Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art criticism, plays, and journalism. She has published thirteen books of poems, a children’s book, and several collaborative books with visual artists. Index of Women, her most recent book of poems, was published by Penguin Random House in 2021. In 2019, she received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts CD Wright Grant. In 2018, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, several volumes of Best American Poetry, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry. She is currently working on a musical play with composer/actor/arranger Steve Gunderson.
***
Nick Minges: The first book that I read of yours was Index of Women, which is awesome because it’s got so many different voices speaking to the reader, from different bodies and different places in time. Reading some of your other books, I’ve found it’s pretty normal for you to jump into a persona when writing a poem. Can you tell me how you got into that? Is persona something you’ve always gravitated towards in your writing?
Also, I love that you made Hercules go to quilting to relieve his stress. So sweet.
Amy Gerstler: Glad you liked Hercules quilting to calm down. Even real tough guys need to chill out at times.
Thanks for that question … dramatic monologues are dear to my heart, and I often, as you observed, resort to them in making poems. Here are a few reasons I think I gravitate towards persona poems/character poems/dramatic monologue:
I’ve always been interested in theater, and at one time wanted to be an actor. Trying to get inside the head of a character who is not entirely me fascinates and enlivens me, provides what can feel like a vacation from self, whether that character is animal, vegetable, mineral, or object. I love the idea of trying to plumb and speak from other consciousnesses, even if in truth they are only expanded, exiled, or gilded versions of my own. Monologues in plays and in the work of poets like Ai, who wrote dark dramatic monologues, really move me. It can be a great form, when it works: transporting, affecting, riveting. The solitary voice spotlit at a specific moment, in a particular predicament, speaking out.
Wislawa Szymborska’s poem from the point of view of Lot’s wife is one heady example. For a long time, I’ve wanted to team up with other poets and put together an anthology of dramatic monologues. And I guess, process-wise, sometimes telling myself the voice in a poem is a specific entity who is not me, however illusory that conceit might be, is a useful, freeing prompt compositionally, and maybe allows me to say and consider things I might otherwise not discover. It can give a kind of permission. Research is an important tool for me in writing, and so telling myself I am writing from a point of view not my own provides an excuse sometimes to lean into research and pull details into a poem that hopefully juice it up, provide color, and maybe suggest details I can riff off of. And then there are, if this doesn’t sound presumptuous, sometimes things or individuals, even if they only truly exist in the writer’s mind, that one may want to try to give voice to via the fictive situation of poetry. Like historical or mythological figures, or a caterpillar, to see what happens, and what one might have in common with that supple little wormy precursor to a butterfly.
NM: Approaching the poem like an actor is a fascinating idea, and it totally makes sense.
At what point in your writing career did you feel like you had a style or a voice that was yours? Though there are a lot of personas in your books, there are elements, like your sense of humor or tone, that make those personas recognizably you.
And was there an aversion to writing about yourself?
AG: That sense you’re talking about of having a relatively clear “read” on my own writing voice (and on what I tend to lean into when writing: subject matter-wise, voice-wise, sound-wise, strategy-wise, etc.) might be rather recent for me. That awareness seems a necessary outgrowth of wanting to explore new territory rather than repeating myself. I want to try to push my voice and tendencies, obsessions, structural moves, thoughts, etc. into new places, or maybe upend what I usually sound like or do, or at least deploy these elements differently. Humor is holy to me, for a fleet of reasons. I am committed to using it in writing when I can, but I want to be mindful not to rely on it too much as evasion or hiding place, or force it.
When I was younger, I guess I did think of writing dramatic monologues as a way around writing about myself. I was a shy, anxiety-riddled, insecure, conflicted young person who wasn’t even sure she had a self (I’m not saying this is unusual!). But when I look back at my older work it seems plain that of course I was writing about myself all along, couldn’t help it. One goal for me would be that I would like to be writing about both me and us (my fellow creatures) meaning I want to be writing about us through me, which I figure is the only way I can do it. Which connects to the incessantly quoted but still lovely and accurate comment of Whitman’s that “I contain multitudes.” Because we all do. We all contain each other. Duh.
NM: This is such a fun way to approach voice. I love it. I suppose we can’t help but put a little of ourselves into the things we make. How do you choose the next figure you’ll inhabit? Are you into this idea of Richard Hugo’s that there is a triggering subject and a generated subject? I guess I’m asking about your drafting process and how the characters come to life.
AG: Obsession is such a writing ally. Poems are sparked by an image or phrase or emotional dilemma; something I’m furious about, a strange dream, an overheard remark, some weird fact, a fear, love, grief, a bit of music or history, or noticing. Things I can’t stop thinking about that grip or trouble me. Maybe that initial item or sentence or tone of voice or character will stick around. Maybe not. The first trigger might get discarded or buried or morph so much during writing as to be almost unrecognizable. So, I connect to Richard Hugo’s idea of the triggering subject and the generated subject (what you start with and then the unexpected thing which emerges from it) in this way: I think there can be more than one trigger and also multiple emergent subjects, motifs, layers, or themes. For example, when I first read James Tate’s poem “How the Pope is Chosen” I got super excited because not only did I love the poem dearly but I felt I could see his methodology. And whether I’m right or wrong about that, it was a gift. I became convinced that the “trigger” for that poem, one of his first moves, might have been the juxtaposition of lines about how popes get elected with facts about dog shows! This was very instructive. Later in the poem, other kinds of “information” (such as warnings about how easily young children can fall out of windows) enter and shape-shift and rub up against the lines about popes and prize-winning poodles. Pretty soon there are several competing “subjects” bumping against each other, in a little circus of proximity and cohabitation that yields humor and pathos and meaning in the world(s) of the poem.
In terms of the drafting process, I usually begin from a jumble of notes and keep shuffling and combining them and moving them around in the hope that the elements I am throwing together like cats in a sack will at some point start to play with and react to each other and create something surprising. The I Ching says “a light will develop out of events…,” which I find comforting to think of when writing. Because writing is an act of faith. I keep combining and collaging ingredients hoping a light will develop out of them that I can perceive, follow and/or write to, if I’m lucky. I try to keep going, be persistent, not freak out, egg myself on, and pray that if I stick with it, the bits I’m trying to work with will eventually be kind and show me something I can use.
NM: That’s such a great quote from the I-Ching. Like those supposed last words of the Buddha, but more comforting. I’m so glad that you like Tate too. “How the Pope is Chosen” is an amazing poem, and I love your reading of it. I had a sort of revelatory moment with him too, reading the later prose-looking stuff. I noticed that the poems in that era usually started with some kind of declaration, sometimes something super casual that he would then have to back up or elaborate on in the next line. In poems like that, I think he just wrote them one line at a time and committed to each line like putting tracks down for a railroad—no going back—which is a totally different method than the info-collage that “Pope” is. I think he used a few different methods over the years.
I also think (and this is sort of related to your monologuing practice) that Tate sometimes takes on a sort of stand-up comic persona, where sometimes he will say something ridiculous with the tone of an encyclopedia, or say something casual that eventually becomes ridiculous once given more context. The poem I’m thinking of is “On the Subject of Doctors.” And a lot of comedy comes from obsession—why is this thing the way that it is? Isn’t this weird?—so there’s definitely a kinship there with your work.
Which element of the poem do you usually lock down first? The first line? The ending? Or is it different every time? How have you kept your faith and stayed busy through so many books?
AG: Yay, James Tate and all his works! Regarding your question, for me it’s choice C: poems begin from varying starting points. A title might come first, or an image, or lines derived from a scene in a film, or something overheard, or a quote that then gets bent like a paper clip, or notes I’ve taken from a book on, say, graphology or meerkats if I like the diction in it. Nothing in a draft is locked down till the poem’s done. Any part of the poem is up for grabs while it’s being worked on. I try to force myself not to get attached to elements in drafts, which can be hard. The beginning might need to get lopped off. The end might become the beginning. The text might have to split into two poems.
The hope is that poems develop some kind of life of their own: their own rules and needs and headstrong surprising directions. Your question about keeping faith, it’s a biggie, isn’t it? Hmmmm. Playing with language is intoxicating to me. I don’t think or feel all that well physically or psychologically when I’m not reading and writing, so that has tended to keep my nose grindstone adjacent much of the time.
Writing poems is part of how I process the world, and also it’s endlessly challenging and riveting to me, a kind of singular high when it goes well. So I am always chasing that high, trying to get my mind to be a clean receiver. How long it takes me to make a book of poems also varies. I think it depends on how many money-earning jobs and of what type I have at the time, what’s going on in my personal life, etc. Maybe a year, working slowly?
NM: Wow, you really are waiting for something to materialize out of the chaos. To be honest, that makes me feel better about my personal chaos at the moment. I love that everything is material, even just words you enjoy or like the sound of. Would you say the poem eventually reveals its own kind of personality? I also love that phrase “clean receiver” because it emphasizes that process of just waiting, trying not to freak out.
This conversation has been endlessly rewarding for me and I want to thank you for that. If I can leave you with one more question, I want to ask what you remember about the drafting process of this poem “Chanson” from the book Dearest Creature. I ask about it because it was a huge inspiration for this rather long piece I have been writing about navigating the death of a friend. We were talking about personas earlier, and this one feels almost stripped of persona, distilled to me. Is Chanson the name of someone you knew?
AG: This conversation has been food for my brain. In response to your question, “Would you say the poem eventually reveals its own kind of personality?” For me, hopefully, through multiple drafts, a poem develops its own directions, frictions, connections, contradictions, and momentum. Maybe its own diction(s). Maybe some surprising ideas rear their heads. Underground/unconscious/subconscious stuff bubbles up. That’s the goal. I try to actively facilitate but also not be an impediment, not get too much in the way.
About “Chanson” … I hope you won’t be disappointed by this footnote to that poem. “Chanson” is French for “song.” Tons of poems are called “Song,” as I’m sure you know. I think I wanted that elegy to have a plain, almost generic title. It was written while I was grieving the death of my first and very beloved dog, Gina. I got her when I was in my thirties, and I still miss her. She was a spirited and ideal companion. A couple of months after Gina died, I had adopted a new dog, who was great, but of course, I continued to long for Gina, her exact physicality and personality, and the fifteen-year relationship we’d had. I missed her so much that I was staggering around in a daze for quite a while after she passed away. The new dog was going about his business with all canine sweetness, energy, and innocence, which was both consoling and not, because while he was his own great being, and enjoyable to get to know, of course, he was totally different from the dog I was keenly missing.
I think I wanted to leave the elegy open in terms of not overtly spelling out that what generated it was missing a nonhuman friend. If I remember correctly, because this poem was written a long time ago, I decided to try to play with the concept of “pathetic fallacy,” an old literary term I was reading about back then, in which writers offload human emotion onto supposedly inanimate things or forces like nature/the landscape. So I tried to employ the rain images, once they entered the poem, like a chorus of mourners, so that those weather images might contain and express much of the grief in the poem, and hold that grief instead of the speaker, who wasn’t really able to hold it. She was too sad and scattered, if that makes sense. That might be one reason the poem felt to you a bit “stripped of persona.” The teacher in me wants to provide a more official, less sloppy definition of “pathetic fallacy,” so here is one cribbed from the internet:
“the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature.”
NM: Wow, I’m so glad I asked about that poem. By “stripped of persona,” I just mean that I had a suspicion that you weren’t writing in someone else’s voice there, and I was right. Thank you so much for sharing and hanging out with me.
***
