12 or 20 (second series) questions with Patty Nash

Patty Nash's first book, Walden Pond , was published with Thirdhand Books in August 2024. Her poems haveappeared in The Paris Review, the Washington Square Review, Annulet,and elsewhere. Website: patty-nash.com.

1 - How did yourfirst book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to yourprevious? How does it feel different?

Walden Pond is my first published book, but it’s mythird or fourth manuscript, depending on how I’m counting. My earliestmanuscripts consisted of single poems that I had more or less haphazardlystapled together, the later ones were more interested in specific topics. With WP, I was narrowly interested in a broadconstellation: nationhood, institutions of religion and language, the exchangeof capital, how these make us identify and relate in codified ways. I wasparticularly interested in national narratives and figures, like Martin Luther,whose high German translation of the Bible paved the way for Germany to thinkof itself as a nation. I live in Germany, and for about two years, I wouldintentionally seek out sightseeing trips or site-specific “research” that madesense for the book. This was different to my writing process before, whichentailed me sort of waiting for things to happen. I also started working onlonger poems and series in this book, many of which didn’t even make it intothe final manuscript. It was originally over 200 pages long…

2 - How did you cometo poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I started writing poems because I thought I didn’t have toknow the rules. What others called “good” poems seemed to me totally random atthe time (I was a teenager), at least compared to novels, which had (to me)clearer markers of success or failure. I’m not sure I still agree with myearlier self, but I still feel more freedom writing poems than I do in othergenres.

3 - How long does ittake to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially comequickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to theirfinal shape, or does your work come out of copious notes? 

My tendency is to struggle for a long time around a singleconceit, like for months. Then, after some break in routine, everything coheresand suddenly starts working, or I find a form that’s so much fun I can’t stopwringing it out. Still, most of my writing is a slog. My early drafts are quitemessy and often quite different from their final versions.

4 - Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?

Since writing WP, Ihave become convinced of long poems. The longer the better! I like working on a“book” from the very beginning, but the “book” often splinters off into otheriterations or siblings… I enjoy pursuing a question without having fullyarticulated it yet, because then everything I do has a poem underneath it. Thatsounds instrumentalizing, but it really isn’t – my poems often surprise me inhow they confound my initial experience of something, be it a wedding or agroup excursion into the woods or a doctor’s appointment.

5 - Are publicreadings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort ofwriter who enjoys doing readings?

I love public readings. The poems that are best suited forpublic readings aren’t always the ones that make it into journals, sadly –which is why I like reading them, looking the audience in the eye. That’s mybig thing: eye contact.

6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?

This is a big question… I’m not sure I can answercompletely. More recently, I’m thinking about the forces that allow or impel meto think of myself as a subject in the first place, someone with descriptive ordenotative authority. Isn’t it curious – the fact that my experience can betrusted, at least in certain contexts? Why is that? If these are currentquestions, I think they’re also perennial questions writers ask – aboutrelations, about power, about systems, about death, but also how we make senseof them, how we emote in them. For me, the central instrument of thatsensemaking is my “I,” but it’s so strange and arbitrary that I have come tothink of myself in this way, and not some other pronoun or grammatical unit ofaffiliation. It seems quite constructed, but also conflated with my whiteness,my German-Americanness. I also see this responsibility to look at thatinstrument as an instrument of power. If there were a question I’m trying toanswer with my work, it would be “What is going on?” And then: “What happened?”And then: “What’s that?” Of course, the central question of “Who am I”, whichis quite common in lyric poetry, attends as well… I don’t want to take anythingfor granted, and I don’t want to detect these big questions in monuments or grandhistorical gestures, but like, when I’m eating breakfast, for example, orwatering my houseplants.

7 – What do you seethe current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one?What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I think good writers make everything strange, or at leastcall attention to how “normalcy” is a motivated aesthetic device. To be moresentimental: it’s bizarre that we are on this earth, and equally bizarre thatthe world is the way it is! Isn’t it? I think writers should be as various asthey want to be. Broadly speaking, I am glad that there are lots of differentkinds of writers and texts.

8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

It’s absolutely essential. My work would be terrible withoutthe input of readers, friends, and editors. The editors at Thirdhand Books(Lindsey Webb and Kylan Rice) absolutely made my first manuscript better than Icould have alone. 

9 - What is the bestpiece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I am frequently told that taking a break will make mywriting better. It’s true, but I don’t always follow the advice, and insteadchurn out dozens of middling poems until I become too frustrated with myself togo on. Then I take a break and things are indeed easier and more exciting.

10 - How easy has itbeen for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose/reviews)? What doyou see as the appeal?

I’m currently writing my dissertation, and it’s frighteninghow similar that process feels to me compared to writing poems, though on thesurface the process would seem so opposed. I have the same associativecompositional style and many similar formal questions when I’m writing thedissertation, i.e., a vague question that I can only articulate when seeing itwritten. I also research a lot, though it’s questionable how much of thatresearch makes it into the poems themselves. And in both I force myself to slogthrough even when the productivity has long since waned. Unfortunately, thecreative energy I bring to the dissertation drains the poems, so I have to becareful about how much I’m working on each.

11 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?

Sometimes, I do a daily writing practice, often sharing thepoems in a poem-a-day doc started by a friend, poet Emily Bark Brown. Then Ihave months when I try to sit down twice a week to look at my poems or write anew one. Typically, it’s about four or five times a week, however. Beforestarting the PhD, writing was like popping a zit, a compulsion, because it feltso necessary compared to my day job. Now I have to be more intentional aboutcarving out time and, more importantly, interest. I typically write in themornings, after I get back from the gym and before I sit down for the “realwork.” My best poems are written, however, when I haven’t scheduled writing andactually should be doing something else.

12 - When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?

With the exception of Wikipedia and select Youtube videos,the internet is horrible for my writing. When I feel stalled, I do something I(ideally) feel ambivalent about, like going to a museum or forcing myself intoan uncomfortable social interaction. I like churning that ambivalence into apoem. The resulting poem is usually not very good but it is a good distraction.If I have the means, I skip town – breaks in routine are fantastic for mywriting and usually the best way to start something new. I honestly think thebest thing for my writing, however, is not writing. I have this compulsion toalways be writing and I think it leads to bad poems.

13 - What fragrancereminds you of home? 

Douglas firs! Gasoline.

14 - David W.McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other formsthat influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I do like opera a lot, but I’m not sure it influences mywork. Same goes for movies. I think fantasy RPGs have found their way into mypoems, surprisingly – I like this idea of suspended contingency, of beingsomeone else and trying things out, erasing them, moving around. I played Morrowind while writing Walden Pond. My boyfriend introduced meto it and I spent hundreds of hours there…I hadn’t really played any games before, besides The Sims.

15 - What otherwriters or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside ofyour work? 

This is so hard, because there are so many. But I do wish Icould write with the same unabashed ambition as Thomas Mann and Leo Tolstoy – Isense this desire to combine forms, fiction and history. I love reading both oftheir works, though I have to say I don’t always love the books themselves, ifthat makes sense. The books are so determined and controlled, and yet withhistorical distance it’s also possible to make diagnoses from afar – Magic Mountain is to me a book aboutthis deadly idea of Europe as much as it is about sickness, time, andmodernity.

16 - What would youlike to do that you haven't yet done?

I really would like to write a libretto. I have started afew but don’t have a composer yet, sadly.

17 - If you couldpick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, whatdo you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I honestly like being a poet, but I wish I had picked uptraining for a job that would allow me to earn a living wage without workingmore than 20 hours a week. Does that exist? I really love writing, but I hatehaving to earn money and worry about that.

18 - What made youwrite, as opposed to doing something else? 

I wish I knew! I enjoyed writing and it was easy to dologistically (I didn’t need extra equipment, or anyone supporting me). I thinkthat was the main reason.

19 - What was thelast great book you read? What was the last great film?

The last great book I read was The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky and this timetranslated by Michael R. Katz. The last film I enjoyed was Dahomey, directed by Mati Diop.

20 - What are youcurrently working on?

I am pregnant and, if all goes well, my baby is due in 1.5weeks. Pregnancy is a very strange experience and has, rather predictably,consumed my writing. When I found out I was pregnant, I started a book called The Experiment, which is composed ofvarious little sections, but also inspired by a pregnancy experiment I’m takingpart in at the Berlin Philharmonic. (You’ll have to read the book to learnmore.) But the bigger, more loomingproject is another one. For the past three years, I’ve been working on abook-length poem about historical Hanses, titled HANS – “Hans” being the diminutive of Johannes in German, andrelated to names John, Ian, Sean, Giovanni, Jean, Yahya, Johanna, Hannah, Ivan,Anna, Nancy, and many more. The book is interested in historical reproductionand repetition, which occurs through the same name in different persons. Thereare a lot of historical Hanses that could make it into the book. The issue isactually keeping the number down…

12 or 20 (second series) questions;