WEBVTT

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I'm very honored to introduce
Arianne Zwartjes tonight.

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Arianne Zwartjes's new
book Detailing Trauma

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is categorized as
essays/medicine.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I'm not sure if
that means it gets

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stacked next to the
five-minute clinical consult

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at Barnes & Noble.

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But Detailing Trauma is
decidedly a hybrid book

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of lyric essays or
prose poems, utilizing

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the language of the
body, organs, injuries,

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healing processes, and disease
to explore emotional loss,

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rupture, fracture, and risk.

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The book dissects the
body, and the words

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we use to describe our
organs to ask questions

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about loss, love, and language.

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In that sense, Zwartjes
just gives us an anatomy--

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[YELLING IN DISTANCE]

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[LAUGHTER]

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--in the traditional
sense that we

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might find in the
five-minute clinical consult,

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as she dissects and separates
the parts of the body

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to closely examine them.

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The book also
dissects and separates

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parts of language,
love, and loss.

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She asks us in her words,
"How do we live and love

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in the face of so
much uncertainty?

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Bodies age, fall apart, rupture.

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Our worlds rupture all
around us constantly."

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She defines things for us.

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She says, "By body,
I mean a plane,

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an expanse of our
breathing, and vehicle

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for our attempts
at living, attempts

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at being, and making our way
through a tangle of people

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and questions and fears
that is this world."

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Here at the Poetry Center, we
throw around the word "hybrid"

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a great deal.

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I think by hybrid,
we mean writing

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that disrupts binaries
between two genres,

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between poem and
prose, fiction and non.

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In the plant world, a
hybrid is the offspring

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of two different
species, or varieties.

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Key lime and kumquat
make the limequat.

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Pomelo and Jamaican sweet
orange make the grapefruit.

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The lion and the
tiger make the liger.

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In Greek and Roman
mythology, hybrid beasts

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hold special
authority with parts

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of humans and limbs of animals.

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Last fall, during the
"Hybrid Writing" series

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here at the Poetry
Center, Ander Monson

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ascribed hybrid beast personas
to the visiting writers,

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and I'll attempt to
continue that tradition.

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[LAUGHTER]

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If Zwartjes were a hybrid
mythological beast,

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she would be a siren, a creature
with the head of a woman,

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and the lower body of a
bird, the feet of a falcon,

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and the tail of a fish.

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The siren is a symbol for
beauty, elegance, and song.

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Zwartjes's prose
will make you swoon.

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But sirens also represent
the destructive power

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of the ocean that lies just
below the calm surface,

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as well as the hot winds that
wither fresh, young plants.

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The siren's falcon
feet stun and grab

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her prey to rupture and risk
our bodies, then smoothly

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glide by us with her fish tail.

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As in the review of
Detailing Trauma in Diagram,

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an online literary
journal, the fracture

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and disjointedness of
the reading experience

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echoes the sensations
of living in a body.

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What has caused
this, and how does

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this relate to
that are questions

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asked by any embodied
person as she

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attempts to understand the mute,
dumbfounding, and bewilderingly

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interconnected organism
that houses her.

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There is something
rhythmic, almost

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pulse-like about reading
Detailing Trauma, short bursts

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of blood in the veins.

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This book details the
involuntary functions

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of the body and brings
them to the surface

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of our awareness, heartbeats,
nerve transmission, breathing.

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Again, Zwartjes asks us, "Now
that we know about our bodies,

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how do we not panic that
our heart may stop?"

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She tells us, and I'll quote
her, "Lungs have no muscle.

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The lungs by themselves
cannot pull air."

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In an interview in Gulf Coast,
another literary journal,

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Zwartjes talks about hybridity.

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She says, "I've spent a lot
of time talking about this

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with friends, actually,
because a number of us

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are very interested in work that
is fragmented, lyric, hybrid,

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and are interested in
hybridity in general,

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both between genres, and more
largely, between mediums.

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I see that as very
much connected

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to cultural and
social hybridity,

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a kind of breaking out of the
narrow boxes of gender, race,

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sexuality, et cetera,
et cetera that

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have been used to restrict
and separate people,

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as postcolonial theorists
have been pointing out

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for some time."

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Zwartjes's writing breaks out
of the strictures of essays

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and poems and medicine and the
five-minute clinical consult,

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and gives us an intersectional
haunting, and memorable musings

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on body, love, and loss.

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I had the opportunity
to interview Zwartjes

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after reading her
book this fall.

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And when you buy the
book later tonight,

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you'll notice that she
begins with three epigraphs

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from Annie Dillard, Kristen
Prevallet, and Ander Monson.

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I asked her, why those three?

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She said these were the books
that she kept on her desk

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and read over and
over each morning

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while writing, the short stack
she spent time typing up quotes

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from.

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She has pages and pages
of quoted material

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saved on her computer.

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Detailing Trauma is part of
the short stack on my desk

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that I read in the morning
as I begin to write

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to get into the right language.

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I think it'll become
part of yours too.

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So please welcome
Arianne Zwartjes.

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[APPLAUSE]