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Behind the Byline

Megan Fernandes

May 6, 2022

NER staff reader Alicia Romero talks to Megan Fernandes, whose poem “Letter to a Young Poet” appears in NER 43.1, about the rhythms of quiet survival, the permission to stumble, and staying raw—unruly. 


Alicia Romero: When I first read your poem, it made me think of music. It’s like listening to Miles Davis in “Kind of Blue” or Chopin’s lamenting Preludes. Then I read your poem “In the Beginning” from Good Boys in which you write, “Muddy waters in the floods with Bach.” You seem to riff in that same way in this poem, “Letter to a Young Poet.” Could you talk about how music influences your writing?

Megan Fernandes: My relationship with music is part blood, part brain. I was not the kid growing up who was listening to all kinds of experimental music and knew obscure songs from limited release albums by heart, but I was surrounded by people who had a crazed and instinctual relationship to music. My sister was an excellent pianist. She could really get into some dreamlike zone and I was more of a plonker on the keys, not terribly nuanced. My closest childhood friend growing up, Judith, had musical tastes that were wildly diverse (she listened to everything from Rachmaninoff to Brazilian dance music) and her presence in my life shaped my sonic appreciation, not necessarily in any technical way, but she really got mood. She used music as a way to curate a car ride, a heartbreak, an awkward gathering of people, a necessary silence. Poets need to know how to do that, you know?

My parents listened to a lot of jazz and blues and would attend festivals and take us to clubs to listen to them in Philly. My mom was into opera and introduced me to Kathleen Battle and Maria Callas. And of course, I grew up in the 90’s and so lived through a great era of hip hop which taught me a lot about flow, wordplay, slant rhyme, and what can be great about rhythmic irregularity, the cognitive surprise and pleasure you get when the rhyme isn’t fully true. Recently, I’ve been reading about triplet flow in contemporary hip hop (Lamar, Migos) and femme folkloric performance in Portuguese fado music.  

AR: You emphasize via clipped sentences: “Bridges. Ideas. Destabilization. Yellow tansy. Cities. The wild sea.” The reader experiences surprise with the idea of “destabilization.” Why is a sense of destabilization important to a poet’s sense of language?   

MF: It’s hard to stay awake. The lull of the homeostatic is so comforting. It’s easy to make decisions that are based in comfort and stability and social expectation. It’s easy to believe in the scarcity politics of capitalism and literally “settle” into a set of static relations with the world. I mean that broadly. But why? To be a poet is, I think, to understand flux and dynamism. I’m not saying one should court destabilization (the glamour or romance of the tortured artist gets boring the older you get), but I do think poetry requires us to be a little raw. And stay raw. And with rawness, you’re a bit more porous and tender to the world. A bit more unruly. I think in a moment where poetry is becoming hyper-professionalized, it’s good to remember that to be destabilized is also to be moved. To allow yourself to reorient. To be the kind of person who can change their mind, to change their life.

AR: You talk about ritual in absence of love and in recovery. When and how does ritual come into play when you’re writing?

MF: The only ritual I have with my writing is to read constantly, widely, and voraciously. My writing happens in spurts and when I force it, it’s not very good. My mind has to arrive at the right time, in the right space, with the right set of constellations aligned. Then it happens. It’s tectonic.

But in this poem, I was kind of thinking that ritual is a way we cope with grief and loss. When you lose someone and you become unintelligible to yourself, sometimes all you can do is the basics. Eat. Sleep. Work out. Take a walk outside. Make coffee. Feed the cats. When any kind of stimulation or emotional engagement feels violent or violating or you’re just too tender, ritual is a kind of armor. It builds daily expectations that give structure and order to interior chaos. Ritual is a way into thinking about the durational, how to survive when time feels long and the absence of a beloved feels unbearable. You still need to eat. Sleep. You still need to step outside into the sunshine. When your heart goes on strike, ritual enters. That rhythm of quiet survival.

AR: This poem makes me laugh out loud and it also brings up deep, serious emotions. Sometimes, in one line, the reader experiences both laughter and quiet turmoil. For example, in the line “Pay attention to what disgusts you.” What do you think our dislikes reveal about us as people and as artists?

MF: I’ve read a lot about disgust. From Ahmed and Ngai. It’s an emotion of the gut. Disgust is that weird dual motion of revulsion and attraction. We are disgusted by something but we can’t look away. And it happens mostly when we come into relation with some other subject, where we are no longer sovereign over our own bodies. Haraway says something like, “sex, infection, and eating are old relatives,” which are three examples of what it means to be in relation to some other person, species, virus. To succumb or consume or fuck. That’s when we’re most vulnerable. When I said, “Pay attention to what disgusts you,” I think at the root of it is some fear of being contaminated by an other. And we should pay attention because often some dehumanizing feeling (racism or homophobia or some other prejudice, conscious or not), is lurking there. One only needs to close read the way the media talks about immigrants and the language of disgust and animalization to understand this.

AR: Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels as though our lives have come to a screeching halt in so many essential ways and yet in your poem you advise young poets to “Go slow.” Could you say more about why that might be wise?

MF: We’re in a moment where people seem both reactive and certain about what they believe. What I’m saying is that it’s okay to go slow. Both in your arrival to the ideas you have about the world, but also, as in, go look at the ocean today. To build a belief system requires experience, requires you getting burned a few times. It means you will stumble. “Go slow” is the permission to stumble. To walk to your beliefs instead of rushing headfirst into them.

AR: A powerful line in this poem is “A good city will not parent you.” How does your upbringing influence the way you approach identity in your work?

MF: I think what I meant by that line is that New York’s indifference to you, your heroic subjectivity, your belief in what you can do, can be useful. You become resilient to the need for validation because in the end, you’re just another person walking across the Manhattan Bridge. You’re not special. A good city will not fool you into thinking you’re exceptional, that you’re an exception to anything. It’s healthy ego prevention.

AR: The title of your poem beckons Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” Could you discuss the mentorships that have impacted your work?  

MF: Dead or alive? I’ve had literary mentorships with some dead folks for a while. Gwendolyn Brooks. W.B. Yeats. Etheridge Knight. Jorge Luis Borges. Meena Alexander. I go on these obsessive little deep dives into the work of some dead authors. They talk through time, from the grave.

In the land of the living, my PhD adviser, Bishnupriya Ghosh, is brilliant. I never know what she’s going to write about next, but she also believes in fun which I think in academia, is kind of radical. I came to her at the age of twenty-two and she modeled for me in this fundamental way, how to live a life full of joy, friends, dinners, critical thinking, a radical living politics, in a way that few have, I think. The poet and my former colleague, Lee Upton, is another person who I count as one of my most important mentors. Again, she just did this by modeling kindness and an unparalleled work ethic.

Lastly, my older sisters. Everyone should be so lucky to have older sisters.


Alicia Romero is a graduate of McGill University. She taught AP English in San Diego, CA and led the English Department for the Oakland Unified School District. She taught English teachers curriculum and instruction at McGill University, San Diego State University, and Saint Mary’s College.

Filed Under: Behind the Byline, Featured, News & Notes, Poetry Tagged With: Alicia Romero, Megan Fernandes

Behind the Byline

Ji Hyun Joo

February 26, 2021

Alicia Romero talks to fiction writer Ji Hyun Joo about mothers and daughters, the risks of assimilation, and the Korean bathhouse.

Alicia Romero: Ji Hyun, as I reflected on your story, I wondered how you came to your story title, “Queen’s Luxury Spa” (NER 41.4). How does it become symbolic in how Mother and Daughter communicate? How does the scrubbing and washing at the spa reflect the emotional condition of both of your main characters?

Ji Hyun Joo: I’ve always found the Korean public bathhouses, called mokyoktang, to be really interesting spaces, mainly because my relationship with them throughout the years has changed. When my mom used to take me to them during visits to Korea, I was terrified of them. I was terrified of being naked around so many other women, whose bodies had progressed and experienced so much farther than I ever imagined for my own. There was a violence in scrubbing so hard that rolls of skin fell off. Now, I understand it as a form of bonding, one of the best kinds, and I yearn for access to them in ways that I didn’t before. As I was writing this piece, I continued to return to my altered view of this space. For Mother, the scrubbing and washing is a form of solace, the mokyoktang a space where she can bond with women who have experienced similar pains. While for the daughter, there is still a level of detachment from finding comfort in these actions.

AR: Assimilation for those of us who come from immigrant families can be complicated and sometimes painful. Can you discuss how the tension between the mother and daughter characters gets amplified as they adjust to a different culture? How, in your opinion, does assimilation manifest itself differently in parents and in their children?

JHJ: For Mother, she’s had a specific way of envisioning life for herself and her daughter, which Daughter finds suffocating. When daughter is unable to follow these dreams that Mother has set for her, her view of Mother shifts; in a way, Mother has become fragile. Daughter hides important details of her life from her, which, of course, creates distance, even though the intention is to protect Mother from the drastically different person she’s become. I can’t speak for everyone because the experiences of immigrant families are different. I feel they shouldn’t be grouped simply into one collective bundle. But from what I’ve experienced with my own family, assimilation has created significant emotional distance on both parties. My parents live in Korea now, and the few times that I get to see them, I am someone different. I’m constantly taking on an altered shape, but they can’t articulate what the shape is, just the complexities that contribute to the changes I exhibit.

AR: As part of the plot in your story, the reader gets a glimpse of your character’s life on the East Coast in New York and even in her marriage to her white husband. Can you explain why her life there unravels?  

JHJ: I’m always so interested to see different interpretations about the ex-husband, as information about his background is very sparse. The ex-husband is not white. Her life unravels because she can’t handle the heaviness of the secret she’s keeping from Mother, that she married a man outside of her own culture. Within the secret of the marriage hides the truth that she’s become someone unrecognizable to her only family.

AR: What were some of the decisions you had to make while editing your final text, and what did you learn from them? How does having two languages and two cultures play into your editing choices? Does it affect it at all? 

JHJ: I wanted my readers to understand my characters deeply. Both Mother and Daughter may not be likable. In a way, they are both selfish in their wants for their own lives, and their expectations for one another. I wanted them to be understood. Even for those who’ve never had to hide parts of themselves to their family, I wanted them to see why Mother and Daughter chose to. For this piece, having two languages and two cultures didn’t sway my editing choices. I think both aspects made space in the story quite naturally in the writing process.

AR: The ending of your story presents some questions for the reader.  For example, what will life be like for these two women in the future?  Your story suggests that Mother and Daughter are more similar than they are aware. If you were to look into the daughter’s future, what do you think it might look like? Are you hopeful for her?

JHJ: This is such an exciting question, one that I hadn’t thought about! My hope is that Mother and Daughter will better understand one another. I’m not sure what that might look like because I think it’ll take lots of time and dialogue, but I’d like to think it’s a possibility in their far future.

AR: Tensions between mothers and daughters run deep and complex in all cultures. How do you think mothers and daughters can learn to support each other and improve their relationship in difficult times?

JHJ: This may be the most obvious response, but my heart is very honestly grabbing on to this one answer: Talking to one another. 

AR: How do you, personally, feel about immigrants assimilating into a second culture? How much is too much or too little and do you think there are consequences for both?

JHJ: Again, I can’t speak for anyone but myself. It’s very complicated. I remember when I was growing up in San Diego, within a very small, tight-knit Korean community, assimilation was both applauded and frowned upon. Assimilation was both survival and the catalyst for abandoning one’s roots. Personally, I don’t like the idea that one must assimilate, primarily because assimilation indicates change on a deep level. It instills the belief that people must alter themselves completely to belong, and I don’t believe that’s productive.

AR: How is decoding more than just words, in your opinion? 

JHJ: Decoding is love. Understanding what someone is saying without them having to say it, or saying something completely different, that’s a level of intimacy that’s deep, born from lots of observation.

AR: Thank you, Ji Hyun. Your story reminds this reader of the indelible value of reading between the lines.


Ji Hyun Joo is a writer from San Diego based in Astoria, New York. She is currently pursuing her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where she is a recipient of the 2020 Felipe P. De Alba Fellowship. Her works have been published in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s online magazine the Margins, the online publication Winter Tangerine, and the journal Bomb Cyclone.

Alicia Romero is a fiction reader for NER.

Filed Under: Behind the Byline, Featured, Fiction, News & Notes Tagged With: Alicia Romero, Ji Hyun Joo

Behind the Byline

Douglas Silver

January 18, 2019

Douglas Silver, NER author of “Borders and Crossings” 

NER author Douglas Silver talks with editorial panelist Alicia Romero about his new piece “Borders and Crossings” in 39.4, a captivating personal-political primer on US history from the switchboard of the White House. Silver speaks of creating endings that would make the great Flannery O’Connor proud with their unexpectedness, and his hope that “by the story’s conclusion the reader has reassessed his or her notion of borders.”

 

Alicia Romero: You parallel a chronology of American history from after WWII to the Vietnam War with the chronology of a marriage. How were you able to keep such a laser focus on the evolution of a relationship within the context of this long, tumultuous timeline? Are there parallels between the historical events and the marital conflicts, in terms of mistakes, disappointments, dishonesty, and racism ?

Douglas Silver: Deciding which historical moments to spotlight and omit was a challenge, but my first loyalty is to the characters and their desires. By rooting the tension in the shifting intimacies and conflicts of this family, I hoped to draw on historical events in a manner that would complicate the characters’ personal struggles without the narrative slipping into a primer on US history during late capitalism. The obstacles of this piece varied depending on the day, but certainly there was a balancing act of sorts—though I would say all stories demand balance. Through the initial draft, a voice in the cheap seats of my brain heckled me over the story’s length. Once the narrative exceeded the boundaries of a traditional short story, I accepted this would be a difficult piece to place in a lit mag and so why not go all out. Thankfully, it didn’t scare off the intrepid Carolyn Kuebler and you wonderful folks at NER, and for that I am eternally grateful. There are parallels between the evolution of a family and of a country, and I will resist the urge to spell out too much and risk spoiling the experience for a potential reader.

 

AR: The switchboard operators filtered some of the content to the White House during the years that this story takes place, but very little gets filtered now. Has the world communicated electronically about politics for longer than we think? Did using the switchboard as a vehicle for political views present any challenges? 

DS: Foregrounding the switchboard was an initial challenge, largely because I did not know the first thing about switchboards or White House communications. But as I began delving into the history of the profession and its role in government, I saw numerous opportunities to depict the sociopolitical climate and the gamut of concerns Americans bring to (or blame on) their commander in chief.  You ask, “Has the world communicated electronically about politics for longer than we think?” I appreciate your phrasing; it has been doing so longer than I thought it was before I began my research. The first telephone (and switchboard) was installed in the White House in 1877, under President Rutherford B. Hayes. (However, it would be another fifty years before a telephone was placed in the Oval Office, at the request of newly-elected president Herbert Hoover.) As for filtering, I’m not sure there is significantly less filtering today. For one, the White House switchboard is still in place. There was a funny incident in 2010 when Secretary Clinton could not get through to a White House official because the switchboard operator did not believe the woman on the phone was in fact Secretary Clinton. Sure, anyone can hop on social media and @ the president, but that’s more of a feel-good exercise, akin to the complaints Genevieve receives from piqued callers she has no intention of connecting to the Oval Office. It’s my understanding that most people, including Congress members and high-ranking diplomats, don’t have a direct line to the president. In this White House in particular, I suspect a message undergoes a tremendous amount of filtering and paraphrasing before being delivered to the chief executive.

 

AR: Right from the start, the title and the first sentence upend the reader’s expectation of the story’s subject. The characters behave in unexpected ways. How important is the element of surprise for you as a writer? 

DS: Yes, the title does not suggest the ensuing subject matter. My hope is that by the story’s conclusion the reader has reassessed his or her notion of borders beyond traditional landmasses, and the title feels apt. I’m glad the story surprised you at points. Subverting a reader’s expectations is an aim of every story I tell; often the most lasting influence of a narrative occurs at those junctures of startlement and disorientation, when the writer generates a sense of cognitive dissonance that the reader must reconcile. How it happens I never really know; the parts of my stories that people usually deem most surprising to read are the parts I was most surprised to write.

 

AR: Short story endings can be problematic. In this story the reader is left with the question: Will Tyler be a good father? Describe how you approach endings and do you recall ones that you have admired by other writers?      

DS: The dramatic irony of Genevieve contemplating Tyler’s future fatherhood is a heft I hope weighs on readers well after the story’s final page. To your point, endings are hard. I think many writers, myself included, strive to achieve an earned and devastating conclusion that would make Flannery O’Connor proud with its “inevitable surprise.” But more than anything, I have to be true to the characters and what I believe they would do. Surprise at the expense of verisimilitude is a poor bargain. Predictably, some of my favorite endings belong to some of my favorite stories: “The Mappist” by Barry Lopez; “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff; “The Reverse Bug” by Lore Segal; Daniel Alarcón’s most recent collection The King Is Always Above the People is chockfull of stellar endings. I could go on and on, but I will leave it at that.

 

AR: You weave American history so fluently throughout the story. Are you a history instructor? Why did you choose to structure your story using historical events?   

DS: I am not a history instructor, but I appreciate that the detail led you to believe I was one. Several factors contributed to the narrative structure, one being that I’ve been hankering to investigate a character’s life over a protracted swath of time. Secondly, upon learning about the machinations of the White House switchboard I was fascinated by the operators who helmed those posts. Genevieve’s position makes world events a central element of her daily interactions. This not only facilitated the integration of history but to some extent demanded it. To ignore history would have meant to ignore the person.

 

AR: Do you believe in American institutions and the institution of marriage? Do you think they’ll survive?

DS: I believe in people. Institutions, be they governmental or matrimonial, are only as resilient and venerable as those who inhabit them. My belief in this country, though it has wavered in recent years, remains intact and speaks to a faith not in bureaucratic levers but in the decency of a majority of our populace. Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve taken away from our current political and social turmoil is that we cannot rely on our institutions to save us; we are their custodians, not vice versa. This, too, can be said for any relationship. It must be tended to and respected if it is to endure, let alone thrive. Of course, if history is prophecy (as it invariably is), since the dawn of humankind every empire has eventually fallen much as every marriage has eventually ended; nothing, flesh or regime, survives forever. One day, the United States of America will be no more and we and our partners and partnerships will have expired and all that will remain, if we are lucky, are various stories, by and about us for future generations to pick over. But until then, we must fight.

 

Read “Borders and Crossings” by Douglas Silver
Order the print or e-book edition of NER 39.4.

Filed Under: Behind the Byline, News & Notes Tagged With: Alicia Romero, Borders and Crossings, Douglas Silver


Vol. 43, No. 1

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Shelley Wong

Writer's Notebook—The Winter Forecast

Shelley Wong

In “The Winter Forecast,” the fashion runway becomes a hibernating place. As a California poet, I was thinking about winters elsewhere, the ones I first saw in children’s books and experienced when I lived in New York City in my twenties.

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