In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—mychael zulauf

Your poem, “yazoo-mississippi delta” appears in Volume 28. When did you start writing this poem? What inspired it?

I wrote the poem in a single day on a recent-ish trip I took with my partner to New Orleans. It was my first substantive trip back in over a decade (I was born and raised there but moved to Baltimore, where I currently live, for grad school), and I had been working off and on on a sort of long form project in which I write a poem a day if I am visiting a place for a sizable chunk of time. And since my partner and I were going to be in New Orleans for about a week and a half, and it was my first time back home in years, I figured the trip would be a prime candidate for some site-specific writing, in a reckoning-with-old-ghosts kind of way.

The day I wrote “yazoo-mississippi delta,” my partner and I had spent pretty much all morning walking along the Mississippi down in the French Quarter; as we walked, some lines started to bubble up, but it wasn’t until we got back to our hotel room and I had a little bit of contemplative space that I actually sat down and wrote the poem. And at that point in the trip, I had already written I think three or four poems that were beginning to explore my relationship with a place that I once deeply held in myself as home and all of the shifts, both noticed and unnoticed, that had happened in me since then, so it felt natural that the river began to function as both the stand-in and the repository for the complicated and conflicting feelings I was trying to navigate, especially since I’ve always felt an affinity to large bodies of moving water, the Mississippi in particular.

The river is embodied in this poem; “the river / walks moonward” (I love that line) and “dreams.” When did the river as a character come into this piece, and how do you think it enhances the tone?

Oh thank you! I really like that line, too. I love how it functions as a break in the repetition / contemplative stuttering of the first part of the poem and allows for a moment of expanded rumination before returning to the repetition.

The river as a character showed up in the poem pretty much from the jump. Being that close to the Mississippi, it’s kind of impossible for it to not seep into your poetry, or even your very existence, and announce itself with that level of intensity. Once the first couple of lines came to me on that walk, I immediately knew what kind of poem it was going to be.

That’s such an interesting question. I don’t think I have ever really thought about how elements like making the Mississippi a discernible character would affect the tone of a poem. I mostly just kind of write what feels correct to me to write. Though, giving it some thought now, I think making the river a character gives a sense of largeness / scale to the poem. The poem reads almost like a fable or a myth to me: it is trying to hold things that are much older and much larger than a single life. And the Mississippi is an extension of that, the much larger thing that a single poem is trying its best to contain, and my hope is as the reader realizes that, they are ushered into the contemplative space that touches all of those other old and large ideas.

The lines flow, fittingly, like waves. When did you settle on this format?

Similar to the river as a character existing from the conception of the poem, the format was also there from the start. Which is unusual as I typically don’t write fragmented, visually spaced-out poetry. Part of me wonders if this was merely a visual manifestation of how the lines more or less appeared to me, over the course of hours and a very long walk. And part of me wonders if the poem itself had a hand in its own creation. 

A number of people have told me that the poem feels like it is an erasure, and someone even asked if I had the source material that the poem was excavated from. I like that sensation in the reader, that there are unseen elements that the poem is in conversation with. In that way, this poem feels to me adjacent to haiku as well—that there was a nuanced, complicated emotional experience I had, but these stanzas are the only bones I’ve recovered to give you. This is the only sediment that washed up and made its way into your hands.

What do you feel is your relationship with repetition, and how does it punctuate your poems, particularly this one?

I honestly tend to shy away from repetition. And the times I do employ it, I try my best to make whatever repeated line / image appear as variations whenever they show up again instead of exactly the same. I have nothing against repetition—I think it can be incredibly evocative and impactful, but I don’t feel like I’ve ever quite figured out how to use it. Even most of the songs I gravitated to as a kid (I feel very strongly that lyrics were my first introduction to poetry) tended to not adhere to the established verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure.

However, this poem wanted repetition. I actually think it needs it; I honestly don’t know if the poem would work without the constant arrival of the river. There is an incessant quality to it, something that feels almost unavoidable. But oddly enough, not overwhelming; it fades into the background, becoming the landscape noise that bleeds away when you’re not actively paying attention to it. I think you nailed it in your preceding question: the repetition hits you like waves, the intermittent pulse of water dragging itself against the shore. 

I think the repetition in this poem allows for its massive empty spaces. Despite straining, it keeps the poem from completely floating apart.

What are some themes you return to in your writing?

You know, I honestly don’t know that I’ve interrogated my work closely enough to say if I return to any particular themes. I think my writing group would probably be better equipped to answer that. I definitely have certain preoccupations, though. Like the site-specific poetry—I’m enamored with the idea of how different landscapes and locations and contexts change me, and by extension my poetry. That is something I am constantly looking for opportunities to explore.

When not writing site-specific poems, I tend to veer fairly nature-y, so trees, flowers, clouds (and skyscapes in general) show up a lot. As do birds. Birds are everywhere in my poetry. As is I think a general sense of pathos, or maybe just small sadnesses, but that’s unrelated to nature. Usually.

I also write almost exclusively autobiographical poems, so whatever I’m ruminating on or going through will inevitably wind up in some poem or another, since writing poetry is very much tied to how I process things emotionally. Case in point—I was navigating some depression and anxiety a few months ago and wound up writing some pretty sad boitm poems about it. So I guess in that instance I was essentially working on variations of a theme. 

What books or authors are your favorites? Do you always keep certain poets on your shelf?

Oh man, my list of favorites is extensive, but in the interest of time, I’ll just stick to poets / books that are constantly on my shelf / in my bag. First and foremost, Mary Oliver. She is without a doubt the poet I return to the most, specifically her collections House of Light and Dream Work. Charles Wright is another poet I frequently return to. His collection Sestets is perfect—no wrong note in the whole damn book. Jane Hirshfield and Anne Carson are two others that for a time were my go-to’s, but it’s been a bit since I’ve made the pilgrimages back to them. And, of course, I am never far away from any number of haiku collections, specifically anything by Bashō and Shiki. Shiki’s A House by Itself  has come with me on every trip I’ve taken in the last like five years. He’s incredible.

Oh, and Italo Calvino has become a reliable companion. I’ve re-read Invisible Cities every summer for the last handful of years, but have just recently started exploring his other works. 

What are you working on now?

Well, I’m trying to find a home for my collection of site-specific poems. And I have another kind of loosely connected pile of poems that I think is ready for manuscript assembly/editing. Aside from that, though, I think I’m in a soaking-up period. I haven’t written anything in about a month or so; I’ve been editing manuscripts for my press and settling down from some recent big life stresses, so I’m more or less just flitting from one book on my bookshelf to another, seeing what sticks and what shakes loose.