NER poetry reader Liza Watkins talks with poet Justin Balog about abstraction and intimacy, the responsibility of poetry (if any!), his two poems in NER 43.1, and his artistic influences.
Liza Watkins: I’m curious about your writing process. Near the end of “Observation on Discovery,” a poem that moves between images of an art installation and those of domestic life on a Catalonian boulevard, the speaker observes that “The narrowness between buildings makes the perfect telescope.” When you set out to write, is there generally something you already know you’re trying to see more clearly within the confined space of a poem, or do you proceed with a more exploratory frame?
Justin Balog: Yes, this is such a lovely first question, thank you! Whenever I’m thinking about the writing process I’m reminded of the framework that Louise Glück laid out in her essay “Education of the Poet”—essentially, there are those writers whose initial stages of writing are indebted to witness and there are those that rely on sketch, which is to say the non-anecdotal. I think, surely for most of us, that the idea can lie somewhere in between, that perhaps we are compelled by some experience and, in the way I think about it, the emotive intricacies and nuances can become more alive through sketch.
The contextual factors of this particular poem stem from a set of annoying mishaps—in the beginning days of my first-ever trip abroad, the airline I flew with permanently lost my luggage and then the next day, my and a friend’s Airbnb key was stolen. It’s now a great and funny story, but in the moment there were a lot of uncertainties and annoyances, so I would describe the impetus here as beginning in experience. But, in my process of writing, I like to let association, what we might label here as a type of “sketch,” allow for the opportunity of moments of unexpected insight (here, the art exhibit or the streets of Barcelona as you mention in your example). It’s these links in association that found, what I would view, a (re)discovery of smallness in the line that you’ve quoted from the poem. In my work, I like to think about scale and I view the craft of writing as a funnel (a telescope, we could say, might be its own type of funnel as well!). I think about abstraction (emotion, an idea, or something esoteric in nature) as existing at the large end of the funnel, and, through the stem, we translate those abstractions through some type of experience, memory, or lived virtue, and then in the small end, finally, to intimacy, self-knowing, learning, or a moment of transcendence (this idea of the funnel can be extrapolated too to images, in this case, how one section of the universe is made small by the walls of buildings). In short, I would say it’s a little bit of both—I know that there are ideas I try to see more clearly in experience, but that it is moments of association and living that allow for the exploratory, the sketches, to unfold.
LW: I like this notion of the writing process as a funnel from abstraction to intimacy, with what you are calling “lived virtue” translating from the large opening to the stem. And I can see your interest in scale in operation in “Abstract,” which contrasts the small scale of the houseplant with the unfathomably large frame of global warming. In beautiful and enigmatic lines, the speaker states, “If I could, I wouldn’t say anything / to Greenland and its disappearing ice,” but of course the poem does say something. Could you share your thoughts about the responsibility of a poem to get a specific message across or prompt a particular thought process? I’m also curious how this might relate to the formal choice to include significant moments of silence throughout “Abstract.”
JB: This is a complicated but important question, I’ll try my best to answer. The responsibility of action for poetry exists, I think, on different levels. At the very top, you have what Heaney might have described as a “lyric action”; a responsibility meant to achieve some sort of outward affect. The consequences in this type of responsibility is frequently dire; it’s an extreme and dangerous form of a type of responsibility, a type of political protest. At the other end we have another type of witness, what I would call an emotive vicariousness; internally, we must feel and be compelled toward consequence before we are spurned to act. I did an interview with Jane Hirshfield nearly two years ago now and asked a derivation of this similar question about her poems, coincidentally, that also tackled the climate crisis. She used a term, which I think is useful here, about responsibility, specifically centered around climate change, that a poem is a “vessel of felt response.” There are a lot of different types of poetic responsibility, but those are at least some of my brief thoughts about the responsibility of a poem to achieve a particular message more broadly.
Obviously, the first type of responsibility is not what is happening here. I’m happy that you think “Abstract” says something. This was a poem that I wrote back at the beginning of the pandemic under a weight of existentialisms that, in different ways and for different reasons for different people, became incredibly even more cumbersome during those first months of COVID; everything from health to the economic, racial, environmental, and political grief of what was happening.
I think this might be where the formal choice of silence that you’ve identified comes from. It felt right to have the poem pause almost out of sheer enormity for the situation. The reason that I say it makes me happy that you think the poem says something is because I guess you can say something out of sheer hopelessness, but in a way, I think, that very hopelessness can eschew any type of future “responsibility” as we might call it here. The responsibility of action is a difficult question because, at least for me, in this instance, it wasn’t an expectation I held for the work. What I’m trying to say is that the responsibility here, at the time I wrote this, was entirely self-centered, only just a manifestation and a prompting of my particular thought process during that period of time. Responsibility can take on its own forms, outside of intent or private sphere. It’s often attributed to Yeats, but an epigraph in his 1916 collection Responsibilities reads “In dreams begins responsibility.” We could quibble and muse about the mysteriousness of that epigraph until the end of time but responsibility, at least, has the tendency to evolve from within.
LW: Thanks so much for entertaining what was rather a monumental question, but one I’m always interested in exploring with other writers. I love the idea of quiet poems being generated out of a hopeless time, and how the emotive vicariousness of the work, as you say, can open a space of personal intent, however unconscious. And I am so glad to know about the epigraph “in dreams begins responsibility,” which makes me think of a gorgeous line from “Observation on Discovery,” “my heart / felt weightless as a toolbox.” In fact, in both poems in this NER issue you explore aspects of being tethered versus being weightless or free. When you write do you work with a collection in mind, or are you less project oriented?
JB: It’s always so enlightening to hear others connect the dots the work lays out, these things always have such a way of remaining elusive to ourselves. One of the many privileges of my MFA experience was that I had a fellowship year to refine and work solely on the collection that I had turned in as my thesis project. It’s now been about two years since my fellowship ended and I wrote these poems under the umbrella of that collection, as I have been doing with everything I’ve written since. I go back and forth, I think as most of us do, on whether I should throw the whole thing out and try again or continue to work on it and see what other insights and perspective time has to offer (I am leaning toward eventually doing the former, but that changes depending on the time of day). Projects always demand an aesthetic focus, and that focus can be helpful for guiding us, but that demand sometimes has a way of narrowing possibility and vision, at least for me. I think that I’m slowly learning the importance of that balance, but for now I think I’ll keep (hopefully not hopelessly) revisiting the collection until I feel I have no more darts left to throw at the wall.
LW: I’m glad you’re still throwing darts at the wall! Have there been particular poets or visual artists that seem to be in conversation with your work or that you’ve found inspiring for this collection as currently conceived? “Observation on Discovery”engages in a kind of ekphrasis, and I’m curious whether this is a regular part of your writing process.
JB: So I have to admit, I’m not terribly involved in the arts world outside of writing (although I wish I was!). I come from a more science-y educational background and the visual arts are something that has remained out of grasp for me but that I’ve always had a deep respect for. I try to get to museums or exhibits every once and awhile to make up for my very pedestrian knowledge of the arts, but I’m not much better for my attempts. To go back to the previous point about the experiential in the writing process, the particular art exhibit referenced in the poem is from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona—it was literally a hanging bedframe and I thought it was sort of nice to pair that with the clothes strung out to dry over balconies and alleys (I have a picture of it, but I can’t seem to find the name of the artist to credit them for the work). That being said, if there is ever a piece of art, or anything of influence, that I see and think it could work nicely in a poem I do draw a fair amount of inspiration from it. I love to think about the associations between objects, ideas, facts, etc.
In terms of particular poets that I feel have guided my sensibility and aesthetics, hands down, Kathleen Graber’s work has by far been the most influential for me (I think her collection Eternal City is one of the best collections of poems I’ve ever read). Another big influence of mine is the work of Lucie Brock-Broido. I think both of their work has been vital in the way that I understand associative logic in poems and how that can be brought out through lyric. Some other favorites of mine who have informed my own sensibilities are Arthur Sze, Anne Carson, Catherine Barnett, Alberto Rios, and Hannah Sullivan—I of course could go on, but I’ll limit myself to only a couple!
LW: I’ve actually been wondering whether the installation in “Observation on Discovery” could be the one from the cover and titular poem in Fanny Howe’s Come and See. It’s a piece called Third World Extra Virgin Dreams 1997 by Dr. Suzann Victor. Fanny Howe is another master of associative logic, and it would be interesting if you both chose the same image to work with in a poem.
JB: Yes no kidding! That would have been such a fun coincidence, but sadly it is not the same one (although I guess there is a common theme among floating bedframes and poems it seems!).
LW: Ah, well I’m sorry I can’t be helpful in identifying the artist, but I’ll be on the lookout for more installation-inspired poems about the place we dream. Speaking of dreams, I understand you’re just finishing a master’s program in education. Congratulations! When you’re not busy reading and writing, what captures your interest or helps you unwind?
JB: Yes that is right, I’ll be finishing up my second masters here at the end of the month, which I’m very happy and excited about! I was just in a year-long program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education; it all went by so quickly, I feel like I blinked and it’s all over now. When I’m not busy with school, reading or writing, it sounds cliché, but I love spending time with my friends or traveling. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of really great people in my life, they are a big source of energy for me and spending time with them helps me recharge and unwind (obviously this has been made extremely difficult the past two years). Outside of that I’m also a huge sports fan, me and all of my family are from Chicago and have been raised to love everything (Chicago) sports, although my main sport is soccer so I’m very excited for the World Cup coming up here in the fall. I also love to unwind with absolutely, mind-numbing dating shows—I don’t watch much TV or anything, but I get unhealthily invested in The Bachelor and, more recently, The Ultimatum on Netflix, they are my guilty pleasures. I try to carve out as much space for different interests, because I don’t think writing would really ever happen for me if I didn’t do plenty of living too!
Liza Watkins is a poet and social worker from Louisiana. Her current work reflects ongoing research in Gulf Coast communities and wildlife refuges. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston, where she was a teaching fellow. Her poetry has appeared in Paris Review and Massachusetts Review. Liza lives in New York City.