Meridian poetry editor, Gabriel Costello, in conversation with Blackbird managing editor, Caroline Richards.

Caroline Richards

Let’s begin officially. Yes. Welcome, Gabriel. Thank you for being here.

Gabriel Costello

Hi, Caroline. Thank you for having me.

Caroline Richards

I’m very excited for this Virginia collab. Just for some background, Gabriel is poetry editor of Meridian over at UVA, and we met through Corey Van Landingham when she came in the fall to give her reading of Love Letter To Who Owns the Heavens which won the Levis Reading Prize. And Gabriel came down—or over, rather, from Charlottesville—and that is how this connection was formed. So thank you, Corey.

Gabriel Costello

Thank you, Corey. Also, Corey’s new book that I think came out this week, Reader, I, is beautiful, disquieting, and has a lot to teach us about love and knowing oneself. I should also just say briefly: we can shout out the University of Illinois, which is where I went for my undergraduate degree, and where Corey was my teacher and a wonderful mentor. It’s also home to a great MFA program in its own right. They also have a wonderful journal Ninth Letter that I believe Corey is poetry editor of at the moment. So we can bring in a little bit of Illinois to the Virginia.

Caroline Richards

Yes. Next time we do this, we’ll invite them.

Gabriel Costello

Yes, naturally.

Caroline Richards

I got a copy of Corey’s book at AWP. It’s so different from her last book and I’m so impressed by that change.

Gabriel Costello

Yes.

Caroline Richards

But there’s still a real tenderness that she reaches for in Love Letter—an optimism. That’s very refreshing to me. I think cynicism and pessimism was hip for a while, and it was kind of cool to be a pessimist. And now, I mean, I just hate that.

Gabriel Costello

Perennially, perhaps. I think it’s also a big interrogation of what it means to be married as a poet right now, which I think Corey would be okay with me saying. Corey’s husband, Christopher Kempf, is a wonderful poet in his own regard, and was also a teacher of mine at Illinois. But, yes, I mean, it’s a deeply personal and beautiful book. In an interesting way, that Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens is personal, but I think is also maybe more concerned with the political, or is more outwardly political. Do you think that’s the correct characterization?

Caroline Richards

I think I would agree. It’s the political intertwined with the personal, or the way the political sort of permeates the personal and the intimate.

Gabriel Costello

Yeah. I mean, there’s politics in the new book as well, but it’s more like the politics of married life, the politics of intimacy, the politics of love. It’s a great book. Everyone should buy it. And Corey’s first book, Antidote. Also good.

Caroline Richards

Yes, so good. So, the layout of this conversation was that we were each going to bring a poem to discuss. Am I correct in saying that you brought a poem from your most recent publication?

Gabriel Costello

A poem technically not out quite yet, next month. So if you’re a subscriber (and I’m sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Meridian subscribers reading right now) it will be in people’s mailboxes sometime in May.

Caroline Richards

Excellent. Mine isn’t published yet either; it’s also coming out in May.

Gabriel Costello

Beautiful.

Caroline Richards

Yeah, I’m excited. Would you like to read or give any context to your poem?

Gabriel Costello

I’d love to. Yes, let me give a little bit of context here. We were just talking about, before we got on, staffing at both of our magazines. I serve as poetry editor, and then there’s a fiction editor, Garrett Kim, and then there is also the editor-in-chief and nonfiction editor (which is one title right now) Coby Dillon. Garrett and Coby are both wonderful editors and writers. But then other MFA students here at UVA also read for the journal: Kamau Walker, Wheeler Light, Holly Zhou, Cy March, Desiree Santana, Danny Eisenberg (who actually reads for both poetry and fiction), and Caroline Erickson. And then last year’s poetry editor, Katie Airy, read for our poetry prize with me, and she was a big help.

So the poem that I brought to talk about is by the poet Martha Paz Soldan, who is also an MFA student, currently, I believe, at the University of Michigan. And the title of the poem is “Auditioning for the Role of Orfeo.” And I can just talk a little bit about what immediately drew me to this poem. I should first say that I remember very distinctly Walker texting me when he first read this poem or this packet of poems and saying, Wow, there’s really something here. And I think, Caroline, one of your questions was what made it stand out from the rest of the submission pile (or slush pile, as some people refer to it) and I immediately— well, you know what? I think it’ll be more helpful if I read the poem and then talk about it. Let me do that.

 
Auditioning for the Role of Orfeo  
by Martha Paz-Soldan

“Cuánto le enseñé con mis silencios, con mis lametones, mientras él me habla ba, me hablaba, me hablaba.” – Orfeo, from Fog by Miguel de Unamuno 

What you don’t know is that I have seen a stork 
with an arrow through its neck settle 
on the streetlight. This makes me a believer 
in certain things, in the dark of a by-the-hour 
hotel room, in the look on your face after 
you hang up the phone. Between us, 
a freight train carrying girls, hands  
tied with their own hair, the screaming 
in the air less like a sound and more a hedge maze. 
Isn’t that where you found me? By the water, 
by my collection of shored-up shotgun 
shells, broken tightropes. I knew you once. 
I knew your hand on my neck. I knew whose blood 
was whose when you came back from a fight. 
When I watched you sink into the tub, 
I knew how long it would be until you were dead 
but not drainage-ditch dead. Whistle for me 
and I’ll show you how to exit the burning house.  
More small talk please. Ten-four, says the truck radio with no  
music. I pretend you’re still behind me. That, by now, 
you’ve dropped the pistol. You’re removing 
tattered fabric from my mouth with stained fingers 
like we have somewhere else to be.

Gabriel Costello

So just a wonderful poem. A distressingly imagistic poem. I think for me that was the first thing that drew me in, how strong and distinct the images are here. I, as a reader, am not necessarily somebody that is always super interested in mythic illusions. But part of what I love about this poem is that it simultaneously, I think, occupies a current space, a current diction. But then we also have that allusion to the myth of Orfeo, which I remember Googling that first time reading this poem. In short, it’s basically Orfeo goes into the underworld to retrieve their beloved. And it doesn’t go well. But part of what I love about this poem is that mythic illusion is important, and I think it’s important to the function of the poem, but it doesn’t present a barrier for entry. I think you could read this poem without having any familiarity with the myth and it would still be just as affecting.

Caroline Richards

I agree. It’s a great framing device, but it doesn’t draw attention to itself in that way. The poem doesn’t become reliant on the myth. It still really holds its own as a poem.

Gabriel Costello

Absolutely. I think that formally this is also an interesting poem. I think in terms of that question of how does something stand out in the submission line, form is important. Oftentimes I see people over experimenting with form or maybe relying too much on experimentation of form. I think, though not always, that can risk losing some substance in the poem itself, whereas here this is a block text form (which in some sense is experimental in that the poem is one stanza) but it also seems like the form here is more fit to the poem than the poem is fit to the form. And this is an incredibly succinct—incredibly, let’s say, pressurized—poem.

Caroline Richards

I agree. I love that opening gesture of “what you don’t know is . . . this makes me a believer.” It’s almost rhetorical. It’s interesting, especially because when you think of this as an audition, it’s as though you get this really interesting interiority from the speaker about what it means to perform. It’s such a good move. It’s a great way to enter the poem.

Gabriel Costello

Absolutely. And wonderfully counterintuitive that we begin with an ending, whatever that might be.

Caroline Richards

I also love the kind of stage direction that comes in, but it’s not necessarily framed as giving direction. It’s not authoritative like that, but I love the moment “more small talk, please” as if there’s a director behind the screen who’s giving them these things to do and say, so that the physical moment “I pretend you’re still behind me. By now you’ve dropped the pistol” takes on a really interesting, and super original, tone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that type of, I don’t know, that type of style or willingness to imagine a scenario that’s happening on the page.

Gabriel Costello

Yes.

Caroline Richards

The speaker is existing with us as we read, it’s not retrospective at all.

Gabriel Costello

Yes and we get enough information to understand parts of what is unfolding within the poem through image. I also think the first-person “I” plays a big role in the rhythm of this poem. But there’s still an ambiguity. This isn’t what I would think of as a straightforward narrative poem. But again, that was something that immediately stood out to me, where I was like, this is a poem that I want to interrogate, that I feel like I can read multiple times and learn different things from which I think the best poems do. They allow us multiple readings.

Caroline Richards

I agree. Are you seeing certain trends in your cue? I mean, this poem feels really original, but are you seeing moves that aren’t as compelling?

Gabriel Costello

I will say one thing that surprised me is the quantity of COVID poems that we still get.

Caroline Richards

Yes. Us too. Which, I mean, I understand that was . . .

Gabriel Costello

. . . A global trauma that we all suffered through. And that, especially for people who are immunocompromised, is something that is still out there in the world. But as a topic, I just think it’s uninteresting right now, for better or for worse. And especially—I don’t know what the correlation is here—but I do feel like there are a lot of people that are writing about it that are beginning writers. I don’t know. I have to be honest that when I read a COVID poem right now, almost instantly I’m like, I don’t think this is something I’m going to be interested in.

Caroline Richards

I one hundred percent agree, and I think it’s because the cultural moment we’re in right now has this desire to forget COVID completely and to sort of erase it. I just feel like we moved on really fast and we were all willing to move on that fast. A lot of people don’t want to dwell on it, except for these poets it seems, who are really interested in returning to the topic that I don’t think anyone wants to hear about anymore. I think part of the reason is because the language surrounding it at the time was so dense and illogical that we’re so sick of it.

Gabriel Costello

I think it’s also a question of: if you’re writing about the same thing that five hundred other people are writing about, maybe not five hundred, but dozens, you’re putting a lot more on your own poem to individuate itself that much more, which is hard to do. Of course, obviously that’s something that has to be accomplished anyway.

I will also say in terms of just like a publishing philosophy in my mind, something that I really like about Meridian is that we publish people who may have been published in Meridian before, who may have multiple books, and that’s great. We’re very privileged to read those submissions, but we also serve as some people’s first publications. We serve Martha for example, who’s wonderful, who’s still an MFA student like you and me. Our journal is welcoming to writers at any and all stages of their career. Is Blackbird similar in some ways?

Caroline Richards

Yes, I think it’s similar. I think it’s such a privilege to be able to read, for example, the writers in our last Flight like Khaled Mattawa and Brian Henry and Kim Addonizio, but we also published really young, up-and-coming writers. Those are sometimes some of the best to read because they’re really in tune. These are writers still in workshops. So they’re surrounded by young people who are also really experimenting with, you know, the “poetics of the moment” or whatever. But I think it’s important to have both. I love when you read Poetry and in the back they’ll have an asterisk next to someone’s name if this is their first time being published by Poetry. I think that’s such a good practice. It makes me so excited for them. Speaking of Poetry, did you see Corey was just in the April issue?

Gabriel Costello

Indeed, “ASMR.” The poems in Poetry, too, they’re newer than even Reader, I, so we’ve got, already, a fourth Corey Van Landingham manuscript in progress.

Caroline Richards

Yes. Honestly, those are the best poems to read, when their bio says something like “I’m working on a manuscript” or “This is part of a longer project.” Then you not only get to see the writer’s latest obsession, but this lingering, pervasive obsession.

Gabriel Costello

Which I will also say, yeah, we’re publishing this series of poems by the poet G.C. Waldrep that are from a manuscript in-progress, and they’re weird and associative and a longer-form thing. We didn’t have space to do the the entirety of it. But seeing work like that is very cool. Being able to hopefully be a part of, in a small way, the making of a book is also a great privilege.

Caroline Richards

It does feel like a privilege. It’s great. G.C. Waldrop teaches at Bucknell, right?

Gabriel Costello

Yeah, he does.

Caroline Richards

Yeah. His poems are amazing. Very associative, but successfully so. Actually one of my pet peeves is when you get a poem that’s really trying to be “surrealist,” but it’s just dressed up as a surrealist poem in a way that only operates as an excuse to lack sense or logic. But that rarely feels effective to me. I dislike that “surrealism” is being used as this defense to writing all this nonsense without, you know, a through line or some sort of associative movement.

Gabriel Costello

I think what’s true of somebody like G.C., certainly, but also is true of Martha’s poem (and a little foreshadowing, but true of the poem that you brought to talk about as well), is that there’s associativeness, for sure, and maybe that’s the driving force of the poem, but the images are so strong, so grounded that they’re impossible to ignore and they play a big part. And, yes, I would agree that I think sometimes when somebody is being surreal for surrealism’s sake, that can be uninteresting. 

I have a question for you, because I know you, like me, are a poet as well as an editor. I was thinking a lot this year about the editorial process. I like that there are a lot of poems in our journal that are not poems that I could or would write, stylistically speaking. I’m interested as to how you think about, or if you see a tension between, your own poetics and practice as a poet, and then trying not to just immediately place that on a submission that you’re reading. Does that make sense?

Caroline Richards

Yes. That’s such a great question for poets and poetry editors everywhere right? This question of your own personal taste versus an artistic project that maybe you don’t resonate with but other people might resonate with, or which on a craft level is maybe really impressive. It’s something that I try and practice getting better at every day by reading things that I don’t love, or I try and read other literary journals as often as I can and not only look for people I know. I try not to look for styles that I know I already like. I sort of just read what’s out there. Like, for example, Bennington Review, their taste in poetry is so different from mine but I’m so impressed by it, even though it’s so different. Some of the poems they publish I’m like, Wow, I see it now, but if this came to me in a slush pile I don’t know if I would have been drawn to it enough to advocate for it. But I don’t delude myself into thinking personal taste doesn’t come into it, because another thing is time, right? You’re reading through twenty, thirty, packets a week. It’s tough to give each poem the time it deserves if it’s not sparking interest immediately, and especially if it isn’t there on a craft level. And Blackbird—I don’t know about Meridian—makes very few edits, if any at all. We want the pieces to come to us more-or-less completely finished, in poetry but also prose. Is Meridian the same?

Gabriel Costello

Meridian is, for the most part, the same. Maybe if there’s something grammatically that we think might just be a typo or something like that. But again, I mean, we would ask the poet permission, obviously, to perform any edits. The other thing that I was going to say is that I feel like what you were just alluding to with the Bennington Review is that it’s just a good lesson for people who are interested in submitting to literary magazines. Just because it’s not right for Meridian or Blackbird doesn’t mean there isn’t a scenario in which maybe a poem isn’t right for somewhere else, or maybe doesn’t make sense for Blackbird but maybe makes sense for Meridian or vice versa. I think sending out work as widely as possible is essential.

Caroline Richards

Definitely. And reading the actual magazine. I think it’s important to go look at the pieces they’ve published and not just one issue, read a couple pieces from the past three issues or something and really get a sense of what this magazine is focusing on, what their taste is.

Gabriel Costello

Yeah. And sometimes that’s much easier with, you know, Blackbird which has a lovely, accessible website that is becoming more lovely and more accessible. You can read pretty much the entirety of the run of Blackbird on the website.

Caroline Richards

Yes, yeah.

Gabriel Costello

We have, like, a smattering of past pieces, but you’d have to track down a print copy which obviously can be harder, especially depending on where you are in the country or in the world.

Caroline Richards

Totally.

Gabriel Costello

So, the poem that you brought to talk about.

Caroline Richards

Yes, let’s talk about Ian Capelli, who is a PhD student at the University of Denver, and his poem “Clarifying the Inner Chorus” I just think is fantastic and so creative, and delights in language in a way that doesn’t detract from meaning-making, which I think is difficult to do because a lot of times it’s hard not to be indulgent with language when you’re writing poetry, you want it to sound good. You want it to be beautiful. You want to be using these, you know, obscure words, but often this desire detracts from the meaning or it’ll really come off as a performance rather than as something sincere. So I will read it.  

Clarifying the Inner Chorus
by Ian Cappelli

You forgive the catachrestic siren 
of the grackle. Petroglyphs, then 
petrochemicals. In the   museum, 
there is a soundless   installation 
dedicated to the rooms in  which 
music     is      performed,     with 
concave chairs—with patinated 
cymbals.    Close   cousinage   of 
“lacunae”   to      “lacunar:”     an 
arched roof or a ceiling. Lacking 
proof of the mind, one senses for 
a   deep     homology       between 
rococo furnishings. The colophon 
inflects a   book      with its     own 
reduction.  About the idea   that 
can    only   ever   be       accessed 
through negation: about forgery: 
one first abstracts before   finally 
adopting an   artist’s mannerisms. 
One deliberately   pencils beneath 
the   completed  painting        false 
sketches,     perceptible to    X-rays.

Caroline Richards

The first thing I noticed, I guess, is the form, which—I don’t know about you, but I immediately think of Robert Wood Lynn and Mothman Apologia. Have you read that book?

Gabriel Costello

I just bought it. I haven’t read it yet. But formally, yeah, for sure. Another block text. Kind of funny that we both chose block text poems.

Caroline Richards

I know. Yeah, I think those are very popular for some reason. Maybe because of Mothman.

Gabriel Costello

Talk more about what you felt when you encountered this poem, how you thought about it.

Caroline Richards

So I noticed the form first. I noticed the shortness of it but also that it was really dense with all these long words. Some of them I didn’t even know. Do you know what a colophon is? I didn’t know. It’s a publisher’s emblem or imprint that gives information about its authorship. And then catachrestic is from catachresis, which means the use of a word in a way that is not correct, which I love because that’s so funny off the bat. It’s very self-aware. I love that the title is called “Clarifying the Inner Chorus” but superficially there isn’t a lot of clarifying happening. The speaker seems to continue to dig themselves into this really, like, scientific or artistic language. Like the “rococo furnishings.” I love that detail. And then I think of a chorus as this layering of sound or layering of voices to create a sonic texture. And I think the poem itself is doing that. I think it’s creating this chorus that’s really attempting to clarify itself but is doing so by grasping at these rich, contorted images and this strangeness of rhythm. It’s really leaning into the strangeness of language and the strange associative moves that create texture and depth. I really just think it’s great.

I guess I also think of the “inner chorus” as our inner voice or the sound of our mind. Which is also a really fascinating topic to explore, the way we’re thinking and speaking to ourselves internally. And I guess because of that I love that it begins with a forgiveness, like the speaker is forgiving themselves for this inner noise. “Forgiving the grackle” is sort of also a forgiveness of the self for this inner chaos. I appreciate that it’s working on so many levels.

Gabriel Costello

Absolutely. Yeah and I think too, similar to Martha’s poem, it’s a poem that you could read so many times.

Caroline Richards

Totally, totally. I mean, just parsing through the words and not only the words, but the way the words are working in conjunction with each other, which changes their meaning sometimes.

Gabriel Costello

Yeah. Wonderfully.

Caroline Richards

Yes. And then the ending. I appreciate this idea of doing the best that you can, “the idea that can only ever be accessed through negation.” So, you know, telling yourself things that are not true as a means of clarifying the self. It almost feels like the inner chorus is inducing anxiety or creating a kind of complexity that isn’t there. So, you know “deliberately penciling beneath the completed painting false sketches that are invisible or imperceptible except X rays” is really like the speaker going forward as best they can. I don’t know. You could interpret that so many ways. I think in my mind I’m like, “Oh, anxiety!”

Gabriel Costello

Yeah, also just the physicality of that image is so great because this is a wonderfully abstract poem, but then that ending is so definite and concrete.

Caroline Richards

Yes, the concreteness of it in the face of abstractness.

Gabriel Costello

I think it also gets back to the really good point that you were making about what a surreal poem has to do to be appealing. And I think meaning has to be wedded to it in a really important way. But those last three lines, that final movement of the poem is scale. Which is really important because an X-ray is a relatively small thing, but then there’s the pencil marks, which are by their very nature impermanent: pencil can be erased. There’s just so much in that image to unpack. But it happens so quickly that I feel like it really closes the poem in an interesting and wonderful way.

Caroline Richards

I agree. I think it brings it all together. I mean, just to talk about endings of poems as a reader for a literary journal, and also as a writer, they’re hard to pull off. I read (and write, certainly) a lot of poems that have really unsuccessful endings. It can easily ruin all the previous beauty of the poem. For me, it’s difficult to forgive when an ending falls short of its ambitions. But I think this poem really does a good job because it doesn’t completely depart from its abstractness and it doesn’t philosophize in a way that I expected on my first read. Or often, I think, and me included, poets will aspire for this like, “ba-dum ching” of an ending. You know, they want to like, drive home a meaning or a purpose, which is tough because often then you over explain or you overdo or you overdramatize. So I think this end on a concrete image, and a concrete gesture, is successful. But not making any grand statements was the correct move. Do you experience bad endings often?

Gabriel Costello

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I think the thing that I was thinking about was that there are so many poems that I feel like I will read to the end, but I know by the first line that it’s probably not something I’m interested in. 

Bad endings are common. But I mean, I think also it’s a question of: what do we want from a poem? Do we want a poem to answer questions? I mean, I can understand that can be interesting, but I think what I look for as a reader—and perhaps what I try to create as a writer of poetry—is an acknowledgement of the ambiguity of the world, and I think that’s something that poetry is uniquely suited to do.

Caroline Richards

I agree. I think that’s a great way to put it. You definitely don’t want to read these didactic poems especially from someone like myself—you know, another MFA student. Maybe you’d want to hear it from Yeats or something. But, yeah, I think acknowledging ambiguity or acknowledging the unknown and sitting with that feeling, whatever that feeling is—that’s it. That’s the stuff.

Gabriel Costello

I think also it’s, you know, truly ineffable. It’s hard. It’s hard to describe what “that” is. And I think that probably, as somebody writing poetry, that can be really frustrating to try and achieve that. But I think it can also be really beautiful, and I think it’s a matter of just continuing to ask the question within the poem.

Caroline Richards

Yes, exactly.

Gabriel Costello

I’m going to attempt not to make any more pseudo-profound didactic statements.

Caroline Richards

It’s hard not to. When you talk about poetry and when you’re a critic of poetry, which at the end of the day, we are, you know, being in workshops and being silly little editors.

Gabriel Costello

Yeah.

Caroline Richards

It’s hard to justify ourselves sometimes.