Bad Fall. Type with pencil in teeth. This week Nida Sophasarun interview Cecily. Enjoy. -GBB
1) Let’s just address the elephant in the room: What’s the big deal with nature?
I think I like the natural world because I am shy. I first discovered the landscape of the American West when I was a supremely awkward sixteen-year-old, and that landscape (and Wyoming in particular) became this place that allowed me to figure out some things about myself. Wyoming seemed paradoxically dangerous and safe. The expansiveness and drama of that landscape constantly reminded me of how small I was, how cold I could be, how easy it would be to lose myself (in many senses); at the same time, that expanse seemed to offer limitless ways to perceive the world, and in that perceiving, perceive myself. I guess I see Wyoming as a place where I can enter into a dialogue with the landscape that is also a dialogue with myself (and because I am shy, that kind of dialogue is very appealing).
2) Some of your poems take the form of letters – why?
I think there are two kinds of letter poems in my book. One group is the “Letter to” poems. When I was writing these, I was thinking about highly specialized professions that were implicitly violent. The fact that I have never met a pistolsmith, stream warden, etc. allowed me a lot of imaginative leeway when I was writing and thinking about what those professions might entail. Before I wrote each “Letter to,” I tried to envision the kinds of letters a pistolsmith, stream warden, etc. would write to me, should they write to me for the last time. My poems are the (sometimes deliberately elliptical) responses to the imagined invitations and rejections that those imagined letters would contain.
The book’s third section, “Letters of a Woman Homesteader,” is a little different. The inspiration for these comes from Letters of a Woman Homesteader, which was published in 1914 by Elinore Pruitt Stewart and tells the story of a woman who went to Wyoming after answering an ad for a housekeeper. She and her daughter (she was a widow) went to work for a man on his homestead, and after a little while, she married her employer. A book of letters tells a story, often by omission, and I felt like this one in particular perhaps elided a more complicated version of the homesteader experience. My poems take language from the 1914 book to tell another, stranger story.
I like letters because they imply a “you,” and I think the reader can become that “you,” at least momentarily.
3) Measuring devices – what’s the allure?
I am obsessed with the weather and am a little afraid of it. I am afraid of lightning and afraid of being cold. These fears are odd, I know, for someone who lives in New York City, where there are myriad opportunities to go indoors, or underground, or out of the way of inclement weather. Perhaps I am afraid of what I cannot predict. I suspect that measuring devices (the rain gauge, the seismograph, the Beaufort scale), which ostensibly measure the effects that certain weathers have on our lives, bring us no closer to understanding weather, which is always changing.
4) What’s in your refrigerator?
Plain yogurt, apples, milk, half-and-half, pickles, cheese, ham, smoked salmon, arugula, parsley, Brussels sprouts, salad dressing, garlic, cream cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, artichokes, cheese (sliced and grated), apple butter, jam, butter, carrots, almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, eggs, and wraps.
It sounds like a lot, but I think most of those things are condiments.
5) Fill in the blanks:
a. I know it’s weird but sometimes I like to _bake apple pies_ in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
b. __Sometimes, only sometimes, I think I might be__ the falcon who cannot hear the falconer!
c. Who _wishes their skirt were longer in__ the monstrous crying of wind?
6) Favorite place in New York? Favorite place in Wyoming?
My favorite place in New York is the West Village; I particularly like the smaller, windy, off-the-grid streets like Bedford Street. I also love jogging along the Hudson River.
My favorite place in Wyoming is Horse Creek, a small stream near the Wyoming Range where I like to go fishing.
7) What do you believe in above all else?
The many forms that love takes.
8) Guilty pleasures?
Eating honey, by the spoonful, straight out of the jar. Also, pedicures.
9) What are 5 words you can’t live without?
undone, until, sick, lapse, divine
10) Say you’re lost in the woods and it’s getting dark. You’ve only got a pen and paper. What do you do?
I would write a letter. To you.
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