{"id":100685,"date":"2016-07-22T11:53:24","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=100685"},"modified":"2016-07-22T16:21:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T20:21:03","slug":"you-are-on-display-an-interview-with-morgan-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/22\/you-are-on-display-an-interview-with-morgan-parker\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are on Display: An Interview with Morgan Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo by Kwesi Abbensetts.<\/p><\/div>\n

Morgan Parker has a long r\u00e9sum\u00e9\u2014she teaches and edits\u2014that somehow hasn\u2019t precluded a prolific career as a poet. Her first collection<\/em>, Other People\u2019s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, came last year; her second<\/em>, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonc\u00e9, is due out in 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n

A few months ago, Parker\u2019s poem \u201cHottentot Venus<\/a>\u201d appeared in the Spring issue of <\/em>The Paris Review. Her use of famous names and long, playful titles (\u201cRyan Gosling Wearing a T-shirt of Macaulay Culkin Wearing a T-Shirt of Ryan Gosling Wearing a T-Shirt of Macaulay Culkin\u201d)\u00a0suggests that she\u2019s light of heart\u2014but she is, as one reviewer put it<\/a>,\u201cas set on understanding the world as on changing it.\u201d Race and femininism are central to her work, which <\/em>explores ways to look at the present through the past, to examine ordinary life through pop culture, and to consider the events of her own life. We spoke recently about the joys of lengthy titles, how her many jobs intersect, and the process of crafting a personal mythology.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You\u2019re an editor at Amazon\u2019s Little A imprint, an adjunct at Columbia, a cocurator of the poets with attitude reading series, and you are one half of the Other Black Girl collective. That sounds like a lot.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I know. Just hearing my bio out loud makes me exhausted.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I was really taken with \u201cHottentot Venus,\u201d which I know will be in There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonc\u00e9<\/em>. When did you decide that you wanted to use her as a way of talking about certain things?<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing the poems in There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonc\u00e9<\/em> for a long time. I\u2019m finally at the point where people have stopped e-mailing me every time something happens with Beyonc\u00e9. I was living in this Beyonc\u00e9 space for maybe four years of my life, writing these poems and experiencing everything through the lens of\u2014not necessarily her, but symbols of black womanhood, celebrity, and the idea of performance. I heard a rumor a while back that Beyonc\u00e9 was going to be producing a movie about Hottentot Venus, and it suddenly clicked that I had never written about Hottentot Venus in relation to Beyonc\u00e9\u2014which was shocking, because there are so many obvious connections. One thing that interests me about Beyonc\u00e9 is who her predecessors are, and how she\u2019s a kind of symbol for all the different ways that black women are revered but also surveilled in a really intense way, put on display. That happens to me just walking down the street. It happens in another way for black women who are celebrities. The whole legacy of Hottentot Venus is one of dehumanization and display. I was interested in that line between awe or reverence\u2014and also exploitation. Where is that line? What does it mean to be at once upheld and at the same time continually made to feel less than? All these questions belonged in the manuscript, which I think of as kind of a tome of black womanhood.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Having read some of your other work, like the \u201cMagical Negro\u201d series, when I saw the title of your next book, I had this conception of what the book is and how it uses celebrity as a way to talk about identity and experience and perception.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

Absolutely. Not all the poems in the book are about Beyonc\u00e9 or even reference her. Maybe less than ten? I\u2019m interested in how that lens shifts readers\u2019 understanding of the confessional poems in the book and their understanding of the poems that reference visual art or jazz. One thing I\u2019m getting at is historical connection. I\u2019m aiming to use my subjectivity to reflect a more widely held experience.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you think when you\u2019re using a Beyonc\u00e9 reference or just a pop culture reference, people respond to it differently than if you reference jazz or classical art?<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

Yes, which I\u2019ve never understood. My first book has a lot of pop-culture references as well\u2014Jay-Z, the Real Housewives, all kinds of media and celebrities. I write out of trying to archive and record my particular experience. It would feel false if I didn\u2019t include all those things that really shape contemporary life. I\u2019m not the first person to do that. O\u2019Hara did that, Eliot did that. I don\u2019t really see what is so difficult for folks to grasp about it, but I think it\u2019s a debate wrapped up in class and race, and what constitutes high and low art. I\u2019m using pop references, but not in a light or gimmicky way. The poems are exploring and troubling something. My references may look different from someone else\u2019s, but in my life I experience the Real Housewives more than I experience Greek myth. These are my contemporary myths and symbols.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Some of the opposition is about dating the poem\u2014imagining having to explain the references in the future.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

That\u2019s true. Some writers want to write something that doesn\u2019t exist within a time, but I\u2019m not interested in that. I want to capture particular moments in time. In college, I double majored in anthropology and creative writing, and I\u2019ve always found the two practices very connected. I\u2019ve always seen my writing as an attempt to document and be specific in that documentation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In your poem \u201cA Brief History of the Present,\u201d you start out referencing the movie In the Heat of the Night<\/em>\u00a0and then segue into talking about contemporary events that echo between the past and the present, which is key.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

\"parker-book\"<\/a>That\u2019s one thing I\u2019m obsessed with, especially in talking about black womanhood. I was talking to a friend earlier about how I really experience all time periods\u2014the past, the present, the future\u2014on the same plane in some way. I think \u201cecho\u201d is a good way to describe it. There are so many experiences we have that someone has had before and someone will have again. I am hyperaware of patterns and repetition in society. The way that history repeats and rewrites. It\u2019s a way of connecting with other people who are here, and also with people who are no longer here.<\/p>\n

Being a black American, it\u2019s easy to explain in terms of trauma. You\u2019re aware that you\u2019re not the first person feeling and experiencing the thing that\u2019s happening, whether it\u2019s violence or discrimination or exploitation. I think there\u2019s a lot to explore there and I think that there\u2019s a lot to talk about being connected to that history. Our conception of history and its relation to the present is always shifting.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In your description of the Other Black Girl Collective, you wrote, \u201cWith energy, brutal honesty, dark humor, anger and pride, we aim to create a new Black Girl mythology\u2014one centered around possibility and freedom.\u201d That use of the word mythology<\/em> is very intentional.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I think personal narrative is really important for the individual and for a collective and for a people. I think it\u2019s important to have agency in that narrative. There\u2019s so much about contemporary life where one story is written upon the person by the outside world, by circumstance. It feels necessary for me as an artist, and for my collaborator, Angel Nafis, to seek our own understanding of ourselves. It\u2019s in the name, The Other Black Girl, that we\u2019re responding to a held perception. To the tendency of people to confuse us for one another. What is a black girl? Or rather, what is your preconceived idea of a black girl? A lot of those ideas are clich\u00e9 and a lot of them are dangerous. I think it\u2019s important for us to really explore multiplicity and idiosyncrasy and that\u2019s where the mythology comes in, to create touch points that feel relevant to us and not received.<\/p>\n

I think of it as a sort of curation of the things that make up my life. Some of them might be obvious, but others will be surprising. I think it\u2019s important to call those things out and say, This is what\u2019s important to me, this is what has shaped me. The same goes for the way we\u2019re thinking about history. It\u2019s about context. We all are contextualized within something and that gives us meaning and it gives our identities something to hang onto. I exist in the context of these women who came before me or I exist in the context of these television shows that are airing the same time that I\u2019m alive.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

And that perception of you that others have exists within the same cultural context.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I try to make my poems fight against\u2014but also acknowledge\u2014that perception. It feels like a very important practice to say, I know what preconceived notions the reader might have, so how can I manipulate that? Even when the reader is me. What are the preconceived notions I have about myself and how can I challenge them?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

One of the first things people will notice about your work is that you like long, complicated titles, which I love.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I think that titles are very, very important, and I have so much fun with titles. I think they should be fun. It\u2019s important for me as I\u2019m writing, and for readers, that the title not just be \u201cToday\u201d or \u201cLeaves.\u201d It\u2019s giving you a preview of what you\u2019re getting into, sets up a situation or asks a question. It doesn\u2019t stand on its own, it\u2019s part of the conversation and it\u2019s a declaration. My poems are really different in aesthetic, and different in content and very different in tone. The titles really help to orient and reorient the reader. I notice it especially when I give readings. I\u2019ll read a title and people will settle into their seats in a particular way, then when I move to a new poem, I\u2019ll see them poised in another way, adjusting to the new tone.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You jump around aesthetically a lot from poem to poem.<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I get bored easy. The number one thing for me in writing is to entertain myself and challenge myself and scare myself and push myself. Plus, people are complex. I think it\u2019s important to show that a kind of showy, glittery poem about Beyonc\u00e9 can exist alongside a much quieter poem about depression.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you feel pressure to balance your more personal poems against the poems where you\u2019re writing about culture and celebrity?<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think much about it. It happens very naturally for me. Again, I think about myself and my interior, personal poems within a cultural context. Maybe I\u2019m watching an episode of Top Chef<\/em> and I hear a line and that makes me think about something I said in therapy. It\u2019s not a matter of reaching into one bowl and then reaching into the other. And in that way, all of the poems are deeply personal. I\u2019m often described as a confessional poet. I don\u2019t necessarily self-identify that way, but I do know that I love to confess. It feels necessary to a healthy psyche and a poem\u2019s success. It\u2019s a powerful feeling to admit or come to terms with truth.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How does spending part of your day thinking about yourself, thinking about poetry, thinking about these ideas, affect your roles as a teacher and editor?<\/p>\n

PARKER<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very self-reflective naturally\u2014possibly to a fault. If it\u2019s possible for someone to be too self-aware due to too many years of therapy, I have that disease. It\u2019s just how I live, but I do think it helps me when I\u2019m working with other people. So much of editing and so much of teaching is understanding how people think. Understanding what they\u2019re trying to say and helping them to say it better. Really, like a therapist, it\u2019s asking them the right questions to get them there. When I\u2019m editing a short story, for example, I kind of go about it the same way as when I\u2019m editing my own work. What isn\u2019t sitting right? What questions can I ask to get to the bottom of what I\u2019m really trying to say? My editing process is rooted in a curiosity about psychology and how people think\u2014and a tendency not to leave things alone.<\/p>\n

Alex Dueben has written for\u00a0<\/em>The Rumpus, the\u00a0Poetry Foundation,\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Daily Beast, and elsewhere. His interview with William Gibson was included in\u00a0<\/em>Conversations with William Gibson<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morgan Parker has a long r\u00e9sum\u00e9\u2014she teaches and edits\u2014that somehow hasn\u2019t precluded a prolific career as a poet. Her first collection, Other People\u2019s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, came last year; her second, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonc\u00e9, is due out in 2017. A few months ago, Parker\u2019s poem \u201cHottentot Venus\u201d appeared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[23451,23459,564,12887,23453,23440,6461,23448,23447,16549,16,135,2527,9859,111,2861,23441,23452,4094,330,23445,2809,23450,21343,23457,8125,23446,23443,23456,7221,1447,165,3628,864,23454,23455,17303,23442,1772,23449,23444,23458],"class_list":["post-100685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-a-brief-history-of-the-present","tag-african-american","tag-amazon","tag-beyonce","tag-black-girl","tag-black-womanhood","tag-celebrity","tag-classical-art","tag-collective","tag-columbia","tag-culture","tag-editing","tag-experience","tag-frank-ohara","tag-freedom","tag-history","tag-hottentot-venus","tag-in-the-heat-of-the-night","tag-jay-z","tag-jazz","tag-lemonade","tag-life","tag-magical-negro","tag-morgan-parker","tag-multiplicity","tag-mythology","tag-other-black-girl","tag-other-peoples-comfort-keeps-me-up-at-night","tag-past","tag-poems","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-magazine","tag-pop-culture","tag-possibility","tag-present","tag-race","tag-references","tag-t-s-eliot","tag-the-real-housewives","tag-there-are-more-beautiful-things-than-beyonce","tag-what-is-a-black-girl"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nYou Are on Display: An Interview with Morgan Parker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The whole legacy of Hottentot Venus is one of dehumanization and display. 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