Uh... push back against a larger political body. It's sort of his... private energies are being expended here. And so that partly explains why we can't 100 % support them because those energies are coming out in. sort of unbridled.
Unpublishables: ah ah disruptive ways that are not always under his conscious control.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: and so I was thinking. The interesting thing about counternarratives, in your sense... in with this book. is what one sees play out is as it were, counter forces.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: The subjugated puts, you know, the master puts the slave in this position and then suddenly it unleashes forces the master could not have anticipated. ah disruptions, violence, all this this chaos.
Unpublishables: So in the end, But... Click. The subject doing that chaos is not himself necessarily a noble character. he's He's reacting in a historical way to the force. So I was thinking in the of terms of Hegel and the master -slave. in this In your version, there are no, as it were,
Unpublishables: Purely good guys. Everybody has been ruined by... the the relationship in some way, so soured or spoiled. Zion is behaving in a very wild manner that... Ideally, yeah in a non -slave context, where he wouldn't be, right? he but he's been pressed into this role and and he's he's sort of acting out.
Unpublishables: And I just thought, When I looked at the other stories... as well. I saw. again Again, this idea of the energy. that's being released by slavery.
John: mm -hmm
Unpublishables: is is frequently not you know a conscious design or something but what the the force that slavery brings into the picture I was also thinking about European history. Let me just say this and then I'll throw it to you.
Unpublishables: You know, European history at this point, right? age of exploration scientific revolution enlightenment is rapidly going towards this rationalist agenda where this is the way life works. It works by these rules. as a And where are they coming from?
Unpublishables: it' At the same time, that's also in a way... a very rule -based uh ideology catholicism right and there's a There's a pull between two essentially rational systems of different types.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: what imperialism introduces and and slavery. is this element that unlike these other two the tension that's already going in is Unknown. Irrational! or as far as the europeans are concerned i'm saying uh a disruptive dark dangerous So there's talk of other stories of black magic.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: right of I think of Carmel and ah
John: Yeah.
Unpublishables: and her muteness again is not a chosen state. It's not that she's...
John: e
Unpublishables: consciously but It's like... This is what happens when you when you create these dark contexts. You you subjugate people. What but might have been benign in another situation becomes Yeah.
Unpublishables: and very disruptive and dangerous for everybody. So I i was thinking, let me just say. I have a little right about where I think. but ah Blackness and slavery, the the the the oppressed term, is is always this kind of introduction of disorder.
Unpublishables: Unruliness. danger as against either the you have stories about monasteries and catholicism where it's challenging that order including gender
John: mm -hmm
Unpublishables: Um, ah transsexuality, orgies. all these ideas that are against. Whether it's Catholicism or Enlightenment, it just it's it's a third term. And so that was the sense of counter I got from you, that it it's... ah not necessarily so well formed as like a ah protest movement or a But there's much more.
Unpublishables: know for me, much more interesting political formation where everybody gets tainted. And ultimately, there's still a guilty party. that You're the ones who put these people in this position. So that's that's not unchanged.
Unpublishables: But the the... The subjugated party is is not is doesn't turn out to be like... uh well formed and solid and and and we can be triumphant it's like he's a deformed entity too but that energy is actually what is harming the overall relation so i i i put this as my take on what but but you could free to push back go ahead yeah
John: ah So was it was a lot of what you said, and it's, I think, fascinating. I mean, a few things, ah so a few things I want to kind of think about is... Or... so alongside let's say okay let's take Roman Catholicism alongside, you know, um the sort of very sort of rule -based aspect of Roman Catholicism, the catechism, et cetera, right? The teachings, you know, there there's always this, I mean, all across Europe.
John: right this folk element right this mystical element right And so that that that precedes.
Unpublishables: that's right
John: right i understand i mean it sort of always it's always there um you know it's like you know this you know seeing you know i mean growing up as a you know As a, you know, as a...
Unpublishables: I...
John: as a as a practicing catholic you know you you have for example the feast of saint blaise where you you have two candles crossed and they're supposed to heal your throat right or protect your throat you know um you you you know you pray to us a particular saint as your intercessor right you know depending on either if it's the same.
John: name you bear or the saint who's basically known for a particular thing right so there is this profound mystical element or, you know, people saying.
Unpublishables: know but I think this is a great modification.
John: Yeah.
Unpublishables: You're right. That it's already there, this irrationalist. right That's what you're suggesting. I think you're absolutely right. Go ahead. Yeah.
John: Right, so I kind kind of un -reason, but I don't want i don't want to... Let's say unreasoned in a purely negative sense, right?
Unpublishables: Okay, yes.
John: I want to think about like the kind of dimensions. of um kind of our existence, including the sort of spiritual dimension, right? So i was I was interested in that. I was also interested in, you know, I mean, one of the things that the...
John: The story that I read. from you know sort of stages is And this is something I really wanted to try to think about, right? First of all, you know Massachusetts is the cradle of liberty in the United States. On the other hand, Massachusetts is the first state to legalize slavery. Right. um you know you Have.
John: you know, as the story is unfolding. you have a personal battle. between you know this enslaved person right who wants to be free i mean this is the thing that is i mean what does it mean to be free now Freedom freedom has multiple means, right? So there's legal freedom. There's you know in your juridical freedom. There's you know kind of social freedom, right? And at the same time, this person is socially.
John: dead right this is something you know Orlando Patterson you know
Unpublishables: Right? Absolutely.
John: perhaps lets talk about You know, he has no. place a recognition in this society. right he is he is there is no place for him right But he he has these gifts. He has these talents, right?
Unpublishables: For singing, in Zion's case, right?
John: meaning for yeah just for for for being in the world.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: I mean, he's charming, whatever. Okay.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: And ah and the other thing and what it's i will I want to think about is, you know oh there are many things I want to think about, but one of the things I want to think about is that much of the behavior that he...
Unpublishables: Yep.
John: engages in. parallels. the various kinds of behaviors that That. you know, people who are white, who are property, etc. uh, uh engage in And yet they they're it's totally sanctioned by the Senate.
Unpublishables: ah That's right.
John: right
Unpublishables: that But let me say, I... I partly said ah talked about pushback because when I came to your book of poems, which we'll discuss later, There's a poem there that...
Unpublishables: When I first started reading, I was thinking, this now this is what I was thinking about counter narratives. There's a hitch because, and it's it's called blacken. is the poem and there you talk about this disruptive effect But you talk about it. except for this one line which I'll get to.
Unpublishables: you talk about it as a more conscious act of resistance, which of course there are cases like that, where it is more a deliberate form of, even if it's not a macro political rebellion, it's a micro one, like on a micro political personal politics and that sort of Foucauldian sense. But there is a line where you where you talk about hacking the system, and it's that sounds more deliberate. But there is a line there which I... i
Unpublishables: I liked because it it connected with my thinking on Counting Errors. But you talk about... a translation we're talking about a translation without a master now i think you maybe intended that to mean without a master meaning just ah the whites, but I also see it as no master at all in a way you that was, you know, anyway, I was just telling you.
Unpublishables: ah Okay, go ahead. do
John: Oh, yeah, no, no, no. So that's great. I'm glad i'm glad you made that connection, right? Because I feel like there' you know there's all these these these these points of connection.
Unpublishables: Oh.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: They're rhizomatic, but I think that each of the texts is rhizomatic. But there are these points of connection between all the texts. um but so it was ah so so so thinking about right so so i was you know, and also I would say, okay, so slavery, but also capitalism. Right. That is the way, you know, if it yeah yeah the the kind of the. the The brutality.
John: of the capital. proto -capitalist and capitalist system, um you know particularly you know as as it is accompanying. you know, the rise of the child slave list system, the Enlightenment, et cetera, right? You know, this age of discovery and wonder and all these things, right? You know, I...
John: I wanted to kind of weave all these things in, and and but not so that the everything is so neat and so perfect. you know i want I want some of that messiness, some of that tension. And so in this story, I was thinking, you know,
John: I mean that. That administrative battle between you know ah the and the American colonies is in the background, but it's also in the in the foreground. And what happens when the...
John: enslaved. body this is a person who basically, you know, everyone, at a certain point, they they just want to get rid of him, right? They want to just, i you know, it's like, let's send him down to Virginia. Let's send him down to New York State.
John: We'll send him to Guadalupe.
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: I mean, just get we got to get rid of this dude because, you know, he is just, he just will not. Behave.
Unpublishables: ah Behave right
John: Which is to say he will not basically. Uh, B. ah He will not he not be a commodity. He will not be allow himself to be.
Unpublishables: i see
John: a cog and a commodity, right?
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: he
Unpublishables: he won He won't facilitate the smooth.
John: Exactly.
Unpublishables: production of Yeah, exactly.
John: the function of capitalism.
Unpublishables: Yeah. yeah
John: you And domination, right?
Unpublishables: Exactly.
John: mission So, so ah you know, and of course, that there's one moment, I think, in this, we you know, there were many points, you know, that... I like that you kind of smiled. Because I want to think also that some of these stories have provoked laughter, right?
John: um But there's you know there's one moment where he basically is charged for impersonating a free person. I mean...
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: You know, um and and, you know, and he just, again, and but the other thing.
Unpublishables: That's right.
Unpublishables: he He's so wily. and it did There's so much creativity in the ways he ducks and dodges.
John: Right.
Unpublishables: That's for sure. and that that's a Uh, that's that's the part of the anti -hero that's where you're rooting for him like in in that way but then you're like It also involves these crazy crimes that are quite violent.
Unpublishables: So it's like...
John: By biology, yeah.
Unpublishables: I love the tip. I love the tension.
John: Right. Wait.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: Exactly. You know, it's like, you know, and I would say, I mean, this is well before the Sopranos, but, look you know you know, people people love the Sopranos. People love the guy, you know, the... Walter White in Breaking Bad. I mean, people love criminals, right?
Unpublishables: Good.
John: You know, if it's criminals, loving enough lovable enough. And I would have decided to be one of these characters, not so much to be lovable, but to just to to introduce them. complications, because it would have been much...
Unpublishables: And his intelligence, ultimately, that to to be that wily.
John: sounds
Unpublishables: right to see yeah As it were. There are so many different types of escapes he has executes within the story. you know of different you know um ah different ways of subverting that you know even if he's not thinking quite that way, he's got the skill for it. He has the knack to to to duck and dodge.
Unpublishables: in a way that's very frustrating to the wider system and is destabilizing. and
John: Exactly.
Unpublishables: Diaz.
John: exactly So so i so so to to follow up on what you're saying, i mean so I think, yeah.
Unpublishables: Yep.
John: I mean, my idea of carnivore is right. i want I wanted it to be complicated.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: I can't. let's say complex i wanted to be complex i did not want i mean because it would have been very easy to have you know we i mean we live in an era maybe maybe it's not so much anymore but i mean i think we live we just lived through like 30 years of like you know this relentless um you know kind of uh super uh uh Superhero Mania. And. um And this book you know, ah What the...
John: you know appeared and was being written during this whole thing right you know and i so And I thought, okay, you know, I mean, there is something to be said for, you know, the thing about superheroes and yeah.
Unpublishables: ah yeah That's right.
John: uh, you know and and and comics, et cetera. But but i wanted to I wanted to make it. to to make readers somewhat uneasy at times, right?
Unpublishables: Uh... Can I just interject? Because i had this I wanted to think about, you know, people talk about political fiction, what a political novel. how How do we go about it? How do we make it convincing and interesting? And one thing about your writing, we we'll talk about the other part later. that the poetry In some of the poetry... And I think that's interesting. You take a much more straightforward stance of...
Unpublishables: uh in a very beautiful and moving way of um speaking toward, it's an explicit political intervention.
John: Mm hmm.
Unpublishables: on the side. of Here. Um, You would get exactly that complication. how did how did you when When do you know when to mobilize which tendency in your writing? The more explicit ah political...
Unpublishables: Uh... thrust where it's it's clear where what we should be doing, what the what where what the right direction is. Or when is the when is the right way sometimes? Where when I finished Counter -Nerders, I was very much like...
Unpublishables: And this will lead into a formal issue about how the book changes over time, which it changes a lot, right? Let me mention it now. ah It starts off with the most stately. i actually want to talk a lot about the formal stuff it starts out with the most stately measured types of pros like a um ultimately historical study or or sometimes a travel journal. Frequently when I was reading the early stories, I had a kind of... um
Unpublishables: voiceover from a serious historical documentary running in my mind. like that It has that tone of remove and pacing. Also, you have a... yeah so The profusion of...
Unpublishables: a period detail is is shocking i mean i understand why it took you to write these this long because the web your we to even Try to tackle. historical fiction of this complexity in the short stories is sort of crazy.
Unpublishables: It's not it's not really done.
John: What?
Unpublishables: And and it's it's a very, I mean, it's ah it's a huge tribute. it' you know It's a stunning kind of achievement. ah to to be able to compress into those pages such a world. ah in such a precise way rather than just going impressionistically. And so the beginning stories have that.
Unpublishables: very very tightly woven detail and a very calm stately authoritative kind of tone as it were in the way things What's interesting, one of the things of of the book is that...
Unpublishables: It's as if. about halfway through This, this... Your poetry starts breaking through, as it were. that The subjectivity starts tearing through the calm documentary voice, as it were. And then by some of the later piece, I'm thinking of like um lions.
Unpublishables: ah That was like almost like a Beckettian dialogue. you know you You don't really know where where the hell are we until later, and it it starts to concretize in some way. I also would say along with this.
Unpublishables: Place and time in the... Early stories are absolutely clear as from a reader. You you know where you are, where you're situated. As you go, even in Aeronauts or some of these, I was thinking. There are times when I'm reading aeronauts where I'm like.
Unpublishables: I forget that this is... ah the the the The Civil War, the the way you've written it, you've made time. Slippery. it's concrete in the beginning it seems very orderly and as you go it starts to become more miasmic. And by the time you get to lions, it's a very much. So I i loved how the book ultimately brings back.
Unpublishables: the prose poetry, that the hybridity.
John: Mm -hmm.
Unpublishables: In a beautiful way. But ah go ahead. What do you think of i'm interested the the formal elements of of how you made this book? what it is.
John: That's a wonderful question. So I will say that the... you know the the the Most of the the earliest stories are in the first part of the book. and um You know, I wrote the first story I wrote in.
John: Well, there are two. But anyway, so the first story I wrote... was was an outtake. I wrote that when I was in a graduate school. And. And I brought it to, I've said this before, so people have heard this.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: heard the story, but I brought it to to workshop and I was the workshop leader was El Doctoro. It was a great.
Unpublishables: Oh wow.
John: Okay. Yeah.
Unpublishables: yeah Yeah, that's okay.
John: We'll be right back.
Unpublishables: Sorry, historical fiction and E .L. Doctorow, yeah.
John: You know, yeah. yeah been the end of the The musical Brackton, I think it just debuted, right? um But... you know but and And he was very encouraging. you know And half the class was like, oh, you know this is this is really, really interesting. i mean i like what do you like I'm not sure what you're doing, but I like what you're doing. And the other half was kind of baffled.
John: Which was fine, you know. um But I say that to say. that, you know, after I finished that story, I thought, okay, you know, I want to write. more stories like this. And I reached a kind of impasse. and And, you know, a journal called Encyclopedia invited me to you know contribute um a piece. And I said, well, write another short story. um one of the editors tisa bryant um was is a good friend of mine and tisa was like you know well
John: what about what about you know an outtake you know and i was like well that's already appeared in the literary journal so uh they gave me two terms uh brazil and denouement And um I.
John: Of course not reading the directions. closely. i thought i was supposed to use both of these so and i was later told that the only two people who used both of them were samuel delaney and i was It's going to get covered, right?
Unpublishables: ah Good company at least, yeah.
John: Yeah, exactly. But I thought, okay, so I want to write random about Brazil. I want to write... You know, like I teach queer writing. i talk with my students a lot about denouement what it is what what would we mean to illustrate it but then also i thought like you know
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: Look. Like... what how can i play with this voice right this authoritative historical voice right and so there are all of these ways in which that that that authoritative voice is destabilized in those early stories right and those are really i think you know i mean because i broke the the collection up into three sections
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: Right. you know And that those first stories really are. um counter narratives, right? But that second section. You know, so we'll say that. For the most part, none of the stories in the first section ah you know are told in the first person.
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: But when we get to that second section, um encounter narratives, and I thought, you know, originally, I'll show you.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: you know i I had this idea that, you know, um yeah that well they did it the new directions did i think the first early version they didn't do it but it's like in it's both encounters but also encounters Right.
John: Um, Because I wanted to think about... How that I... is both intimate but also a kind of vessel for history. our vessel of history.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: um And so so, right, so. But, but... In thinking about like, you know, kind of the historical chronicle, um the historical essay, you know, et cetera, the sort of more scholarly approach, right?
John: you know you
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: You are. supposed to pin things down right and again i mean things get sort of destabilized i mean you know for example zion just disappears right yeah it's like what like you know we like really what happened right um
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: But they'll go the court. Continue.
Unpublishables: But totally, there's a kind of control that makes you feel everything's in order here, even if it's not.
John: Exactly.
Unpublishables: yeah Exactly.
John: Good job. There's disorder in that order, right? But in that second section, right when when it comes to the more personal these more personal narratives, That's right.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: Right. Time at times does fall away. And that was something I was trying to think about. Like, how do i how do I give that sense of both on the one hand of the rootedness, right? So we have a scene that, ah you know, in Aeronauts, right, that takes place during the Civil War battle.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: right where the character i mean he's literally he's absolutely terrified
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: You know, um because, you get you know, the the. um you know the cannonballs are like you know and and bullets are flying right you know um and you know they they it's story about the balloon corps
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: And of course, as this is happening, as these cannonballs are you know smashing against the fort and everything like that that they're in, um you know they I just had this vision right of this, which really did happen, right ah you know of this hot air balloon like floating up in the air. And you know there's an artist up there. you know or Well, I don't think this was what did it.
John: didn't have an artist with, you know, paintbrushes and stuff.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: but That did happen. But, you know, he had a telegraph wire and he's sending, you know, the person with the telegraph wire is sending messages to the troops to tell them, you know, okay, you know, you're in the fort, they're being you're being bombarded, but, you know.
John: Once this battle is done, you know, the bombardment ends and the, you know. ah confederate forces decide to you know kind of move or stay where they are we can send you know a kind of a detailed but create a map so you know where the forces are right okay so and so so so you know i was trying to think like you know and and so you think in the in that the excitement of that moment.
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: time falls away, but then time comes back. And this happens again and again, right?
Unpublishables: that That's right.
John: Right. And so that's that's one of the things I was thinking about in terms of temporality.
Unpublishables: And even that ending of that story, I thought was marvelous, the way it becomes. The... most of it is you know relatively stable. But when when he begins to float away himself, you've introduced this um
John: Yes.
Unpublishables: And there again, the complexities of your book. He's... terrified but he's also like exhilarated and he's like kind of like he's elevating and and he's been wanting to go up on this balloon for a while and ah the The mixtures of that you have managed there, again, very fluid and and beautiful. so
John: And it plays with, I mean, the myth of, you know, Black people flying back to Africa. Of course, innocent enough, great he this is someone from the North.
Unpublishables: yeah
John: He's from Philadelphia.
Unpublishables: that's right
John: He's actually drifting over Confederate lines. So he's flying. But of course, the thing that we realize, well, I'm not going to give a story.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: But mean one of the things we we know is that he has been working with. one of the chief scientists. So he knows how to manipulate that balloon.
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: Yes. you know we we' are we're the though Of course, the hope is. you can manipulate it so that you can basically take it. back north but i mean it the story ends with him just sort of you know because he can
Unpublishables: yeah I mean, it's a it's a very...
John: you know
Unpublishables: um I don't know, it reminded me of like... i Almost like Frank O 'Hara or E .E. Cummings, it's a very sort of ecstatic kind of... but Terrified but ecstatic kind of conclusion. and which it's very smooth transition so you don't notice it but by the end it's like this um
Unpublishables: ah It's a a true climax to the the piece, emotionally even. And it leaves you with the feeling of of definite ambiguity, but also exhilaration, which is there's an energy there that... For instance, invert. first stories is Yeah.
Unpublishables: ah deliberately repressed, as it were. We we don't want anything... get Here, the language allow is allows it to bloom in the same way that the balloon goes up. The the language sort of... expands i thought can can i also ask you ah Two things. One is...
Unpublishables: in the composition of these how much historical research was involved And two, When I, in terms of the book, you know, who's up because who are some of the influence that it for me when i read it the first person the first people that came to mind were nipal Di Benedetto, Zama.
Unpublishables: And. conrad That doesn't mean that has anything to do with your actual influence. that Those are the things I was thinking about. But what who were the actual... the The things that fed into your thinking and how much research was involved.
John: So i'll I'll tackle the research question first. And it varied. I mean, you know, the one thing I was going to say is that, you know, when when I came up with that on Brazil, the Denouement story, right? or So that's where I think I started.
John: May I maybe?
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: left off of that but i wanted to say that you know so so once i wrote that story You know, it it was like, you know, a key unlocking something, right? And it appeared in Encyclopedia. and um you know, ah
John: it's it's it There's this kind of cyclicity to it. uh one of my colleagues when i was at northwestern uh was i guess i think under my tenure committee he later came to a reading i did and he talks about he's a mathematician he talked about the you know the how how the story has like like Very interesting.
John: uh cyclic quality. um And I thought, well, that is that's sort of what I wanted and also kind of a sort of palindromic quality.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: not at not the level of language, but at the level of the narrative, the chasmic quality.
Unpublishables: I...
John: But so anyway, so I still have to say that. but But one of the other early stories. that uh that i completed was um called purses and places and that is a you know it's in the that second section it's very short and it basically is a narrative about w .b du bois and um Uh...
John: George Santayana walking down the street and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Du Bois was silent.
Unpublishables: That's the the twinned one with...
John: Exactly. with two car
Unpublishables: Oh, yeah. yeah
John: and And so the the formal device is that they're walking in opposite directions, right, down the same street. And they haven't. yet met but they know who each knows who the other is um and part of what i wanted to do there was to have a moment of recognition at least from santayana's part on Du Bois' uh part because in as i've said again i've said this publicly a number of times ah you know in in Santianas.
John: absolutely strange and fascinating memoir Persons and Places. where he describes all manner of his experience here in Spain, in the United States, et cetera, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Harvard.
John: He doesn't... you know i think i checked that several times he doesn't mention dubois at all like dubois is not But Du Bois does.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: a number of times mentioned having studied
Unpublishables: The other way. Okay.
John: Oh, exactly. you know
Unpublishables: Interesting, right?
John: Right, right. So i so i wanted I wanted to kind of play with that. is that you know that that's That's probably the closest we get to like kind of your work.
Unpublishables: Yeah, right.
John: Inversion, right. um but Let's see. No. Your question, okay. you
Unpublishables: Other words were about influences are on you.
John: What's your answer?
Unpublishables: Because this book, as all the critics have said, is like, where the hell did this book come from? it's It's so distinctive. And the people I could think of with the same moral complexity were some, and also who were very interested in.
Unpublishables: historical detail, even Naipaul's nonfiction particularly, about uh santa domingo and some of these things i'm just wondering what fed into it in terms of not just your research historical, but other.
Unpublishables: other uh artists, fiction writers, etc.
John: Exactly. Okay. So that's what I want to say. So, yeah. So, so in terms of research, right. it It varied. Some of the stories I did extensive research. Some of them, you know, it was fairly light. I mean, because I wanted to get certain things right. So I'll just tell you within the era.
John: you know, um You know, I think at one point i I had described what the characters, in an early draft, I described the character, um you know, seeing the dome, the finished dome of the Capitol building.
John: And then I saw a photograph, right, from that from that particular, I think that exact year or the year with year before. And it's unfinished, right? So I was like, oh, no, no, no, no.
John: You got to get this right. You know, like little things like that I wanted to try to get right.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: you know Um, But then other things, I other i took leaps.
Unpublishables: liberties, yeah.
John: follow by writers like ah you know, Edward P. Jones. Of course. Paul Marshall, who was my one of my teachers, Eel Doctorow. um wilt the great wilson harris i mean he's much more um
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: you know dense it's much more dense it sort of plays with levels of reality but i mean he was i was very inspired by by him uh in terms of like the political kind of component of the work. um I also was thinking of you know, someone like Toni Morrison.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: Ishmael Reed. Alexander Kluge.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: He's fascinated by Kluger's work. you know So I think there were a number number of folks who...
Unpublishables: Right.
John: but to me, right?
Unpublishables: so shall Shall we? uh transition to punks your your poetry collection
John: Sure.
Unpublishables: Um, ah This came out, I think, in what, 2020 or 2021?
John: i'm gonna i do ah I mentioned this book, Seismosis. And. I want to read. If it's okay.
Unpublishables: And when did that one come out?
John: This came out in 2006.
Unpublishables: but Okay.
John: And so I'm going to do one. A little one poem. ah called Self. And this is you can see this. That's what it looks like and these are the images next to it.
Unpublishables: phone.
John: by the the beautiful drawings by Christopher Stackhouse. Um, They're abstract, but one that has sort of. figurative quality. So just as a kind of bridge. um
John: Self. Self, Black Self. Is there another label? There's an asterisk at the end. And then each of these answers is the asterisk. Raised to itself as a global agent, figure and ground impel representation.
John: Dissolving a sign or we signify. Does it overlap merely as configuration of lines or psychosexual memento? In the mark, how does one identify authenticity or its inverse?
John: Subjects arise or arrive geometric in perspective, layer and sleeves. into which identity presses. Subjectivity. Is there another label? And the solving in a variety of mathematical applications is shearing into abstract models, yet visual logic retains the inner contours pictographic.
John: properties. Self. Black self. Is it differentiation? Arriving in which super... superposition remaps loosely. upon the other.
John: Preconceptualizations arise. on each differentiable map. the inverse of oneself. overlapping another. in nature expression. Or is there an other?
John: In the image, planar space disrupts the placement through which the solving transforms. Self -label the global versus the local. and each dialogic vector. To precisely describe all configurations, positionalities, and momenta, he draws the black images. to shore up these parameters.
John: In the end. refuse signature. Now you were going to say about about punks. I was wondering, I just...
Unpublishables: No, no, I like... I... uh, Maybe you we can read that or we can discuss. I haven't i haven't read this poem before and I'm hearing it just now. So yeah, that's great. though yeah as a transition, as ah especially. um Uh...
Unpublishables: Punks, I mean... is a... There's only one section in it that was previously published, is that right? Or no, the others are collected from from various journals, right?
John: Right.
Unpublishables: One factor about it I thought was so interesting, just before... we I have you read. punks the title stories that is the sheer diversity of style And that when you go through and they're sort of sectional.
Unpublishables: It's like multiple. poetic projects have been undertaken. in these things. I think it's such an interesting way to... to um collect work because it's almost like a whole bunch of radically different projects being executed, almost like the ways your short stories within those are are different projects. So, but let let's go, by ah Punks, i I was telling you. I couldn't. I... I was thinking, I'm not sure if it's characteristic enough of things. But then again, with a book this varied.
Unpublishables: What's going to be but and you said you did see it as the linchpin. So I think it's a great poem to have a sweet and It's a poem I really enjoyed a lot. so Fabulous.
John: Would you like me to read punks?
Unpublishables: yeah Yeah, punks would be great, yeah.
John: okay yes Punks. After. and for Martin Wong.
John: Hypnos on the headboard. Check one. Donatos at my feet. Check two. Twins. No, I'm not through. You got an alternate finish for a patron. Cityscapes for Eastside Connoisseurs in 2256 colors. Can you pick some? Holding still for a vein. Just stick one. Came to New York from SF Game on the sign of Gentry who own Phoenix's First Casino. Not just some Chino who don't come from nowhere. Erte, Chagall, Picasso, Redon, Leger, Lawrence, Utrio, Modigliani, Vlamac, Renoir, Miro, Sharp Days, The Places, The Friends of the... faces the maze of the city, the pretty Ricans who embrace me, the inner spaces I'm drawing, the firemen kissing the skateboarders flying, the streetwalkers, heroes in comic book, sheroes in smoky brown, rubber fragrance on hard dicks, the feared and fierce animal smell of that man in hell's kitchen, the aroma of horseshit, sagebrush and sweat, war and the rumors of war, sweet oblivion, the rooftops, the bridges, the beat cops, the tunnels deep under Hudson and Clinton, Stanton and Forsythe, the body odor I tasted, big heat, we carry ghost traces of adolescence, the impatience, I'm waiting, who knows what we're fleeing. African temples, kids hanging in Lady Liberty. Hypnos calling out, do you hear me? Thanatos crying out, do you want it? The fast fame, the beauty, the sweet lips, the tags. Like dope lyrics to beat the beats, Loicida. After nightfall, not creeping Madonna and Patsy. On vinyl keeping vinyl kids creeping to clubs like they're keeping work hours. The walls between first and C. We've been hitting and drafting each line and angle. I'm seeing moving like Bruce Lee as if he were dreaming. On subways, the brothers of bricks. and the dealers and lovers of smokestacks of colors. The fantasies like I capture angels and fairies and platforms in action. The demigods and demons of the demimonde. The feral girls and monsters out twirling in twilight. The static before and after nightmare. Beauty without danger is counterfeit in my youth. I pursued it, wandering the earth, a restless spirit who has ever escaped its melody. All those years it possessed me like a subliminal baseline, filling the heart of the east side on a wet summer night. The wrapped eyes of my hoodlums who came when I needed to the smile on your face perpetrating disgrace. Don't erase me or history as we lie here. Whoever wins loses the path that he chooses. The art world just uses whoever is closest. Paintings are lottery tickets of the rich and overprivileged. Hypno's calling out, can you feel me? Donato's saying, can I take you to Berlin, St. Louis, Tokyo, Paris? Men, a weightlessness on a precipice.
John: Like a long hope for a fuck with Joe Simmons. Martin, I love you. I'm a voluptuous dude. In the end, you find yourself betrayed. There's only so much a painting is capable of. And you remember the fire this time, the street scenes of Chinatown. Home and here, pagodas, the semaphore, the nights before, the opening, that the drugs, the drugs and the dreams, the bodegas sold.
John: How Pedro's sad gaze wasn't cut out for the business getting beat like a snare drum in Newark. Those days passed like special attack psionics like the Pentecostal church or the Avenue B that became the art bar. Save the robots. This is going to be the last picture show. Everything must flow. Every dream must flower. High as the water towers topping every building on the horizon. Everyone who is no one is going like ice, like smoke, like dew, like the only ones who truly could reminisce with you. Hypnos whispering. Can you see me? Thanatos calling out. We'll be together soon as if the. moment in these paintings never existed as the culture culture has irretrievably shifted as if between us weren't like sunlight through an open window as if eureka were not a place of discovery and shadows and chainsaw valentine's days and ways of saying adios turns out i'm the same issue positive without the symptoms you can come visit me here in new york we can eat good and drink lots of carrot juice the joys and sorrows of being a painter almost identical to being a serial killer the solitary quest the thrill of the hunt the compulsion of trying to complete an imaginary set, the suspense, the urgency, and finally the uncontrollable spasms at the ultimate seconds of being a being, life and death, when the veil and time are suddenly ripped o asunder.
John: I suddenly ripped asunder. Oye, me grito, I faint echo. How are you, my little angelito? El que gane, pierdo.
John: Opero La Vieja de Puerto Rico. Yo fui de Frisco growing up teething on Jade Green and then crammed the mall. Still stuck here in the hospital in isolation because they think I might have TB. I needed a vacation anyway. Maybe you can come visit me. They are acting like I am radioactive as if everything I touch becomes a toxic waste. that becomes a toxic waste. Despite my magic resistance, despite my vast empire of vice and human desire, despite my personal i memorial as impregnable as a cock -shaped citadel, I reserve the right to my own orientation and orientism. I am the progeny of royalty and great beauty. I had a bodyguard at seven. I could mambo and cha -cha. I was addicted to grasshopper, the liquor, not the bug, the gaiety, David Bowie, art dealers, smack dealers, Grace Jones, touching down at three in the morning like the Willamette.
John: a meteorite. Ultimately, painting is similar to murder in that when the thrill is finally gone, all you're left with is a mess and a a disposable a disposal problem. Hypno saying, will you share my amour? saying i'm inside you remember me i walk with you i talk to you together forever remember in dreams in the fight that begins again tonight recuerdos I do. Remember.
Unpublishables: Thank you. What a portrait of... of of New York. i like Can I make a formal comment first?
John: Sure.
Unpublishables: Actually, about... um
Unpublishables: the the way The way it's printed, right, that you've chosen... ah All caps, right? And and on. The pages are lined with that. I... For me, it had a sort of double meaning. On the one hand...
Unpublishables: maybe the more ah obvious one the sense of emphasis and liveliness and immediacy uh and and and bigness
John: Hmm.
Unpublishables: of what we're talking about but The other sense I had was also... almost runs counter and well it's also about bigness but a different type The fact that it's like written the way. Roman language is Properly written meaning...
Unpublishables: Not mixing cases, but all caps. It had the sense of a monument. It's something you might see on the side of a building. it's Like, this is for all time. Let this be recorded. and so it for me that's how i read it anyways i thought that was a beautiful and it's the only poem written in this all -cap style. it's it's It's unique even visually when you come to the poem.
Unpublishables: It's like. What's this? you know and and And it jumps out at you in that way. The second thing I'll say, and then I'm going to turn it over to you because I'm very curious how you understand it. Am I correct to think... especially in portraits of New York.
Unpublishables: Am I correct to think that... Hey. certain That hip -hop had some influence on the composition of this as with Terrence Hayes say and be more specifically Is it? It's totally wrong, but this is what what I felt. when like the particular painterly qualities of someone like Nas.
Unpublishables: ah seemed very much activated here, that that that that sense of pathos, but with speed and with detail and and and and ah vividness of of conjuring.
John: No, I mean, I think you're you're right. So one thing I would say is, in addition to i suppose that's actually a beautiful reading of, you know, but on the one hand, the liveliness, um you know, it's of almost to me like to be proclaimed.
John: Right. You know, all caps. Right. leave You think about, you know. ah now online all caps means you're shouting right this is this is to be declaimed or shouted right
Unpublishables: That's right
Unpublishables: Exactly.
John: Right. But you're right. It's also right that it has a memorial quality. It's like a like almost like a monument itself, right, both on the side of the building, but also as a kind of monument of to a block of text. Right. But and also.
John: it the goal was also to capture the kind of um the kind of a graffiti -like quality. right you know the kind of like that that quality of just you know just like continuous text right um and and you pick out different you know uh names and tags and stuff in it
Unpublishables: That's right. but But graffiti in this special, earnest in this elevated sense, it's like... graffiti, but also with a monumentality, a permanence. And that that that juxtaposition I thought was so special. ah
John: Well, I mean, and that's well and that's the thing that I think is so interesting is that, you know, on the one hand, right, there i think I think about so many graffiti artists and even someone like Martin Wong who was, you know, influenced by graffiti artists and knew many of them and, you know, yeah he has...
John: there's this quality in his work um you know someone like basquiat right on the one hand right there is that sense of ephemerality Right. uh and of course this is we're talking about you know this is also in the that during the era the AIDS era, the height of the AIDS era.
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: which is my, you know, my, my, my. teens and 20s. You know, so the sense of ephemerality, the the the the ever -present of death, right? On the other hand, you know, you think about, like, for example, with Basquiat, someone like Basquiat or Keith Haring, et cetera, these artists, right? you know that
John: you know and And even now, some of the older, you know the the one the artists who are getting a little bit more recognition, who didn't get as much recognition when they were young, and who survived and those who have lost.
John: Right. This question, you know, the how this is also a a. form of fine art right and so it has a it has a it has a lasting quality right
Unpublishables: Basquiat made me, that really rang a bell, like exactly. It's both. graffiti but also there's a There's a sense of gravitas, shall we say.
John: gru said Right, exactly. So so I think so is all these were all things I was trying to capture. And yes, I mean, hip hop was, you know, its it runs all through this, right? And I love that you mentioned Nas, right?
Unpublishables: okay
John: You know, I mean, I think...
Unpublishables: who Who else, maybe, if you wouldn't mind?
John: Well, I mean, I think you know when i was when I was getting... uh when i was young and and getting started i mean some of the people sort of in the background of my foreground and background of my consciousness.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: Wow. were people like, you know, um groups like you know sugar hill gang um curtis blows that's a sonic the fat boy Queen Latifah.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: you know uh Roxanne Shante, all these people, you know.
Unpublishables: Okay.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: School EG. So I think, dope so so so all of that, so those folks, you know, Slick Rick, right, I mean, right, even though this is not like, yeah, right, you know.
Unpublishables: It's the Greek. Good. No, no, I understand.
John: Right, but...
Unpublishables: I think it's it's fascinating that... Even the rhythms of this particular poem are not really recapitulated too many other places in the book. it's such an interesting thing you've done.
Unpublishables: It's sort of wedged in the middle too. uh but if you could speak to like as we talked to earlier
John: Right.
Unpublishables: of of the way you said it was a lynchpin poem and and then that'll lead us maybe into the the other sections of work within this.
John: yeah so so i see it as a kind of lynchpin poem because on the one hand you know it is is very distinctive. um But it centers. you know queer sociality.
John: It centers memory. It's not exactly elegiac, but there is a kind of there is the quality or elements of elegy woven in it. right it celebrates a visual artist who wasn't known I mean, a number of the...
John: Please stay.
Unpublishables: Right.
John: poems are sort of thinking about people who aren't so well known right or invoking them or you know writing to you know the the
Unpublishables: i'm so I'm suddenly starting to see, wait, well, how did I miss this?
John: Right.
Unpublishables: For the different sessions, why don't we, shall we jump into those? those um Those sections. So I've got a lot of commentary I've seen on the book. You know, he's focused rightly, but it it targets. ah ah the first sections of poems or maybe the first 70 pages or so about uh gay life as it were in the 80s, 90s.
Unpublishables: And I wonder, well, first thing I thought was, especially because it comes at the front of the book and I've just read. Counter narratives, right? is and and annotations which just has that frenetic kind of uh besieged quality in some way the The relaxed quality.
Unpublishables: of the these poems they almost have a kind of jazzy looseness And they don't. They are interesting. They're... interwoven with very grave political matters, just like the other books, the AIDS crisis.
John: Thank you.
Unpublishables: obviously issues of racism, issues of, for instance, infidelity.
John: mm -hmm
Unpublishables: and instances of homophobia and cruising, the risks and stuff. But there's a wistful quality. That sort of. embodies this this this way of life. uh of gay bars and other things where Somehow... with all these worries.
Unpublishables: uh sensual pleasure still manages for a moment to hold those worries in abeyance in some way that hey here's a here's a reprieve you're right these other things are happening
John: Right.
Unpublishables: But. One of the, and this is the way that I. but suppose counter -narrators also figures here, there's a sense in which There's a defiance. Like, i for tonight, I'm not going to.
Unpublishables: Live. that way or worry in that way or do even do politics in the right way i'm i'm going to be free i'm going to to do sort of detonate a personal kind of chaotic energy of sex right of these if you could tell us more about that where those poems came from and were they written
John: Yeah.
Unpublishables: I'm interested in your poetic evolution. Were they written it at one period and then you went on to the other stages or how did, why are the sections so different? Were you doing them all simultaneously or did they come about at different phases of your own development?
John: Right. Oh, this is it's great that's a great question. So I often say that this is this collection is a series of ghost books. And, you know, had I been able to publish some of the smaller books that are Because, of course, they you know. There are a certain number of poems in here. I mean i can't remember. Okay.
John: call it's like 213 pages and i have like tons of other poems that you know have but Maybe some time of them appeared in journals, some of them never appeared anywhere, right, that I wrote over the years. um So this is another kind of distillation. um
Unpublishables: Interesting.
John: not not like annotations so much at the level of language but in terms of like you know kind of a a
Unpublishables: poetic output and growth.
John: Okay. and career, exactly. um but i feel I feel like, you know, um The Poems Index. different moments in my life in my life. And I think you know some readers, some critics... ah have reviewers have sort of assumed that you know the earliest poems the the you know the poems in the first section are the oldest and then the poems and the you know, last section of the newest and it.
John: That's not exactly right. I mean, it's kind of right, but not exactly right.
Unpublishables: Good.
John: um ah because I did mix it up, right? but what i also wanted to do was i wanted to write a book right that did deal with, because AIDS is still with us, ah you know, AIDS is still with us, that you know you know, and of course all the other social ills that we...
Unpublishables: or Yeah.
John: yeah you know so You see, you know, the world. you know, in place.
Unpublishables: The guy that guys may have changed slightly, but it's just a reformulation of the same problem.
John: Right. except but empire The empire continues, right?
Unpublishables: That's right.
John: yeah um so so i want i did So I wanted to write a book that you know ken was not... You know. like, you know, sad and lugubrious, right? not to say that there's anything anything wrong with that approach.
Unpublishables: No.
John: But but that that did kind of try to mix it up. That that is political. right in different ways, right a range of ways. right
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: uh you know and speaks to those you know pretty you know predecessor poets, you know, ah the the countless ones right um in different ways but also it was It also gives a sense of this.
John: this time This time is gone. I mean, it really is gone, right? You know, the New York of that era is gone. The Boston of that era, the St. Louis, the Chicago, it's gone, right? You know, we were in a very different moment now, especially in the wake of social media now, of course. ai So I wanted to give a sense of like, you know, ah of some of that.
John: that world that was lost. I mean, there's a section called Lost World. And those are post forms.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: And I actually, I debated whether or not to put these in here because some of them are very direct, very graphic, right? But I also thought you know that also is a political act. um i In fact, I also thought... you know what
Unpublishables: there's ah There's a poem about fisting, for instance, which is, that um I mean...
John: Yeah.
Unpublishables: it's it's just It's something to witness. it It's an amazing poem. yeah Go ahead
John: Right. And I think, I mean, you know, I think it was, I can't remember. I think Forrest Gander pointed out that, you know, Roberto Bolaño has a poem about fisting, right? It's like... You know, it's not like I'm in that rare company, but, but yeah, I mean, it's. Uh...
John: You know, I I i felt like. Yeah, I mean... yeah like like what What might a... a political stance. Uh, but what what sort of political What sort of politics might...
John: a book like this entail right and i think as i was saying i think you know part of it was um you know Yeah. Part of the reason I had it. trouble uh getting the book published you know for so long was because you know of Not to say people that you know that these were not poems that people...
John: refuse to publish but i think they're you know it was just i think they they there's a kind of they're they're
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: direct in certain ways. um ah there. um What's the right word? There's a kind of vernacular quality to many of them. right I think that can be unsettling.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: Even as. i will say you know i get i mean just the other day i received a letter from someone um it was so moving and basically saying thank you for this book you know because i feel like you know you're speaking to me across time, right?
John: You know, this language you know you you you are bringing to life
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: you know, lives, worlds, right? That, that, that that I, that, that, you know. Someone like you know me me, this person writing me. just you know, basically, i'm I'm starved to see that.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: I know I'm not alone in the world, right?
Unpublishables: Right.
John: So so I think, you know, when I think about, you know, politics I think this is a very political book.
Unpublishables: And at the... Politics here is treated somewhat differently, for instance, than counter narrative. So I'm very interested in what you have to say about. how you ah Because there's that there's a joyousness to some of the poems of...
Unpublishables: a forwardness, a directness that's not encountered in some of your other work. It's like, it's like wow, he he he he has this other mode of, of you know, it it doesn't all have to be highly filigreed and sort of...
Unpublishables: ah it's It's like sometimes you break through in ah in a very direct kind of lyric or verse. It's very impressive, the range. that you're able to... mobilize politics under all these different ways. and ah ah to tell up me a little bit about the dark to themselves section, like the the the way they've picked out these black, some of those are very joyous about.
Unpublishables: ah Hank Aaron, they're they're like... uh Jackie Robinson, there's... Coltrane. There's all these. uh Tell me how that those poems came together, or were were they written at all? all all through your career. and and What do they mean to you?
John: So, okay, so and I'm glad did you asked that. And of course, interesting interestingly enough, the first poem in that section, Underground, is like a... poem of about kind of michael brown and trayvon martin poem right um
Unpublishables: That's right. Yeah
John: Right. So the figures aren't named. But yeah, no, I you know, there was a period, I think, in the 90s when I was at. Whoa. beginning of like uh uh probably the late 80s early 90s i was reading people like rita dove and they write which poets i love and um you know uh i you know, her famous.
Unpublishables: Okay.
Unpublishables: Mm -hmm.
John: and then because young reports like elizabeth alexander you know puts with with person persona poems michael s harper um
Unpublishables: Well, actually, I was at at Brown and I studied with Michael Harper and I saw... one of the poets that you mentioned in one of the epigraphs i think uh Hayden. I think he...
John: Okay, yeah, wow.
Unpublishables: he he had made That was a big hero for him. And he always made sure his students understood this. So when I saw that name, I was like. ah if Maybe give it a flashback to ah Michael. Yeah, anyway.
John: Oh, yes.
Unpublishables: Good.
John: Michael looms large in my consciousness.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: um so so yes but i thought you know i mean it would be So alongside the you know kind of the poems in the front. part of the book and it would be really interesting because these poems i feel like honest are are are speaking probably even more directly.
John: to counter narratives right you know but what might a different approach was thinking about these heroic figures right i think the early there was a i had an earlier manuscript called heroic figures right um and i could never get it published um But some of those poems, these poems are in there.
Unpublishables: o
John: So I mean, people like viig Benjamin Banneker, Martin De Portis, you know.
Unpublishables: Mm -hmm
John: mark bc george washington carver right i mean instead of the standard but elaine lock you know
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: you know ah
Unpublishables: I mean to... to to galvanize a kind of political valence around uh concretize it around these particular figures i felt was uh It's just very interesting because it's a different way of doing political poetry, as it were.
Unpublishables: I'm going to do it through history, in a way, through and through personality.
John: Exactly.
Unpublishables: and uh particularity of of of of a human life, one human life still involving the collective in some way. in representative in certain ways, yeah.
John: Exactly. Or Miles Davis, right?
Unpublishables: Yeah. Miles Davis, right.
John: you know And then, of course, i thought you know, like someone like Bessie Smith, you know, Blue Girl Blues. I mean, you know, it's like. you know it's like i want to capture that blues form right you know it's like i mean something so so so to begin so so part of what i was thinking was you know how how can i be in
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: dialogue with these figures. and use form use the you know, use lyric poetry, right? not so much you know these are narrative poems but you know how can I use lyric poetry to capture the essence of these figures right um to capture their voices to capture the music to capture the political valence right um and so uh so that's one of the things I've tried to do and you know I love I would say with you know the Hank Aaron poem I mean I love Um,
Unpublishables: That's a fantastic. It has so much energy.
John: All right.
Unpublishables: And you can see the field like and you can see the. that you know You can imagine the looks on people's faces. It's ah it's a great, ah very vibrant and very different from some of the other work. like that As I say again,
Unpublishables: that the the the way you've managed to master so many different uh modalities. and tonality is very impressive. Can I ask you two things? One, first...
Unpublishables: about dark to themselves, what how you came up with that title. And then maybe we can close with talking about... Manzanita and the sort of genealogy of The Keynes.
Unpublishables: and whatever connection it may or may not bear to annotations but let's start with dark to themselves i wonder what you mean when you when you plump those figures under that Yeah.
John: so and So the title comes from a composition. And I think it's the title of a an album by Cecil Taylor. And that poem, Dark to Themselves, is all about, it's a Cecil Taylor poem.
John: And I was... fascinating because of course you know cecil taylor is i mean not only one of the most original
Unpublishables: Radical musician. yeah
John: He also was queer. Yeah, he was black black and queer, right?
Unpublishables: yeah That's right.
John: Right. and so And so, you know, um and and, you know, there was a period where, I mean, of course, he was. you know, celebrated and beloved uh you know for a good portion of his later career.
John: But, you know, there was a period where he would play and, you know, I mean, literally there was an anecdote about Miles Davis, you know, like giggling because he they they don't know what to do. Like, you know, this man's hitting the keyboard with his...
Unpublishables: It's so chaotic.
John: it
Unpublishables: exactly it's ah It's a visceral performance to the, yeah.
John: thank
John: Right. But I mean, the thing is what I was listening to, like, for example, the great Paris concert. I mean, to me, that's sublime.
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: I mean, it I can listen to that over and over again. It it just feels so fresh. So striking both in time and out of time.
Unpublishables: Mm hmm.
John: And so that's what I was trying to capture. you know like Because this is someone who studied at the conservatory.
Unpublishables: No, no.
John: and
Unpublishables: Oh, no, I didn't mean to suggest.
John: I mean...
Unpublishables: He's absolutely brilliant.
John: No.
Unpublishables: yeah
John: you i'm not saying i'm not saying he suggest that but i'm just saying that you know i mean this is someone you know uh
Unpublishables: Yeah. yeah
John: On the one hand, right you know he could composed if hes you know writes scores and things. On the other hand, he he's very i mean he is has an ear.
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: uh you know and uh you know a kind of nervous system ah utterly attuned to improvisation right to me that's just extraordinary right um so anyway so so that But but!
John: What does it mean to be dark to oneself?
Unpublishables: that so That's what, yeah.
John: that is what i'm trying to think about right you know and again this sort of takes us back to like za figure like zion or
Unpublishables: That's what I'm, yeah.
John: Yeah, Eden.
Unpublishables: i was wondering what what the connection might dark to themselves did is there some way maybe they did not Fully co - see in the round what they meant to the culture or what they what they were doing in terms of a certain type of ah But.
Unpublishables: black visibility or gay visibility or gay rebellion of different types because we also know some of these musicians and artists were controversial figures drawing people into
John: Right.
Unpublishables: worlds that were considered sort of scandalous but opening up a new vista well i mean the you know the beats are totally addicted to like yeah this is the, you know, it creates an opening.
John: Right.
Unpublishables: So tell me a little bit about Dark to Themselves or how you thought, because i it was the counter -narrators that triggered my thought, like, hey, what's this? Yeah.
John: Right. Exactly. and so And so in a sense, right, right. there So dark in the sense of, and not just like not. Knowing that.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: but also like being able to having that. like the, you know, Du Boisian double vision, right? You know, having that, being, being able to like, kind of understand the veil, like seeing that veil and, you know, and, and, you know, but both, both, both being able to sort of move, it move between these different worlds, right?
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: understanding the kind of stakes but also you know in the sense you know uh like i kind of ah kind of call or protection or something like that that you know that that that is another kind of darkness right you know like that that inner in an inner eye right you know um and uh you know when to open it when when they have it open when they have it you know kind of close it For some.
Unpublishables: I see.
Unpublishables: And it can be strategic ah in itself.
John: All right. No.
Unpublishables: Maybe the clip the closure is not just a blindness. It may be... a kind of protection at times or a
John: Well, in opacity, right.
Unpublishables: God bless.
John: I mean, we saw this term, right. so So, I mean, I think that that's that's kind of what I was thinking. I mean, the the multiple resonances of that term. But then, of course, I just love that phrase, too.
Unpublishables: Yeah. yeah ah so ah but ah Shall we talk about...
John: That's right.
Unpublishables: ah that the ah the the genealogical policy i think it's such a fascinating thing and i'm wondering how much ah historicity is here and how much what what liberty is i i wasn't i to be honest i wasn't quite sure and That's why it's wonderful to talk to you. ah I'd love to hear. your thoughts on ah what those poems mean to you and how they came about. and
John: Sure. So, okay, so there was a period, okay, the the genealogical poems, and I think that's such as Monsignor. Those are most of those. In the... Like mid to late 90s and there was a period I was kind of acting was like the kind of under the spell of Kaveh Kahn, and we were... Speaking of you know Michael Harper.
John: Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Elizabeth Alexander. Of course, Cornelius Edigan. Toy Derek, they were all... ah teaching who Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Ely founded. Those are some of the writers who were teaching there at the time, Garrett and Mullen. um and But there was you know there was kind of a...
John: like a lot of writers were a lot of folks will kind of think about, like you know, family stories, family histories.
Unpublishables: I see.
John: and so you get a glimpse of that in annotations but again in very you know well down form so i wanted to sort of play with particularly with my father's family and sort of tease out some of the origins and I'd heard stories, you know, from him about, so that's where that's the very first story.
John: out.
Unpublishables: maybe Maybe you could even read the first poem from that if you if you have it. Tanned.
John: I do. Okay. Let me do.
Unpublishables: That's an interesting one where the keen re recurs. That would be a perfect one to read, actually.
John: Okay. Okay, origins. And so one of the things I'll say for the, you can't. If you hear it, you can't hear the differences, but the different spellings of keen, K -E -E -N -E is my.
John: spelling But then they have K -E -E -N, K -A -N -E, K -E -E -N -E. And then K -E -A -N -E, King. because often when I say my name, people think about it as Ms. King.
John: Is that okay?
Unpublishables: Yes.
John: Origins Keene arrived on these shores named Keene. having left the second son of Inverness. Later, he wed Sarah, a Negro age 16, on account of her... an account of her beauty and the freedom the fortune he made in the rush of 49 had bought it He set up a forum in Alton.
John: There the line begins. through Though his blood and terrors run still in my veins, neither farm nor fortune remains. Cain arrives on these shores named Cain.
John: having fled a hoveling brood in Galway. Later in Maryland, he bedded Sarah Bakongo, age unknown, out of desperation. There were few other women in town.
John: A liar inside he held fake dreams of California fame. The line thus began, and today his blood and terrors flow in my veins. why Sarah stole away one night. He died alone.
John: Keene arrived on the shores named Keene. Self -taught, he stammered in somerset tones. Once here, he set up a traveling magic show with the Yoruba woodworker, Sarah. said carrying it all the way to Monterey before setting up shop.
John: is Illinois. They say she cursed him. That's how the line begins. Even now his blood and hers course through my veins. I bear the third eye.
John: for better or worse. Keen arrived on these shores, dreaming of freedom. Perhaps he was keen or king or king. A European of dubious origin. Eventually he took Sarah, an African, as his bride, because he knew no shame and saw only possibility.
John: To his hungry mid -century heart, her presence was life and blessing. And so the line begins. His blood and hers continue to sing in my veins. Only their true names are missing.
Unpublishables: That's good. That's fantastic. um to I didn't Did you have to do a lot of research?
John: Thanks.
Unpublishables: Go ahead. go ahead
John: I just shared this one little thing. Okay. So. As it turns out. One of those is actually very close to the truth because I have got cousins. On my father's side, you know they did genealogical research.
John: And actually, yeah. Can you guess which one?
Unpublishables: No, no, no. Gene, ah that's a question I'm interested in.
John: Oh.
Unpublishables: Go ahead.
John: Yeah. But anyway, but yeah, they actually did it. And I was like, oh my God, I actually figured this out. I mean, because that's how poetry works. You know, poetry, you know, cognizes things. like you portuguee
Unpublishables: and But unlike ah a more deductive style of reasoning, it's a surprise when the cognition occurs, as it were.
John: That's right.
Unpublishables: It's a a lightning flash. Oh, that's what I was been doing.
John: Right.
Unpublishables: or yeah that yeah
John: right but But also, but you know as my my colleague Bridge Givens pointed out, you know poetry thinks. my Poems think. right
Unpublishables: Absolutely.
John: you know so So there's a way in which right something has been worked out there. so But yeah, one of them actually turned out to be fairly true. um Right. Yeah. At least according to genealogical.
Unpublishables: I mean, if you think of you the the the metaphysical poets, they're obviously making very... detailed conceptual development. So so much can be done in poetry. you know The idea that it's merely an effusion of feeling or something, is that's it only a limited. you know
John: Right, right.
Unpublishables: You can definitely develop. ah a line of thinking. in these imaginative sort of juxtapositions etc but On the question of, did you have to do a lot of research to...
Unpublishables: to write these poems? And as I say, how much of it how much how many liberties have you taken in... and compared to say annotations
John: So I would say, you know uh this I mean, I think, you know, when we think about poetry, you know, the there's there's usually not a one. I mean, sometimes it in poetry it's a one -to -one relationship with.
John: You know. the truth of their lives.
Unpublishables: but yeah
John: But ah to me, the most important thing is emotional truth. And so with these poems, I mean, you know, a lot of them were based on. accounts that i'd heard of you know um my family, from my parents, right particularly my father. I'll say, you know, just to give you one example, there's I have. um One of the poems in here, Cecil's Consolation.
John: which is set during the Great Depression. You know, I had to Heard this story from my father. Um, many times, you know. um Just sort of thinking about... Where is that hand?
John: I know it's here somewhere. But anyway, yes, this is a consolation 1941. And, you know, he was he. ah my grandfather had. go on to a historical black colleges in Missouri and study engineering, and then he couldn't get an engineering job you know anywhere. in st louis um And so he did all kinds of things. he he was a projectionist.
John: he I guess, taught, you know. um students how to work with lathes at one of the local you know segregated high schools etc he was a chauffeur and um So anyway, so you know but so so so I didn't have to do the research for this. It was in my head.
Unpublishables: in your head.
John: the But the thing of course is, again, ah how do you make this work as a poem? Right. And. you know I was trying to.
Unpublishables: Clinging too closely to fact wouldn't wouldn't make sense if you're trying to conjure a certain feeling and a constellation of it.
John: exactly exactly so I mean you know it was like you know it's it's sort of it's sort of like an anecdote, but it's not. I mean, because you know so much of it lies in the music of the...
Unpublishables: oh
John: of the of the of the... you know of of the lyrics so so uh But, you know, I would say with this poem, you know, I heard this story many, many times. And I was at Cave Canem and Elizabeth Alexander was running the workshop.
John: And, you know, she had us draw our mother's, draw our kitchen. right that we we grew up and and so most people thought about you know like uh you know um who was in the kitchen when we were growing up and we were supposed to reproduce it, right?
John: One of the kitchen employees and our kitchen or kitchenette.
Unpublishables: oh
John: and um you know And then we set that aside and then she had us write a poem. And of course, you know when you're thinking, you know you you you visualize. you know, in in almost, you know, virtual.
John: Like, like. uh sort of vivid. uh virtual um engagement you know the kitchen that one spent one's time in as a child, right?
John: All kinds of things. are conjured right
Unpublishables: Right.
John: Of course. This poem came out in one. One sitting.
Unpublishables: But what was the feeling? dealing with some of the same uh Obviously different, but dealing with family matters in the forms of annotations versus the form of... of not prose poetry but even purely as it were poetry in the sort of formal sense was there a difference of a feeling or a conjuration of of Given the difference in syntax and form, maybe there... you know it might track
John: yeah So I would say that, you know, I think, you know, on one hand. ah annotations is like a kaleidoscope
Unpublishables: mm -hmm
John: So it zooms in and zooms out. right uh with these poems and for example the poems of manzanita They're really just zooming in. right it you know it's it kind of focuses on one moment or kind of like a it's a it captures
Unpublishables: Yes.
Unpublishables: It has this sort of snapshot.
John: Kyle.
Unpublishables: Quality, yeah.
John: like a Polaroid, right? um But but but but CRISPR, right?
Unpublishables: Yeah. yeah ah Can I also ask you now what...
John: i me Well, hopefully. Right, yeah.
Unpublishables: what ah you are working on lately, so say ah last few years and currently? on Perhaps. things you are in the pipeline or thinking of of getting circulating new material etc it
John: Yeah, I've been i've been working on it. Thanks for that question.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
John: i but i you know And I always take to my you know take to heart Delaney's comment that you shouldn't talk about work. that you
Unpublishables: i know you Not in too much detail necessarily, but the types of things you're under.
John: Thank you very much. No, no, I'll say, I'll say, I've been working on, I've been working on two, two.
Unpublishables: you know Okay.
John: uh books two two works of fiction um one i've been working on for years um and the other one you know Now. is starting to turn into yours.
Unpublishables: Short stories or?
John: ah both Both novels, right? Both novels.
Unpublishables: Novels? Okay,
John: and so yeah so i so i think yeah what they're They're both. They're both. They're not. autobiographical per se. But one I think is. it's more speculative
Unpublishables: Okay.
John: And one, of course, also, is one the other one is more historical. All right.
Unpublishables: and and how far along do you feel you are is this a lot is it like you We're not going to see these for a long time or are they things that
John: i hope I hope we see them sooner as as sooner rather than later. i mean
Unpublishables: That's fantastic. i' I've been the waiting, obviously, for new writing from you.
John: Yeah.
Unpublishables: It's...
John: We'll do both, right?
Unpublishables: ah I think a lot of your fans, that's how they feel because they know you... But you can see the work when you see it when you see when you actually look at it. But of course, one wants more. And one's greedy for especially when the the artist is of of the right caliber, shall we say so.
Unpublishables: Um,
John: It was very kind, it was very kind.
Unpublishables: ah But ah is is is there anything else you wanted to say?
John: Yeah.
Unpublishables: or
John: No, I think.
Unpublishables: Are you? Okay.
John: That's.
Unpublishables: It's been a terrific opportunity to... to sort of map An entire trajectory. That's why I wanted to read it. Sort of the whole. shebang rather than one thing. So thank you so much for coming on. Uh,
Unpublishables: And good luck with the novels. I hope to see them soon.
John: thank you Thank you so much, Mark. I really appreciate it.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
