Please tell us about the making of “This Room Will Still Exist.”
I came to the idea for this poem while re-watching Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. The title comes from Millicent’s godlike monologue toward the end of the movie, which is in its entirety a heartbreaking meditation on mortality & our shared experience toward death. Because I wrote “This Room Will Still Exist” at a later stage of my manuscript, I noticed the manuscript’s recurrent motif of bedrooms as private spaces for grieving. This was my attempt to bring this motif to the surface & ultimately move beyond it.
Please fill in the blank: “Poetry isn’t dead; it’s ___________.”
In constant displacement.
In what way could the poetry community do a better job of supporting early-career poets?
In my previous statement, I liken poetry to displaced bodies because, in the vast world of the literary, I find it constantly moving, thriving within a small but fierce community. Of course, I say this with the upmost love & respect, understanding the struggles & complexities of displacement. With that said, I believe it is easy for poets beginning their career to feel alienated by the community. This was true to me & only recently felt this change. Now, I’m so grateful for the community, & I call all poets in any stage of their career to uplift & bring exposure to each other’s work, especially the work of those who are just starting to shine.
Select an element of craft and discuss how your approach to it has evolved since you started writing poems.
I knew I wanted to pursue poetry when I learned to manipulate line as an undergraduate—to fit meaning into a line that, with enjambment, differed from the meaning of the entire sentence. I became obsessed with it, writing and rewriting poems attempting for every line to own its individual meaning. Though it’s an element of craft that still fascinates me, I’ve recently taken a step back from long, complex lines to allow in shorter lines more breath, more silence, & more white space to carry what the poems leave unsaid.
When you feel uninspired, which poet might you read for guidance and motivation?
Sasha Pimentel mentored me in both my undergraduate & graduate years. I owe a lot of what I know about poetry to her teaching. Her work continues to teach me to this day.
I also felt so passionately about Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds & Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s The Verging Cities that I requested to change genres during the second year at my MFA. I wouldn’t have pursued poetry with as much rigor if it weren’t for these books.
&, because I feel I’ve already broken the rules by mentioning more than one poet, here are a few others I often turn to for motivation: Rosebud Ben-Oni, Alex Dimitrov, Tarfia Faizullah, Sharon Olds, Julian Randall, sam sax, Richard Siken, & Patricia Smith.
I came to the idea for this poem while re-watching Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. The title comes from Millicent’s godlike monologue toward the end of the movie, which is in its entirety a heartbreaking meditation on mortality & our shared experience toward death. Because I wrote “This Room Will Still Exist” at a later stage of my manuscript, I noticed the manuscript’s recurrent motif of bedrooms as private spaces for grieving. This was my attempt to bring this motif to the surface & ultimately move beyond it.
Please fill in the blank: “Poetry isn’t dead; it’s ___________.”
In constant displacement.
In what way could the poetry community do a better job of supporting early-career poets?
In my previous statement, I liken poetry to displaced bodies because, in the vast world of the literary, I find it constantly moving, thriving within a small but fierce community. Of course, I say this with the upmost love & respect, understanding the struggles & complexities of displacement. With that said, I believe it is easy for poets beginning their career to feel alienated by the community. This was true to me & only recently felt this change. Now, I’m so grateful for the community, & I call all poets in any stage of their career to uplift & bring exposure to each other’s work, especially the work of those who are just starting to shine.
Select an element of craft and discuss how your approach to it has evolved since you started writing poems.
I knew I wanted to pursue poetry when I learned to manipulate line as an undergraduate—to fit meaning into a line that, with enjambment, differed from the meaning of the entire sentence. I became obsessed with it, writing and rewriting poems attempting for every line to own its individual meaning. Though it’s an element of craft that still fascinates me, I’ve recently taken a step back from long, complex lines to allow in shorter lines more breath, more silence, & more white space to carry what the poems leave unsaid.
When you feel uninspired, which poet might you read for guidance and motivation?
Sasha Pimentel mentored me in both my undergraduate & graduate years. I owe a lot of what I know about poetry to her teaching. Her work continues to teach me to this day.
I also felt so passionately about Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds & Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s The Verging Cities that I requested to change genres during the second year at my MFA. I wouldn’t have pursued poetry with as much rigor if it weren’t for these books.
&, because I feel I’ve already broken the rules by mentioning more than one poet, here are a few others I often turn to for motivation: Rosebud Ben-Oni, Alex Dimitrov, Tarfia Faizullah, Sharon Olds, Julian Randall, sam sax, Richard Siken, & Patricia Smith.