Nin Andrews’ poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Agni, The Paris Review, and four editions of Best American Poetry. The author of six chapbooks and six full-length poetry collections, she has won two Ohio individual artist grants, the Pearl Chapbook Contest, the Kent State University chapbook contest, and the Gerald Cable Poetry Award. She is also the editor of a book of translations of the Belgian poet, Henri Michaux, Someone Wants to Steal My Name. Her book, Why God Is a Woman, was published by BOA Editions in 2015. I had the pleasure of corresponding with Ms. Andrews via email about her newest book of poetry, her understanding of poetry’s position in our present society, poetry’s liberating role in her own life, the themes that most fascinate and inspire her, and her perspective on the most radical thing a poet can accomplish in her work.
What is poetry’s greatest role in your inner life? Why do you write poems?
I blame my mother for everything.
She was a terrible mother, and the most wonderful mother imaginable. A semi-autistic dairy farmer, she despised touch and intimacy in all its guises and was better at handling calves than children. A brilliant linguist, she knew French, German, Latin and Ancient Greek, and studied with Richmond Lattimore in college. She spent countless hours reading aloud to her children in a voice like Katharine Hepburn’s, frequently returning to the Greek myths, the Odyssey, the Iliad. If she was anxious, as she was when I was sick (and I was sick often), she sat by my bed and read poetry. “What does it mean?” I’d ask. “Hush,” she’d answer. “And listen.” She never liked explanations.
In my earliest memories, poetry and myths were part of my daily life and dreams. We had no TV or neighbors. The stories my mother read filled my imagination. They were part of how I understood the world. And they were magic, the only magic I knew. How could I not want to be a writer?
What do you see as poetry’s role in our present society? A unifying force? A destabilizing force of social and personal change? A reprieve from the mundanity and suffering of day-to-day existence? An access to greater empathy? A glimpse of inspiring beauty and truth? A compass that reveals new clarity of thought, redirecting our collective course?
Society—I’ve never been a fan of it.
Even in elementary school, I remember studying the city states. Athens, the celebrated birthplace of democracy, was where women were the property of fathers or spouses. Sparta, the terrible warring polis, was where women were educated and athletic—and exercised in the nude (at least that’s what my mom said). I wanted to be Spartan, but without the warriors. I wanted to delete the warriors. But what would Sparta be without warriors?
There’s so much of every society I’d like to delete. I’m not sure what role poets play in society. Does society care for poetry? Remember Plato wanted to banish the poets.
I suspect that the average American thinks poetry is found in Hallmark cards. I can’t stand greeting cards. So many are a way of putting syrup on life’s turds.
That said, I do think poetry is a force for personal change, a reprieve from suffering, a glimpse of truth and beauty, a compass that helped me relate to my cold and brilliant mother, and more, much more.
What is the most radical thing a poet can do in her work?
Poets can look back.
Like Orpheus and Lot’s wife. Or they can look forward like Cassandra. None of these characters are popular with society. I picture society as a city of righteous Lots.
Your book of prose poems Miss August explores racism in Virginia in the midst of desegregation from multiple perspectives. What inspired Miss August? What do you hope the book’s readers will be left with, after the final page?
I hope first and foremost that readers will enjoy my books. But I do have a habit of writing about things people tell me not to write about. Orgasms are one. Racism, another. I grew up steeped in racism. If I write about the past, I write about racism. I don’t mean just color-coded racism.
As early as first grade, when I was a cross-eyed kid at an all-white private school, started after integration became law in Virginia, I was teased for having “ugly eyes.” A farm kid, accustomed to insults, I shouted back, “Well your mama musta’ mated with a rhino.” I was sent to the principal’s office for “talking like white trash.” And for using the word “mate.”
“What’s white trash? And why can’t I use the word mate?” I asked my mother after school. She didn’t answer—she just said I needed to stop talking like the farmhands. And she started giving me elocution lessons.
I think not-answering is a problem. Not-talking about topics—it’s like putting a lid on a hot frying pan. Society does that. If I could give anything to readers, I’d give them the willingness to lift a few lids.
In your first poetry collection, The Book of Orgasms, you introduce the orgasm as an ethereal presence, a muse who begins a dialogue with her human counterparts. And your most recent book of poems, The Last Orgasm, imagines a conclusion to that dialogue: a bold collection of wry, fantastical, feminist meditations on sexuality, desire’s origin, love’s nature, and—ultimately—desire’s ending. What inquiry or interest birthed this beautiful and subversive new collection?
I’ve been lucky. I’ve enjoyed the company of so many great poems and poets, and I’ve had time to dream, to write, to love. And I have loved deeply. But I know all good things must end—including orgasms and poems. Even while composing them now, I can see them leaving. I wanted to say farewell in this book, to prepare myself for the last orgasm and poem.
You edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the Belgian poet Henri Michaux, and in the book’s introductory essay, "Finding Henri Michaux,” you write: “With Michaux, it was passion at first glimpse. … He's not even a poet… he's something else. I still consider Michaux to be something else entirely, …I think of him as an anti-poet, an anti-god, a Buddha, a cure for my suffering. Michaux demonstrated a different method and reason for writing. …He suggested another way of being, writing, thinking, observing, so unlike any I had experienced...” What was the experience like of editing a poet you so admire? And what draws you to Michaux’s poetry? How do his words reach you so profoundly, and what have you learned from his work about what is possible for yourself as a poet?
I never felt up to the task of editing Henri Michaux. But I’ll forever love his character, Plume, happy-go-lucky Plume, who lives out some of my worst nightmares. When Plume travels, strangers wipe their hands on his coat, serve him terrible food, refuse him lodging. When he goes to the doctor, the surgeon chops off a finger. But it’s all fine with him. After all, what’s a man to do? These poems are funny and irreverent, and they expose dark, psychological truths. Michaux taught me that you can write or say anything as long as you keep smiling and laughing.
What themes and inquiries most fascinate and inspire you?
My father used to say, “Nin, put a lid on it,” meaning keep your mouth shut. And, “Don’t make a fool of yourself.” My theme as a writer is: be daring. Make a fool of yourself. My dad was a gay man who lived his life as a straight person. He was an artist who rarely painted. I don’t want to live or write as if I am not myself.
Aspen and Nin, this is delightful interview!!
Posted by: Denise Duhamel | February 13, 2021 at 08:44 AM