AND COULD THEY HEAR ME I WOULD TELL THEM (JORDAN STEMPLEMAN)

Bio: Jordan Stempleman is the author of nine books of poetry including Cover Songs (The Blue Turn) Wallop, and No, Not Today (Magic Helicopter Press). He edits The Continental Review, Windfall Room, and Sprung Formal, and runs the Common Sense Reading Series.

Book Title: Cover Songs

Press: The Blue Turn

1. What is something that surprised you during the writing, editing, or publishing process for Cover Songs?
That it happened. That any of it happened. I remember experiencing a mild state of panic after writing my first book Their Fields because I didn’t have any other poems in the hopper; all my attention was on writing and then editing that one book. So, when the book got published, I was terrified. I truly didn’t know if I’d ever write again, and, truthfully, I didn’t know if not writing mattered. I also didn’t know how to begin anything new because I felt so shifted and changed because of writing that book. With Cover Songs, the doing, the editing, and the publishing of the work were all impeded by so many things. The writing because I didn’t know how to write about a marriage falling apart; who I was, who I was going to be as a father, etc. The difficulty in editing the work was to resist the impulse to see the poems or sequences or lines as these glowing statements of shame or embarrassment or excessive woe. In the editing process, I had to see the work with coldness and care, and that was a real struggle for me. And then, finally, the publishing of the work was pandemically stricken. The process of publication was long and required so much patience, flexibility, rethinking, and perseverance.  

2. How might you describe the “experiment” or challenge of this book? What form, procedure, sound, or mystery enlivened your mind while writing? 
The challenge was very much the challenge that Alexander Chee discusses in his phenomenal essay “How to Become An American Writer,” which is how do writers and artists, and human beings continue making and doing when they’re faced with immense despair, total annihilation? I knew I couldn’t continue writing on my own, by just looking directly into my experience of divorce, I had to sing through others. I had to listen through the language of others, even the “me” of my older work, to stare into the rupture. Had I not done this, I think I’d have fallen into silence, which I’ve come to see as just an alone form of doing. 

3. Can you discuss an edit, idea, response, or interaction with another person that helped this book find its way in the world—aesthetically, materially, visually, structurally, spiritually…? 
Oh, so many people, as I said, were instrumental in bringing these poems and the book into the world. The writers who I wrote through directly—Joyce Mansour, Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as others who wrote into their despair like Ariana Reines in Cour de Lion. But to write into a state of suffering is to see joy, absurdity, grace, humor, praise, etc. The final sequence in the book, “Off Days,” is a cover song of James Schuyler’s “The Morning of the Poem,” a sequence that, to me, is so profoundly human and a composite of emotional complexity. I wanted the poems, even the other poems in the collection, those written directly or allegorically about upheaval and breakdown, to have some wink or laughter within them as well. And the levity comes from others. It comes from what those I love put into practice so well: endurance over suffering, and the ability to laugh with tears in their eyes. 

4. Is there a physical place or space you associate with the poems in Cover Songs? 
A Chinese buffet in a strip mall where my son and I used to eat lunch when he was younger. Next door was a little thrift store where I bought Burroughs’s book Thuvia Maid of Mars. 

A studio apartment where I lived alone writing many of the poems. A place that felt one part work release prison and one part grubby Breadloaf. 

The house I now live in, my wife’s childhood home, where I sat in our bedroom and wrote “Off Days” in roughly a week or so. When it was finished, I knew I’d finally come out the other end. 

5. What’s something that feels difficult about having a book—or this book, specifically—come into the world?
The time between writing it and publishing it. This is always such a weird feeling since so many other poems and events have happened between these two states. 

6. What do you appreciate about the press (The Blue Turn) that published this work?
They are first and foremost a generous and attentive reader. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that. 

7. Do you recall the most recent small press (micro, indie, DIY, university) publication you’ve recommended? What made you want to tell someone about it?
So many. Ian Dreiblatt’s forget thee, Sommer Browning’s Good Actors, Simone Savannah’s Uses of My Body, Nathan Hoks’s Nests in Air, John Keene’s Punks: New & Selected Poems. Each of these works gave me a new language for old feelings. I’m always looking for that.  

8. Is there a text, song, piece of art, or made thing that your book talks to, borrows from, fights with, or is in tribute to? 
Ok, so now we’ve reached the point where I get to gush about this megamix of cover songs that friends and family contributed to. The idea was all Max and Kate Greenstreet. When I emailed them about the book’s release, I think Kate said something like, “wouldn’t it be great if everyone that you sent this announcement to responded by sending you a cover song?” And then she kicked it off by sending me Thom Yorke doing Mark Mulcahy's “All For The Best.”

Listen to this mix and you’ll hear what Cover Songs is really about.

Cover Songs Covers:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4TCWV2zcthOvGBmTRektS4?si=6c196f16debd4f77

Cover Songs (Originals):
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/60b9tMLmCYGf6K4yp3sW6l?si=b3178c2111264139

9. What adventures are you looking forward to, thinking about, or practicing now? 
Going to places with people in them that I love and reading from this book! 

10. Who will you gift a copy of Cover Songs to? Or where will you leave it for someone to find? 
I once made these little business cards that had one little anonymous poem on each card. I’d leave them all over Kansas City—at grocery stores, on people’s windshields, in public restrooms, on a friend’s screen door (the friend read the poem and thought someone was casing their place or that some unhinged creep was in their neighborhood. The business card poem ended up in a police report.)

This time around, I’m going to abandon the anonymous route. I’ll send three copies to the first three people who make it to the end of this interview and who want one. If you’re one of those three people and you want a book, contact me here: https://www.jordanstempleman.com.

This was a blast. Thank you for having me!