Interview Whitworth University

The following interview took place on September 24, 2010 at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington.

THOM CARAWAY: It is Friday, September 24, 2010. This is an interview with author Alan Botsford with Rock & Sling editor Thom Caraway and Rock & Sling intern extraordinaire Kate Schmedake. Alan, how are you?
ALAN BOTSFORD: I’m fine, good to be here.
T: Good. I wonder if you could talk a bit about, before we get to Whitman, maybe your first collection of poems, The Mamaist came out in 2002, is that correct?
A: 2002.
T: Talk about the title a bit, as of course a reference to the Dada movement, where you drew inspiration for that, and maybe talk about that project. You’re eight years removed from having published it now, so maybe ten years removed from the writing of those poems. Looking back on that first collection, how do you think about it now? Maybe some background on that first collection.
A: Its inception was in New York City, and it grew out of, in a word, love – how can I say? – it grew out of my relationship with my wife and I want to acknowledge that because it felt very much like a collaborative work in many ways. And I think that Mamaist has taken on many different meanings in the ensuing years, so as an origin, it was in New York, my wife was pregnant with our only child and Mamaist came up, and that’s something that I sort of thought, “Why not?” It was a “why not?” kind of title presenting itself in a creative fashion, and it was a particularly important turning point in my life. There were many things happening in that particular year, including getting married, including having a child, including leaving Hunter College and NYU and moving to Japan. So it was profoundly an expression of that time of my life, and a celebration of what was going on in my life. So that’s why I used the word “love” and I never really used that word, but in a nutshell.
T: So there was no intentional nod to Dadaists?
A: I have read, of course, as much I suppose as the next guy, Dadaist, surrealist – I loved French surrealist poets for years, and had even translated some in early years. I could name [French author’s name], many different writers, but I wasn’t trying to go up against the Dadaists; I wasn’t trying to make a statement. I just simply liked the humor of it and I wanted to explore where it would take me as a word. And then I discovered that the very syllable itself, “Ma,” interestingly, can be found in most languages. The etymology of the word probably what you would expect it to be as “Ma,” is “food” because the mother is the source of food for the child. When I found that out, is just seemed very fitting, because it was very much a beginning for me and my wife, and our life together. It speaks to many dimensions, both personal and creative at that particular point in my life. But I have not stopped writing Mamaist poems, and I intend to publish Mamaist books in the future, because I probably would like to think of that as a lifelong journey.
T: So you’ll have half a dozen books by the same title.
A: With different subtitles.
T: Does the first one have a subtitle?
A: The subtitle is “Learning a New Language.”
T: “Learning a New Language.” Now, those were written in 1989, or begun?
A: Begun in 1989, yes.
T: Okay.
A: "Nothing," if I’m not mistaken, was written in New York. So that particular poem, which begins this volume, was written while I was in the city, while I was in America. But I went on to write more of that poem in Japan, and it sort of evolved very naturally into what I call “generic” poems. And what that is, as opposed to brand-name poems, you’ll know very quickly what I mean when you hear an example, is that you can play with language or you can bring the changes on turns of phrases and idioms that are fairly commonplace in such a way that they have not only new context but they provide you with a kind of mirror in two ways. A mirror of how life itself – existence – is structured, that is, chronologically, there’s always a before. What precedes the sentence and what comes after the sentence is going to determine the meaning of that sentence. And that very much comes into play with those generic poems, in a very obvious way.

T: This idea of language, the meanings of the very syllables that make up the words we use is in many ways central to a lot of things that you do. I mean, there’s an essay in here on the examination of the words “leaves” and “of” and “grass” in the Whitman book. So there’s a section on the word “of;” I mean, you left nothing unturned in terms of examining all of the various implications and connotations and denotations. Is that something that comes out of linguistic training, or just a particular interest you have in sound?
A: I think it’s related more to sound, and music, in my case. I don’t have any real linguistic training; I mean I have taken a linguistics class here and there, but my training and interests I think grows out of music. At that time, syllables were the building blocks, naturally, of words, so I seemed to find words and phrases, and I would construct a lexicon. I would just makes lists. I was very much immersed in language at that particular time in my life. And that immersion was just one discovery after another. I mean, for me, if you gave me a word I would go to an etymological dictionary and try to find what the origin was. And I would never tire of that.
T: And there’s a lot of play with that in the poetry; I think specifically of fragments of lines that I remember from the manuscript “Inward, indeed, in word, in deed.” And those things put with each other, and calling attention to the sounds that we make and the meaning we attach to those sounds, which, when you put them next to each other, what is that, “Inward, indeed, in word, in deed” – that’s six words that have somewhat arbitrarily been assigned to these different meanings. And I like that oftentimes in the poems it seems like you’re playing with that idea and it seems like that idea of play is fairly important to a lot of the poems in here especially. Where does that, in a sense, come from? Is it a love of sound, and a love of language and your immersion in it, or do you want to address that?
A: I really think, like anyone writing or drawn to poems, that you’re drawn to rhyme from very early on. I think childhood is a place where you discover that joy of language. And I think I wanted that to live in my work as much as possible. And not shy from that experience of joy. Very different from pleasure, a deep sense, you know, even how C.S. Lewis uses the word joy. And so I think it’s a bridge to different parts of my life that I would not otherwise be able to access or maybe there are too many taboos so that in an artistic way you can explore language without the restrictions of those taboos. Does that make sense?
T: I think so. And, I mean, turning to the Whitman book, there is, I mean just in the examination of Whitman and the sense of taboos, that’s one of the big things that he did. We look back and say, “Whitman did this.” He broke down a lot of barriers in terms of just social norms and ‘it’s okay to talk about these things in poetry now,’ and maybe part of that is his gift to us, and so the preservation that makes a lot of sense.
A: “Resist much, obey little.”
T: Right.
A: That’s quintessential Whitman. I think maybe breaking down is maybe one step but the next

step would be breaking through, or liberating – that word is associated with Whitman. He was able to find what I like to think of as when you reach dead ends in creative explorations or even in your own personal life, you have to find ways of breaking through, and he did in a profound way. In probably an unparalleled way, in the history of not only American literature but probably world literature. That influx of energy is at the use and the poetic production of free verse is so, for me, what Whitman represents. What I wanted to say was taking that metaphor of the dead and – and we all have experienced that, in every dimension – and moving it into the open road. That dead end that opens out into what clearly was, for him, groundbreaking. But he had to live with the consequences of that. In other words, once you make that breakthrough you have to recalibrate your relationship utterly to the muse to daily life. So that also presents for me in Whitman’s case an exemplary figure in literature because he transcends literature. His struggle in many ways is not just his struggle as a man of letters, it’s a struggle of a man of well, to use your word, faith, is not out of place with Whitman. So I think that runs though his life and work.
T: Maybe, by way of getting us to more specific questions about the book. It was written over a number of years. You seem to, when you begin a project, become very immersed in it, as you said with language and everything, so what was that process like? How did you come to Whitman? How did this book happen? Because it’s such an interesting combination of original poetry, the dialogues, which covers so much ground, and the essays, which are at the same time scholarly and researched and lyric and poetic. Was it just the case of, in talking about Whitman, there are so many ways to talk about him that you couldn’t be kind of contained to just one?
A: Alright, let me bring down to earth in a very practical way first, and then I’ll expand on it. Very practically speaking, I had to write prose. That is, I wanted to write poetry and really made poetry my priority from the early years in New York on and really made poetry my priority. So poetry was always my priority. But I needed something to back it up, in other words, in the world we live in you need to show the backdrop for those poems in a way that doesn’t diminish their mystery, and I hope I haven’t done that in any sense, only brought more dimensions –
T: Just to clarify, it was a practical consideration, in terms of being a university professor?
A: As a professor, I was just setting out. I had been teaching part time in universities and if I was going to take the next step to full time, I needed to produce critical essays. So on a practical level, that was needed, that was necessary. So I had to turn my focus to what in a way was very helpful, and useful, and important, it turns out. I remember – and my wife will joke with me – because I turned to her, and I mentioned this, even in the acknowledgements, I said, “what could I possibly write about Whitman that would be new? It’s been said 100 times.” What could I say? But I took that leap of faith, and now looking back I have a different answer, and that answer would be it’s grown from the soil of Japan. Japanese nurturing of the spirit of roots that plays such an important role for me, that is I think figures in the birth of that book. The book took on a life of its own and I started with those essays and I found myself needing to write in dialogue form because it allowed play for my imagination and for my moral compass necessarily required that give and take response. And also, it seemed to me so prominent in Whitman’s own work, that he was always addressing the reader. So I think I was inspired by that, and took that and ran with it, and found myriad inspirations not only from Whitman, but –
T : Yeah, I mean, there’s so much mythology. One of my favorite paragraphs in the entire book

is the last paragraph, the thinking outside the cave, just for the borage of references that really encapsulate what the book is doing. It’s not really another book about Whitman; it’s all these other things as well. Just for reference: “Time for us to be putting on our thinking caps and start thinking by the cave. Remember, Mahatma Gandhi toppled the once- invincible British Empire by spinning at his loom and stripping to a loincloth. Meanwhile, as the myth of [Amahterasu?] would remind us, Benjamin Andre of the hip-hop group Outkast sings, ‘When you feel you’ve done the best you can, mother fuck the wagon, come join the band.’” Gandhi, the British Empire, [Amahterasu?] and Outkast, that’s as unlikely a pairing as you can imagine, but it works. So, maybe [Arahsamataro?], and then pairing that with Atlantis, there are so many strings of influence going on in the book. Maybe talk about some of those mythic influences. Does Whitman just lend himself to myth in various cultures?
A: That’s a good question. I think undergirding his thought would arguably be found in the
mythic traditions of both East and West. In other words, he arrived on the scene in the 19th century when a lot of those spiritual epics from the East were being translated. Emerson and Thoreau were reading [?], this was a very exciting time for those who were interested in eastern literature, and Whitman was no exception. So he not only was influenced from the transcendental side, but also from his own readings of the eastern epics. So I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to say by sheer chance I landed in Japan, I had always a longstanding interest in transcendental writers, in Melville especially, and in Whitman. So that all of it just came together in a way that sort of allowed me to not be confined by the scholarly essay, which has its own traditions, its own protocols, and worthy indeed. Hundreds of centuries had established tradition that I am not fine with. But I do see this book not as a tree with its roots, but as a vine, around the tree moving in new directions, and opening up possibilities for others to explore literature in those ways. So they don’t have to follow the norm. That critical scholarship, as important as it is, is not going to change – that is a tradition – but there can be other ways of approaching and appreciating and responding to literature, and engaging with the past.
T: And not just the past of the context that literature exists, but the vaster kind of past that it engages either consciously or unconsciously. Whitman was, of course, influenced by a lot of the eastern epics, but not a lot of scholarship recognizes that. And how do you answer the question, and as the publisher of this book I get this question a lot, how is this book different than any other book on Whitman? And my answer is often, “Just read it.” And that’s not a very satisfying answer, but how do you sum up – how does Alan Botsford, the author of this book, answer the question, “How is this different? Why would I read this?” rather than one of the myriad other books of Whitman scholarship?
A: If you want to understand Whitman, Whitman’s cultural context, his historical context, there is so much to be found in that area that my book does not address per se. My book is more of a creative engagement and a response to the possibilities of Whitman’s language and use of language and how that can continue to inspire writers, as of course Whitman has inspired the
whole tradition of free verse since the 19th century. So I’m one of many to have written these so-called “Walt poems.” And I knew that, I knew that very well that there was a long legacy of poems written in response to Whitman, to, as we say, “Uncle Walt,” or “Father Walt,” and so on. I knew that, and yet I wanted to take it further. Yes, but I think the best answer would be to read the book, because it belies explanation.
T: And what you said there, that so much happened, and your intent was in a way to carry it further. I think the quintessential example of that is, of course, the last – we say it’s the last–

poem in the book, “Singing with the Dead,” which is an 83-part poem, with various versions of Walt and engagements with him. Maybe talk about the process of an 83-part poem, which is 83 poems under the [?] of “Singing with the Dead.”
A: It’s subtitled “In Search of a Living Lord.” In search of Whitman’s contemporaneity, in
search of his voice in the 21st century that might speak to us in new ways, both as readers as potential poets to come – as writers and healers and thinkers – because Whitman is so rich with that wealth of tradition. You asked earlier of the myth. He creates almost single-handedly the myth of the American voice, the myth of the American. Or even today helping define what it is to be American at our best. He’s such a treasure, to me an honor, that I wanted to take it further not as kind of a joke – though I’m now responding to Uncle Walt – but on a much deeper level, hopefully meeting him at those mythic roots where all kinds of archetypes come to life. It’s a path that is a labor of great struggle and love, I think, in looking back when I think about the book. But I haven’t begun to answer your question, and if I may say one or two new things. The evolution of the book is also owed to collaborations with, as I said, the Japanese culture, Japanese colleagues, all the readings that I did, and not least fortuitously, even your contribution was an important part of the journey of this book, and as an editor you – and I’m speaking now of Thom Caraway – I think played a role also, meaning that I’d like to think that the book has roots in a communal existence, not just celebrating, “Oh, this is Alan Botsford speaking back to Walt Whitman.” I would like and hope to think that Whitman would continue to have that effect, and other writers, too.
T: And I think that that’s one of the things that I love about the book is that it doesn’t seem like a book; it seems like a conversation. And at points in the book it is a conversation, negotiating with Walt, and the dialogue – all these different traditions and characters and myths that the book and the context of Whitman engages with, an experience sort of book. It will never be the book you expect, in many of the same ways Whitman is never the same. When you read “Leaves of Grass,” it’s a different experience each time.
A: Well that means a lot, thank you. I would hope so, and I would hope that presence is something that Whitman offers in language in a way that is very unique. He celebrated presence; that is what he finally realized many years later, after years and years of struggle with finding an audience. In later years he will acknowledge openly the arrogance, the flaw, the shortcomings of the man. This is what makes him so human; this is what makes him more than a poet; it makes him a moral force. It makes him a man some say who may not have evolved as much as he could have, given the restrictions of the poems. But I think it’s fair to say that he made his poetry his lifework and it was his journey, it became a spiritual journal for him. That’s how I read Whitman – as a spiritual mentor or a spiritual guide, so those poems in that last section – “Singing with the Dead” – are partly in Whitman’s voice, partly in my voice, partly in Whitman speaking to me, partly in me imagining myself as Whitman. There are so many different permutations, and I never predicted or planned –
T: Right, you didn’t wake up today and say, “Today, I am Walt Whitman talking to Alan Botsford.”I would imagine that would be hard to keep track of. Kate, questions, if you want to jump in?
K: I think you covered a lot of what I was thinking about. You mentioned earlier how language, especially you’ve seen how children’s [?] of language, have you seen that, as you’re a parent, have you grown to learn to love language more as your child is learning to speak?
A: Interesting question. He was raised bilingually, my son Sage, and it was an effort on his

part to be willing to learn the second language at home with his father, because with his mother he would learn Japanese and when your native language, which is inherently the mother tongue – that’s why we say that. But nevertheless his father is American and speaks in order to give him that second language. And so it was a series of negotiations and compromises, because he had his willfulness and I had my hopes, so raising him with both languages necessitated learning something new for us every day for both of us. It was also a joy for me. He’s now fully grown, he’s 21, but looking back on those days, there was a lot of joy as a parent as much learning as what would be good for him growing up and navigating the world in two languages and I’m not ashamed to admit also learning as a father what would be nurturing and nourishing as a human being, because the son is the father of the man, I could believe that. So there was a learning process that I think I am particularly attuned to and I wanted to convey that in my book on Whitman, not only the learning process – the early Mamaist is called “Learning a New Language – but also learning is a creative process. So I hope that in all my work I can communicate that joy of learning, which never stops.
T: I want to ask a few things about the dialogues in particular. Conceptually, the dialogues at times seem at times like negotiating with Walt, so each one has two voices, and one of them Walt Whitman. Odysseus is the character in another one.
A: That’s one of the characters, it goes through many –
T: Right, permutations of self. One that struck me of course the first one in the book, Crossing the Threshold, at times seems to be the speaker engaged with himself.
A: There’s a risk that you run in how much you can get away with. In any form in your experimenting, you have to run the risk of failing. So if the charge of cyllopsism is made, I would say Whitman is deviously cyllopsistic. “I celebrate myself.” “I sing myself.”
T: “What I believe you shall believe.”
A: “What I assume, you shall assume.” Well, that’s more democratic; that’s more egalitarian, that next step. That first step, though, is that infant in love narcissistically with itself, with him or herself. And it’s a joy. So what I admire about Whitman is that risk that he takes he goes on in that first section to say, “I permit to speak, nature without check with original energy.” That to me is a profound statement for any poet to take to heart. I dare any poet to take that line and take it to heart and make that energy available in one’s own work as a creative artist. That would take you in directions unforeseen and possibly why he is a spiritual inspiration, what Wendell Barry calls “an angel of inspiration” for many people. He’s one of many. Is that and just if you look at those first three lines – “I sing myself,” “What I assume you shall assume,” and “What good belongs to me as good belongs to you” – which is mutilated, that last line – but those three lines, it seems to me, have a very nice sort of progression from nativity to equality to democracy, just encapsulated compressed form, those three lines, and of course he spends the rest of his life exploring those things.
T: In the dialogues, do you think that in Crossing the Thresholds, which explores the self and the dialogue with the self in a really productive way, the speaker, the italicized speaker, the conscious speaker, is waking up to itself?
A: That’s nicely put.
T: It seems like a lot of the language takes us there, because the conscious self is so ignorant of the self throughout this dialogue, which really struck me as interesting. He wants to know the answers to that first line of Whitman – “I celebrate myself” – “Why does this hurt me?” The speaker of Crossing the Threshold is saying. He wants the easy answers, and the self- conscious keeps saying, “You’re not getting it, you’re not getting it.” And eventually, of course

he does, and it strikes me that the influence or the range of belief, which is also presented in different essays, just briefly: What should one feeling lost and confused in this realm say to those who would ask him what he’s doing here, a simple, “I’m here to refine my pain will do” and the subconscious self says, which seems a very Buddhist sort of way to interact with the world, and then immediately following: “Alright, but is there some special password I should be using?” So the subconscious says, “You want a password? How’s ‘hell-bent, Heaven- sent?’ Now get going! You’ve places to go” – which is more Christian. So in a way, the concept of awakening and rebirth is present throughout this dialogue and some of the others as well. If the self of the speaker is waking up to itself as a spiritual transformation – you’ve talked about Whitman’s corpus of his work, and of his life, a spiritual seeking. How do you see that – specifically with Crossing the Threshold – which ends, of course, with the temple – keep it clean, and this temple is the answer as if the conscious self was even aware that this consciousness that you have is a temple and you must keep it clean. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit in terms of the sort of journey of spiritual and renewal of faith that seem to be present in these, because it does seem to have that sort of trajectory, beginning in ignorance, essentially, and moving toward the experience of [?] conception.
A: Interestingly, readers have made this observation before, that Whitman represents a kind of radical innocence, and I would think the experience of the Civil War and the trial by fire of that brought about a crisis of faith, which he weathered and endured and came through, inasmuch as not only did he continue writing and find the muse alive and well in new ways, not in his former incarnation. What’s interesting about Whitman is that he does achieve new forms of expression, and he had to sloth off the old pointed persona of the first few editions and achieve a new relationship to his ideals and his faith in those ideals that America stood for, namely brotherhood, egalitarianism, and equality. And those were ideals that were obviously and profoundly and drastically and violently tested in the caldron of the civil war. And significantly his role in the Civil War as a volunteer nurse in Civil War hospitals, not only buttresses his standing in the critical reception that would come later because he walked the talk, he was a man of his word, a man not of Christian faith but, of course, his background was Quaker, per se; he had many different influences, but he was I think profoundly a man of faith. I think a man of faith in creation; I think a man who really had an abiding faith in the capacities for creative life in human beings that could be evolving, that could be – I’m not saying in any sense that you have to train yourself, that you have to have that “get it” sort of feeling which was
prominent in the 19th century with cosmic consciousness. This book is my own take on Whitman’s cosmic folklore. Folklore was the “everydayness” of life – customs, traditions, lullabies, songs, you name it - very human, very every day; it’s the people’s path. It’s not a glorified spiritual awakening sort of path, as much as I respect Buddhism and I respect those traditions; that’s not my approach. My approach is we already have what we need it’s already there, as you reminded me in your own response to the book. We have what we need and it’s a kind of ecology of culture and literary influence and it calls into question your ideas of originality, because if you have what you need, it’s just a matter of knowing how to make use of those materials in creative new ways. That, I think, could be one essential way to explain or introduce my book is its discovering creative uses of what’s already there – idioms or traditions or myths or folktales or cultural beliefs – and each person can be doing that in his or her creative life so that’s why I feel that this can be a kind of point of beginning for possible other books and writers to explore in this vein in this way

T: Well, I think we’re about out of time. Anything else?
K: I don’t think so.
T: Do you want to send us off with a ...
A: Whitworth University, thank you very much, Kate and Thom.