An Interview with Tyehimba Jess
The most immediately apparent thing about Olio is that it’s a massive project: 7 interconnected sections of interconnected poems in formal flourishes, with 6 interviews (each surrounded by 2 related jubilee poems) inbetween, all framed with a submission from the interviewer to The Crisis, the extremely influential (and still running) magazine W.E.B. DuBois started in 1910, and a letter home from that same interviewer. What would you consider the official genesis of the project proper, and could you describe the process that led you to developing the intricate structure of the book?
Olio developed organically over a period of roughly seven years. The genesis of the book was the draft of an account of Scott Joplin's death given by his friend, Blind Boone. That draft was later completely abandoned, but the idea of Blind Boone stuck with me, and the idea of other folks talking about Joplin's death stuck with me as I continued to write the book.
Perhaps the genesis of Olio was also in my wondering about the history of Black music before the age of recording - wondering about those who dedicated their lives to the artistic production directly after Emancipation.
I knew that the book would cover multiple personalities - but I didn't know the structure of the book until more than half the poems had been written. It seemed to me that it would be optimal to have threads that go in and out of each persona's life - those threads ended up being the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the story of Scott Joplin. Together, they form a kind of counterpoint and loose narrative arc throughout the book.
The other folks made their way into the book as a result of their fascinating stories and however I perceive the best way to handle those stories. Blind Boone, Sissieretta Jones, H. Box Brown, Blind Tom, Edmonia Lewis, The McKoy Twins, Bert Williams, George Walker, Bert Williams, Booker T. Washington, Paul Dunbar... all of them are part of who we are today. I wanted to show them in conversation with each other in one book.
Your answer to a question during the Q&A at the Decatur Book Festival described the cyclical and symbiotic relationship between research and activism, and both of those things with poetry. Besides the NEA grant you were given post-leadbelly, what drove the research and spurred you on to such mutually reinforcing heights?
The main impetus was to capture the fascinating stories of Black folks who asserted their humanity through artistic production directly after or during chattel slavery. A more direct example might be that Olio contains a chronological list of 148 burned Black churches that surround a double crown of sonnets for the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The list of names goes from 1822 to 2016, and is as circular as the heroic crown they embrace. Researching these names brought home to me an adage that has been championed throughout the Black Lives Matter movement - "Say Their Names." Also, I am constantly stirred by the work of my predecessors and so many of my contemporaries. From Dunbar and Chesnutt and Zora to Morrison and Trethewey and Komunyakaa... there's so much inspiration out there.
One of the best things about Olio to me is its insistence on the preservation of difference amidst the whitewashing sameness that the book’s systemically representative antagonists try to force onto the many African American characters, which is well documented by the formal wildness of the poems. How did you manage to cull all these differences into a coherent whole?
I am simply very interested in making each voice as distinct as possible, utilizing any method, hook or crook, to achieve that goal. I am most concerned with creating a universe within the book that is as diverse as the folks that are portrayed within it. Form, diction, line breaks, rhythm, rhyme, are all tools I use to try to capture each persona. I try my best to keep myself away from easy answers to each set of problems proposed by the characters.
One of the Edmonia Lewis poems (“Minnehana”) begins with “What part of me is mine that was/ not mined from the mind of poets” (195). How did you avoid speaking over these many voices, so that they can speak for themselves?
The poems in Edmonia Lewis' section are in the personas of her sculptures, which were based on historical and fictional characters. In the case of "Minnehaha," I use an eight-syllable line throughout in order to channel the aesthetic of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha, which also used eight syllablelines. However, it was also necessary to channel the voice of an imaginary character that is conscious of their origins through Longfellow and their incarnation through the hands of Lewis. Edmonia Lewis was a fascinating woman - easily the most successful Native American/African American visual artist of the 19th century. She was wrestling with asserting her own complex identity through her sculptures in order to survive the ravages of late 19th century sexism and racism. She was an artist of grit and extreme talent.
The other characters, from Cleopatra to Hagar and Col. Robert Gould Shaw, were as much vessels for Edmonia's vision as she was for their form. From former servant to queen to warrior, Edmonia was creating a rebellion in stone every time she picked up the chisel and carved out a face. I hope more folks write about her.
Many people in the literary community are scared for the future of the arts in a Trump Presidency. Your recent entry on the Poetry Foundation’s website’s Harriet blog feature, “Breaking Bubbles”, describes the little listenings we need to do as an arts politic (ars politica?) that would prevent some of the feared outcomes of this election and reinforce decency, but it is of course easier said than done. What steps are you taking, and what steps would you propose others take to sidestep animosity, or do you think a more offensive tack would be more beneficial to the cause? Or is this a false dichotomy?
Obviously, we are living in very precarious times. However, I would rather not focus on prescribing particular steps that folks can take regarding their posture toward power. Artists will decide for themselves, collectively and individually, what paths they will take, what petitions they will sign, what direct actions they will launch, which protests they will join, what form of resistance the will foster in their communities.
The positive thing is that so many artists are participating in events that help to voice dissatisfaction and rage with Trump's administration. Hopefully, that level of awareness to injustice and civic engagement will continue regardless of whomever is in office. I will be joining protest when I can, and doing my best to speak out.
I would only add that I think it's important for me to have a long term plan for my body of work - a plan that is not reactive but proactive and self-sustaining beyond the immediate political moment. For that reason, I find myself turning to history in order to find patterns and modes of resistance that are personal, political, humanitarian, ethical and rooted in artistic endeavor. History is an incredible well - a deeply burrowed echo chamber of lessons and lore that speak beyond the present and into the sky of future.
I am also trying my best to work on listening to others that may or may not share my particular perspective. I am trying to avoid easy answers to difficult questions- easy answers that disguise uncomfortable truths about race, gender, gender preference, class, etc. This requires a lot of listening. Hopefully the kind of listening that will lead to work that provides complex and humanistic answers to the world. I am trying to grow as a human being and reflect that through my work and personal relationships. It is a lot harder than I thought...
What have you been working on post-Olio?
To be honest, I've mostly been catching my breath and letting my thoughts meander for a while before really setting my pen back to page. I have some ideas in my head, but they've been slow to manifest on the page.
Also, last year I married a wonderful woman who has been giving me a lot of much needed heart-work and balance in the world. So, I've just been enjoying that.
Blake Wallin is the author of the chapbooks Otherwise Jesus (Ghost City Press, 2015) and No Sign on the Island (Bottlecap Press, 2016) as well as the microchap The Lucidity of Giving Up (Ghost City Press, 2016). He is the Reviews/Interviews Editor for Ghost City Review.