D. A. Powell's books include Tea, Lunch and Cocktails; the latter a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. His most recent collection is Chronic (Graywolf, 2009). By Myself: An Autobiography was penned in collaboration with David Trinidad and published by Turtle Point Press. The following interview with D.A. Powell was conducted by Aaron Delee.
Delee: I've heard many people, academics and ordinary readers, saying that the market has been flooded over the past decade with memoirs and autobiographies; in light of your new chapbook, By Myself: An Autobiography, what is your take on this?
Powell: Oh, yes, it's true. I think that was part of our initial impulse: knowing that the plethora of memoirs was out there, we went in fully aware that the chapbook was in part an effort to parody the genre. But it was only after we started that we truly began to understand what the form of the genre was. Everybody had the same story: strong grandmother, poverty, sense of otherness, being passed over for the role of Cinderella in the Christmas pageant, a desire for fame, a struggle to be noticed, surprise upon being successful, a nomination for the Golden Globe, an addiction.
At first, we were worried that we wouldn't find enough autobiographies or memoirs to use. And then we realized that it was like a bottomless cup of coffee: bottomless. And apparently topless, too, in some cases.
Delee: You were able to create a very distinct and solid voice for the narrator in By Myself while collaborating with someone else; how was it to work with David Trinidad on this when you both have your own styles and voices with writing?
Powell: There's no one I respect more in terms of his craftsmanship. And David and I had collaborated previously, along with Jeffrey Conway, on an epic retelling of Valley of the Dolls. I had to drop out after a few cantos, because it was too arduous. Also, Jeffrey and David had worked together previously, and I felt like I was the slow wheel on the shopping cart, spinning them in circles when what they really wanted was the deli aisle.
One evening David and I were on one of our typical long phone conversations, and the subject of memoirs came up. I joked that I had been toying with the idea of writing a memoir by lifting sentences from other people's memoirs. David laughed but then he got quiet and his tone turned serious. "You know, that's a really great idea," he said. "Yes," I replied, "but when would I have the time? I'd get bogged down after the first sentence." We talked about a few other things, then David came back to the idea: "Would you do it as a collaboration?"
We set the ground rules as we went. We wouldn't use anyone twice, so once an author was "played," they were out of bounds. This meant that we had to be strategic in our sentences. Also, we wouldn't tell each other the titles of the books we each were stockpiling, so it would always be a surprise. In that way, we couldn't know where the narrative was going, though we did along the way start saying "this is probably a good time to introduce an affair" or "now we need to get 'Myself' to Hollywood."
We agreed that I would start and that we'd end with the final line of Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein. Everything else proceeded fairly organically. One of us would use Chastity Bono and the other would follow with Sonny Bono. Remarkably, we rarely stole from one another's stash, though there were a couple of instances. But we were both very good-natured about it, because the choices were always in service of the story. We laughed like schoolgirls sometimes.
Also, I think we both were willing to surrender our own egos to the will of the narrative. We trusted that it would come out fine. And if it didn't, we were okay with scrapping it.
Delee: Previously, I had no idea that you and David Trinidad knew each other; can you tell me how the two of you met and developed into good enough colleagues/friends to collaborate on this book?
Powell: We met when my first book, Tea, came out. I wanted to do a reading with someone I admired, and a mutual friend, Rachel Zucker, suggested David. I was sure he was too famous to bother, but I wrote him a fan letter and asked if he'd please accompany me to read at Wesleyan University.
The trip to Wesleyan was awful in so many ways. And I think we all showed such grace under pressure (Rachel and her husband Josh drove us there, and we had to make fifty thousand pit stops because three of us were having to pee constantly. Or trying to pee and failing. Or throwing up. It was a riot. We came back with a big bag of fancy nuts from the reception. Boy, did that salt make us thirsty. And so we peed some more. When you make that many pit stops with the same people, it's a bonding experience.
Over the years, David and I have corresponded and logged thousands of phone hours. He has been a great friend, confidante and reader. And so much more. Because he's also someone whose work inspires me.
Delee: I was wondering how you might classify By Myself: An Autobiography; a cento, a found poem, fiction, memoir, biography, autobiography? Given the way it was composed, it's very hard to force into our established categories.
Powell: We certainly thought of it as a kind of cento, first. Initially, it was going to be one-hundred sentences long. But we realized that would be far too few. So we landed on three hundred as the right size. I think we got the number from the Qabalah. Or maybe we were thinking of the classic Tony Orlando movie Three Hundred Miles for Stephanie.
Of course, we also knew that it would defy traditional categories. We don't refer to it as a poem or memoir or story. We just call it "the book."
Delee: This was my first glimpse at your work with the fictional narrative; do you have any other short stories or novel in the works that we might ever see?
Powell: Well, I published a short story a few years back in Cream City Review. It was a pretty straightforward story about casual three-way sex. I also was writing paragraphs for a short while: one-paragraph short stories. People kept calling them prose poems. Fine. They were in prose. A few of them were published in Salt Hill and a few in 580 Split.
I'm not very good at prose. It was my first language, but I never learned it as well as I learned poetry. In short, I wouldn't suggest that anyone go looking for my prose.
Delee: As you've said before, half the fun with By Myself is checking the sources to see who had actually said what line. Did you have any line that stood out as a personal favorite for you? Or was there a favorite autobiography/memoir you fell in love with?
Powell: The autobiography I most fell in love with was Ester Williams' Million Dollar Mermaid. But the one that had the best sentences was Carol Channing's.
As for favorite sentences, I think both David and I agree that Veronica Lake's sentence is the best. I'll let you look it up. Largely, it's good because of the context, of course. But it's the sort of sentence you could use practically anywhere.
Second favorite was Billie Holiday.
Delee: When writing this, was there a method used in selecting which autobiographies/memoirs to choose from? Did you read the entirety of the memoirs/autobiographies that you selected lines from?
Powell: After a while, we developed a feel for who would be the most likely to pay off. For example, we knew to hold Doris Day until the end, because we were ending with Stein's sentence about her dog. Some of the books I read most of, particularly if they were juicy: Etta James, Darlene Love, Tony Curtis. For some reason, I read most of Dorothy Hamill's autobiography, too, and let me tell you: it was boring. I think that's why I kept reading. I was in search of one useable sentence.
Delee: Now, the gender of the narrator in the book is somewhat fluid; I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how gender would be assigned in the story, or if that turned into a surprise as you two went along with the writing?
Powell: For a long time, we resisted assigning any gender to the narrator. And even once it was assigned, it kept fluctuating. We were delighted to discover that our boy was a crossdresser; we were typical PFLAG parents with a T on the end for "Trans." We also were proud of his multi-ethnic background. We felt he was far more inclusive in his identity than Hollywood would ever allow. And the more diverse he got, the more we loved him. Or her. "Madame Bovary, C'est Moi," said Flaubert. To which we would respond, "Myself, C'est Nous."
Delee: After this collaboration with David Trinidad, would you ever consider working with him on another project again (was it trying, was it fun)?
Powell: Working with David was a joy. We took a little furlough in the midst of it, and then came right back. The whole thing was about a year in the making, including post-production edits.
We're already talking about another project. But at press time, it's still being held strictly under wraps.
Delee: Chronic just came out at the beginning of this year, and now By Myself: An Autobiography has just been released, do you have anything else that might be coming out soon? Are you currently working on another big project?
Powell: Thanks for asking, Aaron. I'm working on some non-fiction essays. And I've been writing two kinds of new poems, which may or may not fit together into a single volume. Part of me thinks it will be two separate books.
Some of the poems are landscape poems, set in the Central Valley of California (a landscape I've mined a bit in previous collections, but not quite in the same way). This portion of the new work I've tentatively entitled Useless Landscape.
The others are poems in response to a relationship I was in with a combination sociopath and narcissist. They are not about him, but about other people. Well, mostly. They are tentatively collected in a manuscript I'm calling None of This is About Haines Eason, Except For the Description of the Painful and Lonely Death That Will Take Him to Hell. This latter collection will be dedicated to the God of the Old Testament.
Aaron DeLee hails from the cornfields of Indiana. He received his BA from Loyola University Chicago, and has stayed in the Second City since. He is currently working on his MFA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University and spends his free time marathon-training.