Valerie Fox and I have crossed paths many times, both before we knew of each other and since we've met. Both graduates of the Temple University M.A. in English-Creative Writing, but at totally different times, we were also both associated with the shifting series of poetry readings known progressively as the Highwire Series, the La Tazza Poetry Series, and the subsequent series at the Khyber (Black Flag?), although I have no idea whether Valerie frequented this last avatar of the group because I had become an irregular by then. Valerie's associations with such New Jersey surrealists as Alicia Askenase and hassen, as well as her co-creation of the magazine 6ix, has put her in company that has put a woman's collaged massage on the Classical Surrealism that had to control what it was fascinated by. Now it comes from the woman in the forest herself.
: I am fascinated by the title of your book, Rorschach Factory. It seems to be a fusion of the aleatory/chance factor and the mechanistic, two things that don’t go together. Or, perhaps, free-form chaos (Rorschach) and rigidly controlled replication (factory). How did you come up with the title?
Valerie Fox: You are right about my trying to combine two things or ideas that don’t seem to go together. I often do that consciously. For example, I tend to use different stages in my writing process, and typically there is an improvisational stage and a more controlled one. One way I like to combine the two impulses is through the use of found language. After I find it (sort of by chance), I arrange it, sometimes using a certain form or concept that I think might work. The poems in the book were written over many years. Some are quite old. But something that ties them together is that process. Honestly, some of them seem so different from each other when I read them now. So I wonder what that is like for the reader.
Also, the book was accepted under a different title, and I was trying to improve on the original one. I just wanted something memorable. So (talk about chance) I mentioned this to a friend, Leonard Gontarek, and he suggested the title. The actual phrase "The Rorschach Factory" is an excerpt from one of the titles in the book. So that’s how I "came up with it," literally, to use your phrase. I also thought about calling it "The Voyeur’s Handbook," but chickened out.
: I don’t mean to categorize or pigeonhole, but your use of "found language" and of combining things that don’t normally go together reminds me of that definition of surrealism which goes, "the chance encounter of an umbrella and sewing-machine on an operating table." Do you consider yourself a surrealist, or is that too narrow?
VF: I don’t consider myself a surrealist, or anything in particular. But I love Apollinaire. And I continue to be inspired by him. Also, at a young age, I think I was quite influenced by the artists (especially painters) who are surrealists or share a lot with them. Max Ernst made his way into my imagination and hasn’t seemed to have found his way out. I like the "real" in surrealism, as well, and the accessibility. By "real" I mean not just the found elements, but the elemental themes (like love) and the surface quality (a smoothness) of the execution. I am just throwing out terms that describe how I see and interpret things.
The reliance on the chance encounter strikes me as fun and adventurous. I was brought up in an almost cult-like religious atmosphere in which the emphasis was on the Providence of God. And, well, you know how you try to reject everything and end up not being able to. Only instead of a higher power controlling everything I leave it to chance. But discipline is a big part of any creative endeavor—I don’t mean to imply that I don’t realize that! Or that I’m forgetting the "spoken" or "musical" aspects of poetry.
: You mention that you were "brought up in an almost cult-like religious atmosphere," so I wonder if your poem "Psalms and Proverbs" might have an element of playing with your tradition? I like "Pray without ceasing / Render unto Caesar” because both lines are from the New Testament (from Paul and from Luke), but they are brought together (I think) because of the sound and visual play: "ceasing" and "Caesar" have homonymous first syllables that are spelled in slightly different ways, "ceas" and "Caes." What impetus brought these two commands together in this order?
VF: "Psalms and Proverbs" definitely plays with a religious tradition and preoccupation. I may have been consciously trying to incorporate the New into the Old with the ceasing/Caesar lines. The Old sounds nicer, at least that is how I remember it. About that specific poem I recall writing it on a bus going to New York, trying to incorporate what I saw out the window as well as some King James-type language. The leaves were changing color. I believe I’d read a poem in a magazine and someone was rewriting some story from the Bible. I just thought I’d try rewriting it too, but not a story, a couple of the books. Well, there’s an adolescent aspect to it—like, isn’t it kind of funny to play with something that people take so seriously? That was a big part of it. It was a nice excuse to write something long and listy, and rather repetitious, too.
I think when people write fiction they must find a way to bring in everything, and sometimes I like to have a project, or at least work in steps on a longer poem, so I can bring in more about the world or what I’m reading or what I remember about someone in particular.
But where do we find wisdom? In nature, through metaphor. That’s what those texts are all about on some level. That makes sense to me. And teaching all these years just reinforces this to me.
: A Rorschach test exists, as I understand it, not to be a representational piece of art, but rather to evoke whatever latent material is in the reader’s mind. Do you mind if, in the words of one of my students, people think your poems mean whatever the readers think they do? Or do you have certain things in your mind that you want to "get across" to others?
VF: I’ll admit, that I am very open about the way that I interpret poetry myself, and I don’t mind when people find "meaning" in my poetry that I didn’t consciously intend for them to find.
Having said that, I’d probably be upset if someone thought my work was hateful, or trite. But huge misinterpretations like that most likely occur when someone has a bias against a style, or doesn’t pick up on the use of a persona—that kind of thing. For instance, a poem can rely on the creating of a surface. Parts (lines, phrases, sentences) read on their own might not seem meaningful in an obvious way. It might build up and suggest an idea or narrative. John Taggart’s and Susan Howe’s work can be like that. I love their poetry—how it looks and sounds. Arlene Ang’s poems are like that as well—she’s a young writer I have actually been collaborating on fiction with lately. But everyone doesn’t come to poetry to "collaborate," to think about it so deeply. But many (enough) do. I think, also, that identification and empathy are hallmarks of most great art. Thus, if reading a poem (or seeing a play or opera, or whatever) brings out some insight that is basically latent in us, then that is an excellent result. We all have the memory of listening to a symphony or watching a play and having a realization that might, on the surface, be only connected to the performance in an emotional way. I think I’m talking about that kind of connection or identification here.
Having been in some terrific workshops I know that some people are predisposed to read my work in certain ways. I understand now that my poetry comes from an autobiographical place, even if it isn’t autobiographical. If people "go with it"—that’s my main concern and I get a big kick out of that, and out of people who can quote lines of mine, or otherwise show their appreciation. Lately I’ve been using first-person perspective a lot—I hope in an interesting and not simple way. It’s amusing how some people assume the narrator in a poem is the poet—but perhaps they are more right than wrong. Yes, I want to "get something across" in some cases, say in a poem that’s an imitation of or homage to someone. Then again, since my main concern seems to be (honestly) the ritual and process of writing, I wouldn’t want to overstate that.
Think of our friend Alicia Askenase. Her work over the past couple of years expresses her rage over the current administration and the overall political environment. It’s different than some of her earlier work that blended personal and political in a more lyrical way. It’s hilarious and calls attention to the absurdity of so much that is going on. I guess I’m saying that, as in Alicia’s work, in my poems a message is there, but it might not be the only or even most important aspect of what’s going on with it.
Poems take on lives of their own. Yesterday on NPR I heard an exiled Iraqi teacher of American literature quoting Eliot. He’s teaching at Duke now. He identifies Eliot’s descriptions of London with his own city, Baghdad. You can imagine how poignant his reading was.
: I seem to recall that you lived in Japan for some time. Did this have an
impact on your writing?
VF: Yes, I lived in Tokyo for three years and in Kawasaki for two and this influenced my writing a lot. We went on a whim. That was incredibly exciting. This was from about 1995 to 2000. Living abroad really gives you a good perspective on so many things, on your place in the world—and I recommend it to everyone. I lived in Tokyo long enough to get to know a fascinating city, so crowded and colorful. At first when we returned here everything seemed so dull.
One impact living there had on my writing was that I developed a whole new set of friends that became part of my ideal audience. These are people who don’t necessarily know the same writers I know, or see things the way I do generally. So that made me, just from an obvious content kind of angle, think a lot about what I was writing and how I was writing.
I also traveled a lot and, looking back, I realize that this became a narrative frame for my poems, for putting together sets of poems. So the background is always changing. Seeing things as an outsider, even a tourist, can be illuminating. Observing the outsider and the tourists can be a lot of fun. There’s a poem in the book called "Arrange in Any Order" and it mentions things left all around the world. I think besides leaving a part of ourselves or things in different places you certainly pick up a lot as well.
There is often a significant time lapse in terms of when certain details turn up in my poems. It can take years. So I still often find myself using details from when I lived in Japan or traveled around during those years. The little things sometimes linger more than the obvious ones, or the daily things. Like, I think sometimes about how automated everything is in Tokyo—doors and the like. And meaningful social customs, like bowing. We could stand more politeness in the United States, to say the least.
Japanese people have an overall favorable view of America (the people, if not the government policy). They have, let’s say, a lot of experience with that. So sometimes they give us a little too much credit or respect (I mean real respect). That all is quite interesting. And I think all of that was bound to influence my writing.
To read Valerie Fox's work, please visit www.leafscape.org/vfox
Don Riggs studied myth as an undergraduate, the Middle Ages as a grad student (MA, PhD, UNC-Chapel Hill), taught French on the college level, worked as a massage therapist in a holistic health center, and has been teaching English in various places for the last decade and a half.