I WANT TO START BY SAYING: An Interview with Samuel Ace
I want to start by saying thank you for this book.
Kristen Teztmann: Let's begin with where you started. What did you start saying in the early formation of this book?
Samuel Ace: I gave myself the beginning phrase I want to start by saying as a prompt to lead me into writing down the first thoughts, observations or memories, that came into my mind. It was a conscious effort to stay present, to undermine not only internal censors, but also what seems to be the brain’s natural or structural habit to create linear narrative out of the kaleidoscopic workings of the mind.
KT: “I want to start by saying” is the titular phrase that begins almost every sentence throughout this essay. I couldn't help but think about what Gertrude Stein said, "There's no such thing as repetition. Only insistence.” Can you talk about how you interpret repetition/insistence here? Does it have anything to do with the refusal of question marks in this book?
SA: Turning a question into a statement can serve to bring the reader (and me as a writer), into the present. It’s an insistence on this is rather than what might be. “I want to start…” also refers to desire, as well as a resistance to the implied “I don’t want to start…” lurking behind that repeated I want.
KT: On page 13 you write, "I want to start by saying an archive. / I want to start by saying how to retrieve the past. / I want to start by saying there are so many versions." A while later, on page 33 you write, "I want to start by saying I might erase what's been written." Can you share more of your thoughts surrounding archival and documentary work in this form?
SA: It was important for me to acknowledge that my version of an event was only one of many—that others might have a different understanding, and that even my own version might be filled with variables, or change over specific moments of saying (which happens at times in the book itself). It was also important to me to record my doubts when I had them. The sentence about erasure expresses my complicated feelings about veracity, as well as a question about what might be hurtful to others. The might in the sentence acknowledges my fear of not being honest or of not getting something right. It also raises a question about what may have in fact, been erased.
KT: Throughout the essay, you bring up numbers: their sequence, amount, best or worst, luck or lack of it, sacredness, etc. I'm and would be delighted to hear how these beliefs and theories came to be?
SA: Including the moments that involved my particular OCD about numbers was an account of what was happening in my mind in the moment after I wrote down the beginning phrase. Sometimes I would actually stop writing to do a quick bit of addition or circle back to check word counts, and then start writing again to report what I found. Sometimes what came were bits and pieces from the collection of superstitions, opinions, and related facts about numbers that have simply accumulated in my mind over time, but also have a real and definite effect on how I experience the world.
KT: Cleveland is an important place in this book. I'd love to hear about your experience in publishing with us here at Cleveland State University Poetry Center and how it felt coming back here to read from the finished work. Has your memory and understanding of Cleveland shifted throughout this process? Does it still smell like home, like rust and dirt and fallen leaves? (p. 85)
SA: Working with CSUPC has been a dream publishing experience. I’m utterly grateful to Caryl Pagel, who shepherded the book with clear insight and loving edits. Also to Hilary Plum and Zach Peckham for their generous support. The whole CSU crew, including current graduate students, have been wonderful. Coming back to Cleveland to read with Julie Patton, who is so much a part of the book, was a gift beyond my imagining. A particular and unexpected joy was getting to share the book with people who know the city and currently live in Cleveland. It made being there, talking to folks for whom the book has resonances to their current lives, very rich.
I stayed an extra day after the reading to visit both sets of my grandparents’ grave sites, to say hello and pay homage to their presence in my life. I also visited with Julie at her home, the lake shore, and many of the places I lived as a child. It was a cool fall day, partly cloudy, the trees in gorgeous high color, the ground covered in leaves. My body, my very cells, immediately resonated with familiarity. It was a complicated feeling, not particularly joyous, but weighted by low skies, brick houses and buildings, a whiff of oncoming winter, of isolation and loneliness. And yes, the familiar smell of rust and dirt. I recognized these as old feelings, mostly from childhood, which, even in their discomfort, made a place in me that meant home, and I was grateful for them.
KT: Lastly, what are you working on now? What's bewildering you these days?
SA: I have a book coming out from Ravenna Press in January. Portals is a hybrid volume (image and text) co-authored with the poet Maureen Seaton who passed away in August of 2023. We worked on the book for over ten years, and I miss her terribly. I’m very grateful she gets to speak again in this book. I’m also working on a couple of long-term projects—one prose, one poetry—that continue to baffle and teach me.
Even before, and now post-election and through every act of daily living, there exists a constant not-so-tiny creature of fear and anxiety about what is to come, not only for me, but everyone queer and trans, undocumented, those needing health care or an abortion. Every human, every child, here, in Gaza, everywhere. That creature runs constantly at the back of my mind, but I recognize it and keep turning around to face it directly. I believe there’s a deeper realignment happening that involves re-envisioning the kinds of imagination and resistance that’s always been necessary, but will be even more so over the next few years and beyond.
Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist. He is the author of I want to start by saying (CSU Poetry Center, 2024), Our Weather Our Sea (Black Radish), Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Belladonna* Germinal Texts), and Stealth with poet Maureen Seaton (Chax). Ace is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a repeat finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series.
Kristen Tetzmann (née Tetzlaff) is a poet and painter from Wisconsin. She received her BA in Art Therapy and Creative Writing from Mount Mary University. She is a second-year poetry candidate in the NEOMFA program. Her work has appeared in Bodega Magazine, Furrow, Respect Your Mother, and elsewhere. She knows how to say “watermelon” in twenty-six languages.