Brian Turner’s Triple Poetry Release is a Triptych Times Three https://ift.tt/wdQYf6v
As Brian Turner so aptly says about the back-to-back-to-back release of his three new poetry collections – The Wild Delight of Wild Things, The Goodbye World Poem and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook – they are more than a trilogy; they are a triptych times three. Each book is accompanied by an album of music and a three-part film, bringing an ethereal experience to the poetry. Structured this way, the reader is guided to pause and fully experience each heartbreaking, at times, yet gorgeous collection.
Turner takes us on a journey where poems feel like waves – flowing and rising and falling and crashing and always washing over – immersing us in what it feels like to love and lose and grieve and love again.
For me, no poem in the collections captures this feeling better than the ending poem in The Dead Peasant’s Handbook, “All Our Lazy Sundays”:
…wave after wave each frequency
streaming portions of the invisible over and through us
as if the air we breathe carries a digital signature
the living world transposed into the ether wave after wave
traveling through us the bright voices of history children
laughing the dying calling out for their loved ones with each wave
rising and falling…
Turner’s three books cannot merely be described as an elegant elegy. The books go further and deeper, traversing what it means to be human, to love and to heal through the experience of loss and grief. Moreover, throughout the collections, Turner reminds us that it is our memory of our loved ones that keeps them alive within us. For me, these three books are a love letter to everyone we have lost, and, to ourselves. In these collections, Turner shows us how to flourish and love again.
Brian Turner is the author of two other collections of poetry Here, Bullet (2005) – winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, The New York Times‘ Editor’s Choice selection, the 2006 PEN Center USA Best in the West Award and the 2007 Poets Prize – and Phantom Noise (2010). He is also the author of the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country, which made Powell’s Best Nonfiction of 2014 list. He is the editor of The Kiss and co-edited The Strangest of Theatres.
Turner was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and he’s received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, a US-Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Orlando with Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.
Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Brian via email about his new collections.
You did something unique in launching a series of three new books, back-to-back-to-back in August, September, and October. But what I found most unique is that each book is accompanied by an album of music and a three-part film.Would you consider these books a trilogy of sorts?
It’s something like a trilogy, or perhaps a triptych — times three, as these books each include an album of music and a three-part film (accessible via QR code).
Can you describe the artistic vision and process of pairing each book with a music album?
I think of the first album (Clouds) as a sound meditation, one meant to help the reader process the first book in the collection. The next two albums are more traditional in format, and each has an emotional arc meant to bring the listener (and myself) from difficulty to a kind of sweeter resolve.
The three books cover beautifully interwoven themes of grief, memory, survival, and love. How did these themes come together for you across the three books?
I appreciate that very much. That was my intention overall. The books loosely spiral outwards and then dovetail back into the beginning. A consistent, through-line metaphor or motif is that of waves. For example, the first book/music/film begins with waves; the last book/song/film ends with waves. It’s a journey, and the hope is that we’ve experienced something meaningful and profound once the last page and the last note are given to the air.
The books The Wild Delight of Wild Things and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook include some prose pieces. Do you set out with a form in mind, or do you let the piece find its form?
I normally begin with an image or a phrase that intrigues me and, more importantly, keeps pulling the imagination back to it. If there’s mystery in it, then I trust in curiosity to do its work — which is to listen to the world of the imagination when it calls to us. To follow the language as it arises from the imagination. It’s an act of discovery. It’s also the part of the process that I’m most addicted to because when I’m in that space of discovery, when I’m actively aware and listening for the poem with my mind attuned to possibility, it feels as if the world sloughs away around me, vanishing, and I’m suspended in that sweet amber of time, what some might call lyric suspension.
In the first collection, The Wild Delight of Wild Things, we visit “Anna Maria Island” three times. Can you talk about the significance of this place for you?
Ilyse and I used to head out to Anna Maria Island during the summertime to enjoy a week or more with the ocean rolling in just outside the door to the little cottage we’d rent there. There was a timeless quality to being there, floating in the waves, the two of us renewing ourselves together in a place that felt like a secret we shared. The warm water of the Gulf often has an almost phosphorescent green hue to it in the mornings, with sunlight giving it a sheen of gold and rust at sundown. Water. Sunlight. The sound of gulls crying out to one another. The word that comes to mind is medicine. We renewed ourselves and each other through the timeless medicine of sunlight and water and love.
In terms of structure, these meditations roll in at the start of each main section of the book. They are fresh waves rolling in a new layer of experiences the way the incoming tide rolls out, then rolls back in again.
The Goodbye World Poemis a beautiful collection of poems exploring what comes after profound loss and grief. How do you maintain such a beautiful balance when writing about such emotionally trying topics?
Thank you for saying that! I’m hesitant to respond because the question feels, in some ways, like something only a reader might be capable of entertaining. From my own perspective, I can’t escape my own experience (in that I can’t bring my loved ones back). But then again — I think that’s exactly why I’m writing and making art. Art can help us to access the imagination. Which is another way of saying memory. That’s where my loved ones are now. They exist on the landscape of time, and if I can somehow house memory within the architecture of language, then it creates a way for me to visit them — and to share them with others so that the reader might fall in love with them.
There are many reasons to write, of course, but this is a fundamental reason for why I’ve shared these meditations, these books, with others.
Writing can often bring about personal revelations or a new perspective on a topic or experience.Did any artistic or personal revelations come to you while writing these books?
I suppose one of the things I learned is that I can blur the boundaries of genre and mediums. Most of my life I’ve compartmentalized the different art forms that I enjoy experimenting in. This is the first time that I’ve fully embraced creating something that brings together music and writing and more. It’s exciting for me as an artist. In fact, this experience encourages me to try to do something like this in a live performance setting.
Was writing these collections in any way a process of healing or finding renewed meaning for you? Yes, though it took three books to get there. If I think deeper into your question, a much more nuanced and layered and complicated response begins to appear. One example from many: When I completed the first book, I felt a profound sense of loss. As difficult as that first book is — emotionally — I didn’t want to leave/finish the book. I wanted to stay in that place, that space, that suspended state. Ilyse is there. Right there in those pages. And I didn’t want to turn the page and leave her there.
Do you think poetry can help us heal after tragedy or profound loss?
Yes. Sometimes. Poetry is a practice. It is a meditative practice. It’s also rooted in the storyteller’s tradition. We know, from narrative medicine practices around the world, that the process of storytelling has medicinal value in our lives. It’s also an incantatory art. Our body the instrument. We inhale the invisible, and we breathe the world into the empty air. In the process, the body itself transforms oxygen into story and song. The medicine moves through us.
From my experience, there’s nothing immediate about it. Very rarely does it work like flipping a light switch. Poetry works over long stretches of time. It’s a journey into the dark, the poem lighting the way forward.
Writing one book is a significant undertaking for any writer. Writing three with the intent to release them back-to-back-to-back is monumental. Was it difficult to finish these collections – to say, okay, they are finally finished, I am good with them, they are ready for publication?
Absolutely. But I had so much help throughout! First readers like June Saraceno, Patrick Hicks, Stacey Lynn Brown, and and and — they helped me as I found my way forward, line by line, one mediation to another, book by book.
Compounding the difficulty — I had three albums of music and three short video monologues to create. Singers and musicians from many parts of the globe helped me to see the vision through. Their artistry layers into it all. Benjamin Kramer helped to engineer and shape and care for each and every note. Mac Rutan created the films with me — sometimes driving to the ocean in the 4 am dark to get that golden light of dawn within his aperture.
It was such a gift to have the opportunity to collaborate with each and every one of them. I’ve tried to count the number of people who helped to make this all possible — and the number I come up with is staggering. A little over 300 people helped to make this trio of books arrive in the world!
Poet Carey Salerno (who is the Executive Editor and Executive Director) and all of the wonderful poets and humans who run Alice James Books helped guide me from A to Z, as always. I also had the guidance of Anya Backlund and Miyako Hannan at Blue Flower Arts, the incredible friendship and counsel from my literary agent, Samar Hammam at Rocking Chair Books, as well as music publicist Sarah J Frost, and a company that I hired to help me with radio promotion.
It’s a lot to juggle and have everything align — from the creative work to the behind-the-scenes things that have to happen to make it all work.
How would you describe these books to someone who hasn’t read your previous books?
They chart a journey through love and loss, beginning with an intimate conversation with my wife, poet Ilyse Kusnetz, who crossed over into the river of stars in 2016. The three books spiral further and further out before circling back at the end of the third book, where we end with Ilyse and I in bed, the universe washing through us, wave by wave by wave.
You are a prolific writer across many genres – notably poetry and memoir. How would you describe the difference between writing one or the other?
From my experience with these genres over the years, poetry feels a bit more like a built architecture — sometimes a tiny room, sometimes with room after room unfolding before us. Prose feels like the walls of the poem have been blown out, with no roof overhead, a wide open landscape.
That said, with many of the pieces in this collection, it often felt as if I were somewhere in that blurry landscape between genres.
What are some of the books that have most influenced your life and writing?
Good lord! How much time do we have? I’d recommend Small Hours and Angel Bones by Ilyse Kusnetz. You can find both at Alice James Books.
After reading these books, I couldn’t help but reflect on the loved ones I’ve lost over the years, realizing how I might have lived differently if I had known how little time I truly was going to have with them. If you could hope for a message to the reader from these books, what would it be?
Love the people around you. I wish I’d found ways to be more present and alive with my loved ones when they were here. Love them. Shine like the sun for them, whether clouds and rain block the light or not.
At the same time, one of my hopes is for the now. That is — how can we live with the dead we love? That’s the work of these books. And if our loved ones were also artists, as it is for me, then I want to discover ways to continue making art with them. I want to continue our conversation in art, verse by verse, note by note, moment by moment.
What’s next for you?Any projects (or readings) that you’d like our readers to look forward to?
I’m writing a collection of short lyric essays on nature — and loving it. It’s so much fun to write these short meditations, and I love sharing them at readings. Speaking of readings… As I mentioned before, I’m working on something that’s really daunting, and I’m excited by the challenge of it. I want to create and perform a multi-media show. I love sharing stories and playing music, so my hope is to create an hour-long experience fusing story, poetry, music, and film.
But let’s get to the best thing… I’m working on a hard rock album that has songs in it so rocking it’s going to blow out the sun. You ever notice how sometimes the daylight sort of dims for a moment and then returns to full radiance? That’s us. That’s us in the studio recording the album you’re about to crank up while you drive to the beach with someone you love, the windows down, your hair blown back in the wind, the two of you singing with us at the chorus, the day lifting into something a writer might call the sublime.
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