AND COULD THEY HEAR ME I WOULD TELL THEM (TIRZAH GOLDENBERG)
Bio: Tirzah Goldenberg is the author of Like an Olive (Verge Books, 2022) and Aleph (Verge Books, 2017). She is co-author, with Norman Finkelstein, of Thirty-Six / Two Lives: A Poetic Dialogue (Dos Madres Press, 2021). She lives in Port Townsend, WA.
Book Title: Like an Olive
Press: Verge Books
1. What is something that surprised you during the writing, editing, or publishing process for Like an Olive?
For a while I had my heart set on a different title, an unpronounceable one—what has ended up as the frontispiece for the book. Verge’s editor, Peter O’Leary, while supportive of my idea for the title, shared a story: Guy Davenport had recommended that Ronald Johnson change the name of his epic poem from WOR(L)DS to ARK. What works visually on the page, what happens in the mind when reading more of an image than a word, does not necessarily translate into an effortless title, one that can be readily said. Still, I resisted, wanting that particular textual silence to oversee the book.
A few years passed and the editing process was underway. Peter brought up the story again, and I’m very glad he did. This time, after some reflection, on the verge of publication I could see his point (and John Tipton, the publisher, was of the same mind). It didn’t take long for me to settle on an alternative title. I was surprised to find the unpronounceable overlaid with simile, simplicity, edibility, and approximation. I find it delightful that for all its English, “like an olive” keeps Hebrew in its pocket: the phrase is a translation of “k’zayit,” a Talmudic unit of volume. In addition, “olive” brings “aleph” to mind—that perfect rhyme between Hebrew and English is what I’m after.
2. How might you describe the “experiment” or challenge of this book? What form, procedure, sound, or mystery enlivened your mind while writing?
Like an Olive is made up of discrete parts. There are poems without titles and poems whose titles are dedications; a frontispiece followed by a poem called “frontispiece”; an ancestral tale illustrated with a couple of photographs and a bookplate; a tiny essay on tininess; somewhat extensive notes at the back of the book. I began to imagine the whole as a composite prooftext. The term, which became the title for a couple of sections in the book, arose in part from thinking about the documentary hypothesis, the theory that the books of the Torah were composed from multiple sources.
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…?
There’s a section of poems in the book called “for.” These are dedications to family and friends. The poems sprung from these relationships in one way or another, and so all the people addressed in the book helped it find its way. I worried once that dedicated poems would feel exclusive, or too intimate for the reader not addressed, but then I saw that they ask an inclusive question: For whom do we write? Paul Celan wrote: “The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?”
4. Is there a physical place or space you associate with the poems in Like an Olive?
Oh yes, there are several: my hometown of Bala Cynwyd, which turned folkloric in a poem; the Lofoten Islands, where my maternal great-great-grandmother was from; Brooklyn, where my father was raised; a dovecote; a tiny house where I wrote most of the poems; the ancient sites of Masada and Qumran; the maps of imaginary villages and surrounding countryside that appear at the beginning of books like The Wind in the Willows—such maps inspired the first poem in Like an Olive, “frontispiece.”
5. What’s something that feels difficult about having a book—or this book, specifically—come into the world?
The book is open about its Jewishness, which is not altogether comfortable in general, but especially in today’s political climate. And the book lays some of my family history bare. I think the result is intimacy, which makes the book’s being in the world less difficult, makes its risk-taking comforting.
6. What do you appreciate about the press (Verge Books) that published this work?
I’ll always appreciate Peter O’Leary and John Tipton’s embracing of me and my work, which began with my first book, Aleph. I was fresh out of graduate school (2013), and their acceptance of, and response to, that manuscript was the encouragement I needed while farming and living in a van in a field with my husband and cat.
Both books they’ve produced for me (with the designers Pouya Ahmadi and Crisis) are exquisite objects. Verge cares very much about the physical quality of the book. I’m fortunate in this, as much of my work is concerned with things you can hold (or at least imagine holding) in your hands: archaeological remains, heirlooms, a fig (or figment), a faulty bellows . . .
And I’m grateful for the friendships that have come of my connection with Verge—not only with Peter and John, but with others who have entered my life by way of the press.
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?
I call it “the seaweed book.” It is the seaweed sd treble clef by Endi Bogue Hartigan, and it is gorgeously designed by Jordan Dunn at Oxeye Press. I live in Port Townsend, WA, and I often find bull kelp forests strewn onto the shore beneath my feet. Words are bundled up like the seaweed we see in color photographs beside the poems:
is it an action to basketlisten
it a dare is it a prayer
is needing lexicon at all an undulating
weaveheat is it a fledtrumpet
is it a complicit windunit a chance fauna
a sense obit a tidefit
shshshsh.
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?
Yes, very much so. There’s a longish piece in Like an Olive that’s composed of two autobiographies intertwined to create one (in)coherent story of ancestry. It is part paternal grandfather, part maternal great-grandmother, part descendant. Questions at the back of this text include: How do we arrange our multiple sources? Why do only select artifacts remain, and in what form? What psychologies, histories, and cultures have led to our own? How’ve they been interpreted, passed on? How does a descendant preserve, honor, alter her inheritance?
9. What adventures are you looking forward to, thinking about, or practicing now?
This summer I discovered that I can swim (however briefly) without a wetsuit in the 48 degree water of the Salish Sea. Now my long walks end with a blissful immersion. There’s a small group of us who can stand the cold. Some folks stay in the water without moving (alive and well) for a fairly long time. I’d like to know their secret. My husband and I lived for four years in a tiny house without running water, and we rigged up a cold shower outside. But ocean immersion is something else entirely. It shocks all sadness from your system. You didn’t know you could laugh like that, like a thirty-seven-year-old child. And sometimes—deeply magical moment—a seal swims up beside you.
10. Who will you gift a copy of Like an Olive to? Or where will you leave it for someone to find?
I’d like to donate a copy to the Bala Cynwyd Library, which I grew up visiting. It was one of the bounds of my little world, just next to the synagogue that my family and I attended weekly. I’d often sit in the children’s storytime nook. My mom tells me I used to go through stacks of books and say things like “cats caterwauling” over and over again. I’ve no doubt my local library, happily situated beside the shul, contributed to my rituals with words. Thanks to the library and all other storytime nooks that nurture me.