12 or 20 (second series) questions with Rachel Trousdale
Rachel Trousdale [photo credit: Nick Beauchamp] is a professor of English at Framingham StateUniversity. Her book of poems,
Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem
,won Wesleyan University Press’s Cardinal Poetry Prize. Her other books include Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry and
Nabokov,Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination
. @rvtrousdale, www.racheltrousdale.com.1 - How did yourfirst book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compareto your previous? How does it feel different?
I’ve been having so muchfun with this book! My first books were scholarly—I’ve written one ontransnational fiction, and one on humor in twentieth century American poetry,and also edited a collection on humor. I enjoyed writing them, but scholarshipcan be a very small world, and once a book comes out, all you do is wait sixmonths and see if anyone reviews it. This is my first full-length poetrycollection, and it’s been a delight getting to travel around, give readings,and meet people. Someone recently emailed me to tell me he’d used one of mypoems in his wedding vows, which was a thrill.
2 - How did you come topoetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
My dad used to come intomy room when I was a kid and read or recite poems at me: TS Eliot, RobertFrost, Robert Service, silly rhymes from the Open Road for Boys circa1936, Lewis Carroll. I’d put down the fantasy novel I was reading long enoughto listen. Then, when I started trying to write fiction, I discovered that whatI kept trying to do was write the single intense page of epiphany or revelationthat you can’t reach until page 247 of a novel. That page doesn’t usually standalone in prose, but it turns out you can do it pretty efficiently in poetry.
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?
Individual poems tend tocome quickly—I write in a fast burst. And then I edit them very, very slowly.Sometimes when I’m stuck on a poem it turns out to be because it was only thefirst half of something, or more accurately only half of the material I neededto discuss; when that’s the case, it may take months before I find the missingpieces of the puzzle.
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?
My critical books havebegun as big ambitious questions. But in poetry, it’s so far been short piecesthat accumulate into a larger project. Individual poems often suggestthemselves around a single sticking point: an opening line; a closing line; aweird image. Can I write a poem in which an octopus climbs a palm tree? Thenthe challenge is how to find the other pieces that go along with that startingpoint, because you don’t want the poem to be just one thing—otherwise theoctopus gets stuck.
5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?
I love readings. Notjust of my own work: I started life as a theater kid, and I’m always recitingbits of Shakespeare and Yeats at my children, or reading snippets of sciencefiction stories out loud to my students. I like to wave my arms around and dothe voices, or gallop the meter like Robert Browning in that drunken-soundingwax cylinder recording.
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?
I want to write things Ihaven’t seen before. There’s a genre of poetry I think of as “white poetlooking out the window,” where a comfortable speaker looks at a nice safe worldand thinks about how nature makes them feel. I desperately don’t want to write likethat, which can be hard, since I am in fact a comfortable white woman who likesto take walks. I want accuracy and intensity and stakes, and if something’sbeen said already I don’t see any reason to say it again. That doesn’t mean Ialways manage originality, just that I wish I could. I’m also very interestedin the role of pleasure, humor, and joy in art, especially art that addressesserious or difficult topics.
7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?
On the one hand, I thinkit’s silly for writers to claim to be special people; I can’t pretend to be aRomantic-style poet-prophet or anything of that sort. On the other hand, Ithink that artists of any variety have an enormous responsibility to tell thetruth in public. This is a political role, because when something is evil, youhave to say so. And it’s an aesthetic role, because when something isbeautiful, you have to enjoy it. And it’s a social role, because you’respeaking to other people, and inviting them to respond, and trying to create aconversation that goes beyond your own artwork. Writers of poetry, or offiction or drama, can ask hard questions in very different and sometimes morechallenging ways than journalists do. And unlike novelists or actors or evenmusicians, poets’ work is especially easy to share, and to take with you inyour pocket, or keep whole in a corner of your head until you need it—nocharger required.
8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. About twoweeks into the pandemic shutdowns, my friend Catherine Rockwood emailed me andtwo other friends from graduate school and said “we’re going to need poetry toget through this.” We formed an online writing group, giving feedback over GoogleDocs to weekly poem drafts. We eventually named ourselves the Harpies. Not onlywould my book of poems not exist without them, I would probably have gone fullYellow Wallpaper some time in November of 2020.
9 - What is the bestpiece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Never try to make ahappy baby happier.” This has nothing directly to do with writing, but it isthe best advice I have ever gotten. Also “Stick a stamp on it,” from Stephanie Burt, when we were both in graduate school and I was dithering over whether anarticle I’d written was ready to send out. And “I’d like to see more wildnessin this,” from Terrance Hayes, to me and multiple other people in a workshop hewas teaching. And the Connecticut State Lottery: “You can’t win if you don’tplay.” I don’t play the lottery, but it turns out that advice is useful inother contexts.
10 - How easy has itbeen for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you seeas the appeal?
I generally writebecause I’m trying to understand something. That takes different forms inpoetry and critical prose, though. My first critical book was an attempt tofigure out why novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie tasted the same tome. My most recent one was trying to figure out why W. H. Auden and Marianne Moore’shumor felt like home (there wasn’t much mystery why Pound’s and Eliot’sdidn’t). Both of those books started with an itchy feeling that there was apattern I wanted to identify, linking different writers I admired. The processof writing really came down to explaining what that pattern was and finding aname for it.
When I’m writing a poem,though, I’m trying to answer different kind of question, often a moreopen-ended “what if” — what happens if I take this metaphor to a logicalextreme? Can I make a sestina behave like a hologram? Can I understandsomething unfathomable (eternity, the depths of interstellar space) by thinkingabout how it feels to drive on a fourteen-hour road trip? So instead of theitchy feeling that I was missing something, which is where the critical booksstarted, poems are like hiking a bit farther to see around the next corner, orlearning to juggle: can I just get one more angle on the view? can I do this whilebalancing a plate on my nose? What happens if I swap one of the juggling ballsfor an orange? and so on.
But you asked whether itwas easy to move between genres. For me, it’s vital. If I’m not trying to writepoems, I’m liable to miss some of the weirdness and ambition of the poems I’mreading. And if I’m not writing critically, I’m liable to repeat other people’sexperiments instead of coming up with new ones of my own.
11 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?
I wish that apredictable writing routine were compatible with having an academic job and twokids. During the summer, I have the luxury of time: breakfast, take the kids tocamp, write for an hour or two, do some reading, have lunch, repeat. The otherthree seasons, writing takes place in stolen time: composing a poem in my headduring my drive to work and scribbling it down in the ten minutes before class,or an intense week-long writing binge during January break once the kids areback in school.
12 - When your writinggets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?
Few things get meunstuck better than a long talk with my spouse, who asks the right kind of hardquestions. When we don’t have the luxury of a long talk, though, I find ithelpful to do something with my hands: make a complicated dinner, or even justdo laundry. Is it preposterous to find inspiration in laundry? Solving oneproblem — the problem that the kids need clean socks — helps make biggerproblems seem more manageable.
But that’s not very inspiring-sounding,is it? Obviously another answer would be a list of poets I admire, even if mywork doesn’t resemble theirs. Harryette Mullen, Alice Oswald, Gwendolyn Brooks,C. D. Wright. I’ve been getting a lot of poem ideas from Kevin Stroud’s Historyof English Podcast. My students. Books about raven cognition. Travelplanning.
13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?
Butter melting in a hotcast-iron pan.
14 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms thatinfluence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I write a lot of sciencepoems. I’m interested in physics, and animal behavior. If you’re going to writeabout birds, you need to know something about their musculature and nestinghabits and territorial behavior.
15 - What other writersor writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of yourwork?
I recite Keats to myselfwhen I’m anxious. I studied Italian in college in order to read the Inferno,and finally managed it last year, just 25 years after setting myself thechallenge. Virginia Woolf. I’ve read the Anne of Green Gables series anuncountable number of times. I consume big piles of fantasy novels, preferablywith cranky female protagonists; I’m a big fan of Naomi Novik. Oliver Sacks. Formoral philosophy, Edith Stein, Martin Buber, and .
16 - What would you liketo do that you haven't yet done?
In Tobago, you can canoethrough the nesting grounds of the scarlet ibis—I’ve wanted to do that foryears. I have also not hiked enough of the Appalachian Trail. I don’t need todo the whole six month pilgrimage, section hiking will do. And I can’t believeI haven’t made it to the Himalayas—who’s been in charge here?
17 - If you could pickany other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Most of my working hoursare as a teacher. I could do that without writing, and some years I have. But foran entirely different career: I think I could be very happy as a baker, or aninterpreter, or a travel guide.
18 - What made youwrite, as opposed to doing something else?
This is such aninteresting question, and one I have never understood. What is it that compelsus to write things down, instead of just thinking them through and moving on? Ithink it’s that same itchy feeling that something is missing. If I writesomething down, I have a better chance of seeing the gaps in the sequence, theplaces I haven’t actually figured out the problem I’m puzzling over. Then thenext mystifying question is why, once we’ve written something down, we feel theneed to publish it. Shouldn’t it be enough that I’ve solved the problem to myown satisfaction? But no, there the poem is, vibrating on the page anddemanding to be looked at, like in Woolf’s Orlando when the manuscriptleaps out of the bosom of Orlando’s dress. All I can do is send it on its wayand wish it luck.
19 - What was the lastgreat book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book: EvieShockley’s Suddenly We. Not a film but a TV show: we’re watching Adventure Time with the kids and I revel in its cheerful weirdness.
20 - What are youcurrently working on?
Myfall syllabi! But also: I’m writing a sequence of poems that are the answers inan advice column. Not the questions, just the answers. Some familiar peoplewrite in — Galileo, maybe a Shakespeare villain or two, fairy tale characters,Gargamel from the Smurfs, I’m not sure yet. I’m open to suggestions.
