Traci Brimhall’s “Bound” appears in the autumn 2018 issue of The Southern Review. Here, she discusses indulging in research, the satisfaction of slowing down in the nonfiction form, and meditating on the flesh tubes we call bodies.
Rhiannon Thorne: In “Bound,” skin, death, love, and desire seem intrinsically connected. How did you manicure your ideas into a piece this concise?
Traci Brimhall: I think my writing has never been able to escape the body. These cool and annoying flesh tubes we are all in are the way we interact with the world and process experiences. My body is a big part of how I experience desire and God and love and death; and, well, skin is our biggest organ, so I think that’s part of it. And really, my friend just posted something about grinding mummy skin on Facebook, so I asked if I could buy her a drink and get the details.
The concision is probably default because I’m a poet. This essay is twice the length of its first draft! And I was quite proud of that. I had to work to build out the scenes a little more and add more detail to each of the moments. Paragraphs are hard.
RT: As much as it appears to repulse you, or at the very least perplex, that a poet may bind a book of his poems in his amputated skin and present it as a gift to his lover, a couple of times you mention the possibility of your own skin becoming a book’s binding: “If my body cannot become a book, then perhaps it can be buried in a poppy field, let me vanish or transform like memory.” I am intrigued at how becoming a book is akin to vanishing and how being interred in a field is a transformation akin to memory and the tension between them. How did you become interested in books bound with human skin? What compelled you to research?
TB: Macabre things have long fascinated me, though I’m not totally sure why. I can’t remember what compelled me to research them, though I know when I did research for this essay some facts were things I already knew. And I love research! I’ve loved working with nonfiction because it’s such a good excuse to indulge in my gluttony for facts. I can get up in that archival revel and let myself think alongside an idea or a history for an extended period of time. I also quite like immersive essays so I have an excuse to pursue the experiences I want in my life, too.
RT: The sense of smell plays a large role in this piece; in the opening it links the frame narrative to memory. You mention that memory transforms, what power does this sense hold for you?
TB: I’m not sure if it is true but I’ve often heard people say that scent is the sense most strongly tied to memory. And especially since the essay dealt with skin, the pairing felt very natural. Perhaps there’s also something in the fact that I’ve never felt very smart. Everything feels very new to me all the time. But I’m definitely a curious person, and I think I like curiosity better than intelligence because it’s braver. My friend mentioning the smell of mummy skin mashed up made me curious about my own smell, and I know the smell of lovers has always been a big deal for me, and so I just followed my curiosity around and thought about smells in the form of sentences until they fit the essay.
RT: What drew you to the essay form for your discussion on skin?
TB: Maybe it’s just my age. I spent many years in a mad rush to live a big life, and poems definitely fit my frenetic energy for a long time. But things have certainly slowed down for me, and I like that essays take me longer to write. I like wrestling with a bigger shape that moves differently. I like that I’m a little afraid of it and don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s one of those safe fears where failure won’t hurt me; but if I work through it, I can get to a place that feels a little like awe when I can make the pages all work together.
RT: I have been reading your latest collection, Saudade, out from Copper Canyon Press last year. At the risk of oversimplifying, it works backward through a family tree and touches on significant historic moments for Brazil. It’s gorgeous, and I particularly love how the Marias appear in theatrical dialogues like powerless fates or a Greek chorus. How do you curate autobiographical experiences differently in creative nonfiction pieces like “Bound” than in your poetry?
TB: Gosh, I feel like I have a far greater fidelity to truth in essays. I can manipulate those or end a scene early and keep a secret or leave something out entirely. I can hide names or skim over something if I don’t want to investigate it too deeply. But I’m not allowed to lie.
I can lie all day long in a poem. Though I suppose it’s true that I can get to a different kind of truth in a poem. I can evade in an essay, but everything I say must be true. In poems, maybe some things get a bit closer because I’m allowed to lie or speak as the persona in them. I love the freedom of wild invention in poetry, and I love holding my feet to the fire in an essay.
RT: What are you currently working on? Are there upcoming publications we should keep an eye out for?
TB: I’ve finished an essay about a zookeeper who taught me how to prepare skulls, but really, it’s about intimacy (isn’t everything?) that I need to start sending out more. And I’ve been visiting a cemetery in Kansas that’s supposed to be one of the gateways to hell and waiting to meet the devil there. Hopefully I’ll finish that essay soon, but I’m still waiting for something to happen. I guess we will see on Halloween.
Traci Brimhall is the author of three collections of poetry: Saudade, Our Lady of the Ruins, and Rookery. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and the Best American Poetry and has been cited as notable in the Best American Essays. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Kansas State University.
Rhiannon Thorne is the editorial assistant for The Southern Review. Additionally, she is the managing editor of cahoodaloodaling, an associate editor for Up the Staircase Quarterly, and President of Tandem Reader Awards. Her poetry has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Manchester Review, and Midwest Quarterly, among others. She is an MFA candidate at Louisiana State University.
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