In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Bill Marsh

In your piece “Water Striders,” you emphasize the steps involved “in learning, once again, how to love.” Where did the idea for this piece come from?

I wrote the first draft in early 2021, deep into COVID, when life was unstable on many levels. At the time my wife and I were doing some serious relationship work, and I wanted to capture a few of the practices we were exploring without getting too clinical or preachy. For all its wordplay and metaphorical layering, “Water Striders” for me is very grounded in that concrete experience of interpersonal exploration and reevaluation. The steps refer to trust-building exercises but also the general process of looking back on lessons learned while laying the groundwork for future commitments. The story I tell (anniversary day trek to the river and back) offered a strong frame—facing unknown dangers, unstable terrain, etc.—but the experience in and of itself was both frightening and reassuring. For this essay I wanted to ride through that ambiguity without necessarily resolving it. 

Your focus on the word course features heavily as part of something that leads to “synchronized action.” Can you talk about how you wove this idea into relationships? When did you get the idea to layer the history of emotions into the work?

The original title was something like “On Course” or “The Course,” but that always sounded too heavy. The word itself, though, is crucial for its multiple meanings: course of action, coursing through time, course as shared curriculum. Our relationship goal was (still is) to stay the course, to sync our respective visions for the future and get clear on the past, so that moment of mutual concern (sensing danger “down below,” acting on it) offered a unique opportunity to externalize emotions and basically live the danger we were feeling inside. All that became clear, at least, as I wrote about it later. I was trying to channel the emotional tension while interrogating my own pre-history, i.e., what I learned growing up about feeling/expressing different emotions. That research was integral to the writing process. 

The “you” in the piece is not to the reader, but it draws the reader into a more intimate setting. When did the “you” become present in the development of this piece? What was your editing process like?

As I state toward the end, I want the piece to read, in part, as a ‘statement of purpose’ clarifying my motivations and commitments moving forward. It’s obviously written specifically to and for the person I’m moving through time with. In fact, that “intimate” direct address was a turn-off for some editors who found the essay too limited in its focus on the interpersonal. In response I worked through a few longer drafts with more research folded in, but in the end those versions felt forced and artificial—and a little dishonest, a betrayal of my original purpose. So I recommitted (!) to the earlier version assuming it would never appear as a published piece. I feel pretty fortunate that WSR saw value in such a deeply personal essay. The editorial suggestions I received were super helpful in both tightening the language and further grounding the piece in concrete detail. 

What themes do you find your writing return to?

“Water Striders” is one of a few essays I’ve written exploring masculinity norms, specifically white masculinity and the prevailing logic (origins, causes, conditions) of heteronormative white male behavior. I’ve expanded that range a bit to include familial legacies of land ownership and more broadly the history of settler colonialism as a personal and political challenge (the setting for this piece and a lot of my work is a family farm in northern Illinois). In general I’m committed to personal writing that moves from self-discovery into analysis of social agency, something more like public self-witnessing in the context of inherited social norms. 

What are some of your favorite books or authors? What texts do you return to?

In nonfiction/essays, Rebecca Solnit, Leslie Jamison, Claudia Rankine. In fiction, Toni Morrison, Elena Ferrante, Colson Whitehead. I also like to read history, cultural studies, political theory: Ned Blackhawk, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, David Graeber, bell hooks, Roxane Gay. 

What are you working on now?

Lately I’ve been working on poetry (image-text hybrids), but I’m also trying to assemble my essays into a workable collection. The river, literal and figurative, continues to inspire most of my creative work.