Benjamin Garcia

interview by Mag Gabbert

Mag: Hi Ben! Thank you for spending some time with Underblong! Many members of the blong community—our “blongees,” if you will—are just kicking off their poetry careers, so I’d love to get a little glimpse into the process you went through when compiling your first book, Thrown in the Throat (Milkweed, 2020). Were there many other iterations of this collection before it found its final form? Did you end up having to cut any poems you really liked, just to keep things cohesive? I’d also be interested to learn more about your decision not to use multiple sections!

Benjamin: Thanks for inviting me to share in the blong community! Arranging the collection was definitely the most mystifying and intimidating part of writing a book. Like working on a difficult poem, I had to make several attempts before finding the right fit. Everything from sections, opening and closing poem, etc. underwent some kind of trial and error process. Some alternate names for Thrown in the Throat: Vermilingua, Worm Tongue, Closet Verse, A Fountain Pen Shoved in the Throat of a Lily. I tried three titled sections, three untitled sections, a book dived into two sections, with one section being “in” (the closet) and “out.” None of it felt right.

But, like revising a poem, I learned something from the collection with each attempt. I continued to write new poems while trying out these manuscript experiments. These newer poems became the two series that would eventually bind the collection together. I didn’t set out to write a series of poems, but one by one they kept falling into place. Once I had the odes and “The Language in Question” poems, I could use them to offer structure and cohesion for the book as a whole. 

This felt more organic to me than having it in three sections, mostly because I was grouping poems by themes: queer experience poems, language poems, immigration poems. In doing so, I was unintentionally compartmentalizing parts of my identity. But I don’t exist in thirds, I exist as a whole. There is overlap, there is braiding, there is collision. I started to ask myself questions like: do I need this book in three sections or am I doing that because it’s what I see in other books? It might be right for their book, but is it right for this book? What are other ways collections can be put together?

Here are a few poems that didn’t make it into this collection:  

https://www.acentosreview.com/february2018/benjamin-garcia.html

https://west-branch-wired.bucknell.edu/past-issues-of-wired/winter-2015/benjamin-garcia.html

They didn’t fit so I cut them, like removing a line that you like but doesn’t serve the poem. Maybe some of them fit into another collection down the line, or maybe they exist alone and that’s okay, too. 

Mag: One thing I love about your work is the way it often sort of cracks language open and explores the guts/interior of words. For example, in “Averting the Gaze,” you allude to the way the two iis at the end of Pompeii almost resemble two little stick figures as you describe how they “all on their own tongues do things / without us when we aren’t looking”; and, in “The Great Glass Closet,” when the speaker says, “I could see the low in owl, I could pull the hat out of that,” it causes readers to notice other anagrams hidden in our everyday language, too; and then in “Nonmonogamy,” you also point out how “to know someone is another way to say you fucked. You can deny / it, n—o sits in the middle…”

Of course, in one sense, this cracking open can work to “expose language as a colonial tool,” to quote Sally Wen Mao’s description of your book. But I also wondered whether there are ways in which the speaker(s) in these poems—or perhaps the poems’ readers—might be empowered by these discoveries?

Benjamin: One of the best pieces of writing advice I received came from a poet named Christopher Phelps. When I shared my anxiety about readers not necessarily enjoying the same kind of word play that he and I do, he said something along the lines of “don’t worry about that. Show them your joy, and they’ll either join you or they won’t.” So for me as a writer, these moments of exploding/exposing language is me showing one of my joys. 

And though this often comes from a place of play, this diversion often leads to discoveries. So yes, I do intend for the speakers (and by extension readers) in these poems to be empowered to explode/expose language. First, because it’s fun. Second, because this kind of slowing down can get us thinking more critically about the language we use, where it comes from, how it moves, changes, works, fails. 

Sometimes this language play helps me say things I didn’t even know I wanted to say, which fits in with my view of writing as a way of exploring and experimenting. To quote the great scientist and messy philosopher, Miss Frizzle, “take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” 

BTW, if you’re a fan of this sort of play with glyphs, highly recommend Bone Light and LETTERRS by Orlando White and Chord Box by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers.

Mag: A favorite poem for me in this collection is “Conversations with My Father // A Poem in Closet Verse.” In particular, I love the poem’s title, and I’m fascinated by the term “closet verse” (which I’d never heard before)! Would you want to expand a bit on the possible poetics of “closet verse” (more broadly, that is)? For example, formally-speaking, would “closet verse” be about subtext? Or perhaps division? Or exchange? 

Benjamin: All of the above? I was thinking of closet verse as a kind of poetry trading in subtext, which I feel like queerfolk have to be fluent in to survive hostile environments—often starting in their home life. 

For this poem, I set some poetic constraints to establish parameters and a visual perimeter, like a sort of closet. One of the constraints was that each stanza would paraphrase an actual conversation with my own father. Another constraint would be that each answer the speaker provides is both true and not true, both addresses the question and avoids the question. Or, perhaps more accurately, answers the question but avoids the issue. 

Another constraint was to end each of the son’s stanza’s with the ending word of the father’s stanza. In this way, it kind of enacts the mirroring of some passive aggressive conversation—and the hollowness. That emptiness and disconnect are related to the white space in the poem, and the walls that closets impose. In my head I was imagining long distance phone calls with my own dad, but that distance would still be there if we were having the conversation face to face. 

Mag: In your July 2020 interview with Dan Lau for Foglifter, you touched on the way some of the narratives in these poems work to expose manipulation and conditioning the speaker’s been subjected to, as we see in pieces like “On the Slight Cruelty of Mothers.” But, at the same time, I also notice the role rhetoric plays in the poems themselves—I notice the performative and/or instructive aspects of poems such as “This Way to the Egress” and “Gay Epithalamium,” and how some of the pieces seem to engage in a kind of game-like playfulness via the use of rhythm and rhyme schemes. Given these traits, do you think that your poems might also try to manipulate their readers (or, perhaps “influence” would be a better word)? Do you see your readers becoming potential participants within your poems?

Benjamin: I think any piece of writing manipulates a reader—that’s why it’s important to question language and interrogate how it works! Poems in form can be especially manipulative.

But yes, I want to turn my readers into accomplices. I want them to experience the physical joy of saying “uvula violet vulva.” I want them to question their complicity within power structures, be it colonization or heteropatriarchy. I want them to read “Huitlacoche” and never call a gay man the f-word, but also understand why a gay man might call themselves a faggot and what it costs. I want accomplices to understand that it matters what body a word comes out of. I want accomplices to acknowledge they have bodies and that that’s okay. It’s fun to say some words out loud. Say fuck fuck fuck, you’ll feel better. 

Mag: So many cool things are happening in Thrown in the Throat’s series of ode poems. For starters, each one sort of re-frames its subject by introducing a corresponding language; in “Ode to the Peacock,” it’s “the language of handkerchiefs,” and in “Anti-Ode to the Man-of-War,” it’s “the language of hormones,” and so on. I can’t help but notice how—as these poems begin to undertake their acts of (re)defining, and as they work to inhabit the languages of their subjects—the voices and tones of the pieces also seem to morph. Is there a way that this morphing could be mapped onto some of your comments about relationships from your Foglifter interview? Specifically, you noted “there are different kinds of relationships that are possible—and even within that same relationship, terms may change over time. Relationships aren’t always fixed and rigid things. They’re capable of changing, opening up in different ways.”

I guess what I’m getting at is, I can imagine these odes somehow being about relationships (like, relationships to and within the self), and about boundaries, and about the exploration of boundaries, and about the ways in which terms can shift. Is that an interpretation you’d agree with, and/or one that you were intentionally working toward? 

Benjamin: I like this interpretation. Language is one of the ways we breach the barrier between one person’s body and another’s. It’s one of the ways we connect one mind with another. It also helps us understand ourselves and make solid what often exists as air. Sometimes, I think of language as cartography for thoughts. But like all maps, no language can represent the world exactly. 

Normally we think of language as being made up of words, but sometimes words are not the right vehicle. So we come up with other modes of communication, like hanky or flower codes. So, I was thinking of why we come up with other kinds of “language.” Is it because we are afraid to say some things out loud? Because society places restrictions on how to express yourself? Because we don’t want to acknowledge our desires but still want to act on them? 

I don’t know if my answer addresses your question. But I was also thinking of these poems as an exploration of voice. Each one varies slightly in its focus and development, though they all have a kind of chaotic energy. As opposed to the “Language in Question” poems, which often deal with communication between people, the odes have a dramatic monologue quality—and therefore tend to explore internal landscapes.

In writing the odes, I was intrigued by the voice developing in each one, which would have elements of myself but also be so different from myself. I’m normally rather reserved, but these poems are so in your face. Where was this attitude coming from? Oh! It’s because I sometimes have to be in your face as a queer person in a heteronormative society. It’s because queer people have to assert their right to exist so often. It’s because we get pushed to the edge of our emotional limits. I didn’t understand why the voice in “Anti-Ode to the Man-of-War” kept speaking in the negative, that is until I removed the nots and noticed that the poem is about the act of negation. It’s about self-preservation to the point of toxicity. It wanted to be anti-everything. 

Mag: Circling back to the idea of process, I’d love to learn a little more about your drafting and revision process(es)! In your chat with The Rumpus’ Poetry Book Club in August 2020, you commented that you “work in a type of collage” when comparing your writing to the art made by another Benjamin Garcia, a visual artist whose work is featured on your book’s cover. Can you elaborate a bit on how “collage-making” might manifest in your poem-making process? 

Benjamin: I was thinking of the odes in particular here. These poems don’t use traditional punctuation, and often phrases crash into each other. Sometimes sentence fragments complete a thought that came before it, sometimes interrupt it, sometimes subvert it, etc. Even the // somewhat reminds me of stich work or scissor lines. 

More concretely, some poems are literally made up of different notes from here and there that begin to speak to each other. Sometimes this “dissolve and bind” process is so seamless that you wouldn’t know a narrative poem was made up of unconnected events. In the ode poems, I wanted to make that process visible. I was also thinking of social media, how Tweets and updates are a kind of societal collage. Scrolling through the timeline can feel like a barrage. This reminds me of how our brains scroll through the timeline of our mind. I wanted that emotional and linguistic bombardment. 

Mag: I also have to note how much I LOVE the actual look of your poems on the page—the gorgeous symmetry and neat organizational patterns I see in pieces like “Ode to the Pitcher Plant,” and “Queso de patas,” and “Heroin with an E”—and I wondered how much of your revision process tends to be governed by the desire to maintain and/or create those pleasing physical shapes? Do you find it useful to strive for those exterior elements? Or, does it ever feel distracting?

Benjamin: I tend to agree that form is an extension of content, thought it doesn’t have to be. So, for example, in “Conversations with My Father,” form may make a kind of closet. Or in “Bliss Point, or What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese,” lines may poof into nothing like a cheese puff. But form can also serve as structure. So, for example, couplets can provide a sense of symmetry, pacing, and order to what might otherwise read as chaos—like the odes. 

In other words, form is another tool that poets have to shape or create meaning. If it serves the poem, why not use it?

Mag:  I know that other folks have asked you about the role sex plays in your poetry, and about how that topic intersects with some of your work as a Community Health Specialist. But—since you are, after all, an expert—our team at Underblong could really use your opinion to help us settle a slightly different dispute once and for all: What’s better than sex?

Benjamin: This depends on who you ask. But since you asked me, I’ll say why does anything have to be better than sex? 

I’ll also say that I once met a man who claimed that he had a literal orgasm purely from eating the most delicious plate of food. I don’t know what he ordered, but I’ll have whatever he’s having. 

Benjamin Garcia’s first collection, THROWN IN THE THROAT (Milkweed Editions), was selected by Kazim Ali for the 2019 National Poetry Series. He works as a sexual health and harm reduction educator in New York’s Finger Lakes region, where he received the Jill Gonzalez Health Educator Award recognizing contributions to HIV treatment and prevention. A CantoMundo and Lambda Literary fellow, he serves as faculty at Alma College’s low-residency MFA program. His poems and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in: AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2020, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. Find him at benjamingarciapoet.com and @bengarciapoet.