{"id":555,"date":"2015-04-23T10:37:47","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T14:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/?p=555"},"modified":"2015-04-23T10:37:47","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T14:37:47","slug":"mar-asks-emily-schulten-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/mar-asks-emily-schulten-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"MAR Asks, Emily Schulten Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emiy<\/a>
Emily Schulten<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Emily Schulten is a poet from Bowling Green, Kentucky. She is the author of the collection Rest in Black Haw<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0poetry available from New Plains Press.\u00a0Her poems appear widely in nationally recognized journals such as Prairie Schooner<\/em>, New Ohio Review<\/em>, New Orleans Review<\/em>, Fifth Wednesday<\/em>, North American Review<\/em>,\u00a0Salamander<\/em>,\u00a0The <\/em>Los Angeles Review<\/em>, and others. She’s here to today to talk about her poem, \u201cNavigating the Afterlife (Book of the Dead),\u201d which appears in MAR <\/em>35.1.<\/p>\n

Quick! Summarize your story\/poem\/essay in 10 words or fewer. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Attempting control over mortality despite its being a futile effort<\/p>\n

What can you share about this poem prior to its MAR publication?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNavigating the Afterlife (Book of the Dead)\u201d I wrote after my brother began dialysis and his search for a kidney donor. It has a counterpart, \u201cNavigating the Afterlife (Burial Goods).\u201d Both were written quickly and follow into the category of those rare instances in which a poem comes to the writer more crafted than not. In the end, I obsessed over line and image quite a bit but ultimately changed little. This poem uses one of the ancient Egyptian burial customs of funerary texts, books that were placed into the coffins and that included the spells necessary to resurrect the deceased. I hope it\u2019s a nice vehicle to illustrate the human longing \u2013 even desperation \u2013 for immortality (or perhaps only the difficulty in letting go). I also hope it might lead to consideration of the various ways cultures sought immortality throughout history, juxtaposed with the ways of doing this in the modern day.<\/p>\n

What was the best\/worst feedback you received on this poem?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was collaborating with a friend and fellow poet who was writing a poem based on his reading of \u201cNavigating the Afterlife,\u201d and he could not completely connect with its narrative. That is, he took away the mythology of the piece and its quirks, where I\u2019d hoped it was clear that this poem is about the desperation of a man who knows the abandonment of a father through death and is facing being on the other side of this prospect. Many of us can relate to the frustration of a reader\u2019s takeaway being different than that which we, as author, intended. Or worse \u2013 no takeaway at all.<\/p>\n

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success? <\/strong><\/p>\n

A stronger closeness to Keats\u2019s negative capability: particularly, those brief moments \u201cwithout any irritable reaching,\u201d that without the practice of my craft I\u2019m quite certain I would not\u2019ve developed.<\/p>\n

Your biggest writing-related regret?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In connection with my previous response, my broadest regret is that there are still such a great deal of moments in which I remain incapable of comfort in \u201cuncertainties, mysteries, doubts.\u201d As a matter of fact, this applies to both writing-related and non-writing-related regrets.<\/p>\n

Thanks for the interview, Emily!<\/em><\/strong>
\nLaura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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