The Musical Innertube - Volume 2, Number 173 - Theodora Ziolkowski

JOHN 

Our guest today on the Musical Innertube is Theodora Ziolkowski, a wonderful novelist and poet. She teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared more than 60 journals, anthologies, exhibits, the whole shot. She's been a guest editor all over the place. She has a short story collection titled Mother Tongues and a novella titled On The Rocks, and she's here today to talk about her brand shiny new poetry collection, her first, titled Ghostlit, published by the good people at Texas University Press. It's due out around February the 15th. We are really sparkly happy to welcome Theodore Ziolkowski to the Musical Innertube. 

THEODORA 

Thank you so much for having me. 

JOHN 

I'm nothing less than obvious. Let me ask you an obvious question. You published all these things – stories, novella now poems. Many of the poems in Ghostlit do tell stories - some gestured at, some more, directly fleshed out. I'd love to hear you think aloud about what you have to say about a personal, subjective experience as telling stories in prose, compared to telling it in poetry. You could talk about it any way you like, but I'm just very curious. Curious about it because it is different I think, and I'm wondering from your viewpoint, what would you say? 

THEODORA 

Yeah, well, I love. I you know, I just love writing. So I write in any form I can, so I'm always greedy to write more. But there, you know they are very different, and I think you know all of my writing comes from imagination as well as experience. And sometimes when I first start writing, I'm not even sure what genre the piece I'm writing will go into. I don't always sit down and think I'm going to write a poem. I'll make, I'll start kind of making notes and see where the voice leads me. So with poems, I gravitate toward form so a lot of the, you know, some of the poems in Ghostlit look like very long lines. Some are kind of like columns divided in the middle. That sort of form takes place after a lot of editing and becomes very organic to how I write. But you know, I really don’t often sit down with this concrete idea of what genre, and I really just kind of start with the voice. And then see where it goes from there and then once I usually think that, the work talks kind of back to me in a way and it makes clear to me what it's supposed to be. 

JOHN 

So that's interesting. Have things started as stories and become poems or vice versa? 

THEODORA 

Yes. Yeah, that's. That's. Yeah, I think the one I write, you know every day I kind of journal write just thought, just kind of ideas that have come up images and usually I'll use those to as sort of a base to craft something. I'll have, especially for long form fiction. I think a lot about those stories, and I really. Kind of channel that energy. But when I'm when I just have kind of random images and ideas floating around. And it's like I'm just sitting through a pool and catching something. Then I then it's a little more mysterious how I what genre I land in, but it's always exciting. And that's one of the reasons that keeps me writing, whether it's poetry or the novellas. 

DON 

I read a little bit of On The Rocks. You tend to write in first person, which is kind of unique because a lot of people will start out writing third person omission. They know everything that's going on, but you plunge right into writing first person. A lot of your the whole novellas, first person, a lot of your poems. First person. Why do you decide to take that route to write instead of the third person? 

THEODORA 

It's funny you mentioned that because right now the projects I'm working on now are all in 3rd place. So. It's. It's fun to think back on the I just. I just. 

DON 

So this this was a phase that. Were going through. 

JOHN 

What you're telling us is you're just out. Rehab, right and. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

THEODORA 

I think umm. You know, it's funny, I. Especially when I was first started writing first. Working just seemed really accessible to me in a way, and I've had students mention something kind of similar. Writing students mentioning something similar. That that can be really fresh and exciting, but I always like to for each new project, like to invent a new challenge for myself and so. Novel I just finished is in third person close and then another project I'm working on now is third person omniscient. 

JOHN 

In. 

THEODORA 

But I like. I like that you picked up on the first person bit from the beginning. Didn't actually think of it that. That both on the rocks and then this collection, both are very first person heavy. 

JOHN 

Speaking of that, we were taught in in school not to assume that when there's an I speaking in a. Poem that it is the same thing as the author writing. The reason being that it's often not the case. The author has created a character. 

THEODORA 

Mm. 

JOHN 

Although time to think of it, even if you're writing about yourself, you're creating a character, but passing passing away from that for a moment. I'm I know. But it's it's interesting. Mean in these poems? There's a lot of detail. And the naive reader coming. It would see. Word Houston, for example, floating around. So I mean, I'm wondering about, you know, your feelings about like a reader thinking, oh, well, this is, this is her story. She's writing autobiographical poems. Do you welcome that? Do you? Do you think you have something to say about it? You could what do you think? 

Speaker 

Well I have. 

THEODORA 

Some thoughts 1st to get back to the first person a little bit. Mean, I think. One of the reasons I wrote in the first person for ghostlit and kind of had that consistent character, as you said, speaker character throughout is because I do think it makes it easy for readers to kind of slip into who that character is are too. I imagine that. And one of my goals. The book is very much about like. Cultural ideologies around abuse and like how it can, how it's not just the personal, it's it's across. Umm. It's backdrops in peoples and because of that I one way to kind of connect is to just have this personal eye communicating with about their experience. 

JOHN 

Yes. 

THEODORA 

I do think of the speaker as a character, and I think of the husband figure as a character, and it's just this really almost claustrophobic. Up close, look at this one situation. I've been gratified to hear is that those who have read advanced copies of it from across, you know? Genders, nationalities. I've had responses that they could identify with this speaker in one way, shape or form in their experience. That was one of the reasons that I chose that for, you know, for that I I can definitely see. You know, audiences assuming that it's about the poet and for sure. 

JOHN 

Is that OK? Is that OK? 

THEODORA 

I you know, if asked the question about it, I like to always say, well, this has my creative process. Came from these ideas. Wanted to explore, you know, and but I I guess the goal whatever makes people connect with the book connect you know connect with the book. Just want the poems to reach people. So yeah. 

DON 

When you talk in the in the 1st. When you talk, when you create your characters for the poetry, for the novellas, for the short stories that I read, you create women who have and are dealing with pain. And. If John, if we can go back to what John said earlier, if people connect. They go oh, boy, that woman is just steeped in pain. 

Speaker 

And. 

DON 

Frustration and oh, and she doesn't like men. Oh, men, come off terrible in her books. How do you see? How how do when you're writing it, do you? Any of that stuff? Floating around in your mind or or is it just? Straight imagery straight to the page. 

THEODORA 

I think it's just straight to the. I think I would have if I thought too much about what people might think about how I feel about certain things or how you know, if I was worried too much about them tying it to who I am as a person around beliefs, it might inhibit me so. I just feel like. With writing I have that wonderful pool of imagination. You can just draw from and with on the rocks. That book is very the novella. Very much about. Grief and recursiveness and how grief can manifest in the present. I think. Ghostle's about that too, just through a different. So I look at them both as kind of a grief bits, but I, you know, on the rocks hasn't where a humor tilt to it. I'd like to think that some of the poems in Ghostbust have a little bit of humor. Like there's the one with. 

JOHN 

They do. 

THEODORA 

You're gonna see, like on a dating app or whatever. So I try to, you know. 

JOHN 

That was good. That was that was a good one. I love that. Well, let's let's have a little poetry reading here. You've been kind enough to agree to read from. Book and I thought we would begin. First of all your your titles. Often they're not so much titles as just lead in, say, they sort of their the convention is to bold, you know, a line that's separated by a space from the body of the poem. But in a lot of ways, you dump us right in media stress and and we're off to the races. So this. Picture of this and I'd love to hear you read. And maybe. Can talk about it once we've heard it. 

THEODORA 

Great. Thank you, John. Picture this. You wear girls size clothes the summer your aunt passes down that porcelain doll. You are 24. It is a family heirloom. He carries your gift on the return flight from Michigan. There is no room in his suitcase. Besides, the doll is delicate. The science says you can't think straight if your brain isn't getting enough protein. The doll requires a cabin seat. You do your homework. The chocolate protein shakes are less chalky than vanilla. You have always been a good student, though this time it is hard to be. The doll would need to get used to the heat. Every day you think. So much is wrong with me. You can see yourself waving as he passes through security. The doll tucked under his arm. But you JOHN't trust that memory. You put the doll on the Mantel for everyone to see, but it is mostly just you there and you. So changed. For four years, you and he live in a college town that neither of you can ever quite claim. Even when you are smiling, your face is a broken plate. Morning is the only time of day to run without collapsing from the heat. Before sunup and chocolate shakes. Before he wakes, you jog around the complex until you lose feeling. 

JOHN 

And again, we are hearing the poetry of Theodora Zolkowski. That was what's the whole title picture of this? 

THEODORA 

This you wear girls size clothes this summer. 

DON 

So and again there's pain in there. But but it is a sort of what do you want to say universal? This is sort of the stuff that goes through everybody's head when they're going through a day of life, you know? Things that that occur to you about yourself, that and face it when we talk to ourselves, we're usually not saying, hey, I'm great. I'm wonderful. People like that wind up being president of the United States, but. Ordinary people wind up saying, oh, this is what I can't stand about me is and and that's kind of what comes out in your writing is that current. 

JOHN 

Right. 

THEODORA 

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very internal sort of. It jumps. Hopscotch is around, yeah. So definitely I I like to try to move it the way mind at work would function. So yeah, yeah. 

JOHN 

I'm so. I'm so glad you said that because and by the way, ladies and gentlemen, who are listening, first of all get ghost lit. Secondly, when you get it and you see this poem, you'll see that it's it's what's usually called a prose poem that is basically the only thing I know. What what that means is that both. Both edges are justified once from 1 edge to. Other so it. Appears to be a block of prose. But as you just heard, of course, the tensions are what we associate with poetry and the movement, and it does move like a mind moves. And that is by association, by intrusion, by sometimes. It seems to me. Can tell better than I can, but. I think that. That part of memory which is involuntary, those little involuntary stabs of of memory and image, I think that's you know in there too. Just my, you know, reaction to it. The thing I wanted to say is we've all read Chekhov about. The the gun on the Mantel piece and I have to congratulate you that the doll does not fall from the mantle piece and smash in the poem. 

DON 

Instead. 

JOHN 

There's a smile that's like a broken play. You know it belongs. By the way. This is in second. This is a second person, Paul. Yeah, right. No, I. We chose the. That wasn't not any. Second person is by far the least used because. Well, you know, it's hard. I'm sure you can tell me more, but. So we're right and JOHN's right and I'm right that we're we're really in a way we're with, we're in the presence of the movement of a mind here. Movement of a sensibility. Is that OK to say? 

THEODORA 

English. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely, yeah. 

JOHN 

The presence of pain is there. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

JOHN 

And so forth and so on. But it's also the thing that I want to ask you about is. There's something's being played with here that has to do with just how experience hits us. And and I only say that because of the associational aspect of it, you know. That we can't. Choose what's going to happen to. It's going to happen as it happens and and I'm thinking the field, you know, person is sort of the mind as you've been talking about. The imagination is kind of a field, you know, and things come to you. 

THEODORA 

Right. 

JOHN 

In that field and you work in that field. But here too, I mean it's about a person to whom things happen. We might not. Able to draw a linear line. But you know that that. So I I JOHN't know. That seems to be. You're playing. 

THEODORA 

Yeah, I. I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it another way. I kind of thought about it is it's a person who or a character who's like, she's always looking for ways to control. Like the situation. Some ways when she's feels uncontrolled in other ways. So this. I mean, there are other poems in the book that do this, but you know, lose to like. Eating or, you know, that's one form in which that kind of takes. And so yeah, she also, like, looks to, there are a lot of problems where she's looking to something to kind of explain her situation or to understand it differently. So whether it's mythology or film, you know the cover of the book has that great eye that runs. Very hitchcockian, which I really. 

Speaker 

Yes. 

THEODORA 

Really, love. And so yeah, she's looking to film to art mythology to. She's always looking to something else to explain what's going on or to see herself differently. 

Speaker 

Awesome. 

DON 

One of those people that walks around with a notebook. And when an idea hits you, you're going to write it down and then go back, maybe flush it out or. 

THEODORA 

Yes. Yeah, I I'm worse than that, JOHN. I. I'll turn on The Voice memo. You know app on my phone and just start talking so. 

DON 

Oh yeah. 

THEODORA 

Yeah. So I you know, I always like to have something on hand so I can. 

JOHN 

The suffering of this episode is going to be appearing soon in a a book by Theodore Zolkowski before long. 

THEODORA 

Get it down. 

JOHN 

Well, wonderful, I think. Well, you know, I just wanted to say you say we talk we we search. Four points of comparison in order to understand our own experience, we often search for other people's experience and compare ourselves to what they're going through. In you know, what we think might be analogous circumstances, right? We're always searching. And neither of the search nor what it dredges up is necessarily linear or even useful. 

THEODORA 

Right, right, right. 

JOHN 

But in. Somebody tells one. The speaking eyes or one of your poems. Can't remember which one. That you shouldn't. Have recourse to metaphor, so often I can't remember the lines. Yes, you know. 

THEODORA 

Oh great. 

Speaker 

Yeah, yeah. 

JOHN 

So I mean that has that's that's part of what we're talking about here is that. Know. We try to understand ourselves and we reach for things that can stand. For what we're. Through and that's the Taffer Ization, isn't it? Know and. That's I. I'd love you to talk more about that. 

Speaker 

THEODORA 

Yeah. No, that point we're hearing, I think it's a therapist tells the the character Stenger not to do that. So there's a self-awareness to kind of the act of doing that. 

JOHN 

Yes. 

THEODORA 

So the act of doing that as well. So yeah, I just, you know, a lot of the poems too are really they have a strong. Of. So whether it's in Houston or you know across the pond and you know in their palms and there's one palm in Paris, there's some palms in Rome, the Malfi coast. All those two gave me a lot of opportunities to examine art and different surroundings and peoples and places. I think that that gave me another way to kind of do that through the speaker. Through the character of mouthpiece of these poems. 

DON 

A lot of the poems and even more of your. Bros. Have to do with earth animals, that sort of thing. There are geese that pop up constantly in your work. There are topics that almost are medieval. I wanna say when these people are working the the the world, the earth. They're working it not with modern plows and tractors and everything, but they're actually out there with their fingers and you have a a piece of prose where a woman cuts the back of her hand. With her trial while she's digging. Do you have a background at all in farming or or anything like that? Is that just sort of? An imagery that you that you like. 

THEODORA 

I think that's imagery that I like my backdrop. You know, I want kind. You said something about medieval sort of. The way that I look at animal. Well, I love the Gothic, so I think a lot of my what I work with has a fairy tailor Gothic sort of Ben Tun. And that's especially when I spiritualize. How I. That's how I kind of learn how to write a story. Looking at the shape of fairy tales because they have this, they already have the architecture to them and so I would kinda reuse that to be able to figure out how to make a shape. Found that astonishingly hard when I was first writing is how to figure out the shape for fiction as well As for poetry. And yeah, the shape of a. So I think that comes from there. And then I also I just whenever I'm in a new, I've had been fortunate to get to live in different places and to visit other places, but. You know, in terms of the states I've lived in, I'm from Pennsylvania, but I've lived in Vermont. Lived in. I've lived in Houston and I now I live in Nebraska and so they all have such different geographies and I'm very attentive to sort of the floor and fauna around me. Very interested in that. Just as a person. And so. I never thought of my work as cut. In it, as much as you mentioned on so I appreciate that so much because I'm, you know, I I do love that. 

DON 

There's a certain something in in the pros and in the poetry that's very ethereal, that that sort of and, and This is why I keep coming back to what you're thinking, what the mind is going through, because there's a lot of it's first person, but it's you looking. The world and reacting to what? Going on and you JOHN't always react in the way that people would think that you would. There's a little bit of a something going on that has to do with the suffering, but also has to do with the way they perceive everything that's. After them. 

THEODORA 

Yeah, yeah, I think that the those kind of give you an opportunity to do that too. Mean just just thinking on the fly. How how you mentioned I. I just. Of course. Yeah. I think that's really that's a really neat, wonderful observation. 

JOHN 

DON 

I bet you. Think you were gonna get a psychological dress? On this. On this program, but that's what we're here for. 

JOHN 

So, so continuing the the the reading. You have generously agreed to read a poem that uses the word ***** repeatedly, and I thought I'd just mention that so that if readers feel they might not like it, first of all I want to say. It only makes the poem richer and and to come into it with that, it's this is not. A bad moused poem at all, and I'd love you to read. The laying in the hospital bed, one of two that begins with those words in the book. 

THEODORA 

Yeah, I'd be happy to. You, John. 

Speaker 

And. 

THEODORA 

Lying in the hospital bed, I wonder why every song I love contains the word *****. Then the nurse takes my hand, asks if I want to watch TV. I am I most vulnerable waiting for surgery. About a. She socks my feet. Her tone is congratulatory. A snow bank gaping at the back, red ties bowed into Winterberries. 

Speaker 

There's. 

THEODORA 

There is poison inside me. Normally I crank the volume up on my headphones, but today that's unnecessary as I will be sleeping. I can't stop thinking about those songs I play as the doctor peers inside me. According to Google, ******* were originally trained to sniff out prey. Then they were expected to keep the house clean, lest a mole expose them as *******, and thus destined those witches to burn up the state. I have never felt more inside of my body, as when I found myself without my husband alone in another country. Now the nurse searches my arm for a vein, and I consider how there is no Gray area. The ***** in every song I love is either adored or hated. Hue audience applause as the nurse changes the channel and a woman ices a cake on TV. ******* mean dogs, but to ***** means complaining. IE the way ******* about endless tiles of laundry. Unfortunately, there's no way to remove your nose. The doctor proclaims. IE there is an occasion, though not likely, for radiation burning. Please sign an initial your understanding. It ought to have been a sign that marriage turned my initials into the shorthand for disease evinced by blood, coughed into handkerchiefs, and that ending my time as his wife made me prone to reclaiming the years I was silenced. This is where we'll be extracting. The doctor holds a diagram to explain. But practice makes me translate her science into the same anxiety I carried that first night. Felt a hand at my waist, then registered the. Sense of a ring. I poured myself a glass of white wine and laughed my *** off at that party. Kept my ******** behind my. Time to be wheeled. And the nurse squeezes my hand with a tenderness that makes my throat ache. I once saw a performance where the singer wanders through a bright forest with the real birches until disease devours the plot as her ***** dogs bark. I often wonder for how long those bad cells were. A part of me. I mean, at what point did they take a turn for the worse? 

JOHN 

Well. You know, I JOHN't know as a Yi love poetry. Try to write the stuff myself. I. You know, I mean, I'm part of a poetic sort of demimonde here in the in the Philadelphia area, and I can't decide what? What is the more powerful to read, a poem to oneself. Or to hear it read by someone else. I feel as though I'm in this case. I decided not to look at the text and just have you speak the poem to me. And it seems like an absolutely separate experience from when I first read it. I'd love to hear you think aloud about that for a moment. 

THEODORA 

Yeah, I I love that experience of if you first read encounter a poem on paper and then you hear it read or vice versa, it is a different. It can be a very different experience, especially her, you know, hearing different inflections of different people reading the same work. It can be a very different experience. Something I like to do as a teacher is when a student is up for workshop of a poem, I like to have the poet read it and then someone else in the class read it so the poet can hear the poem being read by someone else and hear. It sounds like poetry is the oral form. So I think it's really lovely to be able to have, you know, have that. Echo back to them. 

JOHN 

That penultimate section where you report that you've. You once saw a performance where the Sing singer wanders through a bright forest of ethereal birches until. Disease devours the plot as her ***** dogs bark, and first of all, I just love there's some sumptuous consonant mongering going on. Love. You know I love you know, the bright and the birches and the ***** dogs barking. It's. A lot of bees, a lot of music going on, but there is also there are moments in your poetry I find anyway, where something nails it. Whatever. Is you might not. Have known. But there's something that just seems to just shout. You know. It's authenticity from the poem, but the phrase for me that really struck me that way was, you know, the the disease devours the plot. Because I'll tell you why. Because disease does. Disease. I mean, that's the fear, isn't it? If you have. And a couple of your speaking characters here in the poems do that it may devour the plot in the sense that it devours me. In my world, I'm thinking devourment. And also the fact that this poem also touches on. What I think of myself, what has happened to me, even the word *****, which. Is it's aggressive, it's it's actually an act of aggression when 1 uses it. I think it's one of the reasons it became enshrined in RAP and. Hop lyrics. Is it was an expression of, you know, just, you know, being actively forward. Let's put it. But all that is is is happening in those those little words. It's so explosive. I'd love to hear you react. 

THEODORA 

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I mean the to get to what you're saying about the birches and *****, the way that the sounds kind of work, I mean that was one of the real fun parts of the poem for me is singing and this is. Of those poems that to. Back to something we were saying earlier that I did go into this knowing I was writing a poem about this. Is one of those things where I kind of had the concept. Or I. The first line and then I chase the rest of the line and so the kind of fun part I love about revision, especially poetry, is really finding the sound in the different, you know, different ways I can draw. Image and sound to kind of achieve that. So I love that you were mentioning you know the end there and of course just even the repetition of the word *****. I mean, that's kind of the driving kind of heartbeat of the poem, you know? 

DON 

Sure. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

DON 

Love is, which is what they renamed The Rolling Stones Song. For the radio. 

JOHN 

Yeah. So they could play it, you know. 

DON 

If I was a disc jockey in for years, I I finally was able to play *****. But for years I could. Play love is. Because he didn't want you to say fishing on. Going back to what John said about the alliteration and the musicality of it, I love your imagery too. You talk of that poem about the the hospital gown, like a snow bank. And I know this in the. 

JOHN 

Wow. 

DON 

You know, on the rocks your character talks about talking to. A therapist like climbing a ladder where the rungs are made of pudding. I love because of all that says and that also goes back into the the humor that you inject in in all these things, even when you're talking very painful about very painful things. 

JOHN 

Hello. 

DON 

Humor. There's there's a level of self deprecation and humor in there that this seems to Levin it out. That kind of where you're going with this stuff. 

THEODORA 

Yeah, definitely. I, you know, I think I'm, you know, one way in which I'm like this characters. I am like that as a I am always try to be kind of humorous. That's one one way of my in which I communicate. Yeah, definitely. Terrific. 

JOHN 

There is. A collection of poems and their slim little books, but I often tell people if you're going to open one, be ready to get into all sorts of stuff you're not going to be able to just put it down and read it. To cover, you're going to return. To certain things, you are going to it'll it'll get. Hooks in you and I think this does. Think there are not just the images. Which of course are. I mean, there's so many. I wrote down South. Wonderful. Smiling is painful after poison. I think it is, JOHN't you, JOHN? Mean I think I. 

Speaker 

JOHN't know. Elms. 

DON 

I've never taken poison, but I would assume that smiling would not be one. The first things. Could you try it, John I? I'll try it later. 

JOHN 

There's a fact of memory, and there is a fact of feeling. Which is so precise I mean, but in a minute, you realize, well, yeah. You know, you're the feeling comes to tell us things. The memory might not, and vice versa. Mean they're served in in worlds that are often very separable and separate and. But here's one really just knocked me down the street. Even the dead JOHN't provide closure. The ghosts keep coming. 

Speaker 

Hello. 

JOHN 

Made for us a living death is not the end. I mean other people's. 

DON 

Hungry. Ask a question too about about that. How many times do people come up to you and say in your in your book, in your poem, that that thing? Me. Your friends and they find themselves in your work. 

THEODORA 

Oh, now it's. Thank God. I thank goodness I'm knock on wood, but I mean, I, you know, everything is from. 

DON 

That happen a lot to you. Oh, OK, good. 

THEODORA 

I really think everything's from for writers from experience and imagination. Like everything comes from, you know, we're all just sponges for what's around us, so. You know, but the great part about writing is you get to put a tilt on everything. But yeah, I but Ed. That has not happened to me yet. Had happening a lot, but yeah. 

DON

All right. As I was just wondering if somebody comes up and says again on the rocks, Ted turbine, that's me that right? You know, wondering, just wondering. Yeah, I'm not saying it was me, but I'm saying that people could see themselves in some.

JOHN 

Yeah. 

DON 

These characters you paint. 

THEODORA 

Yeah, I tetchurbang would be particularly a funny one for someone to claim. So. 

DON 

Yeah, very much. 

JOHN 

Well, we have had a wonderful half hour with Theodore Zlotkowski and her new book is Ghostly. Thank you, Theodore Zolkowski for coming over. All the best with your lovely new collection. 

THEODORA 

Well, thank you so much, JOHN and John. It's been a real treat being here, so thank you.