March 2023
Caesura Presents…Sonia Greenfield
Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of two forthcoming collections of poetry, All Possible Histories (Riot in Your Throat, December 2022) and Helen of Troy is High AF (Harbor Editions, January 2023). She is the author of Letdown (White Pine Press, 2020), American Parable (Autumn House, 2018) and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market (Codhill Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College, edits the Rise Up Review, and advocates for both neurodiversity and the decentering of the cis/het white hegemony. More at soniagreenfield.com.
Atypical Ways of Interpreting the Narrative
John:
Congratulations on the publication of All Possible Histories! In it, I see some thematic similarities to your gorgeous previous collection, Letdown, in their exploration of family and personal struggle, but also some new, unexpected, more outward-leaning themes. Can you speak to how Histories acts as both a natural complement and natural progression from your earlier work?
Sonia:
Great question. All Possible Histories tries to map out the way that one’s (my?) own experiences, particularly those related to trauma or loss, inform an empathetic response. That’s why the collection moves back and forth from the personal—like, for example, my experiences with raising a neurodivergent child and with miscarriage, two themes also in Letdown—to the social: that is, being a thinking and feeling citizen of the world. My advocacy, my politics, and my circle of compassion is informed by maternal longing in the broader sense. I mean, what do you do when you want to make the world better, and everyday there’s a new shitstorm to weather? Basically, I walk around with this big, red, throbbing heart, and I try to make poems so I’m not just weeping all the time about other people’s tragedies.
John:
I can truly empathize. Both of my children are neurodivergent, and my partner and I suffered multiple miscarriages before having our twins. It’s a strange feeling to experience consistent trauma and deep love simultaneously, both stemming from the people we cherish the most.
This conversation reminds me of the ending from your poem “Ghost on a Dirt Road”:
Nowhere / is where I feel most at home.
Can you speak more on this idea of how home tends to be an abstraction and complicated experience, which both politically and personally seems to permeate the collection?
Sonia:
Well, sure. the concept of “home,” unless one’s life has been free of trauma or dysfunction, is always a complicated thing—that sense of “here is where I come from, so I know it,” but also, “here is where I come from, but also the place that leaves an indelible mark.” That’s something I wrote about in “Bearing Witness,” a poem in All Possible Histories. But “home,” too, is the utmost place of intimacy, and the primary space of safety. I mean, when I think about it—and thanks for giving me the opportunity to think about it—most triggering action that launches a poem occurs in the space of “home.” And the concept of “home” is built of concentric circles, right? Like: the home of intimate space—head, heart, family; the home of physical space: rooms, house, town, region; and the home of community: where we come from in the greater sense. When I think about it this way, every poem I write springs from a sense of one’s place inside one’s home, even when those poems imagine an other, as in the ghost poems that thread through All Possible Histories.
John:
Speaking of how our experience of the world is both conceptual and intimate, unknowable yet lived, as I believe your thoughts imply, I thought of your poem “Ones & Zeros”, which balances abstraction and the human body with lines like:
She had figured
you could not weigh a soul, really,
only the body without it, just as what
she was able to offer was weighed;
one heart, two lungs & two kidneys.
All of your work, really, walks this delicate tightrope of the human and nonhuman world, soul and body, violence and healing. How do you go about so successfully striking that balance?
Sonia:
Dude, I don’t know. The muse? Just kidding. I think a real tension in my life, and in my art, is trying to contend with reality vs. The Ideal. I’m always, I think, trying to write toward desire—what I wish from life and the world. What I wish most for others. What I want from beauty. For example, I understand myself, have finally admitted to myself that I am an atheist; however, as someone who was raised with the prospect of God, and the promise of paradise in exchange for goodness, I’m always facing down the specter of emptiness and writing toward the wish for a benevolent higher power. I will continue to write the world as I want it to be.
But, and moreover, I exist in a gray area, anyway. I reject all binaries. I remember someone suggesting that poems function as either questions for some poets and answers for other poets. I don’t think my poems are answers. I think they’re just trying to word differently the questions so many of us simmer with all the time. Like, yeah—we do travel the distance between violence and healing, and I don’t think we ever land completely in one or the other insofar as the human condition goes.
John:
There’s so much to unpack there from starting with “I don’t know.” I’d say you have a pretty firm grasp on how little a grasp we all really have. I’m particularly enthralled by your idea of “writing toward the wish for a benevolent higher power.” My past is similar to yours, and I too do not believe in the supernatural. But I keep including religious imagery. The people in my poems often pray for things. And there’s always this desperate holding on to, perhaps reaching out for, something greater (which I know isn’t actually there). When I use religious imagery, it’s often motivated by tapping into previously established, deeply rooted cultural beliefs that will with only a word or two resonate with readers. An unpainted statue, an old wooden church, steepled hands, all such imagery has such ancient origins that an entire world of potential meanings opens up. Do you feel similarly when using religious language and imagery? Do you feel you’re connecting in an odd way with your past, your heritage, and two millennia of cultural history, which inherently imbues your poetry with greater depth and resonance?
Sonia:
I guess I’m just writing toward the realm of possible, though I tend toward more ontological truths. On the other hand, my tiny mind can’t possibly claim to know what is real or not real.
Your question here suggests that I’d be consciously aware of intention in the composition of my poems—like as if I was planning how I will try to move readers. But it’s only in a kind of textual retrospection that I can go, “hmmm, sure is a lot of religion in these poems.” I’m pretty much never thinking about my poems in the context of history, or how they connect to my past as I’m writing them. But when I think about it now, I think much of the inclusion of religion is just one more form of mourning present in my poems. Mourning the loss of God, the concept of which must provide great comfort to the faithful. Mourning the loss of God, too, is also mourning the loss of youth, because those two things, in terms of my past, are intertwined.
John:
There’s a line from your poem “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn” that resonates with what you just said:
You think you know the story / but you don’t.
Both personally and culturally, there’s a sense throughout All Possible Histories that we’re being shown unconsidered aspects of things we thought we were already familiar with. This idea is also brought up, quite directly in the poem “How Dragons Became Flies”:
Legend has it that they were perfect, but / legend often has it wrong.
Do you consider your work to be peeling back layers of our preconceived notions?
Sonia:
In my writing I am often telling folks that, sure, you can look at it that way, I suppose, but how about you look at it this way instead? In both poems you mention there’s the typical way to interpret an implied narrative, but then there’s the atypical way of interpreting a narrative. I am apt to seek out the atypical way of interpreting those narratives. Even though I tend toward logic outside of the context of writing, I don’t adhere to Occam’s Razor in my poetry, because I believe in the power of imagination, and because I believe in the power of atypical interpretation of reality. Sometimes the typical way of perceiving is flatter, darker, pedestrian, more pessimistic. Atypical perception allows for the circumvention of those modifiers if it serves the perceiver. Look…the realm that exists outside of poetry can be such shit, but poetry can rewrite that. Sometimes a poem can be like a magic fucking wand that turns reality to candy, and we can live in that candyland while we’re in the world of a poem, or a collection of poems, and I’m here for that.
John:
My goodness; Occam’s Razor as a poetic perspective sounds terribly unimaginative! I’m not even sure what that would look like. Perhaps those poems that lean toward narrative Hallmarky sentimentality…
But I’d like to further explore this idea that there’s an “atypical way of interpreting a narrative.” I’d argue that’s one of the many, many chambers of the heart of poetry. But in your work, this concept is particularly prominent. I’d like to ask how this applies specifically to two core themes in All Possible Histories: religion and the self. How do you inflect our typical, accepted interpretations of religious themes in a way that helps us view them differently? And how do you approach poems about yourself and your family that similarly shift our understanding of self-identical and personal history?
Sonia:
Okay, let me tackle the religion question first: I feel like someone has said that all poetry is longing, so when I envision God, or saints, for example, I envision them as palpable, fallible, and more human than divine. Because I’m longing for answers to questions, I will never be able to answer, and if I’m going to talk to the imaginary, I have to imagine it as approachable. So, the holy is always approachable in my poems. But I’m never thinking about these things as I’m writing poems. In the moment, I’m just trying to apply a salve to whatever is bothering me.
Insofar as family is concerned, I mean, I suppose there’s a certain amount of self-mythologizing that happens in my poetry. It’s craft, after all. Or, rather, it’s the application of craft—the way that language can add glitter to the mundane—that makes a childhood memory into something bigger than the moment. And if I elevate familial moments—sort of lift them up out of my house and show them to the reader—I’m selecting what should and shouldn’t be written about, so just the editing of subject, the picking what to write about, is all part of the theater of poetry. But I’m making it sound like there’s some kind of intentional pretending that happens when writing poems. Nah. I’m just trying to give readers something to remind them that they’re not alone with whatever they’re dealing with.
John:
“Just trying to give readers something to remind them that they’re not alone with whatever they’re dealing with” is such a beautiful definition of empathy. And I’d like to think one of poetry’s most universal qualities is a deep desire for empathy.
Can you tell me a bit more about the practical part of your craft? For example, how do you usually start a poem? Is it pure, wild inspiration or pre-writing activities like notetaking? Do you usually start with an image in mind then create an emotional context for that image or, perhaps, the other way around?
Sonia:
Now these are questions I can answer! I usually start a poem in the shower, meaning an idea for a poem or the first lines of a poem often present themselves when I’m taking a shower, or sometimes they present themselves when I’m running. It sort of reminds me of those 3D prints from the 80s and 90s where, if you stare at it long enough, a dinosaur or flower will pop out at you. Which is to say that poems most often germinate in my brain when I’m engaged in a mindless bodily task that’s sensate. Sometimes my poems start from a few lines, but often they start from an idea for a poem.
I rarely take notes, but sometimes I have to, or I’ll lose the poem, because life is such that I can’t usually just stop what I’m doing to luxuriate in the writing of a poem. I rarely use prompts, but I wish I could change this at the moment, because my brain is so busy with teaching that it can’t make room for poems. I suppose that makes me like many poets who wish they had more time for writing poems—I’m definitely in a dry spell right now.
As to your last question, I usually start with a concept, such as “I want to write a poem about marrying my dog,” or “I want to write a poem about how dragonflies used to be dragons.” But the foundation of those ideas, as they occur to me, are inherently emotional, because when I’m out for the poem-generating run, I’m not focusing on the cerebral; instead, I’m, like, “OMG, I just want to talk to everyone’s dogs!!!” or “Wouldn’t it be kinda sad if dragonflies were just cursed dragons who kind of fucked up???”
John:
How fascinating. I’ll try to make this one answerable too. Who are three of your favorite contemporary poets writing today, and what do you feel you’ve learned from their craft, voice, or style?
Sonia:
Oh, this is tough. Okay, let me do it this way—here are three contemporary collections that I have really loved: David Hernandez’s Dear Sincerely, because he threads through a theme, and the poems within do cool stuff with enjambment. They’re oftentimes overtly political, but also deeply personal. There’s humor and pathos. Matthew Olzmann’s Constellation Route, because he, too, works with the epistolary theme, and, again, large doses of humor and pathos. Also, well balanced in terms of the personal and the political. I’ll round this out with Jessica Cuello’s Liar, which is a fascinating collection that finds a way to write about childhood and trauma, and Cuello applies craft to such poems in a way that allows the reader to access the experiences of the poems without being subjected to those experiences, if that makes any sense.
From Olzmann and Hernandez, I take lessons on how to effectively work the nexus between humor and pathos, and from Cuello, I’m reminded that it’s possible to write about childhood trauma while still making art.
John:
Thanks so much for introducing us to these poets! I’m only familiar with Hernandez and Olzmann so look forward to reading Cuello.
Finally, now that your All Possible Histories is entering the world, what’s next for Sonia Greenfield? Are you working on a new project? Are you able to tour at all for this book? What does 2023 and 2024 have in store for you creatively?
Sonia:
So I have a completed full-length manuscript, Mist Connections, that’s making the rounds. I’m also trying to work on a collection of flash fiction—weird little stories that I hope to amass into a book-length project, and I’m hoping to work on some essays in the next year. The poems will come and get written, too, hodge-podge like. I have zero (ZERO!) poems out for submission right now. I’ve been teaching these two literature classes, and they’re taking up all of my intellectual space. I have no brain power left for anything else.
Since All Possible Histories, I have also put out a chapbook of persona poems from the perspective of women in The Odyssey. It’s entitled Helen of Troy is High AF, and it came out in January with Harbor Editions. It was really fun to write a project book like this, and I worked on it while away at a self-organized writers’ retreat with a few friends. I’m dying to do this again this coming summer. I’d like to write another chapbook of persona poems from the perspectives of all the dead mothers in Disney films.
I don’t see me doing a book tour. I have family and professional responsibilities, and I don’t have the energy for the hustle of P.R. I hope people find my books of poetry, and I hope they read them, but I’m not willing to spend the hours and hours necessary to insist that people find my work. I do have a few readings coming up, though. I’m always grateful for the opportunity to read with other amazing poets and to hear their voices and visions.