{"id":9559,"date":"2014-12-01T01:27:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T06:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=9559"},"modified":"2015-03-25T20:41:58","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T02:41:58","slug":"an-interview-with-a-van-jordan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/9559","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with A. Van Jordan"},"content":{"rendered":"

A. Van Jordan is the author of four books of poetry, <\/em>Rise (2001), <\/em>M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), <\/em>Quantum Lyrics (2007), and, most recently, <\/em>The Cineaste (2014). In his late twenties, while working as a journalist, Jordan started attending poetry readings and began writing poetry himself. He has won a PEN\/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, Anisfield-Wolf Award, Whiting Writers Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Warren Wilson College, the University of Michigan, and currently teaches at Rutgers University.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Interviewer: How do you go about thinking about the really complicated relationships of writer, character, history, and fellow human being, like in \u201cThe Homesteader\u201d or MacNolia<\/em>? How do you navigate that space?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A. Van Jordan: I think I navigate like any other writer. I think sometimes what happens is we think about poetry, and we put it in a box, and then we think about fiction and put it in another box, and playwriting in another box. But I think in writing in general, we\u2019re constantly thinking about how to represent character, how to represent experience. It\u2019s an issue of looking at what the emotional situation is, and once I figure out what\u2019s at the center of it emotionally, I can approximate the emotions. For me, character comes out of that. I don\u2019t necessarily think if I\u2019m writing about a young black girl in 1936 in Akron, Ohio that somehow that\u2019s different from anyone else who is experiencing the feeling of being cheated or counted out or powerless. Those are emotions that I can translate well, and Lorraine Hansberry says there\u2019s a certain universality in specificity. So the more specific I am to her situation\u2014the symbols, the language, the themes, the iconography of it\u2014then I can talk about the emotions through that. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s any different from a fiction writer or someone writing for television or film.<\/p>\n

You write about yourself and about other people\u2014can you talk a little bit more about the head space, or the processes, or the differences, or the not differences of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This goes back to Keats and negative capability. I\u2019m writing about myself. I\u2019m writing about the other, and I\u2019m still writing about myself. You only have to work with your own emotional reservoir. So, if I\u2019m writing about a subject and someone else is writing about the same subject, depending on our life experience, it\u2019s going to be different. Depending on what we are able to bring to it, and that doesn\u2019t mean we have to hold onto all of our memoires and experiences from the past, but that experiential\u00a0 knowledge informs how we live in the moment, how we experience the moment. For me that\u2019s a big part of the challenge of trying to get it right, trying to move from one book to another book, one subject to another subject.<\/p>\n

You were talking earlier about being a journalist before a poet; does that ever come into your work\u2014those skills or that mindset\u2014or was that something you had to break out of to get into poetry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I never really thought about it much until people started asking me about it. As a journalist, I thought, \u201cI\u2019m writing outside this mode, now I\u2019m writing a poem.\u201d It wasn\u2019t until I started teaching creative writing that I realized there was something I gained in journalism. Two things. One just hit me in the face when teaching, and that was that I never really had a problem with modifiers. I never did a lot of editorializing in a poem, a lot of adjectives or adverbs\u2014you start to look at an image and instead of trying to get the most accurate image you\u2019re trying to embroider the image. Modifiers. And my mind just didn\u2019t work like that. I would struggle with finding that image, but once I started teaching, I realized that everyone doesn\u2019t write like that. I wondered about that, and I think that came from journalism, because you don\u2019t have the luxury of using modifiers a bunch in journalism. You try to push that away. The other thing is that I spent so much time as a journalist talking to other people, I didn\u2019t want to talk to other people. That also helped when I started doing research. I felt like when I started writing and thinking about a subject, I automatically went and started doing research, and I knew how to do it. That\u2019s the thing that really served me well from journalism to creative writing. There were certain skill sets that I\u2019d already developed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m assuming the research is different for each of the books. I can imagine it\u2019s a very different set of research between MacNolia,<\/em> and [the poem] \u201cThe Homesteader,\u201d and then the whole book [The Cineaste<\/em>].<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of The Cineaste<\/em> was sitting there and watching movies, but for \u201cThe Homesteader\u201d itself I did real archival research. I went to Gregory, South Dakota. I met people who were connected to the Oscar Micheaux Film Festival there. There\u2019s a Micheaux Center there which is almost surreal because the rest of the town looks like Deadwood<\/em>. It\u2019s this old western town, and then there\u2019s this building that\u2019s marble, and it\u2019s got a courtyard out back with a black Hollywood walk of fame stars and a well-manicured garden. You look at it and think, \u201cHow is this a part of the town?\u201d But it\u2019s all there and there\u2019s a curator. Once I got to Gregory it wasn\u2019t that hard gathering more research, and they have the homestead there. You have to get a sense of what it was like out there.<\/p>\n

One thing with the two books was almost no one knew anything about MacNolia Cox. Of course, I knew people would know of her because she\u2019s from my hometown. Until I started investigating though, I didn\u2019t know anyone who knew her. I hadn\u2019t talked to anyone who ever referenced her or mentioned her, so once I started doing the research, I started finding people and talking to them. But I knew it was sort of esoteric. This community, they\u2019ll know if I get it wrong, but the rest of the world won\u2019t know. But I want them to know her so I want to get it right. So it\u2019s a different kind of responsibility.<\/p>\n

With Quantum Lyrics<\/em>, writing about Einstein, everyone thinks they know everything about Einstein, so it was more about trying to say something that felt like, not necessarily what he would say, but something he would be thinking. That was my main concern\u2014I didn\u2019t want anyone to be reading it and say, \u201cThere\u2019s no way Einstein would be looking at that and thinking about those issues at that time.\u201d What was compelling to me about that was that there was this whole other side of Einstein that people weren\u2019t talking about and that was his work with civil rights prior to the Civil Rights Movement. He was friends with Paul Robeson, Mariam Anderson. He visited historically black colleges. There are these photos of him in a classroom with all these black students, and I said, \u201cWhy have I never seen this before?\u201d I\u2019d only seen the other photos of him with the crazy hair and the tongue sticking out. It\u2019s a different kind of responsibility to write about a subject that most people think they know, and to write about a subject that almost no one knows and you introduce them to this person for the first time. But the research is fairly similar; it\u2019s just that with Einstein there was more out there and it was already organized. With MacNolia, there\u2019s nothing really out there, and I had to go find people. But it\u2019s the same sort of enterprise.<\/p>\n

How did you stumble upon MacNolia? She\u2019s from your hometown, but it doesn\u2019t sound like you knew that before you found her. <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is interesting. I was in Akron, Ohio, to see what at the time was supposed to be a great basketball game, a high school basketball game. It turned out it was the last season that LeBron James played in high school. So I go home to see this game, and I knew the guy was great, but I didn\u2019t know he was going to be, you know, LeBron James. I got up the next morning at my parents\u2019 home, and I was having coffee, reading the morning paper. I opened the paper up, and there was this column called, \u201cThis Place, This Time.\u201d It chronicled that date in history and the story was MacNolia Cox. It was a foldout, two-page spread with photos, telling her whole story. I was fascinated with it. As my parents were getting up, my dad came downstairs, and I said, \u201cI\u2019m reading this story about this woman MacNolia Cox, spelling bee champ. Have you ever heard of her?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no I\u2019ve never heard of her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then my mom came down, and I told her the same story. She said, \u201cI\u2019ve never heard of her before.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cReally? She would have been about your guys\u2019 age, at the time.\u201d And I thought, \u201cHmm, I want to write a poem about her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are you working on anything now? We all have our obsessions. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Not really. Right now I\u2019m sort of obsessed with public uprisings. Just in the past few years, I\u2019ve been struck by the way things would happen in a community or in the country, and people would be outraged to a certain degree, but their response would be done online. So for instance, I remember when Rodney King was arrested and LA was burned. When Trayvon Martin was shot, everyone was talking about it. People were all online talking about it, but no one did anything. Then, the same thing happens to another young man in Florida, then Eric Garner in Brooklyn, then Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri\u2014all these other incidents and people were strictly online. So I was thinking about the ways in which this would sort of erupt when I was younger. People would protest. I was born in the 60s, so when I was a kid the big issue was Vietnam, and everyone would protest. And I was a little boy, but I kept seeing people on TV in riot gear, tear gas, folks being dragged off to jail, and celebrities being dragged off to jail. It was fascinating to me\u2014people were out there doing stuff\u2014and you felt like anything could happen at any time. Things could be rough. I\u2019m not saying it was better, but it was fascinating to me that there could be that much of a collective action around something.<\/p>\n

It seems to go along with this new visual literacy, how our culture is changing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also, how we watch it. How we take it in. What is the framing of a television set or what is the framing of a window? I think we\u2019re watching a bit more passively. I think when people see it on TV or online, in that frame, they\u2019re thinking, \u201cI\u2019m going to get involved,\u201d and they grab their laptops or their phones. When you see it out your window you go outside. All that\u2019s fascinating\u2014those decisions that folks make around taking action.<\/p>\n

I know that there\u2019s a point in time when I would have been that person who would have been outside. I was involved in protests in my undergrad at Wittenberg, in Springfield, Ohio, against apartheid. But when I see things now, I wonder. Like when I was watching Ferguson, I was thinking, \u201cI would not want to be there right there.\u201d I have a friend who was telling me about students that he had who were going to Ferguson. Young, undergraduate, white students were going to Ferguson to be a part of the protest. When they got there, the folks in Ferguson where chilly to them. Like, \u201cWho are you?\u201d \u201cWhy are you here?\u201d \u201cWhere are you coming from?\u201d These guys had done none of their research to know what was what. So for me, I recognize that\u2019s a change. That\u2019s a change in me, and that\u2019s a change also in the country.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the things I\u2019ve been reading about and thinking about a lot. I just read Claudia Rankine\u2019s Citizen<\/em>. It\u2019s just a beautiful meditation on the same subject.\u00a0 And, wow. So I don\u2019t know how far I\u2019m going to go with it now, after reading that, I thought, \u201cShe\u2019s really covered this.\u201d I love what she\u2019s done a lot with it.<\/p>\n

And she has a great visual element with it too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the thing that I really love about the book\u2014she has a sense of what that gaze is. She understands it. She\u2018s been able to pull those images and think about the strength of the image in the world, and how that image comes onto the page. It\u2019s just a beautiful, beautiful book. And this sounds like a grandiose statement, but I was reading it and thinking that in many ways she is pushing us to not just think about that subject matter but what poetry is and does. Even looking at the way the poems look on the page. What we\u2019re seeing online, in phones and text, Twitter, the way we\u2019re taking information in is having an effect on how we write. How the poem looks on the page. And I think she\u2019s responding to that as well. I think it\u2019s exciting to think about all of that.<\/p>\n

That made me think of something you said earlier [at the student Q&A] that we [poets] have the most freedom of any artists. I thought that was a great statement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s true though. I feel like every poet wants to do something else, like they think it\u2019s cooler or something, and I\u2019m like, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing cooler than doing this.\u201d There\u2019s nothing that gives you more freedom, that allows you to be more open to yourself, in terms of your ability to express yourself in the arts. You don\u2019t feel encumbered in any way. If I were a painter, I\u2019d be thinking about, do people understand what I\u2019m trying to say about this color?<\/p>\n

I was just watching Sunday Morning<\/em>. There\u2019s this woman in Fairfax, Virginia who\u2019s a choreographer. Her son was a dancer growing up, enlisted, went to Afghanistan, and died. So she\u2019s recreated his enlisting and life as a dancer, and his life as a solider as a dance. She\u2019s telling the story with bodies, and I was thinking, \u201cWow.\u201d For me, if I wanted to tell that story I\u2019d find some time alone, but for her, she had to have all these logistics come together. \u00a0She had to find a theater, she had to find a space to practice, she had to get all these people to come to Fairfax, Virginia to practice, and to do the show. I don\u2019t have to do that. I don\u2019t have to think about these things.<\/p>\n

One last question, what is your favorite line of poetry that you\u2019ve ever written?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wow. \u00a0Well, the favorite line from years ago\u2014this is to give you an idea of how things have changed. Years ago the favorite line was in Rise<\/em>, in this poem \u201cJookin\u2019.\u201d The line was: \u201cthe room was so quiet, you could hear a gnat piss on cotton.\u201d\u00a0 There\u2019s a poem in The Cineaste<\/em>, the last poem in the book, \u201cOld Boy,\u201d and there\u2019s a line: \u201cdon\u2019t fall victim to the Hypnotist\u2019s narcotic of clarity, which proves a curare for the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re very different lines, but it\u2019s one of those lines that I remember writing it and thinking, \u201cOh, I like that.\u201d Something that felt like it captured what I was trying to say, and my favorite lines are lines that just ring true. Not about just getting information out, but also in some way really ring true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A. Van Jordan is the author of four books of poetry, Rise (2001), M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), Quantum Lyrics (2007), and, most recently, The Cineaste (2014). In his late twenties, while working as a journalist, Jordan started attending poetry readings and began writing poetry himself. He has won a PEN\/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, Anisfield-Wolf Award, Whiting Writers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[23],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-2ub","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559"}],"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=9559"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11789,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559\/revisions\/11789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}