Mormon Artist and Me: My Honorable Mention

Earlier this year (March 30, to be specific), I extolled my own virtues as a poet by apprising the world (or at least the three or four of you who follow my blog) that one of my poems had taken an honorable mention in Mormon Artist's inaugural literature contest (for writer's under thirty). Well, Ben Crowder and crew have finally released the magazine's Special Contest Issue. And there I am: poem, interview, essay on my poem (by Ty Campbell), and all.

Ah---it's nice to be recognized every once in a while.

But more importantly, it's great to see what other young Mormon writers are doing right now. There's some good stuff on the other end of this link, so I encourage you to do some exploring---to read Davey Morrison Dillard's poem and play, Sarah Page's poem, Eliza Campbell's essay, James Goldberg's stories, and the interviews and essays associated with each writer. It's a pleasure to be included in this crowd.

And because I can and because the magazine had only limited space for the interviews, I'm going to post more of the Q/A I had with Ty Campbell.

Enjoy as you bask in the light of my brilliance---or at least in the back light from your computer screen. Because let's face it: that's likely far more brilliant than my dim wits.

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My Interview with Mormon Artist: Extended Edition

1. [Part II of this question didn't make the final cut. Part I was "What was your process for writing 'For the Man in the Red Jacket'?", answered here.] How long did you work on [the poem]? What if any revisions did you make? How did you decide on the three line stanzas?

Running and writing---writing as I run---has been a successful combination for me, with this poem as with other texts I've written. As is the case with "For the Man in the Red Jacket," I started writing with feet to pavement, transcribed my thoughts onto my laptop as soon as I got home, then hit a dead end. So I shelved the poem to give the experience time to ripen. Some months later, I picked it up again---I think at this time it was titled "Grace"---and was able to dredge up the more lasting details of the experience. After I'd tinkered with it for a few more days, I re-shelved it because I wasn't comfortable with the ending. I think at that point it made direct reference to me being Mormon and of course I've made time for grace---something along those lines. But, for some reason, that just didn't sit right. Chalk it up to feeling that approach was somewhat self-righteous, somewhat self-serving, but I couldn't leave it at that and feel like I was being true to the man's question.

Again, some months later, I picked up the poem and was pleased with much of what I'd written, though the ending still bothered me. Endings are difficult beasts to handle: tame them too much and, like the oversized, excessively slobbery family dog, they may just leave the reader with a big, sloppy kiss on the way out the door; yet leave them wild and they may turn rabid, biting the reader a bit too hard during play, so much so that the visitor leaves offended or hurt and never returns. (The analogy's a bit rough, but I think the idea behind it works.) So I reworked the final two stanzas to include imagery that ties back into the epigraph and to the religious uses and symbolism of water. I also renamed the poem to let the man in the red jacket know (though I'm certain he'll never read the poem) that his words didn't go unheard and to remind myself that maybe my words do things beyond their immediate purpose, sinking in some way into another soul, helping them, perhaps, become more as they'd like to be.

As for the three-line stanzas, it was more an aesthetic decision than anything; that is, I like how the three-line stanza looks on the page, how it ties the lines, the words, the ideas together.

[...]

4. I sense a note of sardonic commentary in the poem; is this something that comes out only in your writing, or is this part of your personality? Are you more likely to write in a more ironic tone than you speak? Why or why not?

My patriarchal blessing reminds me that I have an alert and inquiring mind, which to me implies the ability (among other things) to observe closely and think critically about the varieties of human experience, an ability refined further by my academic training as a literary scholar. This tendency to view things with a critical eye (something I've come to consider as both blessing and curse) makes me sensitive, I think, to what's going on beneath the surface. As I see it, the skillful use of irony (something I'm continually working on developing) is one way of getting at and commenting on these subterranean movements and of poking a little fun at ourselves in the process (as I do in the poem).

Having said that, I don't necessarily claim to be an ironic person. (Maybe that's the irony, though---am I being ironic if I claim to be or not to be ironic?) I'm critical, yes; sarcastic, at times; definitely interested in the workings of paradox; and I try to be witty (though I probably fail more than I succeed here). And all of these seem to part of what it means to be ironic. So maybe irony is more a part of my personality than I thought, though it probably comes out in my writing more pointedly than in my everyday expressions, simply because the written word is by far more focused and compressed than the quotidian.

5. What do you think of the current opportunities available to Mormon creative artists? Do you feel that you are limited by people's perceptions of your faith? What have you done with your writing in order to reach a larger audience?

Though I'm not as apprised as I'd like to be about the numerous opportunities available to Mormon artists worldwide, I'm encouraged by many of the current directions in Mormon arts and letters, especially those that move toward the creation of an expansive community of Mormon artists, one that increasingly includes voices from beyond the Intermountain West and that makes some effort to incorporate artists from outside the United States in their dialogue (though we still have a ways to go in this regard). I'm convinced that the networking capabilities of the Internet play (and will continue to play) a significant role in this community shaping and expansion, as illustrated in the numbers participating in the various Mormon arts and culture blogs and other online forums, such as this magazine.

Such movement across the World Wide Web has further opened opportunities for us to alter our own and other people's perceptions of our faith and our culture, including our arts and letters. I know my own participation on the group blog A Motley Vision and on my personal blog, Chasing the Long White Cloud, have been instrumental in helping me find a way into Mormon letters, giving me an increased audience for my work, providing me with a community of artist saints to work alongside in the continuing development of Mormon culture, and encouraging me to free and condense my creative and critical expressions (as I discuss above) and my understanding of Mormonism itself. In this sense, I don't feel limited by how others perceive my faith; rather I feel encouraged to reach out and to find ways of entering into dialogue with them such that, together, we can come to greater understandings of one another and God.

After Winter Nursing (Poem)

In honor of the snow we got in my neck of the woods over the weekend, here's a poem I've been turning lately (another for my Browns and Rusts sequence). All the usuals apply: suggestions, readability, praise, further discussion, whatever. After the poem, the floor's yours.

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After Winter Nursing

I imagine myself newborn, mouth
dripping with nipple and milk
warm as the rest between breaths
when the flesh goes lax against

death, cozies up to the grave
as to memories nursed
over the mourning dove's elegy
the winter hope slipped beneath my skin:

the first blanket mother used
to swaddle my soul
as she raised me to the breast,
latched me on to her heritage,

filled an eight by three by six basin
with desire enough to top off
the abyss, to trigger the contraction
of God's womb, heaven's walls

bearing down on my hunger, birthing
stars like purled bodies, edges
lost in the eddy of questions swirling
between mother and son,

dripping off the unleashed nipple
as snow fogs the window, asking
permission to enter, asking
what it means

when the mourning dove sings
even though winter’s come, even though
the dove’s coo may just be a coo,
even though I’ve been asking since birth

when a bird’s just a bird, snow just snow,
flesh just flesh, death just death, God just
God, not a question
fogging the window like childhood

wanting in, asking where I buried placenta and soul
in this landscape suddenly blank as DNA
the moment of conception, base pairs
copulating like question marks,

asking, asking, asking what the sex,
what color the eyes/skin/hair, how narrow
the fingers/lips/tongue, how dominant
the longing for solitude sealed in a mouth

once dripping with nipple and milk
warm as the rest between breaths.

Lance Larsen: The Great Mormon Poet?

There's been a lot of talk in the past about the Great Mormon Novel, but we don't hear much---if anything---about the Great Mormon Poet (or Mormon poetry or poetry in general, for that matter). I've accepted the fact that I'm practitioner of an art that's fallen on hard times, if it was ever not on hard times, that is, but I'm doing my best to work that system and to broaden the (Mormon) audience for poetry in whatever nominal way I can---a task I find as necessary as love.

Hence, I've decided (finally!) to do my dissertation (pending approval) on the poetry/poetics of Lance Larsen. Of all the verse I've read over the past however many years, his has stuck with me most. It doesn't wallow in the postmodern condition, doesn't refuse tradition and values and the strength of community (especially the family). It doesn't flounder in self-pity over the failures of language (though Larsen is aware of that trend) and, by extension, it's not mere wordplay. On the other hand, it doesn't reach for some type of transcendence beyond this world, refusing to engage the ordinary, the mundane, the familiar in some attempt to move beyond the immediate. Rather, it's firmly rooted in mortality, in the family, in the possibilities of communities and the "small disturbances" that cumulatively make up a life and that bind humans of all stripes in lasting connections, including those made possible through language.

As I see it, the strength of Larsen's poetry makes him one of Mormonism's best---if not the best poet currently writing in/from the Mormon tradition. And though he doesn't specifically write for a Mormon audience, his Mormonism permeates and grounds his verse in, dare I say it?, hope for a better world. That and he can turn a beautiful, even sublime, line, something that places him among America's best poets (as I've just discovered, though the preceding link's a month old).

And that, I think, is an achievement worth applauding.

(Cross-posted at AMV.)

Pocatello Part VI: We. Have. Arrived.

So after my nine day hiatus from blogging (a side-effect of, well, my laziness plus lack of internet service plus settling in at a new place plus an increasingly scattered mind), I'm back. And the great news (not that Tyler blogging isn't great news. I mean, c'mon...)? After a year of commuting to school from one place or another, we're finally in Pocatello. Now instead of driving an hour plus to class and work, it takes just five or so minutes to get to campus. And if I'm feeling green, I can even ride my bike (which I plan on doing as frequently as the weather permits). Sure this house is smaller than our last. Sure Pocatello's a bit strange (but, hey, so are we). But it was either this or life on the street because our last rental got sold out from under us and we had to leave. So why, we figured, not make our way south?

Now we're calling free (though I'm sure that won't last for long *knocks on wood*), the girls have new friends just next door and potential friends in the ward/neighborhood, and we're closer to our Utah families. Oh, and? I won't have to commute anymore...and just as winter sneaks up on us. Happy, happy day.