10 Questions for Simone Muench & Jackie White
- By Franchesca Viaud
The last spring shall come, the last summer, too,
so no to politicians peddling impotence, no
to preachers stitching our lips into eclipse, we want
the misfits, the women unafraid of descent,
—from "Self-Portrait Lined By Sándor Csoóri," Volume 65, Issue 2 (Summer 2024)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Jackie & Simone: For our new collection, The Under Hum, one of the first pieces we wrote was “Disclosure,” which developed into a sonnet, and one of our goals at the outset was to extend the feminist project of interrogating traditional (male) forms. Pointedly, then, we “turn” the argument of the poem at the end of the first quatrain with the lines, “your nakedness. It is the vehicle, the volta//that comes too soon,” and again at the end of the third quatrain, more implicitly, “Your beauty needs no frame; it pivots on this//exposé….” With this early collaboration, we discovered that we were enchanted by the communal and dialogic aspect of collaborative writing, as well as the structure, insight, endless surprise, and challenge that another writer provides. Collaboration also stretches us beyond the safety and, in some cases, complacency, of our own writing toolkits, challenging our routines, writing tics, and reliable writing moves.
Jackie: Individually, way back in the day, one of my first poems was “White Rock,” influenced by the landscape of southeastern Wyoming where I spent a few summers in college and by William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and the whole Imagist movement, as seen in the closing couplet: “black spots on the valley’s horizon:/calves being primed for slaughter.
Who has influenced the way you write now?
Jackie: Working collaboratively, my current influences are, of course, Simone, and the foregrounding work of Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton. I also continue to be influenced by my love of Dickinson, Eliot, and Hughes, and a host of Latin American poets—Julia de Burgos, Alfonsina Storni, Neruda and Paz.
Simone: Jackie, of course, as well as my other collaborators, Phillip Jenks and Dean Rader. Instead of the “anxiety of influence” I’ve always felt the “inspiration of influence” and am indebted to the following writers (as well as many not listed!): Sylvia Plath, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Desnos, Charles Wright, Julio Cortazar, Larry Levis, Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda. I also owe shoutouts to some of my professors who served as mentors including Marilyn Krysl, Dennis Brutus, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Michael Anania, Anne Winters, Peter Michelson, and Reg Saner.
What did you want to be when you were young?
Jackie: a marine biologist because I liked the idea of spending a lot of time under water! But as I explored the vast weirdness of ocean life, I went off that idea. Along with that love of movement, I also dreamed of becoming a dancer, but my lack of height kept me from going that route. Given my greater love of all things literary and linguistic, however, I mostly always wanted to be a writer and a teacher.
Simone: Architect, fashion designer, interior decorator, psychiatrist. . . however, I discovered a teacher’s report from when I was seven that stated “she does well in spelling and creative writing”; so, it appears that my current profession was already forecast.
What inspired you to write this piece?
Jackie & Simone: Another interest in our project, The Under Hum, was, of course, the idea of all that collaboration means, particularly as it investigates the supposed singular voice, the singular identity of the lyric, so we began exploring the tradition of “Self-Portraits” to demonstrate the fusion of two writers’ “selves.” Along those same lines, we wanted to make explicit how every poem is in an implicit conversation with the poets we read. Those concerns led us to the technique of “lining” poems with text from other poets who figure into the inspiration, as in our “Self-Portrait Lined by Sándor Csoóri.” Of course, we were obviously inspired by his language and, as the content of the poem shows, the unfortunate political climate in which we live. To get a broader, less provincial or nationalistic perspective for this and many of our other “Lined by” poems, and to interrogate the dominance of the Western, English language (male) poetic tradition, we consciously chose to explore and include voices from outside of that canon.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
Jackie: I’ve always been enamored of Chicago, for its vibrancy, its architecture, and the lake, but I’m probably more influenced by the prairie and forest preserves—natural imagery—outside of the city and by the expanses and mountain-scapes of the West, as well as, in both places, the night sky and the idea of what’s out there. The imagined spaces of the psyche also intrigue and influence.
Simone: I often write out of the geographies I’ve inhabited, mainly Louisiana, but also Colorado, Australia, and Illinois. The natural landscape of the South tends to seep through my work most frequently: woods, bayous, ponds, humidity, dirt roads, pine trees, and the flora and fauna (wisteria, pelicans, azaleas, magnolias)
Are there any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
Jackie: I have to begin my day and my writing process alone in a coffee shop, with strong black coffee, chatter and music in the background, as a way of clearing my mind and warming up with words. Then, I read some poems, sorte virgilani, and jump into the lines that Simone and I have been sending back and forth.
Simone: As I’ve written elsewhere, I typically try to write as I’m going to sleep when my internal editor has slipped away for the night, and I’m floating in liminal land (Hawthorne’s “twilight hour”), that shifting space between waking and dreaming. But I also write in the morning as I drink my coffee and cuddle with my cats. Usually this writing is done with Jackie as we trade our work back and forth. I was also inspired by Harry Mathews book 20 Lines a Day to at least write 20 lines during the day and 20 at night, though I don’t always maintain that ritual. Another way of approaching it, when I’m not feeling particularly imaginative, is just to set a stopwatch, and write for at least 10 minutes a day.
Who typically is the first person to read your work?
Jackie: Simone! Not only now as we’re working collaboratively but also in response to any individual poems I’m crafting.
Simone: Jackie! And ditto.
If you could work in another art form what would it be?
Jackie: Choreography, as a way to combine movement and music, to create “form” while maintaining fluidity, to express ideas or tell a story, as poems do, but without the language of words.
Simone: Film director or cinematographer. I teach a course on the horror film and have always been interested in their construction. I’ve been a horror fan since I was a child and fell in love with films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon and King Kong. The Blob was another early favorite—I was stupefied by all that gelatinous erasure—as was the Universal fare: The Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, and Invisible Man. Recently, I discovered my father through 23&Me, and he has written and directed a horror movie titled Virgin Cheerleaders in Chains! My newly discovered half-brother, Evan, also teaches a horror film class. I always joke about what gene, akin to the cilantro gene, holds the DNA for an adoration for horror movies.
What are you currently working on?
Jackie & Simone: We’re now well underway on another collaborative project exploring and bringing to the fore the work of women who contributed to and advanced Surrealism and hopefully in a way that updates that tradition. In developing the poems, we’re also experimenting with ways to fracture the sonnet, add free association to the cento, and blend the ekphrastic with linguistic collage. The working title is “Elegies, Epistles, and Ekphrastics: Conversing with Women Surrealists” and it engages in the artwork and writings of women surrealists, which include, but are not limited to, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Kay Sage, Ithell Colquhoun, Lee Miller, Alice Rahon, Valentine Penrose, Olga Orozco, Joyce Mansour, Claude Cahun, Unica Zürn, Valentine Hugo, Dora Marr, Jane Graverol, Meret Oppenheim, and Dorothea Tanning. The process is a kind of immersive alchemy and assemblage of our own voices with their written texts and art.
What are you reading right now?
Jackie: Lots of surrealist poets! And critical texts that examine their work (name titles?) My beside and morning reading includes Odes to Our Undoing: Writers Reflecting on Crisis, Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s Matria, Suzanne Frischkorn’s Fixed Star, and Eavan Boland’s In a Time of Violence.
Simone: Percival Everett’s The Trees, Mary-Alice Daniel’s Mass for Shut-Ins, and, as Jackie mentioned, rereading surrealist books including Joyce Mansour’s Screams, Don't Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, and Penelope Rosemont’s Surrealist Woman: An International Anthology.
SIMONE MUENCH is the recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship, the Meier Foundation for the Arts Award, and the 2023 Lewis University Career Scholarship Award. She is the author of seven full-length books, including Wolf Centos (Sarabande). Her recent, The Under Hum, co-written with Jackie K. White, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2024.
JACKIE K. WHITE has published three previous chapbooks and, with Simone Muench, Hex & Howl (Black Lawrence Press.) Their full-length book, The Under Hum, is forthcoming in 2024, also with BLP. Professor Emerita at Lewis University, Jackie’s poems, translations, and collaborative poems appear in such journals as APR, Bayou, Pleiades, and Shenandoah.
