Contributor Interviews – Mid-American Review Blog

Interview with Sam Martone, On Fiction No. 3

In this interview, Former fiction editor Lydia Munnell chats with Sam Martone. Martone’s fiction story “Night Watch at the House of Death” appears in Volume XXXVI, issue 1.

I’m interested in the way ideas happen for writers—do stories start with an image or a character or a situation or are they fully formed for you? How about “Night Watch…” in particular? What kicked it off?

For me, it’s usually some glimmer of a concept or image. I’ll stumble across the Wikipedia page on spite houses or build off a pun I made on Twitter. For “Night Watch…” specifically, I think a lot of it came from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. It’s been so long now since I read it, but I’m almost sure there’s a section about bodies being rigged up with bells to ensure they were dead. Not sure if it’s one of his stories-within-the-story or if it was based on an actual past practice, but it certainly got my attention, and from there I placed it in the anachronistic setting and expanded on why one might have to do this with the recently deceased.

In some sense you seem like a project-based writer. Your two chapbooks, for instance, both seem to have been conceived as projects. Is that true? If so, talk about the way that process is similar to or different from writing an individual piece.

I definitely do tend to work on things with projects in mind, although I often have too many projects I’m juggling at once, which means nothing gets done, or whatever fragments do get done end up coalescing into a new project. That was kind of the case for the first chapbook (from Corgi Snorkel Press). Some of those stories were conceived as parts of other projects, others were just individual pieces, but they all shared a number of similar concerns and ended up working well together. Thinking toward the greater whole is just how my mind works, but I actually think it’s a bit inhibiting. For example, I’m working on all these stories set in Arizona right now and realizing how repetitive all the talk about the heat and the desert landscape will read when they’re put together. Probably my favorite stories, the stories that have been the most fun to write, were ones totally independent of any bigger plan.

What role does the internet play for you? Video games? (of course I’m thinking of your most recent chapbook here but also stories where it might be less apparent) If these places are particularly fertile why would you say that is? And what about a story like “Night Watch…” that’s less obviously connected?

I really love the internet and video games and pop culture/media of all kinds as raw material of sorts for fiction. In large part I think they’re fertile grounds for writing because so many writers actively avoid pop culture and contemporary technology in their stories for fear of dating their work or cheapening it somehow, but I think, for example, a Netflix binge is such a familiar part of most of our lives, that to purposefully exclude that stuff from fiction ends up limiting our ability to write about what it means to be human in the U.S. today. Lately I’m finding that I love fictional works within fiction almost as much as I love the fiction itself. Mike Meginnis’s novel Fat Man and Little Boy depicts these great invented movies throughout the second half of the book. They complement (and eventually connect to) the “real” story very well, but they’re also just an immense pleasure to read on their own. “Night Watch…,” even though it doesn’t talk explicitly about any real-world pop culture, still has a narrator who’s deeply affected and driven by the stories he sees in film. I think that’s what I’m most often interested in, in a lot of my work: how the stories we see in art and entertainment cause us to reinterpret and reconstruct the world around us, for better or worse.

You’re an editor at Origami Zoo Press. At MAR we see all kinds of (probably coincidental) trends pop up among submissions and work we read. What are you calling out as trendy right now (for better or worse)?

We’ve been closed for submissions for a while now at Origami Zoo, but I recently served as a guest editor for SmokeLong, which meant I read a week’s worth of subs and selected one story to be published in their weekly installments. Among those submissions, I don’t know if it’s something about the 1,000 word limit, but I received a number of fishing stories. Also a tendency toward one word titles that played with archetypal stories (i.e., “Myth,” “Fairy Tale,” “Urban Legend”).

Now, things I’d like to become trendy is another story: 1) lasers. 2) heists. 3) someone saying “you’re going to want to see this.”

“Night Watch at the House of Death” is, at least in part, a story about love and connection and loss. What’s a favorite love story? (please use that apply that label as broadly as you’d like)

I’m pretty drawn to love stories in general, both as a writer and a reader, so this is hard to narrow down, but I think “The Ballad of the Sad Café” by Carson McCullers is my favorite story that pretty explicitly examines love and what it means to love.

The monotony of work and the waiting associated with work almost make the world of “Night Watch…” feel like a kind of purgatory. Talk about a terrible job.

Yeah, it’s interesting you mention this, because a lot of my stories involve narrators working terrible, tedious, but nonetheless life-consuming jobs. Oddly enough, in real life I’ve been fortunate to never really have a particularly monotonous job. Maybe I’d be a bit less fascinated with writing such stories if I actually had to experience it on a daily basis…

An interview with Christina Duhig, author of “Lesson” (by Coral Nardandrea)

I was a Gender Studies major in college, and I’m a person who, generally, just cares. It’s difficult for me, as an assistant editor on the MAR staff, to pass up a poem that speaks to something bigger and manages to remain artistic. Any of us can say an alarming amount of women are murdered each year—each day—but few people can say that in a way that’s different. Thankfully, “Lesson,” by Christina Duhig, does just that.

A poem like “Lesson” is hard to read. It deals with what every girl who makes it to womanhood deals with: the violence she knows is happening around her, and the violence she is unable to fully escape. “Lesson” speaks to the author’s first time grappling with this knowledge—a young girl trying to imagine the details of a murder and how this experience impacts her future.

All young women have the moment they realize they need to worry about something more than most of their male friends. The “don’t go out alone” discussion, the “take a friend to the bathroom” discussion. The moment they watch a newscaster talking about a woman who has been assaulted or killed or both. Duhig brings awareness to that in a way that hurts. Because it needs to.

When I first read “Lesson,” that hurt sneaked up on me. Duhig uses short, clipped sentences and powerful, controlled diction to put the reader exactly where she needs them to be—in the moment, on those train tracks, in the flames. Duhig forces readers to live these moments in time with her nine-year-old self, forces them to look at the dental records the way she looked at them, to “learn to see the body beneath the body.”

Duhig’s “Lesson” is such an important addition to Mid-American Review. A poem that reminds us what we don’t want to be reminded about, a poem that forces us to remember the moment we understood.

Do you have a writing ritual of any sort? Tell us about it.

I need a stack of poetry books, an iced coffee, and— about an hour into the effort— I usually need a cookie. Substitute iced coffee for Diet Coke, a cookie for a sleeve of saltines, books for different books. The caffeine helps with focus. The food soothes desperation. The books, of course, unlock the head- space.

Has your idea of what makes a poem a “poem” changed since you began writing?

My aesthetics and the aesthetics I appreciate in a poem have certainly evolved over the years. I’ve come to embrace a short and succinct title, the kind that seemed “too easy” when I was younger. (I was no good at writing those long, delightfully clever titles anyway.) I shy away now from abrasive language, which appealed to me as I was figuring out my feminist politics. What hasn’t changed is my desire for sincerity and the sense of urgency I feel as both reader and writer when piecing together meaning. I love the lines in Marianne Moore’s “The Steeple Jack:” “it is a privilege to see so/ much confusion. Disguised by what/ might seem the opposite.” I’m drawn to well-ordered confusion in a poem—the way the poem’s order shifts as it moves down the page.

What is your biggest writing-related success, other than a publication?

Cue the list of writing-related successes I wish I’d experienced by now. I’ve written a number of poems that attempt to confront the traumas that women I care about have endured. Each of those poems— poems that feel “finished” and honest—are my best “writing-related success” because they are my best effort to confront violence and support women, in writing. “Lesson” is one of those poems. Though I never met the woman that poem is about, her story—as I heard it on the news when I was nine years old—was the first of many I’ll never forget.

What was the most useful feedback you received for “Lesson” that helped it evolve into the poem it is?

In “Lesson’s” early drafts the last three lines—a couplet and a final one-line stanza—were clunky and vague. I think I knew the couplet in particular was off, but I didn’t know how to fix it until a friend suggested that it wasn’t scary enough, that the poem had to hurt more. She was right.

A few years later, satisfied with the revised couplet, another friend suggested that the last line—“girl, fire, track, man”—move into the body of the poem. I resisted at first. I loved the last line. I felt power in the line, and I wanted that power. But, together, we moved the line, and the second line of revised couplet became the last line of the poem. She was right, too. The poem had to hurt.

Do you ever feel you are unable to write out of fear?

Yes—

Without this sounding like a therapy session, I am almost three years out of a terrible run involving deaths in my family, a breakup, bed bugs, panic attacks and parallel anti-depressants (my first!), adjunct exhaustion, and my escape (rescue) from Brooklyn. I’m convinced the poems that will ultimately result from all of this will finish my book, but I’ve also realized that I have a habit of avoiding the place where the poems are scariest, where they should hurt most. And I just have no interest in fear and hurt right now.

“Lesson” has a very distinct message concerning violence against women, and how women learn about this violence. What were some techniques that you used to help tackle such a loaded subject?

I tried for years to write a poem about her death, and in doing so I tried any number of times to find out more information about her. One of those times, I entered the right search terms, and the news was right there. I was stunned by how many of the details I remembered, and stunned again by the details I either never heard or forgot. In particular, that he “started a fire with gasoline.” At nine, when I heard “she was burned,” my little self imagined matches or a lighter held to her skin. And that’s one of the images—even as an adult—that stayed with me. Realizing, finally, the disconnect between how he actually set her on fire and my attempt at nine years old to understand how she was burned, the poem wrote itself.

So, time? Recollection? Detail?

I also can’t tell you how grateful I was to learn her name.

MAR Asks, Allison Adair Answers

Allison Adair’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Missouri Review (“Poem of the Week”), Boston Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Tahoma Literary Review, the Boston Globe, and the anthology Hacks; and her interactive digital projects have appeared recently at The Rumpus and Electric Literature. She teaches at Boston College and Grub Street and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Adair’s prose poem, “Letter to My Niece, in Silverton, Colorado,” appears in MAR 35.1 as the winner of the 2014 Fineline Competition.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer.

Girls warning girls about a vague, creepy world.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This piece came about fairly quickly, in one sitting. But that’s somewhat deceptive, as I’d been working for several months on a poem with the same idea – a dedication to my niece, about a younger version of her mother, a version she will never know. The poem wasn’t coming together as I’d hoped, so I first decided to borrow a brilliant technique from a friend, poet Eduardo C. Corral, who experiments with different forms not just during the writing process, but also once the poem is (seemingly) finished. He calls it “putting the poem into different containers.” In my case, though, line breaks themselves felt too self-conscious, too poeticized, so shifting from couplets to quatrains, etc., didn’t seem to solve the problem. In a moment of exhaustion, I stopped arm-wrestling the poem and just reconnected to the original impulse of letter-writing. I wrote the whole thing fresh – blank page. Not a single line from the original poem appears in the published version – not a single image, in fact – but they surely informed it.

What was your reaction upon learning you won the Fineline Competition?

I was overjoyed, and humbled. Also grateful. The piece is a strange poetry-prose hybrid – not really a story, but not a poem, either – and I really appreciate that the Fineline Competition has created a space for my and other writers’ “between” work.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

There are two, and they might be related. The first is figuring out how to create consistent writing time despite the obligations (and delights) of working-motherhood. Making writing a priority often translates to a lack of sleep – but it has also led to almost forty new poems in a year. The other success, as I would define it, is not allowing ambition to become an excuse. For years, I refused to send work out at all, because I knew everything could be tighter, fresher, better. And maybe it could have, and maybe it still can. But now I work and rework, rework some more, then seek out feedback, revise, and send things off. If I still want to continue revising at that point, I do, but the piece is already in circulation, and I’m on to the next poem. It’s partly motherhood that has taught me to how to move on, how to participate without waiting for perfection.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

I was a competitive ballroom dancer in college. Specialty: international rumba.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

It’s nearly impossible for me to write poetry, and more so to read it, while listening to music – even instrumental music, and even if the volume is low, buried deep in the background. It feels like a shouting match to me – my brain doesn’t seem to know how to sort the layers of sound.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

I’ve come back again and again to Matt Sumpter’s “Dead Zoo.” The tension between the various roles of the speaker – participant, observer, observed – seems smart to me, but fresh. It’s a poem with a concept that doesn’t feel overly conceptual, partly due to its highly animated images: “They’re born again / in glass: a doe tacking hard // forever, leaping a painted creek, / the cougar caught with a pheasant // it can’t spit.” I love how Sumpter gives us motion frozen in time. Poetry is a lot like taxidermy, isn’t it?

Here’s where we usually ask contributors to share a photo of themselves holding a contributor copy of MAR. But here, we’ll do one better — this photo shows Allison reading her Fineline-winning poem at the Mid-American Review 35th anniversary party at AWP 2015 in Minneapolis:

Thanks for the interview, Allison!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

MAR Asks, Nancy Hewitt Answers

Nancy Hewitt’s chapbook Heard was published in 2013 by Finishing Line Press. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has maintained a private practice in clinical social work in Salem, MA, for over 30 years. She divides her time between Swampscott, MA, where she is the town’s first Poet Laureate, and Randolph, VT, where she is most apt to meet up with her muse. Her poem, “Measure,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer.

associations to meanings of the word “measure”

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

The word “measure” was resonant to me. I like to meditate on words that have a range of meanings, especially if there are current news events that contribute. In this case, I had personal associations to exactness in measuring, & I kept collecting other examples, like iron filings to a magnet. And the piece which really solidified the poem was an article I read in the New Yorker about Osama bin Laden’s capture. Truth is absolutely stranger than fiction.

(The title poem in my chapbook – “Heard” – began when there were a number of strange news items, in a short time, about hearing and ears. I linked these with other associations, & the poem grew from there.)

I worked on “Measured” for a year or two, 12 revisions. I go through long stretches when I don’t send anything out, but I remember sending this poem & 2 other prose poems to a good journal I’ve tried to publish in previously. Emailed them at 10pm & they rejected them by 7 the next morning! I think MAR was the second market I sent to. Thank you, MAR, for your appreciation of prose poems!

Fashion attire for my computer desk is most often flannel pjs, & the more papers & books stacked on the desk, the better! But I always write by hand first, in lined notebooks, so my attire then depends on how public is the writing spot!

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

Ecstasy! It’s a fine journal! Went to AWP one year & talked to a young man in a lunch line about looking for places to send my prose poems. He happened to be an editor? a reader? an intern? at MAR, & told me about the Fineline Competition…the rest is history.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

“I have some copies of my chapbook here. Would you like to buy one?”

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

Having my chapbook, Heard, published in 2013 (Finishing Line Press).

Your biggest writing-related regret?

Wishing I’d started to write poetry way before I did, at age 40.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that involves writing.

While I wouldn’t consider it strange, a unique thing about me is that I’ve been with my writing group – Kitchen Table Writers – for over 25 years. We have a First Friday writing practice every month & 2 weekend retreats a year. Amazing women, so supportive.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

So many fine pieces! My most favorite is Anne Barngrover’s poem “Site Fidelity.” Spare language, beautiful images, & an amazing last few lines. It reaches very deeply.

I also love Claire Wahmanholm’s poem “Theory of Primogeniture: Barn” for its wonderful tale of grass eating the barn, & then…another terrific last few lines.

Thanks for the interview, Nancy!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

MAR Asks, Katie Booth Answers

Katie Booth’s work has appeared in Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, The Fourth River and Vela, where she also edits the “Bookmarked” column. She has earned recognition and support for her work from the Edward Albee Foundation, the Blue Mountain Center and the Massachusetts Historical Society. She teaches writing and journalism at the University of Pittsburgh. Her creative nonfiction piece, “Still,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your piece in 10 words or fewer.

Excavator birds. Burned out house, brink of demolish. Flashback: fire.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This was one of those pieces that I struggled with for years. I won’t bore you with the details of its many transformations and deletions. I will say that it only really broke into its current shape after I read “Stillness” by Charles Baxter, and let the piece unwrap around a single moment.

What was the best/worst feedback you received on this piece?

Once, after I read it aloud, a friend said, “It sounded like it was very beautiful, but I couldn’t actually hear you.”

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

I recently published a fiction story which was a thinly veiled story about my great-aunt’s experience as a native speaker of American Sign Language in an oralist deaf school in the 1930’s (where Sign was forbidden and punished). She had spent so much time, over years, letting me interview her, answering all these stupid questions I had—both for this story and a larger study of that moment in Deaf culture—but I’d never shared my writing with her. When I found out she had cancer, I was living in China. I couldn’t deliver it myself, but I finished the story and emailed it to my mother, who interpreted it into Sign Language for my aunt. It was published in Indiana Review this year, which was wonderful, but I was far happier to know that the story made it to my aunt, in her own language, before she died.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

Yes! At the risk of sounding like I didn’t read past the first piece, I’ll say that Jennifer K. Sweeny’s “Parenthetical at 35” is my favorite. She does this wonderful poetry-meets-essay thing that I’ve tried for years to pull off, but never really have—not like she does. The images she creates are so taut and layered; returning to it now, I’m shocked at how short the piece is. There’s such a full world within it, and such a quiet unfolding of the story that holds it together. I love this: “I had wished to live in a country of bad weather and nested inside a winter inside a winter inside a long night.” But for all the slow lingering of Sweeny’s piece, I also love the rushing thoughts of Wendy Cannella’s “Immortality,” and Nancy Hewitt’s “Measured,” both of which move breathlessly forward, ending in such unexpected ways, among the extension of the details we began with, but with expansive breadth.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

Thanks for the interview, Katie!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor