Photograph courtesy of Patricia Lockwood.

For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they’ve contributed to our pages. Patricia Lockwood’s “Party in the USA” appears online today. Her poems “Perfect Pussy,” “The Ventifact,” and “Cave Painting” appear in our new Fall issue, no. 253.

How did this poem start? Was it with an image, an idea, a phrase, or something else?

The genesis of this one is almost comically literal. I was recording the audiobook for my new novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, at a studio in Savannah, Georgia, and after my first session the sound engineer told me that Miley Cyrus had recorded “Party in the U.S.A.” in that very booth. (Why not tell me beforehand, so I could call upon her power?) On the second day, when we broke for lunch, I looked at my phone and saw that my sister had texted about an active shooter at the hospital where she works. Nothing makes you feel stupider than having just whipped off your bra in the “Party in the U.S.A.” booth while reading a book about your tiny little life so you can get more air into your idiotic diaphragm than your sister suddenly texting you the words “We’re on lockdown.”

Were you thinking of any other poems or works of art while you wrote it?

I was. Many details in the poem are taken from Roger Shattuck’s 1980 classic The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, which had been sent to me by NYRB.

Where did you write this poem? Do you have any photos of your workspace or workspaces?

I have the best workspace picture that anyone could ever ask for—in front of Miley’s diamond record for “Party in the U.S.A.,” which the sound engineer referred to as his most treasured possession. (I’m dressed like I’m in the armadillo Marines because comfort in the booth is paramount.) When I was through recording we took a planned trip to Key West, and I finished the poem on the back porch of our vacation rental in the early mornings. It overlooked a pool full of sun-poisoned Midwesterners in American-flag tank tops, which seemed fitting.

What was the challenge of this particular poem?

The trick of this one was the balance. It was part of a sequence of diaristic poems where everything went in—what I was doing, reading, eating, overhearing. The whole idea was to get out in the world. But it’s much harder to work in an active shooter and have it mean anything, because an active shooter is by definition a nonsense element. There is something about the image of Baby Peck (a coworker) climbing into the desk with a bottle of bourbon that allows us to enter it, I think, because it’s such a specific detail, such a thing that a person might do in that moment.

Where did the baked potato come from?

The baked potato was loosely drawn from Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre’s description of the Wild Boy’s preferences; roasted potatoes were the first food he would accept, though he later came to eat rye bread, chestnuts, “peas, garden beans, and green walnuts.” He had a little haversack that he carried with him that contained these trusted items, but I’ve generalized it here to the baked potato. He also rejected alcohol and was said to sip water slowly while looking out the window as if he were drinking the view.

Patricia Lockwood is the author of five books, including the novel Will There Ever Be Another You.