Joseph Lease & Ben
Mirov discuss poetry as soul-making
the opposite of sincerity is
mediocrity
-Joseph Lease
Ben Mirov: After reading Testify for the first time, I couldn't help
but feel that it was the book for our particular moment in
American history. It addresses huge political and social issues without lapsing
into diatribe or didacticism or sacrificing the musical integrity of the poems.
The tone is an oxymoronic mixture of pathos and courageousness. Do you get the
sense that Testify offers a vision of salvation from the
mess the country is in? Or is it more important that the work embody a yearning
towards an alternate future than the one being offered by politicians and CEOs?
Joseph Lease: It may be easier to
imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
That’s what Mark Fisher says in his book Capitalist Realism.
I think it’s more important than ever to have different ways of
imagining. I think poetry is the best way of embodying and enacting
different ways of imagining. And that involves different ways of
imagining social space, different ways of imagining capitalism and justice and
the ideal of democracy.
BM: One thing I love about the work in Testify is how the musical quality of the
poems has a catalytic effect on their subject matter, which is often
politically and or emotionally charged. Can you talk about this quality in your
work?
JL: A poem makes passages of emotion and thought actual in a construct
of words. My work is ear-driven: rhythmical control answers/embodies the
emotion that animates the poem. So a poem isn’t merely political.
It’s not alienated. A poem is ethics and eros and spirit. A poem of
erotic experience embodies and enacts what it feels like to move through the
world—to be alive—to have a body and a mind and desire and a conscience and an
unconscious mind.
BM: Another thing I admire about the work in Testify is the application of repetition
throughout the book. Lines come up again and again, or they morph slightly into
different versions of themselves. It occurred to me that this repetition and
the repetition in prayer have something in common. How important is prayer in Testify?
JL: Rhythmical control
answers and embodies the emotion that animates the poem. The music becomes
incantatory. And, yes, the music of the poem—the emotional
trajectory—makes the poem matter so much more than a summary of a political or
emotional argument could matter. Poetry can enact changes in awareness so
well because that isn’t the only thing poetry does. Let me try to say
that a different way. A poem is a rollercoaster ride, not a description
of a rollercoaster ride.
BM: One of the ideas that's come up when we've
talked about the breathtaking poem "Broken World (For James Assalty)"
(from Broken World) is
creating community through "mystical individuality". For me this idea
encapsulates the visionary aspect of your poems. How is "mystic
individuality" important in your work? How does the idea play into the
poems in Testify?
JL: James was one of the smartest, toughest, most gifted writers I
have ever known. I needed to write a proper elegy for him. And I
love the connection between elegy and political anger in “Lycidas”: so when I
write to James—“You are with me / and I shatter // everyone who / hates you”—I
am enacting a ritual—and I believe that poetry connects the living and the dead
in mystical community and democracy (if you are part of a true democracy, you
are part of something spiritual).
BM: We've talked about the idea of "soul making" in your
work before. How does the idea of soul making play into your poetics,
specifically your work in Testify? Is it a
sense of structural and/or musical completeness you look for in your poems? Or
something less tangible and ineffable?
JL: I
don't want to sell poetry short. Sometimes there is a bias against strong
emotion in contemporary discussions of poetry. Sometimes there is a bias
against real intelligence (emotion enacts intelligence). Sometimes there
is a bias against sincerity (sincerity is not the opposite of irony—sincerity
is artifice made actual in a construct of words—the opposite of sincerity is
mediocrity). So, sure, Keats believed we aren't just put here to suffer—we
are put here to make our souls. Soul-making demystifies lies.
BM: "Soul-making demystifies
lies" is really wonderful. For me, this is a summation of the connection
between the individual and the political in your work. Your poems are
courageous in the way they put so much faith in the reader. They are the exact
opposite of the empty rhetoric we're spoon-fed by politicians, who treat their
constituents like idiots. It strikes me that you must have a great deal of
faith (faith in the reader, faith in poetry). Is poetry a religious practice
for you?
JL: It's
a spiritual practice, yes. I'm a leftist Jew but I don't go to temple.
I read psalms and Walter Benjamin and Emily Dickinson. Reading poetry
aloud can be prayer. "The exact opposite"—I like that. I've
studied and written about oppositional poetics. I think post-capitalist
political language can be poetry—resistance—poetry that resists dehumanizing
lies—we need fullness of representation, fullness of embodiment and fullness of
enactment.
Ben Mirov is
the author of Hider Roser (Octopus
Books, 2012), and Ghost Machine (Caketrain,
2010) which was selected for publication by Michael Burkard, and chosen as one
of the best books of poetry in 2010 for Believer Magazine's Reader Survey. He
is also the author of the chapbooks My Hologram Chamber is Surrounded by Miles of Snow (YES YES 2011), Vortexts (SUPERMACHINE, 2011), I is to Vorticism (New Michigan Press, 2010),
and Collected Ghost (H_NGM_N,
2010).
Joseph Lease's critically acclaimed books of poetry include Testify (Coffee House Press, 2011) and Broken World (Coffee House
Press, 2007). Lease’s
poems "'Broken World' (For James
Assatly)" and "Send My Roots Rain" have been selected for Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (Second Edition). "'Broken World' (For James Assatly)"
was also selected for The Best American
Poetry 2002.
*Note: This interview was conducted in 2011, after the release of Joseph's book TESTIFY (Coffee House Press)
