by Ryan Teitman
Poet Ross Gay called Hannah Faith Notess鈥檚 debut poetry collection, The Multitude, 鈥渜uirky, mysterious, weird, grave, and full of wonder.鈥� One of the winners of the 2014 Michael Waters Poetry Prize, the book pulls together subjects as disparate as video games, religion, and travelogue, and combines them into a collection that鈥檚 as intellectually versatile as it is linguistically accomplished. Southern Indiana Reviewcontributor Ryan Teitman talked with Notess about her book, her influences, and why someone would make the strange decision to turn Dante鈥檚 Inferno into a video game.
Ryan Teitman: Can you talk about the process of putting the book together?
Hannah Faith Notess:聽The process of composition for this book has been to add a bunch of stuff, take a bunch of stuff out, add a bunch of stuff, take a bunch of stuff out, and trying to cohere the poems around certain themes.聽
I finished my MFA in 2008. So between my MFA thesis and this book, there鈥檚 maybe a one-third continuity between the two.聽I remember taking a walk with Ross Gay, who was one of my thesis committee members, and he said, 鈥淪o those poems, that whole twenty-poem sequence you have, I don鈥檛 really know what鈥檚 going on with that.鈥� And I said: 鈥淵eah, I don鈥檛 know either.鈥� We both knew it wasn鈥檛 that great. That section got cut.聽I don鈥檛 feel the need to publish every poem I write. At the same time, I hope I won鈥檛 become like Marianne Moore who constantly revised things after they鈥檙e published. Sometimes you need to just let it into the world, and write the next poem. At least that is what I tell myself.
The oldest poem in The Multitude is about ten years old, and the newest one is less than a year. In between that time there have been various forms of the manuscript, maybe over the last four to five years especially. Every year I would lay all the poems out on the floor and arrange them in a way that seemed pleasing to me, and try to take out the ones I thought weren鈥檛 as good, and then put it back together.聽
RT: The thing I was noticing when I was rereading the book was that things that seemed like they didn鈥檛 have connection with each other on the surface, like poems about faith and myth and videogames, actually had surprising connections between them. You said you were looking for the common key that tied them together. What were some of the things you thought linked the different kinds of poems you had in your book?
HFN: One is the experience of going into an unfamiliar place and not really knowing what to do with yourself. The idea is to create certain places and spaces that are disorienting. Those can be literal places, like the travel poems where I鈥檓 writing about visiting different holy places in India. I think it also applies to anything where I鈥檓 writing about a kind of faith experience, which is interesting when it鈥檚 characterized by uncertainty. 罢丑补迟鈥檚 something that I try to record, because so much of the discourse around faith and religion is about people who think they鈥檙e right about stuff. 罢丑补迟鈥檚 just not my experience at all.
I was intrigued by the idea that gameplay worlds are constructed spaces. When you鈥檙e going into a place as a character, an avatar within a game, you go forward and you don鈥檛 know what you鈥檒l find. And then you die, and you learn from that, and you try to figure out what to do next. It seems like a perfect metaphor for that kind of uncertain journey.
RT: Tell me if this is completely crazy or not, but it seemed to me like one of the other connections between the poems about videogames and the poems with the witch was a space where life and death weren鈥檛 as final as we think of them in the world. Like you said, in a videogame if you die you just get another life, and you just start right over again. Where you playing with that in these poems?
HFN: In videogames the afterlife is very literal鈥攜ou literally get another life. You keep coming back, and maybe that鈥檚 a kind of obvious parallel to whatever happens in different religious traditions after you die, at least the ones that I鈥檝e participated in. There鈥檚 an element of imagination to the afterlife鈥攚e don鈥檛 know what heaven is going to be like鈥攁nd that鈥檚 where metaphor and poetry come in.
Dante鈥檚 the best, most obvious example of that from the Christian tradition. He, of course has levels in every part of hell, purgatory, and paradise. I haven鈥檛 played it, but there鈥檚 a video game based on The Inferno.
RT: I remember seeing that.
HFN: But what would you do in a Paradiso game? I think that鈥檚 interesting鈥攚hat would you do once you got to the top? I guess nothing, cause you鈥檇 be in perfect鈥攜our soul is in perfect communion with the eternal being.
I think of myself as being a kind of tourist both with regard to gaming and when I鈥檓 writing about some of these spaces that are sacred to other traditions. It鈥檚 risky because you will always get some of it wrong. It鈥檚 not yours; you don鈥檛 own it. How do you write about a place, and how do you exist in a space that is holy to someone else and not to you?
I find those questions interesting, and I don鈥檛 think I have a good answer or a knowledge of how to do that without some kind of cultural appropriation. 罢丑补迟鈥檚 actually something I think about a lot and have a lot of uncertainty around.
I鈥檓 trying to imagine a space where there鈥檚 always something on the other side of the door, and you don鈥檛 know what it is. That could be the afterlife, or the next life, or what you come back as if it鈥檚 reincarnation. To me poetry is a vehicle for exploring that part of life. I鈥檓 not going to write a propositional essay on what the afterlife is actually like, because people who do that are obnoxious.
The imagination is the perfect tool, because how else are we going to approach it? We use metaphor and poetry to try to talk about these big question marks in the world.
RT: It sounds like you鈥檙e saying you鈥檙e not particularly interested in certainty鈥攜ou鈥檙e more interested in the exploration of something, how it could be.
HFN: I really approach it through sensory language and metaphor. There are other poets who use what I would say is more like propositional truth language in their poems around the issues of faith. But I鈥檓 just not really interested in doing that, because it鈥檚 too much like writing theology. That has its place, but it鈥檚 not for me; I get bored with it really quickly. I鈥檓 not wired to approach these topics that way. I鈥檇 rather approach them through the lens of some image or narrative that already is really weird.
Fortunately, within religious texts鈥攁t least in the Bible, which is what I鈥檓 most familiar with鈥攖here are passages oriented toward propositional truth, and a lot of people like those, but then there are crazy stories and poems about people getting their eyes gouged out and breaking babies on the rocks. 罢丑补迟鈥檚 the stuff that I gravitate towards.
RT: Can you talk about poets that specifically influenced what you were doing in this book?
HFN: I often find myself drawn to poets who are willing to talk about their own mortality, probably because the first poet I ever fell in love with was Emily Dickinson. Lucia Perillo is a great example of that. Part of her own story is that she was a super outdoorsy person and then was diagnosed with MS. She went through this reckoning of: 鈥淲hat does it mean to now be in this body that I know is going to die.鈥� We鈥檙e so invested in the idea that we鈥檙e not really going to die. Like if we do these twelve weird tricks we can maybe cheat death. Perillo is also very funny; the dark humor is very appealing to me.
There is an issue of TriQuarterly edited by Barbara Hamby and David Kirby about an aesthetic that鈥檚 talkative, distractible, distracted, and somewhat narrative, but still really within the realm of lyric. Campbell McGrath is another example of a poet that I think does a sort of talkative voice.
Wislawa Szymborska and Yehuda Amichai are poets I鈥檝e spent a lot of time with in translation. Really dark, funny, and wanting to talk about mortality and death.
Wordsworth and Frost and Coleridge appeal to me because they would get off topic and then something interesting would happen within the movement of the poem.
And Elizabeth Bishop鈥檚 touristy poems: 鈥淐rusoe in England鈥� and 鈥淥ver 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance鈥� and 鈥淎t the Fishhouses.鈥� She was interested in writing about art that sucked and the aesthetics of crappy places, like the gas station. I like that about her work. Bishop is really known for her talent as a formalist, but I was attracted to her subject matter.
RT: Can you talk a little bit about your goals for The Multitude?
HFN:聽I understand that some people write books that are supposed to be really coherent in theme or revolve around one particular world or one particular narrative. This book is not one of those. I return to certain subjects and characters and worlds鈥攁nd this is how I read poetry too. Often times I鈥檒l read a book, and then I鈥檒l pick it up two years later and read it again, and I鈥檒l carry it around with me for awhile. Sometimes I鈥檒l read the same poem for a month.
To me it鈥檚 interesting when poems are from different worlds or spoken in different voices, and yet they鈥檙e juxtaposed next to each other and you see similar images coming together. So as I was shaping the book, maybe one poem is a travel narrative and then the next one is an ekphrastic poem that鈥檚 responding to a piece of art or a videogame, but there is a common image.
I used to make a lot of mix-tapes when I was a teenager, and I would try to put the most disparate songs in terms of musical genre next to each other that I could get away with, but often times they would be in the same key or similar rhythm. I think putting The Multitude together was something like creating a mixtape for me.
In this book, I wanted to create a multiverse where you can walk into one poem and you鈥檙e in the 鈥渞eal world.鈥� You can walk into the next poem and you鈥檙e in a mythical world that鈥檚 connected to this world. Then you can walk into the next poem and find you鈥檙e in a virtual world.
We all live our lives across multiple worlds. We have our day-to-day life, and then we become an online avatar, and that鈥檚 a different self in a different world. And there鈥檚 more鈥攍ike who you are with your family versus who you are with your coworkers. 罢丑补迟鈥檚 part of life, and it鈥檚 what I wanted the book to reflect.
Ryan Teitman is the author of the poetry collection Litany for the City (BOA Editions, 2012). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, New England Review,聽The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and The Yale Review, and his awards include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a National聽Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He lives in Philadelphia.