Befriend & be fascinated: an email chat with karate-ka and ottava rimist Elinor Nauen
Q: How does a nice Jewish poet from South Dakota end up moving to New York and going for a black belt in karate?
A: If you're from SoDak, you are very likely to move on, especially if you're Jewish. And New York is still the golden medina for Jews. Actually, being Jewish is somewhat connected to my studying karate. When my best friend at the synagogue died in 2007, I felt dislocated & that I had to do something different, and maybe something that involved punching. There are many similarities between karate & observing Judaism–a lot of rules that seem arbitrary from the outside, for example, and a strong emphasis on ethics (at least at my dojo).
Q: Was the ottava rima in your book something imposed from without (it "called" you) or something you actively chose?
A: Very much BOTH. I wrote a single stanza, idly, and I felt exactly as I had the first time I ever came to New York City: THIS is what I was waiting for, this is what I was looking for. I moved here in a flash and never looked back, and in the same way, I knew ottava rima was mine and would be there for as long as I needed and wanted.
Q: I haven't read Ko, though I keep meaning to. Now I realize that a long poem with a lot of baseball can be moving & funny at the same time, even though I'm not a baseball fan (or just ignorant of all sports).
You need to be lucky to write a poem like yours. You have a husband who stars in some sections, a baseball-star obsession in others, and – in still others – a synagogue, of all places. Unlike many Jewish authors, you don't go on and on about how you are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by the Tradition. You write about shul like you write about your friends.
A. Zack! I love that you said one needs to be lucky – I secretly envy people who have "something to write about" – who have suffered or been a weird tabloid hero or a firefighter. I always feel I'm just plugging along, living my life, which I find totally entertaining but it's just my life. And I love that you say I write about shul like I write about my friends. That's exactly right & the plan of my life – befriend & be fascinated.
I didn't have much Tradition or yiddishkeit growing up & have always felt lucky I didn't have to fight against it – as soon as I realized it was there & there for me, I could stroll right in and take what I wanted. I'm the rich lady who doesn't have to look at the price tags.
I love Kenneth Koch but Ko least of his works. His ottava rima (there's also The Duplications) is more formal than mine. I don't think it was an influence but I'm always wrong. I used to introduce a poem I liked a lot, so I read it a lot, as "my Jimmy Schuyler poem" until someone said it had nothing to do with Schuyler and could I please stop saying that. Which goes to show that what you consciously grab, in technique or tone or form, may not be what really shines through the work. What influenced So Late? Well, besides Byron? Ashrei for the acrostics and similar wordplay. John Clare for not getting Byron right, which left me room enough to plunge in. Probably in some completely random, inexplicable way, whoever I was reading along the way–Donne, Whalen, Myles (etc).
Q: You're a Jew, and a poet: what does the conjunction of those things together mean to you? Does it have to mean anything?
A: Let me back into an answer or take the out you kindly offered: No, it doesn't HAVE to mean anything. Hard, though, to imagine that something as central as being Jewish doesn't at least inform what one is most absorbed with, that is, poetry. If Judaism isn't the subject, is it therefore not part of the process or the poem? No, I don't think so.
I'm still backing in and out of an answer, aren't I? I'm a lot of things: I grew up on the prairie and so my lines are (usually) long, out to the horizon. I'm female, so I'm concerned with cutting men down to size (ha!). I'm a baseball fan, a wife, a sometime gearhead, a karate-ka, easily amused, very tall (Zack, please don't correct that!) –it's all part of how and why the work gets written.
I keep wandering away from an answer. So instead, very Jewishly, I will ask: Can an American Jew be a Jewish poet? Can one write a Jewish poem without being a Jewish poet? What is a Jewish poet, anyway? Can I be a Jewish poet if I've never asked myself before if I was a Jewish poet? What makes a poet or poem Jewish? So Late into the Night contains two acrostics: does that make it Jewish? Should I stop right here?
Q: When is Derek going to read your book?
A. He's not much of a reader, I'm pretty sure. My experience is that public figures don't really like to read poetry about themselves. Or poetry at all.
