Theia Mania: In Conversation With Dallas Athent & Maria Pavlovska

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Editor's Note: Theia Mania is a book of poetry by Dallas Athent with illustrations by Maria Pavlovska (Black Square Editions). This book is fiercely feminine, self-empowered, loud, brash, beautiful, and filled with references to gods and the Divine. Here. I interviewed Dallas and Maria about their collaboration and their work. 

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INTERVIEW WITH DALLAS ATHENT

LISA MARIE BASILE: Ah, the binary. I am addicted to it and your work explores it so well. It's bikinis versus god and bars versus transcendence and the problematic versus self-empowerment. Except here, the light always seems to win. Was that a conscious choice?

DALLAS ATHENT: I used to believe in good and evil. After my studies ofThe Golden Dawn and Platonic elements, I began believing instead in light and dark. Light elements are things that are connected to the divine, the higher powers, spirituality. Dark matter is that which makes us mortal. It's what drives us to be gluttons. This book is really a study of both states. Light doesn't always win because it is "good," per say, it wins because making art is a struggle for our dark matter to be connected to higher powers.

LISA MARIE BASILE: There's not a lot of subversion here, although on first read I thought there was. I think you're screaming, HEAR ME. And I love it. I don't see a lot of work that encounters radical self strength with such bravado. Tell me, were there weaknesses and fears and vulnerabilities you grappled with while writing this?

DALLAS ATHENT: At one point during this I was laid off from my job the same week I was closing on my apartment. It was a hard week for me and that's where on the one hand I was celebrating an accomplishment, but it felt fake, not knowing if I could really afford this thing I had been working towards. A lot of the darker poems were written during that week, and the ones that are more about me feeling like I can do anything were written when I got myself out of the hole.

LISA MARIE BASILE: So, you keep mentioning England. How did England shape you IRL?

DALLAS ATHENT: I love England. I lived there for a short while and I'm always trying to move back. I adore pub culture. A lot of my friends talk about wanting to visit warm places, and how beautiful beaches are, but for me the most natural state is in the corner of a pub on a rainy day with a book and a pint.

LISA MARIE BASILE: You say, "the purpose of art is horror," and I think that's fucking magic. I agree, but I haven't seen it put so succinctly. Tell me about this idea. Did you aim to horrify?

DALLAS ATHENT: The poem that's taken from is about making art, and trying to leave a mark through doing so. That being the last line was just me thinking of how hard we try and end up nowhere. It's like a beautiful nightmare.

LISA MARIE BASILE: I feel like this book is like if contemporary feminist discourse had a baby with the baddest, most rebellious, most sassy Lana Del Rey video ever. It's all girls and alcohol and scum and the body, but it's elevated with these ideas of divinity and Theia and the powerful feminine. How do you approach talking about BIG IDEAS in such an aesthetic way? I know when I was writing Apocryphal, I wanted this landscape of cars and deserts and fabrics and gardens and beaches and fires and tropics, but at the end of it, that was a character all meant to juxtapose the grandiose shit. What about you? Was this landscape and aesthetic conscious or not? Or was it just, "I love these things. They're real to me?"

DALLAS ATHENT: That's a great question. And I actually feel the same way about Apocryphal. You managed to create this classic, desperate, suburban summer on a coast feel — but used that landscape to illustrate what it's like being a young woman.

For Theia Mania, I've always loved cities and lived in cities. I'm obsessed with places where there's so many people and they all live so close to each other but don't actually know each other and have such drastically different lives. I just like how that contributes to the concept of trying to make art to be someone. It's a constant reminder that we will fade into the fabric of the earth no matter how well known we are.

LISA MARIE BASILE: (Thanks, Dallas). I've heard you talk about Yeats before. You write, "there is an oppressive veil separating us from the stars and Yeats." Can you tell me more?

DALLAS ATHENT: A while ago I read this essay titled the The Gnostics by Jacques Lacarriere. What I got from it was that the Gnostics believed there was a veil that separated us from all that is holy and divine, and that's why mortality is always doomed. Because we're always trying to see everything behind the veil but can never possibly. Yeats, being everyone's favorite Golden Dawn member, and a true inspiration to me, seems to have been someone who has achieved crossing the veil. It was a little line to give him a nod. 

LISA MARIE BASILE: What does Theia mean to you?

DALLAS ATHENT: Theia Mania is a Platonic theory about how people who are experiencing horrible things, like heartbreak, are brought closer to the divine in those moments, and that's why we make great art. That state is really what the book is about, along with the dualities of being mortal and immoral, and trying to leave a mark on the world. That's how it got its title.

RELATED: 2 Poetry Books By Women to Read This Summer

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INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST MARIA PAVLOVSKA

LISA MARIE BASILE: Your pictures evoke chaos, but they seem finely, painstakingly deliberate. I'd love to learn about how you approached these works for this book. 

MARIA PAVLOVSKA: There is a series of 30 drawings, which was one piece related to each other from the first one to the 30th. Altogether it is one story.  They are not meant to be viewed individually, but as a collection. They were originally conceived as part of a show "Black and White Diaries," which included also large canvasses. I wanted to show, as I always do, the progression from drawing to painting. 

LISA MARIE BASILE: Something I realized about this book is that there really is a balance between the good/bad or holy/not holy polarity. In your work, I sense that you contributed in a big way to that feeling. I find it very hard to strike a balance; how do you, as an artist, find that median? 

MARIA PAVLOVSKA: My work translates topics of choice into pictorial language that demonstrate a quietly powerful eloquence. My drawings and paintings reflect painting as a battlefield, where light and darkness fight and the result is unpredictable.

One sees the lightning bolts of ideas at work, as they are being worked out. That is the balance I look for. This sort of simultaneous image /process / results in a dialectic that lies frozen in space, stimulating the viewer to actively participate in the image creation themselves by way of investigation, inviting myriad readings within a given theme.

LISA MARIE BASILE: You're from Macedonia. What about the culture inspires your work? Is there something you're bringing to your work — and Dallas' poetry — that is related to Macedonia in some way?

MARIA PAVLOVSKA: My inspiration does not specifically reflect my Macedonian heritage. I draw inspiration from who I am and how I see the world, in me and around me, and this is more of a global perspective. The people that see my work, whether they are in Berlin, Vienna, Belgrade, Paris or NYC derive this universal feeling from the art as unique. 

LISA MARIE BASILE: What does Theia mean to you? Who is she in your work?

MARIA PAVLOVSKA: In my work, the contrast between light and dark, shadow and brightness, is evident. Theia, the Titaness, has several distinctions: brightness, uprightness, belief. Theia is a good omen. 

LISA MARIE BASILE: Each of the works in this book feel like they're unraveling to some sort of secret that I finally learn. Can you tell me a secret?

MARIA PAVLOVSKA: As the viewer can notice, there is a lot of writing in my work. You cannot really make out the words or read it, as it's not a poem or a thought that needs to be read. I need to write inside during my work as the thoughts are coming from me, and i'ts part of the composition. In the end it is part of the piece. So in that sense, it is a kind of secret (obvious secret). 

LISA MARIE BASILE: How do you make art from literature, like this? Is it a translation? Or a collaboration?

MARIA PAVLOVSKA: It is a collaboration as Dallas in one of her visits to the studio noticed the drawings realizing that they relate to her poems, and they seem to compliment each other. The drawings already existed, they were not created for the book, but, they seemed to fit with her poems perfectly (what I draw and explain with the lines, she writes and explains with words). We commented that my work would work well with her poems and that we could create this remarkable, new book Theia Mania.

Note: The images above were part of Pavlovska's Black & White Diaries concept. They were developed in a two-month residency studio Pavlovska won in 2014 at Cite Des Arts in Paris. The works were displayed at DRAWING ROOMS Gallery in New York City at the group show "Automatic - Systematic" in May 2014 and then shown at MANA CONTEMPORARY Open House in January 2015.

RELATED: 6 Incredible Pieces of Art We Saw at Mana Contemporary’s Open House

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Dallas Athent is an art reviewer for At Large Magazine, a board member of Nomadic Press and the editor of the short story collection, Bushwick Nightz. Her writing has appeared in Buzzfeed Community, PACKET Bi-Weekly, PANK Magazine, VIDA Reports from the Field, BUST Magazine, Yes Poetry & more.  She has been an editor for Bushwick Daily and Luna Luna Magazine. Her work has been profiled in Bedford + Bowery of New York Magazine, Brooklyn Based, Brooklyn Magazine, Papermag among others. 

Maria Pavlovska was born in Skopje, Macedonia (Former Yugoslavia) in 1975. BA and MA she receved at the Faculty of Fine Art in Skopje, Macedonia. Her work has been featured around the globe in over 28 solo shows and more than 100 group international exhibitions including Art Basel Miami, The Kunsthalle-Vienna and Kunsthalle-Krems (Austria), Gallery Lang (Vienna), Cite Internationale des Arts, The Dock (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art, The National Gallery, Museum of the City - Skopje (Macedonia), City House in Nurnberg (Germany), Station Gallery, Gallery MC, The Open Space Gallery, Citibank (New York), FLA Gallery (Connecticut), Viota Gallery (San Juan - Puerto Rico), Prima Center (Berlin), MANA Contemporary and Drawing Rooms (New Jersey). Her work is held in private and public collections worldwide, including embassies, museums, galleries and libraries.

Interview with The Love Witch's Anna Biller: "I like to construct an alternate reality with cinema"

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

When I watched The Love Witch for the first time, I was fucking floored. Here was this aesthetically gorgeous, feminist, totally nuanced, witchcraft-focused, super kitschy, sexual, glamorous, dark piece of cinema — directed by a woman.

Before I watched it, I realized most people buzzing about it on social media had nothing but absolute praise for it. It's not like any film I've ever seen — and it requires a viewer to let go and just fall into its beauty and the binaries it presents around feminism and patriarchal brainwash. I also felt it was high-time a movie deal with witchcraft in a way that didn't involve overtly goth dress and changing hair colors for fun (looking at you, The Craft), wiggling noses, or inaccurate mixups with Satanist ideologies.

I also know that the director Anna Biller (who is also the production designer, editor, producer, composer, and costume designer), took her time to study witchcraft, which makes it so delicious. I was honored to be able to speak with Anna Biller — about how much I love her work and the nuances found in it. And please read Luna Luna's review of the film here.

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Lisa Marie Basile: What drew me to The Love Witch was the fact that it was about a witch, of course, but also the fact that you so unapologetically used glamor and aesthetic as its own character. How do you think its unique look enhances the way the viewer emotionally reacts to the film? 

Audiences respond to cinematic images very strongly, no matter what those images are. What’s strange about many movies today is how hard they try to seem unmediated — undesigned, unlit, as if the actors are just “there” and it’s all real, like makeup that takes an hour to put on to make it look as though you’re not wearing any makeup. But these are all choices. Deciding not to have glamour in your movie, not to have aesthetics look like aesthetics – that’s a choice too. I love glamour, so I use it. It’s a personal choice. It’s what I like to see on the screen. But in the kind of lighting I like, it’s not only people that are glamorous. Objects are glamorous too — chairs, mirrors, stairways, gardens. Beautiful lighting and design does produce heightened emotions. It also enhances the story because the audience is being told what to focus on through what is treated with the best shots and lighting.

Lisa Marie Basile: The Love Witch is interesting in that it can be (I think, very wrongfully) passed off as anti-feminist when viewed under the wrong lens. Obviously, this film is all about subversion. With so many people talking about the Bechdel test (which this film passes!) for film, how do you feel about it?

Anna Biller: If think if people are seeing the film as anti-feminist, then they’re either confused about what feminism is or they’re not seeing the film at all. The entire content of the film is about a woman’s life being destroyed by being made into a sex object within a patriarchal system. 

Lisa Marie Basile: I know you asked people to stop saying the acting is 'wooden' and you asked people not to assume it takes place in the 1960s. Can you tell me a little about the way you approached the film and why you made these choices? 

Anna Biller: I made the choices I made for the same reason anyone makes choices for their film: because they fit the story I was trying to tell, and because of my own sense of aesthetics. As for the acting, it’s good acting done by trained classical actors.

Lisa Marie Basile: What do you think of people who criticize the film for being filled with beautiful girls for the most part? From feminists I know who loved and saw the film, a few (of course, not all) said that was one element that did bug them.

I'm wondering if that was more than a typical silverscreen-casting call — and more an explicit attempt at capturing some of that narcissism and female sexual power you're exploring? 

What’s wrong with beautiful girls? What’s antifeminist about that, unless feminists actually buy into a sexist stereotype that only unattractive women can be feminists? That’s really shocking to me. I love to look at beautiful women on the screen. It has nothing to do with catering to what men like and want to see. Also, a very high proportion of working actresses are attractive. Many directors don’t have their beautiful actresses wear a lot of makeup or dress in cute clothes. Does that make those directors more feminist-friendly?

Shouldn’t people look at the text, and not at what the actresses look like and what they are wearing? What kinds of messages are women sending when they become obsessed about the appearance of women on the screen rather than focusing on the complex characters they are portraying? Also, what do these objectors think of the character of Trish? She is Elaine’s foil, a woman who does not base her value on her looks. And Elaine, the one who is obsessed with her looks, ends up being the one whose values are questioned in the movie. That’s why I say that if people think the film is anti-feminist, they’re not following the narrative.

But as I said earlier, I do love glamour, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I am deliberately trying to bring back dignity and pleasure to glamour, which is something that used to give women a great deal of pleasure before they started having to feel guilty about it. It’s actually a political stance. It’s about not being ashamed of being a woman and looking feminine, and about not privileging a male or genderless mode of self-presentation as being better. It’s not better or worse, it’s just another choice. If we are truly liberated, we should be able to take pleasure in any mode of self-presentation we choose, and we should absolutely not have to apologize or feel ashamed for being born with a good bone structure!

But as I said earlier, I do love glamour, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I am deliberately trying to bring back dignity and pleasure to glamour, which is something that used to give women a great deal of pleasure before they started having to feel guilty about it.

Lisa Marie Basile: I recently wrote an article about witchcraft as self-care — and part of that reasoning is that people are finally coming to understand that it's not just hocus-pocus, that it's not only real, but that there can be a feminist, empowering element to it. Your film explores both ends of the spectrum. The magic and feminism — the tampon soaked in urine and the body as power, but also the desperate need for male approval and love through the Craft. How did you approach that binary, and why was it important to you to explore both? 

Elaine’s need for respect and love is a primary human need, especially for people who were raised without love. What I have found is that women often turn to witchcraft to find personal power, which is how Elaine came to it. But she also came to it out of desperation, which is always a bad way to approach any kind of religion.

Lisa Marie Basile: I felt that The Love Witch had this Lynchian quality — there were plenty of scenes that had an eerie, uncomfortable undertone. A disconnect from reality, perhaps? It slowly creeps under your skin. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Lynch and your filmmaking inspirations in general. 

I’m actually interested in reality much more than I’m interested in disconnecting from it, although I like to construct an alternate reality with cinema. I’ve often been compared to Lynch, but I think he is trying to point out the weird in the everyday, and I am more trying to point out the mythic in the everyday. But I do agree that my work can be eerie.

I think the eeriness comes from the mix of strong, sincere emotions and heightened visuals, along with a slight sense of detachment from the whole thing. When I’m making a film I almost feel as if I am dead, I am that much in a trance. So I am looking down at the whole thing from a great height as if it has nothing to do with me, and I am just a spirit medium teasing the film out of the ether, but it’s based on all the things that happened to me in life and mediated magically through the media of script, acting, lighting, film, and editing. 

Elaine’s need for respect and love is a primary human need, especially for people who were raised without love.

Lisa Marie Basile: I respect so much that your film explains witchcraft as a way to manifest intent. I know you studied witchcraft when making this film. Have you thought that previous films showcased witchcraft incorrectly, as something different?

Witchcraft as a way of manifesting intent comes from modern Wicca and from Aleister Crowley. It’s how real practicing witches think of witchcraft. I’ve rarely seen any film that deals with witchcraft the way it’s actually practiced, except maybe the original version of The Wicker Man.

Lisa Marie Basile: [READERS BEWARE: SPOILER ALERT]

When Elaine kills Griff (and when Wayne dies), it is unclear to me how Elaine feels. I struggle with this a lot — and I've watched it a few times. Maybe that's because Elaine herself is both dark and light ("you have two selves," says Wayne). Is she capable of feeling loss? Is she mourning these men's imperfections and rejections?

I think that when Wayne dies, she is very sad. But it’s not the type of sad one usually feels when mourning a death; it’s more the type of sad when you’ve broken your new toy, and now you are bored because you have nothing to play with. So it’s “narcissistic sad.” When Griff dies she’s not sad — she’s more relieved. Now she’s done away with the obstacle of the real man who argues with her and refuses to tell her he loves her, and she instead has the imaginary man, who says he loves her, marries her, and carries her away on a white unicorn. So at this point she has completely lost touch with reality.

Lisa Marie Basile: I've heard a lot of comparisons between Elaine and Lana Del Rey, which is interesting (I LOVE them both) — and between The Love Witch and Lana Del Rey's sensibilities. What do you think?

I don’t know. They’re both pretty girls with long brown hair who dress ‘60s. It’s a pretty superficial comparison. I like Lana’s look and aesthetic a lot, though. 

BUY/WATCH THE LOVE WITCH ON AMAZON OR HERE.

Elaine, a beautiful young witch, is determined to find a man to love her. In her gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, and then picks up men and seduces them.

Support Stigma Fighters: In Conversation About Mental Health Support With Sarah Fader

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Stigma Fighters is a mental health non-profit organization dedicated to helping real people living with mental illness. Stigma Fighters has been featured on Good Day New York, Psychology Today, Women’s Health Magazine, and The Washington Post. You can support the current anthology by donating here. 

LMB: What I love the most about your work with Stigma Fighters is not only that you're pushing for awareness in general, you're pushing for awareness in the everyday. I think that's where the conversation slips through the cracks: the high-functioning person with anxiety, the role model or public figure with panic disorder, the happy-go-lucky people-person with quiet depression. This is what I am so thankful for — because, as a public-facing person, I am always wondering when and if my cracks with show, and what will happen if they do. How did you approach this goal? What message do you want to tell?

SARAH FADER: I can relate to the high-functioning person from personal experience. I grew up in the 90’s when it was shameful to speak candidly about living with depression or anxiety, both of which I experienced on a chronic basis since age 15. I became adept at hiding my illnesses, and I was an excellent actress. This continued into adulthood, and I was hyper-fixated on other people being able to tell if I was "normal." I wanted to call attention to this type of situation in particular because it's one that people don't speak about often.

We are surrounded by people who have mental health issues, but whether or not they speak about them openly is debatable. That is one of the main reasons I started Stigma Fighters is to provide an open forum for people who have been dying to speak their truth about living with mental illness but haven't found the right area to do so. Now people who have a variety of mental illnesses have a place to tell their stories. Whether you are living with Borderline Personality Disorder or Panic Disorder, Stigma Fighters is here for you.

LMB: Can you talk a little about the history of building SF? It seems like a huge undertaking!

SARAH FADER:  Stigma Fighters began as a blog series. I reached out to people in the blogging community who I knew were open about living with mental illness and I invited them to share their stories on www.stigmafighters.com. It grew and grew and eventually it was a burgeoning mental health community.

One day, my life changed for the better when I met Allie Burke, who became my business partner. Allie lives with paranoid schizophrenia, but she is so much more than her illness. She is a best-selling author and writes a column for Psychology Today. She has been featured in Women's Health Magazine and runs The OCH Literary Society. Allie and I took Stigma Fighters from being a blog and transformed it into a 501C3 non-profit organization. My inside joke with Allie is that my anxiety loves her paranoia. I adore her and with her leadership and my tenacity we were able to make Stigma Fihters what it is today. We were featured on the front page of The Washington Post! 

LMB: What will the anthology feature? How can people support it and your organization? 

SARAH FADER: The third volume of The Stigma Fighters Anthology features stories from people living with a variety of mental illnesses. It tells the stories of people who have been continually silenced by our society. I am fortunate to be able to unify so many voices into a volume of text. I want to tell the stories of people who have been told (in one way or another) that they do not matter. Society tells people with mental illness that we are burdens, that we are people to "put up with," and that we shouldn't speak about our challenges. These are all falsehoods and I want to make sure we debunk these statements simply by telling our stories.

LMB: What would you say to the person who may want to contribute to SF by sharing their story, but might be afraid?

SARAH FADER: First I would say, you can tell your story anonymously if you are not ready to share it with your name on it. If you want your name attached to your words, I encourage you to speak your truth. You don't know how many people you are reaching by telling your story. Think about the person who is suffering from depression right now who could benefit from knowing that she is not alone. Mental illness can be inherently isolating. When you open up about your experience, you give hope to people who are yearning for it.

LMB: How can we, in the everyday world, create an environment that is compassionate and kind to those around us (who we either may or may not know are living with mental illness)?

SARAH FADER: We need to speak openly about mental illness period. It's important to combat against the shame associated with having any sort of mental illness. You are a human being first and foremost with feelings and a soul. You have a right to your story and no one can take that away from you. The more we speak openly about mental illness, the more normalized it becomes in society. Next, people who are listening to a friend or loved one who has a mental illness, truly hear what they are telling you.

Maybe you've never experienced bipolar disorder, that doesn't mean you can't be empathetic toward a friend who has it. Lastly, empower the person who has mental illness to know that they CAN when they think they CAN'T. When I say that they can, I mean that sometimes knowing you can means asking for help. Simon and Garfunkle claimed that they were both a rock and an island, but I disagree with that. We are not islands, we are people and we need to ask others for help sometimes.

Want to fight against the stigma? Donate here.

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Sarah Fader is the CEO and Founder of Stigma Fighters, a non-profit organization that encourages individuals with mental illness to share their personal stories. She has been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Quartz, Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, HuffPost Live, and Good Day New York. Sarah is a native New Yorker who enjoys naps, talking to strangers, and caring for her two small humans and two average-sized cats. Like six million other Americans, Sarah lives with panic disorder. Through Stigma Fighters, Sarah hopes to change the world, one mental health stigma at a time.

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine and moderator of its digital community. Her work has appeared in The Establishment, Bustle, Bust, Hello Giggles, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping and Refinery 29, among other sites. She is the author of Apocryphal (Noctuary Press), war/lock (Hyacinth Girl Press), Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York) and Triste (Dancing Girl Press). Her work can be found in PANK, the Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, The Huffington Post, Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, The Atlas Review, and the Ampersand Review, among others. She has taught or spoken at Brooklyn Brainery, Columbia University, New York University and Emerson College. Lisa Marie Basile holds an MFA from The New School. She is an advocate for foster youth. @lisamariebasile

Devin Kelly on His New Book 'Blood on Blood' & Being Personal

BY JOANNA C. VALENTE

This is going to be a big year for Devin Kelly, because he has two books coming out in relative proximity. His book "Blood on Blood" is forthcoming from Unknown Press this year, while his other collection, "In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen," is coming out from ELJ Publications in 2017. 

"Blood on Blood" is a gorgeous tale of growing up in a house of silence--and how that affects personhood, adulthood, and brotherhood. Having heard Devin read his poems, I can say he has a uniquely perceptive voice. 

I was thrilled to be able to speak with Devin about this forthcoming collection below:

JV: This collection is clearly very personal, as it details your relationship with your brother. Was it difficult to write about? Do you write personally in general?

DK: Most everything I write is personal in nature, often deeply. I’m grateful to be able to separate the act of writing work from the risks writing such work entails--you know, like how it will be perceived by loved ones. My brother and I were raised for the latter part of our childhood by just our father, and none of us really talked at all about anything. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary because that’s just the way it was, and I don’t think I realized until later the extent to which our silence could be made into something transcendent through language.

Our life was mundane, but language has the potential to heighten all of that, make the smallest piece-of-shit moments into something sorrowful, joyful, whatever. So no, it wasn’t difficult to access those memories--I think I’ve gone back into them so many times that the past has become a pliant thing, and it’s fun in a way to throw different kinds of light on it and see what happens – what shines in a new way, what dies out, what comes back.

In the end, there’s few things we know for certain. One is that time runs out. The other is that there are people with whom we share blood. No matter how much or little we talk, there’s no one I’ll ever feel closer to than my father and my brother. I can make myself well up when I think of them. I take our collective story very seriously because so much of what runs through me runs through them. I believe very firmly that our story is a debt and a reward we are each accountable for, and my hope is that such a feeling comes through.

 How do you know when a poem is done?

Oy, I don’t know. Is it bad if I just say something like when it feels done? It’s hard to say. I very much do get a feeling. A heaviness. A deepening. This is such a subjective and interesting question, because I think we all perceive the act of writing differently. I know we do. For me, writing a poem is an act of accrual. I’m trying to write out a feeling, a story, through lines, and the hope is that it will allow a reader to move through my headspace, reach that same feeling. I think (and this is my personal take) that such a moment happens, like I mentioned, with accrual, a piling-on, however tangential. It’s why I love the word and. This and this and this and this. It’s fun.

Some poets prefer minimalism. Some poets prefer cutting excess. All of these approaches can exist. That’s the beauty of poetry, it’s a super generous art. I don’t like when people approach it with complete certainty, that this must be the way. When I finish a poem and look back at it, I know there’s stuff I could cut, but there’s also the thought that everything seems necessary, and I feel a need to honor that. That the roughage is part of the art. That if a poem is approximating some sort of feeling, then there needs to be a little bit of detritus, the stuff of headspace and doubt.

And I know people who’d disagree with that, and that’s cool. And it doesn’t mean I approach a poem lazily--for every ten lines that made this new book, there’s 10, 20, 30 lines that didn’t--poems I started that I knew weren’t honest, or poems I finished that didn’t work the way I wanted. For me, editing is starting anew with failure in mind.

What I love about poetry is that this process can exist alongside so many others. But in the end, the poem you’re trying to write can only be that--the poem you’re trying to write. It can’t be someone else’s. It has to be yours. But within that is the fodder of so much you’ve read, you’ve loved, you’ve hated.

What were you listening to and reading and watching while writing this?

Well, as far as listening, obviously Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Also Sharon Van Etten, Sufjan Stevens, Tallest Man on Earth, This Will Destroy You, Pinegrove, Modern Baseball, Advance Base. And a lot of the jazz my roommate puts on--Chet Baker and Thelonius Monk and Sonny Rollins especially.

Here are some books I read throughout the process: Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Janice Lee’s The Sky Isn’t Blue, Jamaal May’s The Big Book of Exit Strategies, a bunch of James Wright, a bunch of Larry Levis, a bunch of Yusef Komunyakaa, Jim Harrison’s Just Before Dark, essays by Eula Biss and Lia Purpura.

I don’t know the ways in which all of these books influenced me, but, you know, they did or didn’t but probably did.

Also, Terrence Malick’s Badlands. Great movie. My girlfriend and I watched "Zootopia." I sometimes need to watch "Seinfeld" to help me fall asleep. None of this is really relevant. So, yeah. Go figure.

How do you know when to break a line?

Some combination of intuition, purposeful mistake making, wordplay, more mistakes, and not knowing and never-being-able-to-know what the fuck I’m doing.

What part of you writes your poems? What are your obsessions?

I obsess about so much, really. I'm terribly self conscious, and I'm terrified about the ways in which we each view the world - how much such views differ, and if my worldview has any place here. Not too long ago, I thought I was right about everything, and that gave me permission to feel victimized by the world when things didn't go my way, or when other people didn't, either. But, I mean, most of life is not knowing. We are surrounded far more by what we do not know than what we do, and this is very much what draws me to a poem.

There's so much anxiety involved with being alive, and I believe in poetry as a kind of stilling. It's the only way I can really still myself. A poem is a place where binaries don't need to exist. Right versus wrong, love versus hate. A poem can get at the infinitely small gray space where those kinds of binaries meet. I think that's really cool. And, I mean, poetry or not, in the end my hope is that we all sort of dwell in the gray space, the nuance of things. Just a huddled mass of fear and anxiety and embarrassment trying to figure shit out.

That's what a poem is. It's rough. I've made a lot of mistakes in life. That's what a poem is. Never perfect. You live in it, you suffer for it, you keep trying. And that takes empathy. And empathy understands that you’re never going to be right all the time. And knowing that you’re never going to be right all the time but still wanting to live in this mess means you’re okay with listening. And listening involves sound and breath and stillness and language. And bam, there you go, poetry. 

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Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She has lead workshops at Brooklyn Poets.

Devin Kelly earned his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a co-host of the Dead Rabbits Reading Series in Manhattan. His collaborative chapbook with Melissa Smyth, This Cup of Absence, is forthcoming from Anchor & Plume Press. His work has appeared in Drunken Boat, Gigantic Sequins, Lines & Stars, Post Road, The Millions, and more, and he's been nominated for both the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. He works a college advisor for high schoolers in Queens, teaches English at Bronx Community College, and lives in Harlem. You can find him on twitter @themoneyiowe.