Interview with Vievee Francis
by Laura Steadwell, Poetry Editor
Laura Steadwell: In another recent interview, one of the ways you distinguished Horse in the Dark from your first book was a sense of, to you, being more confessional, speaking more directly as yourself with your memories. Is that accurate?
Vievee Francis: I wouldn't call it confessional. I would say that the second book addresses the personal, difficult issues, but is not necessarily covering the taboo, and it would be up to someone else to decipher any psychological threads. I am trying to get to wider concerns through me, as opposed to going to the wider concern first. I want to use my personal experience to speak to several things. I talk about my physical form and presence, which is something I'm always negotiating in my work, one way or another. African-Americans being the only group in the United States legally considered part beast or chattel: I want to speak to that. I explore how I am framed as an African-American woman with dark skin, African-featured, heavy-hipped, so that's another level of then being crudely and pathologically thought of as beast. And then I want to get back to the historical line—Reconstruction forward—when someone like me was no longer considered a beast legally, but would have been used as a beast in the field. By the time you get there, so much is internalized, so you have the self being told that it's of the beast for so long, you have another kind of pathology where you turn your gaze upon yourself and all you see is the animal.
So there's all of that happening, and then there's a larger question. There's the Ovidian question: how much of man is animalia, how much of man is human, what makes us—all of us—human. Getting to these expansive philosophical concerns—if you're a white male, not having to deal with all those other issues I’ve mentioned (certainly not from my vantage), you can get to those Ovidian concerns like this [snaps fingers]. I couldn't get to those Ovidian concerns until I negotiated this [gestures to self]. And then, as a woman, and as an African-American woman, I had to give myself permission to address those philosophical concerns because the constant message I'm given—culturally, socially, politically—is that because I'm so much beast, I don't have the intellectual capacity to address those broader questions.
Then there's pleasure. When I lived in a rural community, I took pleasure in the field, took pleasure in walking the corn-littered field with my cousins, touching the cows, the smell of the field. It's raw and horrific and sensual all at the same time. I was telling a story last night about getting into constant trouble because my grandmother had hounds, who would just wildly have litters every season, and I would lay my head on the hound's belly, which was so soft and appealing to me, and I would get ticks, because I wouldn't leave the hound alone. So there was a joy of the field, a joy of being around the animals, pushing at the animals, feeling myself a part of nature, in a natural way, without all of the aesthetic/racial pathologies of American culture, the layers of pathology.
Reading The Metamorphosis, understanding that some of these issues others have tackled and thought through, was helpful, but really just giving myself permission to make the leap from the personal into the philosophical, and giving myself permission to tackle the personal at all, has changed the way I write. The book is a kind of look around what makes us human, and clearly I'm hoping what the reader gets is that I'm very much saying that how African-American women are defined is inhuman in its narrowness, and that I, for one, am not going to allow it.
LS: Could you speak to the mentorship model for a bit?
VF: Most iconic literary figures did not go into MFA programs. So how did they learn? What did they do? They did a couple of things: they read prodigiously, and they ran across or sought out people who understood the field they were going into, understood the craft, and they solicited their help. I think it's a model that works. It's an intense model.
Also, I think it pulls a writer into the writing world. You have to acknowledge that there is a writing world. The writer doesn't get to fool herself. Not that I don't love the programs. I studied in one (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor), albeit later than most. I work with the programs. I think the programs are marvelous. For me, had I gone into a program earlier, I might have grown my work a little quicker. Some programs can combine the best of those kinds of apprenticeship/mentorship models, but also provide a structure;there's some disparagement of low-residency programs, and I'm not saying they're all perfect, but when such programs get it right, I think highly of them.
LS: Do you consider yourself to be self-taught?
VF: Yes.
And a couple of poets argue with me about that, but I was. I didn't study poetry in college. I think I had a class for a week-and-a-half before I dropped it as an undergrad. I read other poets and practiced. I read and I practiced. And I gravitated toward other serious poets. I loved their company and I learned by listening as well.
The poets who take issue with my being self-taught, that's their issue. We come to poetry in different ways, many roads, many paths. That was my particular path. Some poets, because their point of entry was the MFA, feel as if that's the only point of entry. It seems stunning to them that anyone could enter without that. I took the MFA quite late, after my first book Blue-Tail Fly [Wayne State University, 2006] came out. But I am certainly not the only poet who published prior to having the formal structure of the MFA.
LS: Since you've been such a significant mentor for so many poets, I think it's interesting that you've never really had one yourself.
VF: That's why I do it. My mentors were—okay, that's going to make me cry...
It's a point of pain that no one—not no one, that isn’t true—there were some early on who helped me as they could, but I kept growing, beyond the localized ideas. I wanted to study at points and places where the idea of “studying” poetry was discouraged. Or people would quite literally suggest I limit my study to certain schools or demographics. But too many of the poets around me were in effect standing still in time or place, unable to get past their own received beliefs which were based of course upon their era or city. Either my work was already stronger than they could handle for them to mentor me; or at the time there was no exposure to anyone who could; or far worse, I'd meet people who couldn't see in me what I could see in myself. And that still happens and that's the thing that's making me cry, because it always feels bad, because I know myself and I see myself as a poet.
By the time I found those who could mentor me, I’d already grown past the need. So, I'm giving what I didn’t get, which is why I tell my private students as well as those in the classroom to not to rely on someone else telling them they're good, to develop the will and discipline and curiosity to study and work on their own, and learn to discern for themselves where they are and where they need to be.
LS: Our profession is difficult, as you say, very internal and undervalued. So why do you do it, V?
VF: For me, without writing there is no complete self. And this is not unusual for a certain kind of poet. Not all poets feel that way. And I’m not saying they should. I am speaking for myself. So understanding myself as a poet, I am disturbed when I meet a serious, let’s even say “notable” poet of another demographic, and they sit at a table with me and we're talking, and they can't hear a word I'm saying, to hear the poet that I am, because they can't get past the filter of race, gender—and let me add aesthetics—because I don't look like their version of a muse. And I say this very harshly. I basically have to grab some male poets by the metaphorical throat to say, “Hey, we're on par, I'm a poet, I'm not a muse, I have no desire to be—you've got to talk to me on par.” On the other end, how can I be too self-righteous when there are so many women I know who refuse to see themselves fully as poets, because women are taught to be and expected to be muses, not artists in their own right. Further, so much of who they are is invested in such. Perhaps in the end I have an advantage because I aesthetically don't fit the muse model. It was never an option for me.
But women have always written poetry. What are our thoughts on what a muse is? We don't articulate them enough. We don't demand enough of the field in the ways that suggest we look at our own complicity. So in this era, where there are so many women that are so powerful in the field, I think that—and I'm going to say we—are necessarily interrogating and shifting these ideas and attitudes and getting a lot of push-back, but once that's through—I can't even—I get so excited thinking about what poetry can mean without being trapped inside of Beauty models. And I like to pull my poems out of that.
LS: I think a lot of women do feel trapped in this way. For many of us, the possibilities feel very limited, if we can see them at all.
VF: What I say is this: the field is as open as we make it. I insist that it's open for me. I won't accept anything else except that it's open. I'm going to write poetry, I'm going to get read, one way or another. I think that, when you're African-American, it is worth noting that some of the ceilings that were there before aren't there to the same degree now. Some ceilings are not in the same places. But there are those who would reconstruct them, because they have attached ideas of what poetry is, and community to them. They are invested in what they have experienced and can’t see past that experience. But what they're reconstructing is flimsy; it won't work, because new voices and their respective concerns are unstoppable. Further, staying locked in one way of thinking prevents a poet from effectively addressing unforeseen challenges or new challenges. It dements us to have to fight through ceilings we shouldn't have to fight through, so then insisting upon them is tragically reductive.
LS: Yes.
VF: But the compulsion to write is overwhelming. So no amount of disparagement, false ceilings, being told that we don't have the intellectual capacity, that we don't belong at the table—none of that means anything. The compulsion to write is larger than those artificial constructs. And if this is what you need to do, feel compelled to do, you will do it. Even if, at the end of it, there's going to be a cost exacted, right? We're not always stable when we get there, because we've had to endure so much. It's good for us to have groups and friendships and connections, it's good to recognize when we're unstable and have the compassion and generosity to help stabilize each other. But is poetry mostly in the writing of it alone? It is. We're wrestling with ourselves.
There's a cost you pay for the awareness, the external awareness and the self-awareness you have to have to do what we do well. No matter who takes this on, there's going to be cost. But if you feel you have to do this, nothing can stop you. Nothing.
Vievee Francis: I wouldn't call it confessional. I would say that the second book addresses the personal, difficult issues, but is not necessarily covering the taboo, and it would be up to someone else to decipher any psychological threads. I am trying to get to wider concerns through me, as opposed to going to the wider concern first. I want to use my personal experience to speak to several things. I talk about my physical form and presence, which is something I'm always negotiating in my work, one way or another. African-Americans being the only group in the United States legally considered part beast or chattel: I want to speak to that. I explore how I am framed as an African-American woman with dark skin, African-featured, heavy-hipped, so that's another level of then being crudely and pathologically thought of as beast. And then I want to get back to the historical line—Reconstruction forward—when someone like me was no longer considered a beast legally, but would have been used as a beast in the field. By the time you get there, so much is internalized, so you have the self being told that it's of the beast for so long, you have another kind of pathology where you turn your gaze upon yourself and all you see is the animal.
So there's all of that happening, and then there's a larger question. There's the Ovidian question: how much of man is animalia, how much of man is human, what makes us—all of us—human. Getting to these expansive philosophical concerns—if you're a white male, not having to deal with all those other issues I’ve mentioned (certainly not from my vantage), you can get to those Ovidian concerns like this [snaps fingers]. I couldn't get to those Ovidian concerns until I negotiated this [gestures to self]. And then, as a woman, and as an African-American woman, I had to give myself permission to address those philosophical concerns because the constant message I'm given—culturally, socially, politically—is that because I'm so much beast, I don't have the intellectual capacity to address those broader questions.
Then there's pleasure. When I lived in a rural community, I took pleasure in the field, took pleasure in walking the corn-littered field with my cousins, touching the cows, the smell of the field. It's raw and horrific and sensual all at the same time. I was telling a story last night about getting into constant trouble because my grandmother had hounds, who would just wildly have litters every season, and I would lay my head on the hound's belly, which was so soft and appealing to me, and I would get ticks, because I wouldn't leave the hound alone. So there was a joy of the field, a joy of being around the animals, pushing at the animals, feeling myself a part of nature, in a natural way, without all of the aesthetic/racial pathologies of American culture, the layers of pathology.
Reading The Metamorphosis, understanding that some of these issues others have tackled and thought through, was helpful, but really just giving myself permission to make the leap from the personal into the philosophical, and giving myself permission to tackle the personal at all, has changed the way I write. The book is a kind of look around what makes us human, and clearly I'm hoping what the reader gets is that I'm very much saying that how African-American women are defined is inhuman in its narrowness, and that I, for one, am not going to allow it.
LS: Could you speak to the mentorship model for a bit?
VF: Most iconic literary figures did not go into MFA programs. So how did they learn? What did they do? They did a couple of things: they read prodigiously, and they ran across or sought out people who understood the field they were going into, understood the craft, and they solicited their help. I think it's a model that works. It's an intense model.
Also, I think it pulls a writer into the writing world. You have to acknowledge that there is a writing world. The writer doesn't get to fool herself. Not that I don't love the programs. I studied in one (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor), albeit later than most. I work with the programs. I think the programs are marvelous. For me, had I gone into a program earlier, I might have grown my work a little quicker. Some programs can combine the best of those kinds of apprenticeship/mentorship models, but also provide a structure;there's some disparagement of low-residency programs, and I'm not saying they're all perfect, but when such programs get it right, I think highly of them.
LS: Do you consider yourself to be self-taught?
VF: Yes.
And a couple of poets argue with me about that, but I was. I didn't study poetry in college. I think I had a class for a week-and-a-half before I dropped it as an undergrad. I read other poets and practiced. I read and I practiced. And I gravitated toward other serious poets. I loved their company and I learned by listening as well.
The poets who take issue with my being self-taught, that's their issue. We come to poetry in different ways, many roads, many paths. That was my particular path. Some poets, because their point of entry was the MFA, feel as if that's the only point of entry. It seems stunning to them that anyone could enter without that. I took the MFA quite late, after my first book Blue-Tail Fly [Wayne State University, 2006] came out. But I am certainly not the only poet who published prior to having the formal structure of the MFA.
LS: Since you've been such a significant mentor for so many poets, I think it's interesting that you've never really had one yourself.
VF: That's why I do it. My mentors were—okay, that's going to make me cry...
It's a point of pain that no one—not no one, that isn’t true—there were some early on who helped me as they could, but I kept growing, beyond the localized ideas. I wanted to study at points and places where the idea of “studying” poetry was discouraged. Or people would quite literally suggest I limit my study to certain schools or demographics. But too many of the poets around me were in effect standing still in time or place, unable to get past their own received beliefs which were based of course upon their era or city. Either my work was already stronger than they could handle for them to mentor me; or at the time there was no exposure to anyone who could; or far worse, I'd meet people who couldn't see in me what I could see in myself. And that still happens and that's the thing that's making me cry, because it always feels bad, because I know myself and I see myself as a poet.
By the time I found those who could mentor me, I’d already grown past the need. So, I'm giving what I didn’t get, which is why I tell my private students as well as those in the classroom to not to rely on someone else telling them they're good, to develop the will and discipline and curiosity to study and work on their own, and learn to discern for themselves where they are and where they need to be.
LS: Our profession is difficult, as you say, very internal and undervalued. So why do you do it, V?
VF: For me, without writing there is no complete self. And this is not unusual for a certain kind of poet. Not all poets feel that way. And I’m not saying they should. I am speaking for myself. So understanding myself as a poet, I am disturbed when I meet a serious, let’s even say “notable” poet of another demographic, and they sit at a table with me and we're talking, and they can't hear a word I'm saying, to hear the poet that I am, because they can't get past the filter of race, gender—and let me add aesthetics—because I don't look like their version of a muse. And I say this very harshly. I basically have to grab some male poets by the metaphorical throat to say, “Hey, we're on par, I'm a poet, I'm not a muse, I have no desire to be—you've got to talk to me on par.” On the other end, how can I be too self-righteous when there are so many women I know who refuse to see themselves fully as poets, because women are taught to be and expected to be muses, not artists in their own right. Further, so much of who they are is invested in such. Perhaps in the end I have an advantage because I aesthetically don't fit the muse model. It was never an option for me.
But women have always written poetry. What are our thoughts on what a muse is? We don't articulate them enough. We don't demand enough of the field in the ways that suggest we look at our own complicity. So in this era, where there are so many women that are so powerful in the field, I think that—and I'm going to say we—are necessarily interrogating and shifting these ideas and attitudes and getting a lot of push-back, but once that's through—I can't even—I get so excited thinking about what poetry can mean without being trapped inside of Beauty models. And I like to pull my poems out of that.
LS: I think a lot of women do feel trapped in this way. For many of us, the possibilities feel very limited, if we can see them at all.
VF: What I say is this: the field is as open as we make it. I insist that it's open for me. I won't accept anything else except that it's open. I'm going to write poetry, I'm going to get read, one way or another. I think that, when you're African-American, it is worth noting that some of the ceilings that were there before aren't there to the same degree now. Some ceilings are not in the same places. But there are those who would reconstruct them, because they have attached ideas of what poetry is, and community to them. They are invested in what they have experienced and can’t see past that experience. But what they're reconstructing is flimsy; it won't work, because new voices and their respective concerns are unstoppable. Further, staying locked in one way of thinking prevents a poet from effectively addressing unforeseen challenges or new challenges. It dements us to have to fight through ceilings we shouldn't have to fight through, so then insisting upon them is tragically reductive.
LS: Yes.
VF: But the compulsion to write is overwhelming. So no amount of disparagement, false ceilings, being told that we don't have the intellectual capacity, that we don't belong at the table—none of that means anything. The compulsion to write is larger than those artificial constructs. And if this is what you need to do, feel compelled to do, you will do it. Even if, at the end of it, there's going to be a cost exacted, right? We're not always stable when we get there, because we've had to endure so much. It's good for us to have groups and friendships and connections, it's good to recognize when we're unstable and have the compassion and generosity to help stabilize each other. But is poetry mostly in the writing of it alone? It is. We're wrestling with ourselves.
There's a cost you pay for the awareness, the external awareness and the self-awareness you have to have to do what we do well. No matter who takes this on, there's going to be cost. But if you feel you have to do this, nothing can stop you. Nothing.
Vievee Francis is the author of two poetry collections Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University, 2006) and Horse in the Dark (Northwestern Press, 2012). Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies including, Best American Poetry 2010 among others. Work is forthcoming in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. She was the recipient of a 2009 Rona Jaffe Award and a 2010 Kresge Artist Fellowship. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is currently an Associate Editor for Callaloo.