Writing in Code
Interview by John Deming
The second section of Jenny Boully’s second book is titled “He Wrote in Code.” Much the same could be said of Boully. Her pioneering first book, The Body¸ was written entirely in footnotes and its blend of vision and experimentation rendered it among the only books by contemporary young writers that can be deemed a collectors item—a used copy currently fetches about $100 on Amazon. Her experimental spirit and romantic largesse were continued, perhaps emboldened in her second book, [one love affair]*, among the best and most challenging must-owns published in 2006. With a third title on tap for 2007 and a reissue of The Body in the works, Boully here addresses her love affair with the footnote, the complexity of relationships, getting by as a poet, finding meaning among remains or fragments of a fallen something¸ and the layer cake that is [one love affair]*.
JD: First off, the footnotes. The Body, your first book, was written entirely in footnotes with no relative text. [one love affair]* is full of footnotes revealing many of your sentences are lifted or sampled from other pieces of literature. What function do footnotes serve for you, and do you anticipate abandoning them in your future work?
JB: My attraction to footnotes goes beyond what I think they might accomplish formally or in way of information giving. I'm attracted to them for their preciousness, their ability to appear vulnerable and in need. The Body, formally, I believe, needed footnotes. I was writing from a time when I had not yet developed the ability to speak on my behalf, if that makes sense. And, of course, I was quite in love with the notion of the metaphor of the footnote and the metaphysical questions it raises when a book is contrasted against an individual life. The footnotes in [one love affair]* function quite differently; they seem to me to help "locate" but not necessarily to place the reader in any closer relation to whatever is transpiring in the writing. The footnotes of [one love affair]* won't give you a surprising jolt, but they will give you a contrast--the academic end notes here against all of what takes place in the book may, taken as a whole, make the reader wonder just what is gained from reading academic papers. Why shouldn't this book hold up to any conference paper? Why is this "knowledge" devalued? I feel very tender towards the footnote, especially as it seems to get smaller and smaller in my mind. I don't think I could ever abandon it; I may think of different ways to relate to it, but I won't ever abandon it, I don't think.
JD: In the first note, you write, "when reading, our minds often supply another narrative. This book is thus the narrative that snuck in when reading various books, which are documented in subsequent footnotes." Would you say then that regardless of an author's intentions, it is impossible for a reader to avoid reading/imagining the book in his or her own way?
JB: I don't think we should give everything away ever. If there's anything I've learned about being in love and loving it's that the lover has an uncanny way of leaving just as soon as everything is revealed. I like to leave things slightly concealed, to give a space of wonder, so yes, I hope it's utterly impossible for a reader to read my books in my way. And, conversely, I do think it's impossible for a reader to not read a book in his or her own way. I've read Don Quixote, but there are others, I swear, who have read quite a different book, although they claim to have read it. They defame and insult Cervantes; I don't quite understand it at all. The only thing I can assume is that they were reading a different book or, because of their lack of a certain mental apparatus, could not read the same book I was reading. But perhaps I have disgressed and am, on top of that, biased.
JD: Much of this book is a transformation of other writers' language based on the imaginitive and emotional state of your narrator as she reads these writers. Was it at all your intention that the reader is then twice removed--in a sense, reading your book but supplying their own narratives?
JB: That would be wonderful--if somehow this book were like a layer cake without end. Hopefully, the reader would have written marginalia, marginalia with which another reader might come across and make further surmises. I love layering and the metaphor of layering, thinking about levels of thought, existence, understanding. Here we have the layer of the author reading books and then writing a book, a book that will be read by others, others who will, hopefully, think about their own narratives, another layer with which to make closer or more distant those relationships between author/book/reader.
JD: The book's third section is titled from a line by Gertrude Stein: "There is Scarcely More Than There Is." Is there scarcely more than there is? Are footnotes a way of acknowledging this metaphysical "more"?
JB: I love that line, "There is Scarcely More Than There Is." To me, it signifies having discovered that, in the end, there isn't any more; that's all there was and will be. The challenge here is to transverse that space between "what was" and "what is," a space that can, at times, seem to be without end. So, yes, there is scarcely more than there is. It's terrible, it's tragic, but it's true. I think of everything somehow passing out of our lives, and how there just isn't anything more than there is. My dear neighbor passed away last week, and I loved him dearly. I keep thinking that maybe someone will give me a photograph of him or a sweater that he wore, that I'll be able to somehow say goodbye to him. But there isn't anything more. I guess love stories are like that too. Even simple postcards will not come. You can try to make sense of whatever evidence you might have saved, and it will not, will never give you more than you had or help you to understand anything more than what you already knew. Footnotes to me are like afterthoughts, a way, I suppose, that those things we hold dear can have an afterlife of sorts, to make us believe, like hope or prayer might, that there might be more than there is.
JD: What was your early life like, where did you grow up, and when you begin to write and publish poetry?
JB: When I think back to my childhood, I think of it as a strange and complex thing. I grew up in San Antonio, Texas. My father worked three jobs, and I hardly saw him. I was always shy around him. When we was home, he slept. He went to work again. My mother was young and new to America and the English language. Yet, she taught me how to read and write. I had her accent, and I attended speech classes to correct this accent. There are still many words that I don't say correctly. Because it was difficult for others to understand me, I was an extremely shy and quiet child. I read a lot, but we didn't have any books in the house; I checked out whatever I could from the school library. We could only check out one book a week, so I had to reread a lot of books. I was very good in school. My parents were avid fishers and gardeners. I grew up among rows of vegetables and bodies of water. I would grow my own plants and catch my own fish. My sister and I didn't have very many toys, so we were taught very early to make our own toys. My mother sewed and she used to crochet lace on the tiniest of needles. She learned how to do this looking at books written in Japanese, although, being Thai, she didn't read Japanese. My father was also a maker. He made his own fishing weights and had carpentry skills. My sister and I made our own doll furniture, doll clothes, and paper dolls. If we wanted books, we made them ourselves. We illustrated them. Perhaps this girlhood led me to love the made thing, to cling to the finished object. Poems were the easiest to make. I could make them in class after I had finished my assignments. I could make them at home. I began writing poetry when I was in the first or second grade. I began to write it more frequently when I was in middle school. In high school, I wrote abundantly. I was editor of the school paper, I had a personal column in the paper, and I wrote poetry too. I had a few pieces published in the city newspaper and won several city poetry contests. I didn't know until my senior year of high school that I could go to college and study poetry. When I learned that, my whole idea of life changed. I published my first poem in a real literary journal when I was about 22 when I won one of the AWP Intro to Journals Awards in poetry. After that, I just kept sending my stuff out and trying. I don't think I was ever one to quit. This can lead to dangerous behavior.
JD: How apt are you to incorporate autobiography into your poetry? Do you feel the need to be accurate when doing so, or is it more rewarding to successfully reshape/reimagine one's personal life?
JB: I'm not sure if I believe in accuracy when it comes to memory. It seems to me that our memories, what we choose to dwell on, is encumbered by our poetic pathos of the time. I'm not saying that everyone approaches memory with pathos, but very often, we remember details that are embedded in metaphor and symbol. A spring of departures is more poignant for having remembered the way the lilacs smelt or the manner in which the dogwood blooms quickly left the trees--life's ironies, if you will. I'm a huge fan of the autobiographic, and I don't think I could hide very well and say that my work isn't autobiographical. The term "autobiographical" isn't fixed for me; I think of it as pliable and fluid, and I happen to believe in the dreaming-life, and two other types of experience I refer to as the "day-dreaming life" and the "future-imagined." I do think I try to recreate truly what an expereince was like to me, but sometimes, this means that you're getting a fragment that isn't entirely what it should be or really is. Writers should have allowances for obsession, I think, for living something over and over again under different guises.
JD: Somehow you've developed a way of pioneering new presses: The Body was the first of many books published by Slope Editions, and if I'm not mistaken, [one love affair]* was the first book published by Tarpaulin Sky Press. Could you comment on this?
JB: Starting a press is always a risky endeavor from what I understand, and I was very honored that two new presses chose my work as their flagship titles as it were. Publishing The Body with Slope was very quick and very dream-like. I felt as if the world was before me; I was young and impressionable. I think I was 23 when I got the book contract and 24 when the book came out. I stayed awake whole nights sometimes--that's how great my excitement was. I think that Ethan Paquin was able to devote a lot of time to my book, as it was his only one at the time. Reviews flooded in and then the book went out of print very quickly. I was a published writer, but with no book as it were. I have to applaud Christian Peet of Tarpaulin Sky Press for his utter bravery. He published a book with a crack pipe on the cover, and he did so willingly. He really listened to me and brought such creativity and energy to my book. Somehow, he knew I was never kidding about anything, and he was willing to entertain my playfulness. In many ways, [one love affair]* is a playful book. It's not a book that established presses would think of publishing--it's uncategorizable, it's creepy, it's absolutely crazed in its content and crumbling narratives. I don't think my first two books would have ever seen print were it not for new presses that were willing to publish my crazy work.
JD: Used poetry books can often be found on Amazon for fifty cents, but a used copy of your first book, The Body, fetches at least a hundred dollars. What do you think about the fact that, at least in the poetry world, your first book is something of a collector's item, and why do you think this is the case?
JB: I think that even when The Body was in print, it was difficult to get, and then suddenly you couldn't get it at all. I think the book went out of print in 18 months. Just as it was really getting attention, the book itself was nowhere to be found. Poets are always on the trail of the unattainable, no? Perhaps that is why the first edition has such a high price tag. I don't know. I do think it is such a pretty book, and it is such an odd book. If it weren't mine, I think I'd want a copy for my bookshelves too. The cream pages, the dreamy cover, the delicate font--they all make for something precious--a "keepsake," I think is how Ethan Paquin referred to it. Even rare book sellers in New York City were pricing their copies at over two hundred dollars, so I know the large price tag isn't a ruse developed by poor students or poets who are looking to sell their books. I have about 10 copies of the book. I don't know if anyone actually pays the high prices for the book or not (the copies in the rare bookstores seem to be gone), but at least I know that if I needed to, if I had absolutely nothing to eat, I could try to sell one. It will be interesting to see if the price of the Slope Editions edition drops when Essay Press reissues the book.
JD: Beginnings and endings are an important obsession in your poetry, evidenced by much of the text in [one love affair]* and by the fact that you have a new book coming out this year from Sarabande titled Book of Beginnings and Endings. Could you comment on this?
JB: I think I'm very attracted to the idea of coming upon pieces of something and having to reconstruct the scene, to find some meaning among remains or fragments of a fallen something. It occurred to me that so much of what life gives us we live outside of; we dream in beginnings and lament endings; hardly do we seem to give thought to the in-betweens, the interludes of things, and when we do, we can't help but think of the endings; it all makes for something hurtful and bittersweet. Suddenly, very simple things, even envelopes, bedsheets, mementos, become occluded by the weight of the beginnings and endings. It makes you wonder if you were ever really living at all, or if you were in some strange sense, merely preparing for the ending. It makes us wonder why it is that we want what we want, why it is that we bother with the giving away of ourselves at all. We hardly remember the meals in-between at all, the box of pasta, the sorry boiling, but we do remember the lovely wine and dine of the steakhouse-date, the champagne that glistened and bubbled like a sweet promise. And what is it toward the end? Toast, a bit of cheese, a rare pat of butter.
JD: Who would you regard as your biggest influences, and who are some contemporary writers you read regularly?
JB: It's a bit difficult for me to pinpoint one writer as my biggest influence, but the first one that comes to mind is Roland Barthes. I don't think I've disliked anything he's written, and I don't think I could ever stop rereading what he's written. Barthes is endlessly puzzling, endearing, and heartbreaking to me. His love of smallness and fleetingness, of the unnoticed is what endears me to him. I'm much more attracted to reading older works that aren't necessarily poetry, so I don't really follow any contemporary writers. I do, however, pick up books that look interesting, and I do try to keep up with what's being published.
JD: What to you is the most difficult thing about writing and publishing poetry in the 21st century?
JB: I think that ultimately, no matter what, you wake up most mornings and feel like a failure. To write and publish poetry in the 21st century is to oftentimes feel that you've given your life to something that isn't giving you much or anything in return, to realize that you, in this relationship, are the one who loves more. Poetry seems to love you less. You start to get older, and the youth of your twenties starts to slough and you look around and your friends are doing things with their lives. They're traveling to Europe, they're getting married, they're having children, they're buying houses, they're sitting on nice couches while you scour your neighborhood on trash days for ironing boards and bowls. Poverty and uncertainty are the most difficult things about writing and publishing poetry in the 21st century. The challenge is to fine-tune your imagination, to make-believe that life isn't as dreadful as it might seem. Luckily I live in a city full of museums and bizarre occurrences, and I've always been an avid daydreamer. The challenge is to surround yourself with metaphor and beauty, to not succumb to feelings of failure and dread. If you are a poet, it's very easy for you to be perfectly surprised and happy to see a perfectly cooked egg-over-easy. The rewards are small and few and far between. I had a poetry professor once tell me that in this business, you had better be enough for yourself. That's always stuck, and it's always what draws me to my desk to write--that, and the promise of make-believe, the thought that perhaps today I could write a perfectly cooked something.
