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by Amie Whittemore

Amie Whittemore: Your collection听笔颈苍别听was selected by Michael Waters for the 2019 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. It is a gorgeous book that investigates queer identity and how landscape, particularly that of the American South, informs one鈥檚 sense of self, desire, and as the title of the first section鈥檚 name indicates, 鈥減otentiality.鈥� In this section you explore desire, fear, doubt, and, I鈥檇 argue, queerness as a means through which to understand desire and fear, a way of being in and with the world. It opens with the poem 鈥淭he Science of _________鈥� which ends:

听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 ...science of startle,听
science of the remarkable. Two girls听
in a field test the science of buttons.听
Their shirts soon to break into yellow blooms.听

In this poem, the reader is positioned to see queerness as a science鈥攓ueer desire as both the product and pursuit of science, as both fact and hypothesis: there is no knowing without embracing uncertainty. This pursuit is at the center of the first section, as the speaker comes to terms with her own identity while in a closeted romance with a female partner. For instance, the first section ends with the poem 鈥淓ros, as bus鈥� which closes:

could I see it coming: 听听听 听听听 falling for her again听听听 听听听 听听听 like a fact
听 听 听 听 up ahead in the road听听听 听听听 an animal听 听 听 听 听 crossing in the dark.听

Here, falling for the girl 鈥渋s a fact,鈥� and also 鈥渁n animal鈥� in the darkened landscape鈥攚e don鈥檛 know what kind. Knowing and unknowing collapse, overlap here. I鈥檓 curious how the lexicon of science shaped your approach to writing about queer identity and desire.听

Julia Koets: I love your reading of the first section of the book and what you said about queerness and desire: 鈥渋t is both fact and hypothesis: there is no knowing without embracing uncertainty.鈥� As a kid, what I loved about studying science in school was developing hypotheses. Figuring out what I knew and what I didn鈥檛 know and going from there. The point was that I didn鈥檛 have all the answers. The same was true about queerness for me. I spent many years asking questions about my own sexuality, about my own desire, but until I allowed myself to be okay with the uncertainty, to acknowledge that I didn鈥檛 know all of the answers, I didn鈥檛 allow myself any hypotheses. For example, when I was nineteen or twenty, I wanted to kiss this woman, but, for a long time, I was too afraid to actually do it.听听

I started writing 鈥淭he Science of _________鈥� after reading the quotation from The听Century Magazine that appears as the epigraph of the poem. I liked the idea of coming up with a word for something before knowing whether it was even possible to do that thing. Inventing words, another kind of science, is a form of longing, I think. In connection to longing and queerness, I begin this first section of the book with a quotation by Jos茅 Esteban Mu帽oz in which he talks about queerness as 鈥渁 horizon imbued with potentiality鈥�: 鈥淲e may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality [鈥�] we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.鈥澨�

AW: I鈥檓 in love with all the villanelles in this collection, and with the formal choices throughout, so I have a couple questions regarding form. First, why villanelles? How did they enter into the project? Are they a form you feel at home in or a challenge (or both)? Did you intend to use so many when you imagined the book, or was this a form that you developed a new relationship with as you wrote this collection?听

JK: I feel both at home and challenged by the villanelle, which I think might be true of all obsessions. When I was working on my PhD in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati, people were very surprised when I brought a poem to workshop that 飞补蝉苍鈥檛 a villanelle. I started writing villanelles before I started writing this book, but the more villanelles I wrote for this particular book, the more I realized why I was so drawn to the form. So much of this book is about a speaker who circles back to a relationship she lost, and, in its repeated rhymes and refrains, the villanelle encourages such circling back. The repetition is a kind of persistence, a refusal to completely let go of what she鈥檚 lost. When we think of something as being repetitive, we often think it鈥檚 boring. People critique books for being repetitive, for the fact that the story doesn鈥檛 go anywhere. In a villanelle, though, with each iteration鈥攊f the poem is successful鈥攐ur understanding of the repeated words and lines changes, even though the words themselves haven鈥檛 changed much.

I don鈥檛 know if it鈥檚 because when I think of villanelles, I think of Elizabeth Bishop鈥檚 鈥淥ne Art鈥� and Jean Passerat鈥檚 鈥淛鈥檃y perdu ma Tourterelle,鈥澨齜ut the form, more than other poetic forms, feels capable of holding loss. I wrote early drafts of some of the poems in this book as villanelles and then took them out of the form in a later draft. I needed to write them first as villanelles in order to sit with the speaker鈥檚 loss, to understand it.

AW: In addition to the villanelles, which are, as you note, forms of repetition with variation, there are other structures that repeat and vary: the 鈥淓ros鈥� poems, each of which draw inspiration from unlikely moments of 鈥渆ros鈥� in the world, the 鈥淭hank-you鈥� notes to places, classes, and 贰.罢.鈥檚 Elliott; dictionary entries; the poems with the same titles (鈥淪olstice,鈥� 鈥淎ntlery,鈥� etc鈥�) How is this engagement with repetition and variation in conversation with queer desire and identity? 听

JK: Sylvia Plath鈥檚 repeated line 鈥淚 think I made you up inside my head鈥� and Elizabeth Bishop鈥檚 repeated line 鈥淭he art of losing isn鈥檛 hard to master鈥� both get at how repetition鈥攁 queering of time鈥攆elt utterly crucial to understanding the losses surrounding my early experiences of queer desire. With each repetition, the speaker in the poems processes a facet of the loss that comes with loving someone in secret. I think, too, since the woman the speaker was in love with claimed to be straight, on some level the speaker felt the loss of her from the very first time they kissed. She anticipated the loss of her from the very beginning. Because I didn鈥檛 talk openly about my relationships with women for many years, I wanted to write about how the secrecy of those relationships can change someone鈥檚 relationship to time, can cause someone to replay past experiences in their head, to attempt to figure out what was real. Because no one knew about a particular relationship, that love felt strangely out of time. Writing in forms that utilize repetition allowed me to move around more freely in time, which felt essential when writing about a love that felt out of time. As Sharon Cameron writes in Lyric Time, the 鈥渓yric both rejects the limitations of social and objective time, those strictures that drive hard lines between past, present, and future.鈥澨�

AW: Nicole Seymour鈥檚 Strange Natures begins with this epigraph from Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands鈥檚 and Bruce Erickson鈥檚 Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire: 鈥淭he task of a queer ecology is to probe the intersections of sex and nature with an eye to developing a politics that more clearly includes considerations of the natural world and its biosocial constitution, and an environmental politics that demonstrates an understanding of the ways in which sexual relations organize and influence both the material world of nature and our perceptions, experiences, and constitutions of that world.鈥�

I would certainly categorize Pine as grounded in queer ecology, as so many of the poems speak to a confluence of self, desire, and place; the three are interwoven, arguably inseparable. For instance, in 鈥淓ros, as fish,鈥� the speaker writes, 鈥渨e fastened a rope around our waists / so we would not lose each other. // Look in the sky and you will see us there. / Look in the water鈥攖here, too.鈥� Furthermore, in many of the poems the 鈥淚鈥� is part of a 鈥渨e,鈥� further questioning and/or complicating the idea of an individual self. My question then is this: how does queer identity queer one鈥檚 relationship to self as well as place/nature/ecology?听

JK: I think that I write about place and landscape so much in this book because, as a queer woman who didn鈥檛 come out until my late twenties, I鈥檝e spent many years trying to figure out my complicated relationship to the South, to the place I grew up, to the landscape that in many ways feels most like home to me. For a long time I wanted to leave the South because I thought that that was the only way that I could live more openly as a queer woman. At the start of Pine I include an epigraph from Sara Ahmed鈥檚 Queer Phenomenology to ground the book in a focus on landscape in relationship to desire, on what it means to deviate from the paths that the people closest to us often expect us to travel: 鈥淚t is interesting to note in landscape architecture they use the term 鈥榙esire lines鈥� to describe unofficial paths, those marks left on the ground that show everyday comings and goings, where people deviate from the paths they are supposed to follow. Deviation leaves its own marks on the ground, which can help generate alternative lines, which cross the ground in unexpected ways.鈥澨�

AW: A little more on the use of 鈥渨e鈥� in the poems. While many of the poems feature a plural first person as the speaker, several of the poems, particularly those that deal with coming out (I鈥檓 thinking of 鈥淓ros, as Oxygen Mask鈥� and 鈥淭he Boathouse鈥�), strongly feature an 鈥淚.鈥� To me, this 鈥淚鈥� feels vulnerable and alone particularly in the poems referenced above as she comes to grips with her sexual identity: 鈥淚 try to tell him what I can鈥檛 easily / tell him, what seems impossible in the South: / I love a girl,鈥� the speaker states in 鈥淭he Boathouse.鈥� Can you speak to the dynamic between theme and point of view in your work?听

JK: In terms of point of view, oftentimes I think of someone in particular when I write a poem, so I鈥檓 imagining this other person that the speaker is talking to and the 鈥渨e鈥� is that person and the speaker. In other poems, though, the 鈥渨e鈥� is an attempt to imagine other queer people experiencing similar things. In 鈥淭he Science of _________鈥�, for instance, I wanted to imagine all of these other girls lying down in fields falling in love with the girl next to them. Growing up without knowing many people who were queer and out, I felt very alone in my questions about my own sexuality. I was afraid to talk to anyone about it, and so I also wanted to write about that fear and loneliness in this book.听听

AW: The second section of the book is titled 鈥渆phemera,鈥� and shifts focus a bit: the speaker feels older; the initial bloom of her romance(s) has passed and a reckoning is at hand: what does it mean to love and lose? To love and break and mend? While natural ephemera appears, such as the antlers of deer, so do references to cultural ephemera, particularly lesbian icons Jodie Foster and Sally Ride; furthermore, both of these women have a relationship with closetedness and space鈥擲ally Ride, an actual astronaut and Jodie Foster playing an astronomer in Contact, a role you reference in 鈥淎 Villanelle for Jodie Foster.鈥� Can you speak more to why these two women entered into this manuscript?听

JK: In An Archive of Feeling Ann Cvetkovich talks about how lesbian and gay archives are full of ephemera, items that archivists and librarians can鈥檛 easily catalogue. In writing about a relationship between two women that remained secret, I鈥檓 interested in stories that get left out of the archive, the public record. I鈥檓 also interested in how particular documents or items from someone鈥檚 history reveal some aspect of their lives.听

In third grade, I memorized a song about Sally Ride for a school science project, and I鈥檝e felt an affinity for her ever since. She鈥檚 always been one of my heroes. As a kid, I was in awe of the fact that she flew into outer space and worked for NASA. I鈥檓 still in awe of her. Ride came out for the first time publicly in her obituary in 2012, and Foster came out publicly for the first time in her 2013 Golden Globes speech. In writing about a speaker who can only imagine her marriage to the woman she loves happening on the moon, where no one can hear their vows, I鈥檓 also interested in the line between privacy and secrecy.听

AW: The moon is an essential figure/landscape in Pine: as a force on the oceans (which are also central, especially in the imagery in the first half of the collection), as a site of queer ecology; as a symbol of resilience: it persists, fully itself, despite metaphors that might mistake it for 鈥渁 knife glinting in the dark,鈥� despite Buzz Aldrin deeming it a 鈥渕agnificent desolation.鈥� I could go on, but I think my question comes down to this: is the moon queer or a queer ally? Or both? Neither?

JK: Maybe both!听

AW: In looking over your answers, it feels like Pine was, perhaps, a healing book to write, a way of comforting a past self, through coming to accept/explore the ambiguities and complexities of navigating closeted relationships and one鈥檚 own relationship to their desires and identity. So, I wonder: what鈥檚 next? What are you working on now, or what questions/new territory has Pine opened up for you as a writer?听

JK: In Radiant Lyre, David Baker writes, 鈥淎 poem may propose a temporary alternative鈥攂e it a dream, a wish, or a warning鈥攖o the world. But a poem intends not so much to stop time as, instead, to formulate a parallel universe with its own temporality.鈥� Writing Pine, I got to go back in time, to inhabit a kind of parallel universe, where I could, as you say, 鈥渆xplore the ambiguities and complexities of closeted relationships,鈥� queer desire, and queerness in the South.听

After writing Pine, one thing I realized was that I鈥檓 interested in writing more about the line between privacy and secrecy and how it relates to queer experience. I鈥檓 working on some new nonfiction essays that ask questions about that line.听听

听is the author of the poetry collection听Glass Harvest听(Autumn House Press). Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her poems and prose have appeared in听The Gettysburg Review,听Nashville Review,听Smartish Pace,听Pleiades, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.