Pleased to have Matthew Minicucci as the seventeenth
interview in The Fine Delight series.
Earlier this year I reviewed Matt's poetry debut for HTMLGIANT. Here's
an excerpt:
Reliquary’s true mystery, and its greatest success, is cataloging the differences between unbelief and disbelief. The latter almost requires the possibility of belief as an axis point, something to push back against. The images of the Stations of the Cross would mean nothing to the narrator without the Catholic architecture, in the same way that critics of Warhol’s mass-produced, soup-can iconography are fascinated by the duality of something ubiquitous made individual and great. In “Figure 12: Jesus Dies,” “Sister Theresa doesn’t have to ask for silence.” The children are still, “hands in pockets, / trying to reach further than the cloth’s catch.” They are looking at death, and they believe in it.
I appreciate Matt's generous responses and thoughts. A bio note and link to his book follow this interview.
1. I loved Reliquary--I think my review at HTMLGIANT sums that up. So I'd like to
hear more about the story behind this book: anything from initial idea,
composition, revision, to publication.
I think (and I’m sure many writers feel the same way upon
completion of a manuscript) this is a book that I’ve always wanted to write.
There were numerous times even before I entered my MFA program that I sat down
with the idea and worked on it. I played with the themes and characters
here and there, but never felt comfortable with them, especially in a workshop
setting. I will argue that this was a book that could not have been
completed in workshop. Not that I’m against the notion of workshop and
the value therein, but the poems would have been sanded down, tightened in such
a way that may have robbed them of some inherent honesty. Or, at least,
that’s what I tell myself.
The true beginning of the book as a fully formed idea came
about in an unpublished poem I wrote many years ago. As it turns out, it
was the initial impetus behind the series. This is where I started:
The Door
Closed
but no window opened. It seems sister Theresa was wrong about the lord's mysterious ways, how many paces from the tabernacle to the altar, how I tried to steal the Eucharist once when I was nine. I wanted to be powerful, I admit it. I wanted a small token of favor I could wear around my neck and show off to my friends. But this too rotted away. Festered, like stale bread on my tongue, or sister Theresa's bony fingers jabbed into my chest. “You're stupid” she said. I know. You should see me when I'm unprepared. I spell doughnut wrong on the first test of the year, forget how to add simple fractions and don't look at me like that. Take off that habit. Come out of the convent for afternoon recess. We're playing football. Watch. Watch how I use what god gave me to throw long, to two-hand-touch Chris right into a rock wall. Listen to his shoulder separate. A soft touch won't fix this. Sometimes even god has to place the heel of his boot in your armpit and pull.
It was one of the first poems I wrote where I felt I tapped
into something that I had been dancing around in my work. Religion was
always there, but not in such a direct way, with these characters, and
presented sine missione.
The book was written in the 8 months following my graduation
from my MFA program. And, unlike other manuscripts I’ve worked on, it was
a straight progression, from Figure 1 to
Figure 14, without stop, and without
other projects as distractions or breaks. It was an obsession for those
months. It was, simply, all I had, as I was unemployed, and was living
(frugally) on savings. Every morning I awoke, sat with photos of
sculptures and illuminated pieces, and studied the stations of the cross.
In many ways, I didn’t need to study them. I
remembered much more from my Catholic school days than I imagined I would.
In seeing simple shapes and specific twists of the human body of this man, this
one very important man I had been taught to revere (and fear) in such a way, I
started to spin memories and images into some sort of narrative. That
narrative, the characters, and the natural stopping point for the series (there
are only 14 stations in the traditional Via
Crucis, after all, and thus a project with a clear end), made it an easy
decision to consider the poems as a chapbook manuscript.
I had actually considered sending the pieces out
individually, (and did to a few notable places, but with only nice letters in
response) but eventually decided the work had much more weight when a reader
could engage with the entire series (much like the stations themselves, I hope).
2. Accents
Publishing, a great small press, published Reliquary.
Could you talk about the process of submission, revision, and publication? And
how does it feel to have this book out into the world?
I actually ran across Accents Publishing first just randomly
walking by their table at AWP Chicago in 2011. Their books really caught
my eye: simple, classy, traditional. I loved the textured covers; the
black and white stenciled art. I immediately considered them a
possibility, even before I knew they had a chapbook competition. The
press’s aesthetic seemed to match with the resonance of the poems perfectly.
That summer, I was vacationing with my girlfriend and her
family and I received a call from Haley Crigger, an intern at Accents who would
end up working closely with me on the publication of the manuscript.
Shortly thereafter, I was called by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, who told me I was
a finalist in their competition, and that they were taking the book.
Getting that call was certainly a culmination of a lot of
work, not just these poems, but everything I had written. This was my
first book publication, and it was a wonderful moment.
I feel extraordinarily lucky to have had such dedicated
editors over at Accents. I have to thank Haley, especially, as I think
she probably got about 75 emails from me over the course of that Fall semester.
Bless the patience of that young lady, and her willingness to keep writing back
to a doting father of a nascent book.
In talking about the publication process, I would like to
make special mention of my friend Jake Adam York. I was lucky enough to
receive blurbs for the book from both Jake and Angie Estes, a fact which, in it
of itself, fills me with disbelief that the book actually exists. No man
is that lucky. When I received Jake’s blurb, he accompanied it with a
wonderful email, complementing me on the manuscript, and telling me he was
proud of what I had accomplished. When he passed away shortly thereafter,
suddenly and unexpectedly, it hit very hard, as it did for many friends and
colleagues in the literary community.
I consider Jake a friend and a mentor. He was the
first editor to take a poem of mine, and one of the first to befriend me as a
young, wide-eyed MFA student at AWP in Chicago (2008). And so, for all
that, and for reading these poems, and taking the time to say something
beautiful about them, I’m forever in Jake’s debt. And I miss him.
3. "It
was an obsession for those months . . . Every morning I awoke, sat with photos
of sculptures and illuminated pieces, and studied the stations of the
cross." An awesome, inspiring image. Do you consider the composition or
reading of poetry as a form of prayer?
Yes. Yes. And yes. I think one of the strangest
things I remember from the entire composition process of these poems and this
book was the first time my father read them. Himself a twelve-year
Catholic school veteran, the first thing he said on the phone was: they’re so much more pious than you might
realize.
I was certainly caught off guard. While writing, the
poems felt like expulsion, rather than any sort of gilding. I wanted to
present the emotionality of the stations as a method of acknowledging the
difficulty of those things; those moments. The book ends by playing off
the Latin root for passion: passio.
I say something to the effect of: how
bitter its etymology; how tangled its root. What came of it was, as
you quoted from John Updike in your review of the book, a crystalline cynicism.
That someone would see the piety in these things never
occurred to me. Furthermore, that I myself might still engage with
respect and awe these ideas that seemed so far away, was amazing. I still
can’t sit here and claim to be some arbitrary definition of a “religious
person,” but the book allowed me to remember what faith (and prayer) might
actually be: this skin that’s ever-molting; never as stationary and calm as
you’d hope it to be.
So yes, writing these poems was certainly an act of prayer.
And you’re exactly right: the composition of this book reminded me that every
poem I write or read is a prayer to someone, or something. The acts
resemble each other so very much: the internal made apparent; the observation
and record of a moment; the faith that something of the self and its hopes is
transfigured, and lasts forever.
4. That’s a
wonderful, dual definition of poetry and prayer. Could you talk about poets
who’ve been able to lift their lines into that meditative place, who are capable
of such “transfigur[ation]”?
Not to delve too deeply into the standard interview
repartee, but that’s a difficult question. There’s a ton of names that
come to me, and people who have that particular gift. Just off the top of
my head, I would mention Carl Phillips, James Merrill (especially his poem The Octopus, which defined the way I
considered the meditative line for many years), and Richard Wilbur.
On a more personal level, I think one of the first poets I
was introduced to that really seemed to be capable of transfiguration was
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, who I was also fortunate enough to have as a professor and
advisor during my MFA program. The first time I read Song; the first time I read the line the low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother’s call, I
understood something which I felt I had known my whole life, but wasn’t quite
sure how to say. It reminded me of the way prayer was explained to me as
a boy: I didn’t understand what was being asked of me early on during mass, so
I inquired. I was told that I should close my eyes, and say whatever it was that was in my heart. This, at the
time, seemed an insurmountable task. And, to this day, it still does.
Perhaps that’s the reason why I continue to attempt it.
5. Kelly’s a
great choice: To the Place
of Trumpets is a very
Catholic book. She strikes me as a poet whose Catholicism, while complicated,
shines through in her consistent return to wonder.
In her poem
“The Convent Park Beneath My Window at the Hotel Charles,” the narrator wonders
about both proximity and mystery: “Where did the nuns, / the birds go during
the day while I scoured / porcelain tubs, answered bells, moved a mop / idly
over long linoleum floors.” It’s a great poem about nuns, a personage that is
oversimplified by Catholic and non-Catholic writers alike.
In Reliquary, you’re
able to construct Sister Theresa as a dynamic, interesting character--she’s way
beyond any type, any construct of female religious. Was her character in
existence from the beginning of the manuscript? Did your own religious
schooling provide a predecessor for such a nun?
I’ve been really interested in the type of attention the
character has gotten since the book was released. In all honesty, I was a
bit hesitant that she might come off as too much this or too much that, so I’m
glad to hear that she works in a dynamic way.
To be fair, the character is really an amalgamation of many
possible models. I generally think that this is the case with most
characters (in poems, especially). There is a certain freedom to being
able to connect disparate aspects of moments and the actors in those moments to
create the correct person for the scene.
There was quite a bit of precedent and reality to many of
the specific moments relating to her, however. Much of this, in its
kinetic inspiration (that is, the actual movements of the characters involved)
came from my own memories of our studies of the stations of the cross in
preparation for first Penance. Long mornings were spent studying the
specifics of the passion, and longer afternoons spent observing and meditating
on the statuary in our parish church. If Eucharist is the most blessed
sacrament, then Penance is the most difficult. At least it was for me, as
a young man. I would argue there’s a kind of transubstantiation in both.
In one, the host changes. In the other, it’s you.
In retrospect, it amazes me that we were able to absorb such
heavy (and, in many cases, disturbing) information at such a young age.
Perhaps, in the end, that’s a lot of what the book is about: how does the mind
grapple with these things? Look at these statues: how long can you stare
at them?
I think the character of Sister Theresa really pushes the
other characters, in some obvious ways, but in some (perhaps) less obvious ways.
There are specifics of worship, and she is often portrayed as strong-arming the
boys into proper position (so to speak). But there’s also an emotional
shaping, a component (I felt) of considering the stations, and of first Penance.
When she describes the motivations of Simon of Cyrene, I
think a lot of that is there. Simon is infinitely complicated, I would
say, as his presence is fleeting, forced, and usually proselytized as an act of
sacrifice. But I’m not sure the characters really believe that here.
It seems too simple an answer, as is alluded to in the poem, and it is.
Simon is really being treated as all the characters are being treated:
conscripted into a short (but brutal) task, one requiring complete obedience.
Part of me hopes that when one reads these poems, even
Sister Theresa herself seems to pause in her relating of the standardized
Catholic fair, and consider (in the statements) the real suffering inherent in
them. It’s that moment of breaking through the rhetoric, if only for a
moment, where the piety of book (if, indeed, it is pious) comes from.
6. Are there
other elements of Catholicism as a faith or a cultural experience that you hope
to engage in new/future poems?
Well, I’m currently working on my first full-length
manuscript, which is tentatively titled Calvary.
As you can imagine based on the title, the book still finds its genesis (no pun
intended) and weight at the place of the
skull, just as much of Reliquary did.
I’m certain Catholicism isn’t as directly referenced in this
manuscript as it is in Reliquary. Instead,
I think faith as a more general human concept is engaged with in relation to
both ecclesiastical history and personal history. The speakers (who are
numerous, I think) are much older, and much more considerate of faith in
relation to certain undeniable moments of those ecclesiastical and personal
histories that forever alter one’s own relationship with god (however one might
define such an indefinable thing).
I’m hopeful that my poems (all of them, forever) will engage
with Catholicism purely because it’s an inexorable part of my personal history.
To try to write around it would be like writing in a language I’ve never even
heard.
Going back, briefly, to your first question, I do believe
this was a book I was always supposed to write (take the metaphysical
consequences of that any way you like). But instead of it being a subject
that I needed to study and take on, it instead seemed to be a thin layer that
was slowly chipped away. Perhaps that’s the honesty I feel in it when I
read the book. If it is, I hope to carry it always.
***
Matthew Minicucci is the author of the chapbook Reliquary (Accents Publishing, 2013).
His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from numerous journals, including The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review,
The Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, West Branch, and Crazyhorse, among others. He
has also been featured on Verse
Daily. He currently teaches writing at the University of Illinois at
Urbana/Champaign. You can find him online at www.matthewminicucci.com.
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