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A Diana Arterian Interview

UDP intern Jessica Castro interviews Diana Arterian about her 2013 chapbook, Death Centos.  

Jessica Castro: I’ve read that you have been experimenting with collage poetry for a while now and I’m wondering if there was an actual physical paper process of interweaving the various lines of the centos—a cut-out collage, of sorts.

Diana Arterian: While I am generally one for tactile processes, these were done simply by putting pencil to paper, erasing, re-writing, etc. A very similar method to how I write non-appropriative poems.

JC: Was there any other reason behind why these people were chosen other than to perhaps shrink the gap in space and time between the periods these people lived in?

DA: The overarching reason is because it’s compelling to know the last thing some cults of personality said before death. This is of course why I have access to them – a person takes note of what they say because the speaker made their mark on history in some way. That said, I didn’t merely take every final utterance I came across. Mostly I was drawn to particular last words either because of their particular lyricism considering their proximity to death and/or the strangeness of them in conjunction with the speaker as a public figure. Think Archimedes saying “Do not disturb my circles” as an example of the former, and “Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me” from Chris Farley as the latter (arguably some of the saddest last words I read).

JC: In your essay, “Statement of Poetic Research,” you wrote, “Centos is a way to simultaneously pay homage to poets and the beauty in their writing, and also bastardize their work.” How would you like to see your work re-interpreted, re-configured, or “bastardized” in the future? DA: This is a really great question, and I can’t believe I haven’t actually thought about it before now. Really, any which way. I think about Christian Hawkey’s Ventrakl, and all the methods he engaged with Trakl’s work. To have someone do all that (shoot bullets through a book, put a book in water and try to translate from the shreds, doing something more straight-forward like centos), you know they are devoted with the writing. If my work were able to inspire any such impulse – be it to destroy, reimagine, or otherwise – I would be thrilled.

JC: Are there any other poets you’d like to see your work to be collaged with?

DA: I love this question – it’s like asking with whom I would like to mix my DNA. Of course I’ll only say the people who I have friend/poet-crushes on. But also those who I wonder how our poems would “look” when enmeshed. The most interesting collage is often the disjunctive species. Well, the biggest looming figure in my poetry mind is Alice Notley, who is simultaneously genius, compelling, radical, and yet often inscrutable to me. The Descent of Alette will haunt me forever. I wonder what it would look like with my own writing. There are probably many other living poets whose work would make for interesting collage children (Claudia Rankine? Anne Carson?), but maybe someone totally insane and no longer of this earth, like William Blake or Herman Melville. Or a non-poetic text, like a diary – or a government text. I think of M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! and all it does with a two-page court holding. Sometimes institutional language is a good source so you can wrench its power from it.

JC: You reference growing up making mix-tapes and now mixes, how do you feel about Centos being more an act of design vs. writing original poetry? What do you believe is the artistic relevance of creating these poetic “mixes”?

DA: Writing these centos and other appropriative poems do feel like personal poetic creations, but I don’t think they need to. It’s funny, because once when talking about them someone told me, “Yeah, but you didn’t really write them” – as if appropriation wasn’t creative output. I talked to poet Mathew Timmons about this, and he said he’s had that experience, and responds with, “Yeah, isn’t that cool?” Which I kind of love.  I think about this in conjunction with Vanessa Place and Rob Fitterman’s question and answer session at an Ugly Duckling Presse Cellar Series event in which some audience members attempt to point out what they see these appropriative conceptual poets doing as problematic, but Vanessa and Rob remain unfazed. At one point someone asks Vanessa, “But don’t you feel that—” and Vanessa interrupts her and says, “I don’t think it matters how I feel.” To me this upends the common author/reader power dynamic and makes the reader decide how s/he feels about it. The politics there are pretty thrilling.

This is all to say that the artistic relevance of creating appropriative work, to me, is engaging with the broader dialog of conceptual and appropriative writing that is some of the most exciting stuff out there these days. Personally, it allows me to interrogate my writerly self in a way that likes to engage with puzzles and lyricism in conjunction. A lot of it is play, fun with the ear – but can take a more serious tone when considering, say, last words of people before they are executed.

JC: What were some of the commonalities in language and thoughts before death you feel you’ve uncovered with this project?

DA: If anything it actually showed me the broadness of the spectrum. There are those who are resigned, confused, unaware, delirious, terrified. Since writing Death Centos I’ve read Diana Fuss’ Dying Modern in which she breaks down some of the logistics surrounding Western society’s interest in the deathbed utterance. It shifted from the pious Christian benedictions (with the decline of church’s influence), to merely hope to access some of the other side. While the latter prevails today, it is actually less and less common for people to speak shortly before death because of the development of medical narcotics. Ultimately I think that the commonalities in relation to “natural” deaths are less likely than those of people prior to their execution, particularly in the United States’ modern era. If you consider a person who has been on death row for years, with little to no access to the outside world, and certainly no voice that can do much to reach the public, this is the space in which s/he can speak and be heard – or at least documented. This and of course being a victim of the prison industrial complex, potentially face-to-face with the victims’ families, and their own…it makes for a particular situation, to say the least. There are fewer variables. I have gone down the rabbit hole of reading all the last words (and police records) on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s website, so I can say that there are definite patterns there.

JC: Is there a specific person or combination of lines you created that really sticks out as a favorite for you?

DA: I think probably my favorite from “Last Words of the Dying” is “III,” because it’s such a bizarre mix of people (James Brown, Hegel, James Joyce, Marco Polo, Babe Ruth, to name a few). That and I think it’s probably the most heartbreaking of that section. It’s odd because when I read it aloud to people they often laugh at the list of names and continue to laugh through the poem. I guess because of its public life it makes me think about laughter, too. From “Last Words of the Condemned,” I like the conjunction of the two “To the Executioner(s),” as I think they show the different kind of people and “criminals” governments put to death. Some are damaged, violent persons, and others something not quite so easy as that when considering their ends.

The SPECIAL EDITION of Death Centos is available here.  

[jessicacastrophotography-blog]

"Tom Girl" by Jessica Castro http://jessicacastrophotography.com 

Superior Mag August 2013

Model: Gwen @ Factor Model Management ATL

Make Up: Veronica Sitterding

Hair: Sydney King

Wardrobe Styling: Kris Cole 

Check out the whole spread at http://issuu.com/superiormagazine/docs/superior_online_august_2013/70

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