is a micro-press of sorts; founded and run by native Brooklynites, it produces small notebooks, crafted by hand from paper, old cassette tapes from your favorite ’80s and ’90s bands, and the album art and liner notes they came packaged in. As part of the mission of TheThe’s Infoxicated Corner is to promote indie art of all kinds (and to emphasize the confluence among literature, creative writing, and other types of art and creativity), I asked Andrew Jung, one of the co-founders of this small arts business to tell us a little bit about the genesis of their press and the creation of their handbound notebooks.

This is my Cassetsy notebook, which I love. I told them to surprise me with whatever album they thought best, and they chose Salt N’ Pepa’s Blacks’ Magic, from 1990.

 

Watch Cassetsy co-creator Andrew Jung handcraft one of their Coptic-bound notebooks .
(Video credit: Jason Pierre)

 

Q&A
Fox Frazier-Foley: Excited to learn about the genesis of Cassetsy! Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background? Who are you? What is Cassetsy Notebooks?
Andrew Jung: My name is Andrew, and I’m one of the co-founders of . We upcycle old cassette tapes and transform them into notebooks. Outside of making these notebooks, I’m an editor for an academic press. But my dream is wage a one-man war against street crime.

F³: I believe in all of those occupations. What gave you the idea to start making notebooks from cassette tapes?
AJ: My friend from Los Angeles was visiting me in New York City. She gave me an amazing sketchbook that she made herself. Since I was so interested, she provided me with instructional videos on (where else?) YouTube. That’s where I found the YouTuber SeaLemon, who has amazing videos on all types of arts & crafts. I started to make cassette tape notebooks for friends, and that’s how I got started.

F³: How did you all choose your name?
AJ: My partner and I combined cassette + Etsy. We thought it was clever. There was already a “CassEtsy” on Etsy, so we slapped on “Notebooks” at the end to distinguish ourselves. If we had a flooring company, it would be called Floor d’Oeurves. If we had a tattoo shop, it’d be Tattoouille. And our Chinese bakery would be Bao Zedong.

F³: That’s amazing. I feel a little sad that the rest of the interview can’t just be a list of what you’d title different specialty businesses. But, rather than succumb entirely to that sorrow, I feel compelled to say: I think these notebooks are a really cool example of sustainability and eco-friendliness being expressed in a creative way that sparks more creativity (for the writers who use them)! Can you talk a little bit about your views on sustainability, or what your thoughts are on how to help care for/protect our planet? Do you use recycled paper in the notebooks, or do you foresee Cassetsy doing that in the future?
AJ:  Sustainability and eco-friendliness are certainly important to us. My first (and personal) notebook is actually made from recycled paper. CassEtsy Notebooks experiments with using different types of papers – such as 25% cotton, 28-lbs laser print, drawing paper, watercolor paper, etc. We currently use waxed Irish-linen threads, but have made a few notebooks with hemp thread. Our goal is to eventually transition completely to hemp or bamboo threads & paper for all our notebooks.

F³: Do you have any favorite notebook you’ve made, or one you’ve kept for yourself?
AJ: I don’t have a particular favorite notebook, but it is quite satisfying finding a cassette tape from my youth. We purchase all our cassette tapes from local NYC shops, such as thrift stores, record shops (big shout out to Rainbow Music in the East Village!), and garage sales. Most of the fun is digging through the crates.

F³: Yeah, that feeling of (re-)discovering, or the feeling of having-found-something is one of my favorite things in life. Probably like lots of people, I associate that feeling not just with record stores, but also with used book stores. What authors give you that feeling? Who are your favorites? Or favorite books?
AJ: Grant Morrison is one of my favorite writers. His primary medium is comic books, and he’s written a number of classics – Arkham Asylum, The Invisibles, All-Star Superman, Doom Patrol, and New X-Men.
The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong, is one of my favorite books. The writing is very creative and eloquent. Plus, Gertrude Stein is a character in the story!
And Dune, by Frank Herbert, is a classic. But watch the 1984 film at your own peril.

F³: Since the Infoxicated  Corner is all about the confluence of different types of art and creativity, and since your notebooks are so heavily music-inspired, it seems appropriate to ask what you like to listen to. Who are your favorite bands/musicians?
AJ: Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Blackstar; Wu Tang Clan; Sinead O’Connor.

F³: Do you think that Cassetsy Notebooks will eventually branch out to offer other products? Or, if not, do you see yourself doing anything else in the publishing/micropress/indie-lit vein? Making books in any other capacity?
AJ: My next project will be starting an independent press focused on science fiction & speculative fiction by underrepresented writers, i.e. people of color, women, LGBTQI, non-Western, etc. We’re at an inchoate stage at the moment, but have significant plans for a late-2015 launch.

F³: That sounds incredibly exciting! We may have to invite you back to hear more about it once you’ve got it off the ground. In the meantime, is there anything else you want to talk about that I haven’t asked you yet?
AJ: I want to thank Poetry Blog for the great work they’re doing.

F³: Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing the Cassetsy Notebooks story with us, Andrew!

Andrew Jung: Brooklyn poet, wordsmith, editor, Cassesty co-founder, and aspiring street-crime vigilante/warrior
Twitter:

Hear the audio version of this poem .

 

 

 

 

 

Hear the audio version of this poem .

 

 

 

Hear the audio version of this poem .

 

 

 

Meg Cowen writes, paints on canvas and builds furniture in her old New Hampshire farmhouse. Some of her recent work appears in PANK, Whiskey Island, Passages North and interrupture. She edits Pith, a journal of experimental writing, and lives online at www.megcowen.com.

 

 

 

True Ugliness: Cate Marvin’s Oracle
by KT Billey

People are fucked up and funny, and so is the world. This is a fact that Oracle (Norton, 2015), Cate Marvin’s third and most recent collection of poems, bestows upon us, and it’s clear from the get-go that anyone looking for soothsaying better look elsewhere.

Or consider what soothsaying means. The very first line throws us into a sharp, observant speaker who sees and understands being seen:

 

As the leering boss poised by a photocopier…

 

There is no false advertising in this book’s truth-promise title, nor are these poems riddles. “On the Ineptitude of Certain Hurricanes,” the introductory poem, sets a scene for many readers—likely the east coast, a couple years ago, but if not in a particular time and place, surely in a post-natural disaster mood. A bit of dread and relief, perhaps, but mostly attitude. This human dares to critique the performance of nature, which also assumes that Hurricanes have a function—can we be inept without a set purpose? This kind of quick-thinking spurs the entire collection, propelling us forward with a critical, perceptive wit that doesn’t care if we get it or agree.

In a book full of relationships—and their slicing and dicing—that not-caring is a testament to Marvin’s articulate skill. High school, divorce, patriarchy, classism, love, motherhood—these poems are full of boyfriends and terrible encounters, yet there is a remove at work, and a knack for choosing details that put the interpretation and consequences in our hands. Over and over, we are presented not with opinions but practical matters of fact:

 

Take some sleeping pills, spare your mother the blood grief.

 

…an egg chipped at the edge

of a bowl, so that when I spill out all saffron, slide
to the corner bodega to buy a forty, no one but me
notices me, for I am crawling beneath the window…

 

…I don’t drink tea,
but I can brew it…

 

He was suckled with corn syrup instead of breast milk.
I think of him at the polls.

 

These poems are as harsh and political as titles like “High School as a Dead Girl,” “The Hamptons,” and “Dead Girl Gang Bang” would make us hope, but there is no soapbox. The point is not to be political, but to present moments. The poems tug on our limbs and scraps and we feel it because we’ve experienced our own versions of their dynamics. Emotional ties, cities, inescapable selves—all that is ill-advised and inevitable.

Many of these moments are gendered phenomena, things that happen to daughters, mothers, girls, and women who are taught to think of themselves as girls for as long as possible. Yet there is a deft lack of direct call-out. The tone isn’t indignant, it’s a chuckle in the dark corner of a bar, and all the more condemning.

It’s tough reading at times. The poems evoke disgust not at the world or its particular outrages, but at the general acceptance of them. They say look, this is the way things are—shit happens. There is a daughter splayed in a Buick this very second, death threats are part of the deal. This is why Marvin’s humour is so crucial and effective—it keeps us grinning, and shows to us how to endure. Humor, and obstinancy. The stubborn insistence to keep living, to spend time with daughters and sidewalks and wine. Failing to do so would be letting them win, those who would be villians if they knew what was wrong, but also because that’s life. Shades of blue and red recur in bars and cop cars, calling to mind those early 3D glasses. Appropriate enough, given the vivid structures—high school shop class, hotel rooms, hospitals—these poems lead us through, forcing us to see what we might not want to name. Because

…If you can’t avoid being invaded, why not
extend an invitation to your destoyer?

There is awareness and honesty, an owning up, but also owning, period.

Not that there is a lack of romance. The surroundings are harsh, but not gratuitously so, and Marvin presents them in all their mundane glory. We see the space between fantasy and reality, the acid rain above the skyline. The flimsy lack of happily ever after isn’t a loss, but there is a reckoning, an assessment of fairy tale tropes that puts its tongue in our collective cheek with titles like “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” and closures like:

 

…I failed to admit the beach
here is littered with syringes. This is my good-bye.
I wish I lived in a little house in the sea. But I do.

The book is also a lesson in sonics and a mixing syntax that let sound and sense association carry it, and us, along.

…I am no friend. According to them. Accordion, the
child pulls its sitting wind between its opposite
handles…

 

Descriptions of trash are elegantly exact. Lyricism is undercut by blunt vernaculars, and the combination is both effective and fun to read.

 

…You passed out from the fumes.
Now I’m thigh-deep and slick, no, sick in the pit
of her religion. She traded your eyes in for the last
Payday (stale) the vending machine had to offer.

 

I wouldn’t call this book morbid. Morbid is “an unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects” but that is one of the greatest questions that Marvin raises: Is it healthier to turn a blind eye? Are death and disease, both physical and social, better served by ignorance? Of course not, Oracle says. If it bothers us, it’s because she’s onto something. These poems hold our squeamishness up to the light, and nothing is off limits. Not even our “Poetry Machines.” Hallelujah.

As the book zeroes in there is the sense of advice being passed down, particularly to girls. The stellar final poem “Next of Kin” does much with the idea of inheritance. Rather than bemoaning the shitty world we eventually deliver to our children, this poem is an empowerment of the next. Armed with Marvin’s frank approach to the state of affairs, the up-coming kid is capable. Not in spite of her girlishness—her plastic cookies and pink bibs—but because of it. Oracle is a thing that divines, so she know’s what’s up. She can spit you up anywhere, and will.

Read this book. It dares you.

 

 

moved from rural Alberta, Canada, to study poetry at Columbia University, where she is now a Teaching Fellow. Poems have appeared in CutBank, The New Orleans Review, Phantom Limb, Ghost Proposal, Prick of the Spindle, the sensation feelings journal, and H.O.W. Journal. Translations have appeared in Palabras Errantes. She is proud to be a Girls Write Now mentor.

Portrait of Thumbelina As A Poet

Like ducks, she moves in circles: old tattered lamentations, same
fears to excavate, this eternal wait for fingers other than her own
to hold open the book. A loss of faith in what the city knows. The
scent of the rickety lemons on the sidewalk, the rains from under
the streetlights,the palimpsests of the potholed sidewalks. Assurance
of scripted disobedience, the maroon ruptures in the city’s maps.

She writes the names of her other lovers on her wrists, her palms–
places from which her husband won’t be able to avert his eyes. In
this city where poems flow like snot, where poets infest both
homes and gutters like mosquitoes, she is just another housewife
striving to be a poet. Unable to tear apart her quilt of slumber, afraid
of severance. An incomplete rebellion, a collage of cliches: in loss

of new rhymes, rhythms, plot-lines. A pencil inside her freezer. An
over-abundance of stories in the catacombs she inhabits,and she
doesn’t know how to gather, collect and sift. The moon doesn’t stop
to shade its light in her rooms, walks right past into the alleyway.
When her room lights up, it does so with the glow of the tv-set:
the mundane ceremonies of accustomed discordances.

 

 

The First Real Fallout

A disagreement with my sister about what a book is:
the cacophony of harmoniums in the attic. It has rained last night,

the wood has grown. There are worms within the keys
and the fake ivories are coming off their glue.

On the tips of my fingers are specks of wood dust– crushed,
white cloud. A grackle-wing morning, and the neighborhood

is beginning to be owned by little girl voices. A light
like spiderweb over the houses, and the keys

are coming off on my palms. All little girls
are taught the same seven songs. The same notes,

and the papaya leaves outside are choking on them.
I know more than seven. I pump faster, pressing

on to the keys harder and harder. The keys come off
with every nudge of my fingers– bones from an untrodden

graveyard. I leash out a song from the box. True
that my sister had broken my harmonium before. Revenge

for disagreement over what behenchod means. But I
who know more than seven customary songs,

have something to teach my sister. And this is what
I tell her without my voice shaking.

A book is not a house. It is a graveyard.
A book is a graveyard which needs to be dug in. Periodically.

The bones retrieved and the dead nudged to talk. A book
is nothing but a conversation with the dead. Ghosts

do not know how to rest in peace. Neither do books. Sister
does not mind setting up a tent inside a graveyard. As is it,

she likes the company of anyone dead much better
than other little girls. Only the tent needs to be green,blue and black.

This is the first real fall-out we have. From that day on,
my sister hardly speaks to me.

 

 

[Home],

Mother says, is the shadow of an over-active quill. A silenced
​sun hangs over the neighborhood. Nazia Hassan

blares assurance from the next door uncle’s stereo. I repeat
​disco, disco, disco. Like a scratched record. My sister,

always and already alert about words, whose meanings
​she does not know, is reciting nashelee hain

raat, nashelee hain raat, nashelee hain raat. Home,
the sisters suspect, is their mother’s skeleton sculpted into walls.

 

 

Nandini Dhar is the author of the chapbook Lullabies Are Barbed Wire Nations (Two of Cups Press, 2015). Her poems have been published or forthcoming at Whiskey Island, Eleven Eleven, PANK, and elsewhere. She divides her time between Miami, Florida and Kolkata, India.

Letter One

Dear Continuum:

I got an issue of Poets and Writers in the mail yesterday. I enjoyed what I read, but it was not inspiring at all. It was realistic. It was honest about the uphill battle it is to get a book seen. I know the work of this all too well. But this letter is not about books, this is about voice and the love and armor you will need to have yours heard.

When I think about being a writer in 2015, being a writer with a Black woman’s voice— as Lucille Clifton said, “I am a black woman poet…and I sound like one”—with no agent, no powerful mentor opening doors, no financial support, no salary, no benefits, then I realize that this really is a crazy path. Deciding to be a writer was beautiful. Writing is beautiful. Deciding that my concerns, dreams, hopes, and voice are valid, and committing myself to putting my visions on paper has been a deeply healing experience. This work connects me to people I have never set my eyes on. However, being a writer in a country that does not support art and writing from the heart of my Black woman mama mouth is a struggle that sometimes leaves me speechless. (But the point is to exhaust me/us beyond words, isn’t it? So I rest up and speak on) Beloved, this landscape is actually more treacherous now than when I started 19 years ago. I don’t say this to discourage you, I say this because you need to know that you are embarking on the path of most resistance; if you plan to walk it, you need to study and you need to endure.

Listen, there is all sorts of color in academic conferences and departments now. Much of that writing is non-threatening and status quo. It’s the type of work that could have come from 18th-century nowhere. It’s work that no one in our communities or families could wrap around cold shoulders or grasp onto in desperate moments or even nod at in faint recognition. That, we are constantly being told, is poetry. That exsanguinated verse. But you and I both know poetry can be soulful, grounded, gravity-defying and irrepressible. If your poems walk picket lines, work in soup kitchens, gather dandelion leaves, sweat, jump rope, wear stilettos, shout, give birth, watch the phases of the moon, or know that it is appropriate to put flowers in the ocean on New Year’s Eve and pour liquor on the earth before anyone living takes a sip, then supposedly they are not poems. Supposedly you missed the memo on craft and your poems will be returned to sender. Save your postage. Honor your time.

Tap your cimarron blood, tap the defiant DNA that gives your hair such good posture. Find a community of poets dedicated to writing and walking and being liberation. Study Hughes, Baldwin, Hurston, Walker, Shange, Baraka, Hayden, Dumas, Bandele, Johnson, Girmay, Moore, Rux, Hammad, Rich, Clifton, Boyce-Taylor, Brooks, Madhubuti, Medina, Forche, Ya Salaam, Rojas, Rivera, Knight, Esteves, Kaliba, Simmons, Kaufman,Sanchez, Finney, Perdomo, Espada, Betts. This is your work and there are so many more to study; you will find them as you make your way. Read, write, edit and find a way–let the poems find their way–get those words read and heard. Find someone unbought to publish your stuff. Be really brave and publish the work yourself, but don’t stop there. Publish the poets around you who stand on the frontlines and refuse to bow down. Publish those mamas bringing their babies to readings, those poets whose works are in anthologies that they read in the food stamp office, those lettered poets who can’t make the rent, those poets with a day job who organize free workshops and salons, those poets who never lose their accents, the ones cast off in a spoken-word ghetto because they actually dare to connect with an audience. Publish all of them, who are all of us, who fight this fight because we are determined to keep the doors open for the next generation, and because we would go crazy without our tongues, without our pens braiding the strands of our thoughts into some type of beauty. Not pressing our voices flat. Flat to that white rageless whisper. Not doing that and paying a heavy price.
And so it is.

One,
Mariahadessa

 

 

Letter Thirteen

Dear Continuum:

I hope this card finds you in great health and strong spirits. Yes, there has been a whole lot going on lately, and I’m glad to see it too! It’s about time people went out into the streets to make their voices heard. It’s way overdue.

What have I been doing? Maybe I have been feeling more than doing this time around. After this last incident, I sat quietly for days trying to figure out what to do. Not just with my body or my words, but what to do with my rage. The rage I felt was so big it startled me. Flattened me even. I knew I couldn’t be as effective as I wanted to be in that state. So I sat quietly. I called friends. I went to see an art exhibit. I wrote “Black Lives Matter” in sidewalk chalk on the streets. You see, we’ve been in the streets before. I am not an old lady, but I’ve been protesting one thing or another since I was 16. My first protest was outside of a courtroom in Brooklyn, and since then I’ve been at marches to prevent invasions, end wars, demand an end to police brutality, stand in solidarity with the Zapatistas, and insist that the killers of our children, grandmothers, brothers and sisters and lovers at least be arrested for their crimes. And so, initially, I stayed still because history seemed to be repeating itself and I was wondering if being in the streets was going to achieve any goal whatsoever. I thought about Apartheid and the petitions I’d signed, and the products I refused to use or buy because the companies were invested in South Africa and thereby supporting apartheid. I thought about things I had not seen—like the bus boycott in Montgomery. I know pulling money out of the system is an extremely effective way to make a statement heard. I started studying the armed resistance in Mississippi. Members of my own family used arms to defend themselves against racists in the South when it was necessary, and I thought it was important to research how effective that strategy had been. But more than anything else, I thought about what art could do. And I saw what art could do. I was at a temporary loss for words but when I danced, I felt a lot better. When I sang, I felt a lot better. When I saw visual art, I felt a lot better. My friend Cheryl read me the poem “Power” by Audre Lorde and it helped dislodge something in me. But I was still thinking about my poetry. What could it do really do when 12 year olds are being shot down by police on playgrounds, and 28 year-olds are being killed “accidentally” in stairways, and children’s bodies are being left in the streets and no one is being held accountable? What the hell use is a poem then? I finally came to this: while poetry may not win the battle, it can move people to understand why the battle is necessary. It can help people decide to get involved.

I read a poem about rape to an audience of college students recently. During the Q&A a young man raised his hand and said that he had sat through a training on preventing sexual harassment and assault in the military, but it had not affected him the way the poem had. He said a poem I’d shared about a particular incident in Mississippi illuminated the devastation of racism. He said no seminar or training had shown him these things the way that the poems had. That is the power of art.

The other powerful thing about poetry is that it helps people to envision another world, a better one. And that is a huge gift when you’re in the midst of struggle or despair. Remember music and poetry helped soothe and strengthen people who were on the frontlines of struggles globally. Sometimes the poets and musicians were on the frontlines.

A lot of people share their poetry when these painful events unfold and that is understandable, but I think we have to be conscious of what we do with the art that comes from tragedy. If I can, I like to use art strategically to raise awareness about an issue and move people to action. Sometimes the actions are small ones like signing petitions or bigger ones like donating resources (time, money, skills) to relevant organizations. In some cases having readings to raise money for the families of the victims might be useful. We can also organize ourselves as artists and work collectively to support groups we believe in. It’s also important to me that the work I do be in the hands of people who can use it in practical ways. I’m excited when poems are used to facilitate discussions, or trainings, or healing sessions. When it comes to doing this work, it’s our job to know the difference between exploring tragedy in a useful way and exploiting it to bring attention to our own work and ourselves.
These are some of the reasons I sat and considered what I was going to do very carefully.

In the end, of course, I went out into the streets, and I signed online petitions, and I donated what I could where I could. I’ll find a way to make what I write useful. And I know you will too. Just make sure you take good care of yourself in the midst of all this. If you want to keep doing the work, you have to be as healthy and as centered as you possibly can be. We need you for the long haul. Be well!

Pa’lante.

Love,
Mariahadessa

 

 

Letter Seventeen

Dear Continuum:

I hope all is well. Forgive me for taking so long to write you. Between traveling, editing poems, finishing my next book, writing, teaching, being present for my daughters a lot of things get neglected. I miss staring at the sky, hanging out all night with friends, long phone conversations, dance classes and painting. I realize that I need to do all those things again. They feed me and my writing. I did tell you that our very lives are art, and I stand by that even if I don’t always exemplify it.

Art goes beyond our pens and paper. Art is our very way of thinking and breathing. I don’t have days or weeks of silence, but regular mental rest is critical for me. I go to my favorite restaurant every few weeks to get space to explore, wonder, and just be. Somewhere I read that “we are human beings not human doings.” Being can happen in unexpected places like an airport or a crowded subway. It’s where I can have access to my own thoughts; it’s unhurried space. My art—when it comes from a space of being—is deeper, more complex and layered than that which comes from a whirlwind.

Anyway, I can imagine the pressure you feel with your work and the options you’re weighing. Things are so different now, and if there weren’t others who inhabited that 90’s poetry space with me, I’d think I dreamt it all up. Back in the day no one in my circle– or its orbit– ever asked me where I got my MFA. No one. No one asked me what organization or institution I was affiliated with either. When I started sharing my work, poetry was about poetry, and community and not about pedigree. I miss that. It felt like every moment was an apprenticeship to word, to color, to struggle, to sound, to movement and ideas, and love; I learned to spend more time with elders. Be quiet. Listen. That’s where I think this writing thing really starts. Listen. Listen with your entire body and being.

So should you get an MFA or a PhD? Sure if you want to learn, and certainly if you want to teach. But there are many unemployed and underemployed folks out there with degrees. Nothing is guaranteed. And if you go that route, just remember to keep opening doors for the folks coming behind you.

I’ve seen some people treat poetry as a corporate ladder to climb. I’ve watched from the sidelines as people climb rungs made up of other poets’ backs. There at the top are the prizes, your name in lights, the book deals. I’ve seen it, and you probably see it too. There’s a whole lotta inside deals going on too. That is not the only way, but it’s the dominant way. You’ll know who operates by it. When they realize you can’t do anything for them, they back away quickly.

Remember, there is another way. It’s as ancient as we are. It won’t cost you your soul. It won’t alienate you from your Grandma. It might even make your work meaningful to her.

I got an MFA from a place no one really knows. I wanted to learn more about writing while being in the Bay Area. I wanted to have more options than I did with a Bachelor’s degree. I know people are making it work without advanced degrees, but I couldn’t. I know some folk who are making it work without any degrees at all. You ask what I’d do? I’d give myself space to decide what is true for me.

Everyone’s path is different, Continuum. Keep walking yours, and stay connected to your heart.

Love,
Mariahadessa

 

[Letter One originally appeared at the Her Kind section of the VIDA website, and appears here by the author’s kind permission.]

is the author of Karma’s Footsteps (flipped eye). She is the poetry editor of the literary magazine African Voices. Her poetry has been the subject of a short film “I Leave My Colors Everywhere” and it has been published in BOMB, Crab Orchard Review, North American Review, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, & Black Renaissance Noire. Tallie is also the mother of two wild, wonder-filled daughters. Her most recent book, , is now available from Grand Concourse Press.

Photo Credit: Dominique Sindayiganza

I asked the poet to talk with me a little bit about the genesis and refinement of her new book, , which is excerpted today at Poetry Blog. (And please see the end of the Q&A for a brief note from her publisher about his grassroots micropress, Grand Concourse!)

Fox Frazier-Foley: I really loved this book, and I’m so excited to talk with you about your process in creating it. Can you tell me a little bit about how you started the project? How did you come up with the character, the name, the gender or lack thereof?

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie: Only the first letter was my idea. I wrote it because I was angry about things I was seeing on the poetry scene among poets of color. Poetry seemed, to me, to have become about pedigree and careerism almost overnight. As a poet, I “wasn’t raised like that.”

I imagined what a poet who was just stepping into the arena might feel like. I thought about what obstacles they’d encounter simply by writing poems that were blatantly political/dealing with social justice, and so I wrote that first letter. It was published on the (now defunct) Her Kind section of the VIDA website.

I wrote two more letters to include in a talk on craft at Texas A&M International University. A student at my talk asked if I’d write more letters and create a book from them. I thought it was a great idea. I did have a lot more to share. So I did it.

Continuum is named so because s/he is part of a continuum dedicated to the tradition of weaving social justice, activism, and art. People do this in a variety of ways so I am not going to define what that looks like, but you feel it when it’s happening in someone’s work. Cultural workers can be of any gender so I didn’t want to assign Continuum a gender. I wanted any reader who identifies with Continuum to feel welcome into the text.

F³: How did you come to the structural concept for the book of writing letters? Do you consider them prose poems, or just prose?

MET: I think these letters are prose. There might be a line or two that contains poetry.
The essays are more poetic, I think.

F³: What was your favorite part of writing this book? What was the hardest part?

MET: My favorite part of writing the book was writing the book. That’s always the best part. Everything after that is a necessary chore. But getting this work publishable–and published– has been a community affair that has opened my heart and mind in new ways. That has been amazing. I am so grateful for the people who stepped in to read, edit, proofread, copyedit. The manuscript has transformed under the care of some beautiful, brilliant people.

This book is also an act of power. It was made outside of the white literary establishment and outside of the black literary establishment. No one gave us permission to do it. We simply dedicated ourselves to it and did it. That’s what Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Louis Reyes Rivera, Haki Madhubuti, Broadside Press, Kitchen Table Press, Shameless Hussy Press, Blind Beggar Press and many others encouraged us to do by example: have some ovaries! Don’t always go running to the establishment to get things done. Get your community together and do the work. And don’t become a new establishment in the process, just be a community engaged in the work.

And this book really has come forth because of a community. A student asked for it to be written. Timothy Prolific Jones read an early version of the manuscript from cover to cover, and gave me feedback. Bonafide Rojas agreed to publish it. Frank X Walker heard me read from it at The Watering Hole–an amazing writing retreat!–and said to me, out of earshot from anybody, “If you need money to publish this work, I’ve got you. We need this book.” I was in tears after that reading, partly because the support for this book was so strong. Shauna Morgan Kirlew, a wonderful poet, scholar, professor, and mother also took me to the side and said “If you need someone to edit this book, I’ll do it.” I cried again! Yes, I did. And I am not a person who gets emotional like that in public. Believe me.

All the way at the end, when I was totally burned out, my dear friend, the scholar Patricia Milanes, stepped in and did some more necessary editing and proofreading. She imbued this project with a grace it didn’t have before. Dominique Sindayiganza, my husband and one of the hardest working people I know, copyedited this book. I’ve worked in magazine publishing but once I saw him go to work, I truly understood what a gift a copy editor is. And what do these people get out of working with me and Bonafide? Nothing but thanks! That is all we have to offer this community of people who lovingly gathered around this project, and volunteered their eyes, time, skills, energy, and money.

F³: How did you find Grand Concourse Press as your publisher for this book? What was your experience like, working with them?

MET: In terms of finding a publisher, this was not a book I was willing to “shop.” I wanted a publisher who embodied the ideas of Continuum. My first choices were Moore Black Press and Grand Concourse Press and so I approached them about the project.

There were plenty of times I wanted to say to hell with this because I was tired, broke, sick, touring, writing other things, and feeling overwhelmed. At some point someone I cared for deeply told me the project was crazy. This is the truth. I had to work through all of that stuff and because of the community supporting me, I was able to and the book got done!

People who have read the book say they’ve been nourished and informed by it and I’m beyond thrilled about that. This book is my way of trying to share everything I’ve learned with anyone who wants or needs to know it. I wish I could mentor everyone who asks, but realistically, I can’t do that and take care of my family, write, take care of myself, teach, travel, and have a life.

F³: Speaking of life, what’s next on the horizon for you? Do you have any projects you’re working on right now?

MET: On the horizon: a baby!!!!!

F³: Congratulations!! And thank you so much for sharing your amazing project with us!

MET: Thank you, Fox!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

A word from , founder and EIC of Grand Concourse Press:

Grand Concourse Press is an independent press based out of The Bronx. Our main focus is to publish works (of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art books) by poets. Our vision is to publish quality books that will leave a mark on this generation & future generations. I want to document the movements that are being created right now, as well as celebrate previous ones.

Grand Concourse Press is a direct reaction to the lack of presses that focus on writers of color. There is a strong disconnect between the major publishing houses & small independent presses, so I founded Grand Concourse Press to be another avenue writers can use to share their word & vision.

Grand Concourse Press is named after a historic boulevard in the Bronx, The Grand Concourse, which stretches 5 miles and is one of the main streets of my life.

Deep in a forest

in the Northernmost
part of Vietnam,
in a Vietcong
reeducation camp,
my father watched
to see if the
chili peppers
would spin
in the clear water.

If the peppers
were still,
then the water
was not poisonous.

Father said
the best way
to get water
was to cut
a bamboo tree
or a banana
tree
with a knife.

The water
in the heart
is pure.

 

 

Mother

When I hug
my mother,
she feels so fragile
as if she would
fall apart like petals
in my arms,
but I know she is much
stronger than I am –
silk that keeps me
cool in the summer
and warm in the winter.
The soft and gentle
thread of worms,
tougher than metal.

 

 

Praying at the Cemetery on Con Son Island

Endless gravestones
unnamed
a yellow star on each stone
lights the night

I try not to breathe in spirits
but I breathe in
the smoke of incense.
A bat flutters by
A green grasshopper lands by my foot
Someone is saying hello
Perhaps it is a girl who died in a Tiger Cage

There are not enough
incense sticks for all
of the graves on Con Son Island.

 

Hear the audio of these poems .

 

Teresa Mei Chuc is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Red Thread (Fithian Press, 2012) and Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing, 2014). She was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and immigrated to the U.S. under political asylum with her mother and brother shortly after the Vietnam War while her father remained in a Vietcong “reeducation” camp for nine years. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as EarthSpeak Magazine, The Good Men Project, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Hypothetical Review, Kyoto Journal, The Prose-Poem Project, The National Poetry Review, Rattle, Verse Daily, Whitefish Review, as well as in several anthologies, including the forthcoming Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees. Teresa’s new collection of poetry, Song of Bones, will be released by Many Voices Press in 2016.

Phantasmagoric Bed Time Story: Otherworldly Shifts Bring Us Back Home

In Elizabeth Cantwell’s debut poetry collection, Nights I Let the Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), we traverse dangers across a tangible universe and seek respite in dream-like interludes; both planes of existence feel familiar. A child pets a fawn. Then a body is pulled out of a bottle drifting in the ocean. Cantwell cannot possibly warn us about all the dangers this universe contains and yet she is continually attempting to warn us. As William Blake wrote his eighteenth century poem, “The Tyger,”

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

so Cantwell attempts to draw her readers through dichotomous worlds. Blake questions, how can the same being that made the lamb create the tiger? Cantwell answers, using a nuanced palette of language. On one side is daily life: Cantwell illustrates a cat “licking a knuckle,” or a tourist eating Hamburger Helper in France. Amidst these reasonable images, the reader experiences ghosts breathing over our shoulders or someone is launched into outer space, wrapped in a picnic blanket. Cantwell reads us a gentle bed time story while simultaneously opening the closet door to let the monsters in. In the poem “Nights I Let the Tiger Get You (I),” we are thrust into the real – nothing puts reality more in perspective than fleeing from danger. Rooted in the physical, Cantwell at first bemoans her earthly body:
My legs, my legs, two lumbering
jackasses that just can’t get
the job done.

When looking straight ahead,
carrying a person feels almost the same
as dragging a body along
behind you…

The sound of the tiger
no longer behind us but
on top.

There is repeated imagery throughout the book of dragging a body behind oneself (conveying the book’s disparate themes of humanness, evolution, metamorphosis, and outer space) and the thought of trying to save or warn a loved one weighs on the speaker’s shoulders. Cantwell fleshes out various fears from various life scenarios, in a spectrum of different environments. Cantwell’s inner conscious entreats these dangers on metaphysical planes. Not only in describing war on television, but also under the “Happy Birthday” sign hung at home. There is the dark ocean, fiery car accidents, a bomb under a bus, a body or animal coming apart. She sees life balancing on the head of a pin and isn’t afraid to draw our eyes to it. In “A Hot, Close Sun Turning Your Temples Into Ash,” she writes:

The things you never
thought you’d want to save you end
up trying to pry out of his jaws. And when you think you’ve
won, it all starts up again, the sky, burning and
heavy; the sound of the machines; this
day, and the next, and
the half planet still in the dark.

Cantwell pushes the believability of the realistic right up against the surreal; the two interconnect perfectly, like a twisted game of Jenga. Cantwell creates a domestic apocalypse in “Learning Curve,” and it is written in the casual style of surveying vacation photos. She maneuvers the boundaries of the unreal and real, using suburban imagery and domestic symbols that overlap with say, the physically unsettling image of skin peeling off. She presents the idea of a local theater performance of “A Midsummer Nights’ Dream,” co-mingling with words like “gas mask,” and “opera gloves.” All of these phrases and words live in a vein of normalcy, so to speak, but this is what she formulates:

​. . . the Atlantic Ocean has been burning
​for four days We were told to stay inside
but we’d forgotten which houses
belonged to us Now we lie on the beach

watching the local theater company’s
production of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream In the audience one lumbering
ash man walks up to an ash

woman and leans over He looks
surprised at all the ash Like a man who
hits his deer with his car and stops
to see his full name written on its back

in Sharpie . . .

The overall effect of coupling these phrases together makes us recognize our own feelings of displacement. The characters in the poem (Cantwell depicts many characters) are told to stay inside because the ocean is burning, but they forget where their home is. In Cantwell’s universe, the obvious result is then to be marooned on a beach, watching Shakespeare. People around them have turned to ash but are still walking about and talking to each other.

The danger is expertly crafted in all of the Tiger poems (there are five of them throughout the collection, holding it together like a spine,) The reader continuously undertakes the tigers at the picnic scene. Sometimes the tiger is behind us, or in front of us, or we cannot see because he is already on top. No matter where he is, he never stops. From “Nights I Let the Tiger Get You (II)”:

​future and past

In it I couldn’t tell you
when things start to go wrong. The sidewalk of
the picnic blanket.

The slow zoom on the fur
that grows bigger and bigger
across the screen of my eyelids.

Okay so I am dragging your body
along behind me again. The way the bee
keeps pollen on his legs, we’re together, we’re flying
on to some other field of pistols…
The tiger comes, she drags the body, she lands in a field of guns. Even the bees cough up blood. She cannot escape the attack, the aftermath of always “dragging your body.” And time marches on, the past and the future, one big circle. We are caught in this loop with Cantwell, but unlike her, we don’t want to escape. We want to witness.

As with any trauma or attack, it feels almost logical to leave one’s body entirely. We try hard to stay glued together, mentally and physically, but in Cantwell’s world, a body eventually becomes ether, a thought, a soul — whether on this plane or another. The surreal invades the real. Our basements “hold atlases we’ve never seen before,” and a child ghost sets up a guillotine “by your arm.” The ghosts live amongst us but we are also one with them, as we repeat actions and words and are continually stuck on a haunting of our own making.

The repeated Tiger poems repeat a nightmare, yes, and eventually intermingle with the speaker’s brother in the last Tiger poem (V). The speaker illustrates the brother’s struggle with addiction. It is heartbreaking. The Tiger nightmare is here again, this time, the brother is a focal point. This nightmare is his walking narrative:

Something falls past the window
and you flinch. It could have been a bird.
But it also could have noon not
a bird. It could have been
your parole officer, or me, saying something like:

​​​​You can’t come to my wedding
​​​unless you have been sober for six months.

The speaker and the reader are not sure what is outside the window, only that it scares us, even if it is a tiny bird. The bird could be memory or a larger shadow: the future. It is a warning and we will revisit it. Revisiting dangers in new landscapes is cyclical as well. In “A Kingdom Ago by the River,” Cantwell writes:

Eventually everything goes in circles:

the raft, the fat man’s
bowel movements, the hair of the dead
man’s head in the water, the smoke, the eyes of the horses.

The men in the forest will go in circles, too
searching for some silly well they dreamt of long ago

waiting for the bodies, the men they killed
to bloody their doormats…

That is no ship
that is no forest
that is no arrow

Those are not your lungs on the ground being rained on.

That is not your daughter, bleeding into your palm.

Even though we are in the world of make believe and Cantwell is instructing us on what we see and what we do not, we still hold a bleeding girl in our arms. Like some of the violent imagery, Cantwell’s sentences also reveal sudden stops and starts within sentences. These line breaks are enjoyable and such a breath of fresh air. For example, at one point in the long poem “Nights I let the Tigers Get You (V),” she writes:

One more crime, one more
act of subconscious mind on
the wide-flung haunches.

When I say the word “brother”
I mean

Like the jaws of a tiger clamping down on a throat, Cantwell silences the reader on the page. We are left finishing the grisly business in our minds that she began. For some, the most alive some people feel is upon cheating death; in Cantwell’s collection, every page is a rush, a sweet relief, a potential (but not guaranteed) victory.

From “Nights I Let the Tiger Get You (V)”:
But the next time
the curtain rises, the next night,
I’ll know: I just can’t save the child.
And the crowd goes wild.

As the speaker accepts that she cannot save the child in her dream, we must confront the fact that, in the universe Cantwell’s poems construct, we cannot save ourselves. We read on, only praying that the tiger will somehow be kept at bay.

 

 

went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and currently lives in the DC area with her family. She is the author of four chapbooks. Recent work can be seen / is forthcoming at Toad Suck Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, Yes, Poetry, Gargoyle Magazine, Jet Fuel Review, Glittermob, The Norfolk Review, Moss Trill, Pith, So to Speak, Freezeray, Crab Fat Literary Review, and Hobart.