{"id":264,"date":"2010-04-01T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T05:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=264"},"modified":"2015-03-25T21:14:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T03:14:27","slug":"an-interview-with-beth-bachmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/264","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Beth Bachmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beth Bachmann’s first book of poetry, <\/em>Temper, won the 2010 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and\u00a0the AWP Award Series 2008 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. \u00a0Her poems have appeared in <\/em>Ploughshares, <\/em>Southern Review,\u00a0Black Warrior Review<\/span>, <\/em>Kenyon Review<\/span>, <\/em>and\u00a0Tin House<\/span>, among others. \u00a0She lives in Nashville.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Interviewer: As you were working on Temper<\/em>, how did it begin to take shape as a collection?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0I began writing the poem that became \u201cFirst Mystery of My Sister\u201d at Hopkins in 2001. Back then, I thought I could say everything I wanted about that in one poem, silly me. At Sewanee in 2004, Alan Shapiro and Mark Strand told me what I already knew: I had to go deeper. I came home and wrote \u201cPaternoster\u201d and after that, it was just years and years of writing. \u201cTemper\u201d was the last poem I wrote. It was fall 2007; I fed my 4-month old daughter and put her in the crib. Watching her sleep is like watching water, but the poem felt like poured gasoline. It felt good to finish.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0Were there any pieces you began that you had to put away?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0\u201cPaternoster\u201d was the hardest; it meant entering a place I didn\u2019t want to go. I printed it and turned the page over. Something was let out.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0Much of the power in <\/strong>Temper<\/strong><\/em> seems to come from what is left unsaid. What was your process? Was there a lot of deleting involved, or did the silence grow organically within the narrative?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0There was no deleting. It\u2019s funny I never thought of it that way\u2013as erasure\u2013though it makes sense that there might be.<\/p>\n

The silence is in part a function of the distance needed to render the material. I wanted the sense of heightened space to hold. I was reading about interior design of elevators and still on my wall I have pictures of a paternoster lift, a couple of Cornell boxes and a Giotto missing the fourth wall.<\/p>\n

\"BethInterviewer:\u00a0Many of your poems have this tension between the urgency of the material, the compressed lines, and the distilled lyrical voice. How do form and content interact as you shape a poem? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0Hmmm, that\u2019s hard to answer. I\u2019m going to go with\u2026simultaneously<\/em>. It\u2019s important not to say too much.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean that as (entirely) coy. The silences are important, as places to dwell. Before Temper, Black Warrior Review<\/em> published my chapbook Evasion<\/em>. It\u2019s one way of dealing with space, moving around it.<\/p>\n

Let me try again, I wanted the approach to violence to be minimalist and realist.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Temper<\/em><\/strong> engages the reader on many different levels; it positions the reader as witness, confidante, voyeur, and accomplice. In \u201cMystery Ending with a Girl in a Field,\u201d the speaker addresses the reader directly: \u201cI know what you\u2019re thinking. \/ Maybe he did maybe he didn\u2019t.\u201d How do you want your audience to respond to this material? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0Hmmm, this is a big one. Writing it, I wanted the reader to feel held mercilessly under my heel. The violence was so important to me, the depiction of it, for a while I couldn\u2019t imagine anyone wanting<\/em> to read it. I knew I was abusing my reader and wondered how far he\u2019d follow.<\/p>\n

Accomplice was farther from my mind. I didn\u2019t think about it clearly until Nick Flynn read the book and said he felt implicated<\/em>; at first, I thought it was just his guilty conscience speaking, but then I thought about Wilfred Owen turning on the reader at \u201cIf\u2026my friend\u2026,\u201d <\/em>and that sense of implication, so, yes, in the end, witness, voyeur, confidante, and accomplice, too. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0At a reading you gave in September, I was struck not only by how warmly and easily you engaged the audience, but by the candid way in which you addressed the material itself. How do you negotiate private and emotional terrain within the public landscape?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0It\u2019s funny how terror can appear warm and easy, isn\u2019t it? In the poems, I had to go into the dark and stay there; in a reading, you can break for jokes.<\/p>\n

Negotiation is the right word. It has to do, I think, with this practice in distance, when and how close.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0How did your experience in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars influence your writing? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0The workshops at Hopkins were a beating. They were great. Andrew Hudgins favored the question, so what<\/em>? It\u2019s such an important question for a poem, not just as a whole, but at every moment. And Hopkins\u2019 training in form informed my eye and ear.<\/p>\n

Since then, the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers\u2019 conferences both fed me: Alan and Mark pushed me into a place I was on the edge of entering and Michael Collier showed me that place wasn\u2019t final. Now, I\u2019m on my own and I\u2019m not the kind of girl you mess with.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0Which writers do you go back to for inspiration?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0I was sitting in my office chair yesterday when I looked up and noticed a Carl Phillips book on every shelf. I\u2019ll listen to Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee, dog-ear the audio at Poetry Foundation.<\/p>\n

For Temper<\/em>, I also read Army field manuals. I love manuals and manual artwork.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0What else inspires your creative process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0Netflix has added a line to my queue that says, based on your taste for dark foreign drama<\/em>. I love Bergman\u2019s use of noise.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0Does location have any effect on your writing? Is there a difference for you between being a writer in Nashville as opposed to New York?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0There\u2019s a sign in my neighborhood that says, COYOTES IN AREA. SMALL PETS AT RISK. There is something to be said for imminent danger and the threat of dog-on-dog violence, things wild, things bred.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have many readings in bars here. You can bring guns in bars here.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0Is there anything essential to your writing practice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0Currently, a collection of hoodies from Korea that say things like HEY IT\u2019S ENERGY, hmm\u2026,\u00a0 shhhhhh!, HELLO, DON\u2019T WORRY! They provide the necessary warmth, anonymity and perception of public clamor.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:\u00a0What do you do when you experience \u201cstuckness\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0I go outside with a book. It doesn\u2019t take long before something reminds me of something else.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: <\/strong>Besides being a poet, what are some other important aspects of your identity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann: Fear, desire, obsession with space and color, animal reflexes.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Temper<\/em> ends with \u201cElegy,\u201d which leaves the reader with these lines: \u201cLovesick, \/ \u00a0I flick a feather into the water. No stones. \/ Only the one in my pocket, heavy as a tongue.\u201d I was deeply moved by this gesture, which seems to embody everything that could not be said, the feeling of being forced to reconcile with the unresolved, the speaker\u2019s desire to communicate with the sister. Has writing this book helped to create a sense of closure or healing? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bachmann:\u00a0Wow, that\u2019s a nice compliment. Thank you.<\/p>\n

Closure? Something about the opening up feels good. But I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s a wholesome type of pleasure.<\/p>\n

\u201cElegy\u201d has, at its heart, Andrew Marvell\u2019s \u201cThe Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn\u201d:\u00a0\u201cOh, I cannot be \/ Unkind t\u2019 a beast that loveth me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read Beth Bachmann’s poems “Temper” and “Elegy” at www.bethbachmann.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beth Bachmann’s first book of poetry, Temper, won the 2010 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and\u00a0the AWP Award Series 2008 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. \u00a0Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review,\u00a0Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, and\u00a0Tin House, among others. \u00a0She lives in Nashville. *** Interviewer: As you were working on Temper, how did it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[23],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-4g","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11826,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/11826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}