The woman down the hall is wailing again -Molly Gaudry from We Take Me Apart It’s possible you haven’t read the magically lyrical work of Molly Gaudry found in the pages of Barrelhouse, Hobart, Lamination Colony, decomP or Word Riot. Maybe you didn’t get a chance to read her story The American in Best of the Web 2009 or see her poetry and prose featured in What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years? An Anthology of the Bush Years. Maybe you haven’t heard your heart sink and then have it held up to the warmth of sun. You are missing out. Molly’s We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious press), a novella in verse, is available now. Richard Garcia calls it “a stunning debut.” It is. It is beautifully rendered and invigoratingly experimental. It is calling for you. You can hear her read an excerpt here. Shelf Life: Did you choose to write the novella in verse beforehand or did the format emerge organically? Molly Gaudry: The format emerged organically. In the beginning, I had a long poem--about ten single-spaced pages with very dense lines. About that time, I attended a reading in Baltimore, and, after, stopped in for drinks at a little bar. Kathleen Rooney and Abigail Beckel were there, too, and Abby and I had a chance to chat a bit about Rose Metal Press and poetry, and then she mentioned Peter Jay Shippy's How to Build A Ghost in Your Attic. She dropped the term "novel in verse," and I immediately thought, "Yes, that's it! That's what I'm doing!" (Interestingly, How to Build . . . is billed as "a book-length poem" on Rose Metal's website.) Not long after that, I scrapped the original manuscript and started over, using words from Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons. The word associations are what led to the final version of We Take Me Apart. And although the final version in no way resembles the first, I know that the term "novel in verse" really helped shape the manuscript; for this, I am very thankful to Abby. Damn, I forgot to thank her in the acknowledgments section. I suck. I'm really sorry, Abby, if you're reading this. SL: Food is definitely everpresent in We Take Me Apart. Is this just a motif or was there a deeper meaning you were trying to convey? MG: Well, now that you know WTMA is the end result of word associations, you'll appreciate that I was in way over my head with all the food in Tender Buttons. There is so much food in Tender Buttons! Some of it I was able to hide in the prose, like when the speaker/narrator thinks of her lover's tongue as rhubarb pushing through soil, but others I just had to plunk down in the middle of it all. This is what ended up inspiring the idea to mark time by using the phrases: "this morning it is [insert food item]," "today it is [insert food item], " and "tonight it is [insert food item]." SL: When people say "What's your book about?" what do you tell them? MG: This is a great question. Usually, I just go with, "It is a retelling of a lot of well-known fairy tales." SL: Did you intend to bum me out? MG: Actually, I think I did. One of the infuriating things about fairy tales is that they end "happily ever after." One of my intentions was to not let mine end this way. I am sorry to have bummed you out. I hope there were lighter moments in there that maybe had the opposite effect. SL: There were some lighter moments for sure and I agree with you, I see way too many happy endings. After reading WTMA, what reaction would you most like people to say they had? MG: I would like most people to have felt a connection to the speaker/narrator. I want them to want to hold her. I want them to feel strange because they can't, because she isn't, after all, real. SL: What are your plans for promoting the book? MG: Right now there is a book tour in the works. Jamie Iredell--who is promoting his book, Prose. Poems. A Novel (Orange Alert, 2009)--and I are trying to figure it all out. The plan now is for me to head down south, where we'll read in a few cities. Then he'll head up to the east coast, where we'll read in a few cities. And from there our plan is to hit the Midwest. I'm the drummer. He's lead guitar. Once we've got dates and venues, we'll find the rest of our band. Whoever they end up being, we'll all have a massive and insane reunion in Denver, at AWP. SL: Any projects you working on now? MG: In the same way that I used words from Tender Buttons to jog the creative juices, I'm now using words from Jeanette Winterson's “The Poetics of Sex.” The first word on the first list is "Why." The first word on the second list is "sleep." The first word on the third list is "girls." And so on. When I got to the bottom line in my notebook, I went back to the top. I filled eight pages. Then, I made new lists. I took the first word on the first page and followed it with the first word from the second page, and so on. The second word from the first page is the first word on the second line. Confused? It's really much simpler than it sounds. The point, though, is to jumble the words so much that when I finally get down to writing, I've dissociated and hopefully unremembered the original meaning of the word, which then allows for me to be more free from Winterson's influence. For example, in some cases, Winterson's adjectives can become my verbs (like "flirt," for instance, or "complete"). I also find that by hand-writing these words not just once, but twice, they sort of seep into my brain, get to fester a bit before I go back and start working with them. SL: Future projects in the works? MG: Mourning Land: An Autobiomythography. I can't really say anything here about this other than that I dream about it. It is the important one. SL: How has your work as an editor affected your writing? MG: I don't write short stories anymore, so I'm not submitting to journals. If I were, though, then yes. I would start every short story with an amazing first sentence, a sentence that makes you want to read the next sentence. And then I would make that whole first paragraph matter, like, I mean, really matter, for the rest of the story, and then I would end the story with an amazing last line, a last line that made the whole story explode. It may be a formula, but it's a formula that isn't easily executed; it is therefore a forgivable formula. Read five of your favorite short stories, and tell me if at least one of them doesn't live up to this. And, on a much larger scale, I suppose novels can (and should? I don't know, maybe) do this too. SL: What are you reading these days? MG: Issue 50 of Conjunctions. It's a back issue that I purchased at a discounted rate when I subscribed. I'll confess here that I'm struggling with Cole Swenson's poetry, and it's keeping me from moving on to the rest. Every night before bed, I read her again and again. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, prior to hitting this wall, I really enjoyed (loved) Shelley Jackson's “King Cow,” which is incredible, as is Charles McLeod's “Edge Boys.” I'm still only about an eighth of the way through the massive issue, but everything I've read so far is great. SL: Thanks so much for doing this Molly, I am an embarrassingly big fan. MG: That's sweet, and great to hear. What writer wouldn't love to hear that? Thank you. I'm really grateful you're interviewing me, too. I'm so grateful for any extra publicity. I really appreciate it.
SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE : issue #008
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