Bone Map: An Interview with Sara Eliza Johnson
Sara Eliza Johnson’s first book, Bone Map (2014), was selected for the 2013 National Poetry Series. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Boston Review, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Meridian, the Best New Poets series, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Winter Fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a work-study scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and an Academy of American Poets Prize from the University of Utah, where she is currently a Ph.D student in the Literature & Creative Writing program. In 2015-2016, she will be the second-year poetry Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
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PHILLIP: SARA, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR AGREEING WITH ME TO HAVE THIS INTERVIEW! I’VE BEEN EXCITED ABOUT YOUR WORK FOR MANY YEARS SO OF COURSE YOUR BOOK, BONE MAP, WINNING THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES FELT LIKE A GIFT. CAN YOU TALK TO ME BRIEFLY ABOUT WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO SUBMIT YOUR BOOK AND HOW IT FELT WINNING SUCH A PRESTIGIOUS PRIZE?
Sara: I have loved your work for a long time, too, Phillip, and am honored that you asked me to speak with you about mine! While I spent about five years writing (and rewriting) the book, my submission process for the manuscript was unexpectedly and surprisingly short; I submitted to four contests in a season, and the National Poetry Series was the last one to which I submitted. I wasn’t sure if it was “ready” to be a book in the world. But I knew that I felt mentally “finished” with the manuscript, and decided to see what happened if I put it out there. I was incredibly shocked to receive the phone call from the National Poetry Series. I remember shaking a little, not knowing what to say. Most of all, once the initial jitters wore off, I felt overwhelming gratitude that someone had connected with my book so strongly to pick it out of so many amazing manuscripts. That person–Martha Collins–was wonderful to work with during the edits process. I couldn’t be happier with the process or how the book turned out as a material object in the world.
P: IN THE FIVE YEARS THAT IT TOOK YOU TO WRITE AND EDIT THE BOOK, WERE YOU ALWAYS SURE OF AT LEAST THE DIRECTION YOU WANTED TO TAKE OR DID EVEN THE TRAJECTORY CHANGE AS YOU WENT ALONG? I’M ASKING BECAUSE THE POEMS ARE SO TIGHT AND, TOO, THE BOOK IS TAUT IN A WAY THAT A LOT OF FIRST BOOKS SIMPLY DON’T ACCOMPLISH. THERE IS FOCUS THAT FEELS ENTIRELY DELIBERATE AND I ENJOYED THAT VERY MUCH.
S: Thank you, Phillip! I had originally envisioned the book as a seafaring narrative, of sorts–one derivative of “The Seafarer,” and inspired by journals I had found by Arctic explorers–and eventually decided that there wasn’t enough dynamism or tension in the work when located exclusively in that liminal, ethereal seascape: in wandering only. Back then, in its early stages, the book didn’t feel, to me, like it had much direction in part because I was exploring an idea and pushing it to its limits. Once I realized the monotony developing, that I was essentially treading water, and trying to force an idea to work, I decided to broaden the scope of the book, and I think that’s when the work truly gained traction and thus direction. I felt that I was writing “toward” a place, an ending, even if I wasn’t exactly sure what it would be. And once I gained that traction, it all started happening much more quickly; I wasn’t struggling as much with the poems in their initial stages, I could “feel” my way through them because I knew the “world” of the book so well. So, I’m not sure I would say I was deliberately writing with an eye for the unified field. I think that eventually I felt psychologically (maybe even physically) connected to the poems in Bone Map, and writing that space became somewhat intuitive.
P: THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE TO ME, EXPERIMENTING WITH AN IDEA UNTIL THAT IDEA EXPLODES AND REVEALS FOR YOU ITS POTENTIAL, ITS HIDDEN AVENUES. IT’S AN EXTRAVAGANT VERSION OF RICHARD HUGO’S “TRIGGERING TOWN” ONLY YOU DEVELOPED THE MOVEMENT ACROSS AN ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT.
HOW MUCH OF THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN DURING YOUR MFA PROGRAM/PHD PROGRAM? DO YOU FEEL AS THOUGH MANY OF THE POEMS YOU WROTE DURING EITHER TIME MADE IT TO THE FINAL FORM OR WAS ONE TIME, OR PERHAPS BOTH, FILLED WITH POEMS THAT SIMPLY DID NOT FIT? I SUPPOSE I AM ASKING IF YOU ALWAYS WROTE TOWARD THIS BOOK OR DID IT IN SOME WAY BUILD ITSELF FROM VARIOUS OTHER FRAGMENTS?
S: That’s a great way to put it: that the idea “explodes,” and in a way that engulfs you within it, I think, so that you no longer feel like an outsider to your own work. I wrote the majority of Bone Map during the years between my MFA and Ph.D programs. During my MFA, which I began (as many do now) immediately after college, I’m not sure I could have actually written a book (or this book, at least) because I was learning how to navigate my own poetic intuitions and interests, learning how to essentially “be” a poet. While I think writers at all stages experience something akin to “growing pains”–because we are always pushing ourselves, hoping to grow beyond our comfort zones–the first two years of the MFA were especially difficult and awkward, and most of the work I wrote there (with the exception of two poems that appeared in Bone Map) has been filed away as personal record, nostalgia, and material for future mining. Thanks to some wonderful professors, and their reading suggestions, I left my MFA with a better sense of poetic “self,” ready to truly “start” the kind of book I wanted to write. Still, my MFA thesis resonates within Bone Map, and much of the process was about learning to let go: to cut those poems from the MFA period that served as artistic milestones for me, to which I felt attached, because they either didn’t fit or I knew I could write better poems to take their places. During the Ph.D, I wrote very little new work for the book; instead it was a time of radical revision, of taking those poems that I knew needed overhauling and breaking them apart, reconstructing them.
P: IN YOUR POEM “AS THE SICKLE MOON GUTS A CLOUD” YOU WRITE “IN TWENTY YEARS, THE BOY/ WILL PLACE A SHOTGUN IN HIS MOUTH/ WHILE HIS CHILD IS ASLEEP,” AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT “ALL MOMENTS WILL SHINE/ IF YOU CUT THEM OPEN,/ GLISTEN LIKE ENTRAILS IN THE SUN.” THROUGHOUT THE BOOK THERE ARE IMAGES OF WHAT COULD BE CONSIDERED GROTESQUE OR VIOLENT JUXTAPOSED WITH THIS VERY CREEPY SILENCE THAT IS THE DARK NATURAL WORLD OF THE BOOK. IT’S A MARITIME GOTHIC SO TO SPEAK, BUT MUCH OF THE BOOK ALSO FEELS TO BE ON LAND (HORSES RETURN THROUGHOUT). I’M THROWING A LOT AT YOU RIGHT NOW BUT THOSE LINES ABOVE, WOULD YOU SAY THEY POINT TOWARD AN AESTHETIC OR IMAGISTIC INTEREST YOU HAVE THAT CARRIES, FOR YOU AND HOPEFULLY THE READER, THE POWER OF METAPHOR? HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELF UTILIZING IMAGES OF VIOLENCE AND WHAT, IF ANY, IS THE DIFFICULTY OF “SEEING” THESE THINGS AS A POET?
S: Some poets, I think, come to their obsessions through rigorous intellectual exploration(s), while others have certain obsessions so deeply and inexplicably rooted in them that much of the intellectual work is done afterward, answering that (integral) question for themselves: why? Since I was a child, I have been obsessed with these qualities you see in the book: visceral violence and horror, inhuman silence, and physically destructive forces that seem to contain both of those things, such as the tornado with its quiet interior, or the black hole with its singularity. Much of my thinking, then, about my work in this regard has been retroactive and introspective.
In Bone Map, I think these obsessions manifest as they do–with echoes of fairy tale or folkloric horror, the Psalms, those authorless Anglo-Saxon poems–in order to bridge the gap between those dark regions of human memory and our contemporary moment, to collapse the distance between our (extremely violent) cultural moment and “original” violences deeply rooted in the human psyche. I have said in another interview that I eventually realized I was writing violence as origin. And I think that speaks in some sense to your question about the difficulty of “seeing”: in order to write such violence, and to engage with it viscerally (rather than merely discursively), I need to access an inner violence in myself, to test the limits of what my imagination is capable of–and to know when I need to hold back and keep that private as well. I suppose, then, that it requires one to go deep into the terror of the nightmare that literally shakes you awake (which we have all experienced at some point), to tap into those qualities of the mind when it dreams, and is given the freedom to explore its darkest reaches.
P: AND IN WRITING THESE NIGHTMARES, I WONDER IF THERE IS A FEELING THAT FOLLOWS OF “RESPONSIBILITY”, AS THOUGH WRITING OUT THE PAIN AND SHOWING READERS WHAT THEY TOO ARE CAPABLE OF HANDLING IS A WAY TO HOLD OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR MUCH OF TODAY’S VIOLENCE.
HERE’S A READING I HAVE OF YOUR BOOK: DESPITE THE MYTHOS OF THE BOOK, THE DARK FABLE-LIKE WORLD, THE REALITY IS THAT DESTRUCTION AFFECTS, IT MAKES EVERYTHING INTO SOMETHING QUITE DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN WHAT IS LEFT CAN’T ALSO BE MADE USEFUL. IS THERE A USE FOR THIS KIND OF VISION? I ASK BECAUSE I THINK THE ANSWER IS “YES” AND SECRETLY HOPE YOU DO TOO.
S: Yes, I think that’s exactly part of it: that recognition in oneself of the power to harm, to take pleasure it even. I do think there is a latent element of sadomasochism in the book, in that sense…
I think that reading of the book is thoughtful and perceptive. The repurposing of body parts (e.g. to set the hand on fire to create a lantern by which to see), and the repurposing of certain elements of the landscape, is echoed by the repurposing of words and images and sonic connections throughout the book. That was definitely a challenge in writing it: to reuse (recycle, essentially) certain elements again and again in a way that felt productively regenerative rather than merely repetitive. The bees in “Beekeeping,” for example, returned in “Archipelago: Tabula Rasa” as a violently transformative force on the body, and I think that’s how I see the work of the book as functioning, as “perpetually” engaged in a regenerative cycle of transformational violence that I hope is apparent structurally and linguistically as well as imagistically. There is, I think, a use for this kind of vision, of engaging readers in this way of seeing things. I do want readers to see their world in this “fable-like world,” and to understand their complicity in destruction(s), as well as their individual power to repurpose, rebuild, or regenerate what remains in its wake, whether that means revisiting the residue of what they have destroyed, or their own “remains” after a pain they have suffered.
P: YOUR POEM “LETTER FROM THE ICE FIELD, DECEMBER” ENDS “[…]TELL ME/ WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DOING/ WHEN YOU TRIED TO LAY YOUR BODY/ INTO THAT GROUND.” IN WHAT WAYS IS POETRY A KIND OF LAYING OF ONE’S BODY INTO THE GROUND? I AM THINKING OF YOUR BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY BUT ALSO OF THE MANY WAYS POETS CAN SERVE AS USHERS BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. I THINK FREQUENTLY WE SEE PEOPLE SO EXHAUSTED WITH DEATH, MURDER, POLITICAL UPHEAVAL, ALL THE -ISMS AND -PHOBIAS FROM WHICH SO MANY VICTIMS DO NOT HAVE THE OPTION OF ALLOWING EXHAUSTION TO BE THEIR REASON TO STOP PAYING ATTENTION, TO STOP SEEING. PAIN IS SUBSTANTIAL AND NEEDS WITNESS AND EMPATHY, YES?
I WONDER ABOUT POETRY’S POTENTIAL TO PUT NOT ONLY ONE’S SELF AS A POET INTO THE METAPHORICAL GROUND, THE PASSAGEWAY BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH AND POSSIBLY THE FINAL POSSIBILITY OF EMPATHY, BUT READERS TOO. SOMETIMES IT TAKES UTTER ANNIHILATION OF WHAT WE LOVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO FEEL FOR SOMEONE ELSE. HOW CAN POETRY MOVE PEOPLE TOWARDS EMPATHIC EXISTENCE? WHAT DOES “THE GROUND” MEAN TO YOU?
S: It is interesting to me that you ask your question using “Letter from the Ice Field, December” as a lens, since that is the poem in Bone Map most deeply rooted in personal history. That poem was written with the (repeated) suicide attempts of a loved one in mind. There was a time, when I was very young, when I was writing almost exclusively to “process” that experience of being the abandoned, the one left behind, and I think that poem was the result of ten years of trying to process that trauma (and failing over and over again). While I do think (and hope) that poem (and that entire series of epistles) is operating well within the realm of the book’s larger concerns–that is, the ones we have been discussing here–there is a personal kernel of empathetic reaching in it, of trying to understand a loneliness that acutely painful, and that violent, when I, too, felt harmed by it from afar: of wanting so badly to move past my own pain to access the pain of this person.
And yes, I suppose that there is a certain level of vicarious experience there: the “you” who lies down as both anonymous addressee and reader, and thus the readers asked to dig their own graves, to lie down in them, as they are also asked to kneel for the boatwright in “Parable of the Flood”–to (imaginatively) prepare for their own annihilation. I do like the notion of bringing readers closer to their own death, close enough to feel it waiting inside them, like the swirling cloud that funnels down, slowly, gradually, into the tornado. I also like the notion of that as an empathetic exercise that helps us better access our inborn connection to all living things around us, but especially the suffering of other human beings. As the literal ground becomes the place where the corpse may (or may not) take root and grow, the “ground” of the poem becomes the place where both the poet and readers (vicariously) might give “all” of themselves–imaginatively, emotionally, intellectually–with the hope (but not the guarantee) that something might “take root” in them. That they might leave that poetic place altered–and better people for it.
P: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS! YOUR ANSWERS WERE GENEROUS AND AS LYRICAL AS YOUR POEMS. TO CLOSE OUT, WHAT’S NEW FOR YOU ON THE HORIZON? WHERE CAN PEOPLE KEEP UP WITH YOUR GOOD NEWS? WEBSITE? TWITTER? ALL OF THAT.
S: Thanks so much for inviting me to chat–your questions have been really insightful, and I so appreciate how deeply and thoughtfully you’ve engaged with the book! I am currently working on a second manuscript, tentatively titled Vapor, that explores inhuman spaces (the deep sea vents of the Cambrian era, for example, or the center of the black hole, or a long post-apocalyptic earth so changed it seems extraterrestrial) alongside human violence(s) against each other and the landscape–essentially the ways in which Homo sapiens might be considered a “natural” force of destruction, a manifestation of violence upon itself and the earth en masse. The project is very new and still in its preliminary stages of exploration and experimentation, and will likely remain so until I finish my doctoral qualifying exams in the fall, after which I will head to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown to be the second-year Poetry Fellow, where I hope to leave with a complete and workable draft. You can keep up with my news, events, work (etc.) at my website: www.saraelizajohnson.com.
Thank you again, so much, for the opportunity to talk about my work with you. It’s been a pleasure!
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