Of Rhythm, Spatiality and Religion: A Conversation of Poetry with Paige Lewis and Kaveh Akbar

Paige Lewis and Kaveh Akbar recently visited writers at the Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle, Texas. They had just finished a tour of the Halifax Ranch nearby, when we had the pleasure of conducting this interview at the KAP House on a bright warm February afternoon, not long after enjoying a strawberry smoothie from a nearby favorite in Kyle, the Daily Grind Café.

Kaveh Akbar is an accomplished poet with two poetry collections, Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell. His debut novel Matyr! has been described by NPR as a novel that “celebrates language while delving deep into human darkness.” He currently teaches at the University of Iowa. Paige Lewis’s latest collection of innovative poetry is Space Struck. Their poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines.

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David Lauterstein: This morning I was reading Robert Hass and, just by accident, came across this passage: “Rhythm has direct access to the unconscious because it can hypnotize us, it enters our bodies and makes us move, it is a power. And power is political. That is why rhythm is always revolutionary ground.” To start, we’re curious about your ideas on both shamanism and also how this idea of rhythm plays a role in your work.

Paige Lewis: Thinking about how rhythm leads one to revelation or to visions. I feel like so much of writing poetry is about seeking that sort of revelation and being into a rhythm that feels natural. And I find that when writing poems, I like to read my poems out loud as I’m writing to find that rhythm. But I wish that they led me to be like a Hildegard von Bingen type of character. (Smiles). But…

Kaveh Akbar: Yeah. Theodor Roethke said, “The serious problems in life are never resolved. But some states can be resolved rhythmically.” I find lots of my work in poetry and prose is about investing myself in that promise, this idea that rhythm and repetition can denude the denotative context from language and/or change it or complicate or deepen it. And allow the aural topography of the language to reveal the emotional and psychospiritual data that we understand lives in the sonic experience, right? You go to a performance of “Ave Maria” and you weep or you listen to Future before a run and you feel pumped up. We understand that there is data, emotional data, psychospiritual data, and sonic experience. And there is a way in which rhythm guides both the writer and the reader towards that as opposed to trying to strap the language down to a chair and beat a confession out of it. Like the Sufi mystics who say Allahu Akbar 100,000 times a day before they do anything else, right? By the eighth time, you know, it has just become sound and by the 800th time, you know, it starts to become something else, right? It starts to become translated, it starts to become embodied, right? It’s almost apathetic in that way where you’re saying one word and thus, you’re not thinking about your taxes and your emails because you have this one concentration point.

Jubril Badmus: This question is for you Paige: in your poems, but specifically in Space Struck, I’m struck by the line/idea, “I think, I thought it was God, since I’ve been told it is.” To me, this line offers us several layers of consciousness because you could have said “I think” and simply continued the line. I believe Jean-Paul Sartre called it positional consciousness, which is a consciousness that takes on another reflected consciousness as an object. The way you structured that line, it’s a recollection of another thought. So, I guess my real question is this: to what extent does phenomenology or philosophy generally influence your poetry?

Lewis: It creeps in. I was a very rebellious teenager and was trying to read Being and Nothingness, to the point where I even got a tattoo. There’s this quote in Being and Nothingness—something like “I exist, it’s sweet, so sweet.” And it’s just like this very long paragraph about just feeling existence, sort of like curdling at the back of your throat. And I was like, That’s so weird. It was like one of the first tattoos I got. So, I’ve always had it, it’s always in the periphery. I am very interested in Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard and the way in which religion plays a role in fear and trembling. But I do think that it is because I have placed so much of it in front of my face in one way or another, it finds its way into my poems without me thinking about it. So I don’t know that I was ever like, Oh, I should be considering this philosophical. But it does end up just coloring my thoughts without me knowing. So, it’s wild that you make this connection. That’s very cool.

Badmus: Again, for Paige, in your poems, there is an acute awareness of galactic spatiality and its relations to us, the dwellers of the planet. So, my question is this: What prepares you? Or what kind of experiential exercise did you go through before putting together Space Struck?

Paige: That’s a great question. So, I minored in astronomy when I was an undergrad. So I took some physics-heavy courses and an archeoastronomy course, which was my favorite where it was more about learning about the strangeness of the ones studying space rather than space itself. And then I found that I was much more interested in the lives of astronomers. I mean, I’m still very obsessed with space, but I’m particularly fond of like Giordano Bruno, and his sort of strange life. Or Tycho Brahe—he owned a pet moose, he got it drunk, and it fell down the stairs. He also got his nose cut off in a duel, it’s just wild to think that these are the people that are focusing so much of their time and attention on the stars while still living these very wild and full lives.

Lauterstein: I was going to ask a little awkward question.

Akbar: I love awkward questions.

Lauterstein: One of the topics you return to in your work is the subject of alcohol and your experience with recovery and sobriety.

Akbar: I wouldn’t have written three books about it with a smile.

Badmus: I remember when your first chapbook came out, it felt very bold because it was titled, Portrait of the Alcoholic.

Akbar: I just wanted to get out in front of ever trying to be euphemistic or shy about it. You know, it’s like I’m going to make this decision now. And similar to calling my novel Martyr!—it was like, I don’t want to dance around what I’m actually talking about.

Lauterstein: Would you say that there were positive aspects to the altered state that accompanied drinking some of the time? Was there some particular motivation or connection for you?

Akbar: Yeah, I think that I have long sought what I sometimes see as obliteration and, other times, in more charitable-to-myself-moments have seen as transcendence. In alcohol, narcotics, dope, whatever—these technologies of transcendence and obliteration—I have found that those technologies are the dubious luxuries of normal people, but for me, you know, I can’t handle them. And I’ve lost my privileges to them. But there are also a lot of other ways to get into that space of defamiliarization, that kind of dishabituated viewing of the world. You look at a child, you know, on a playground, and she puts a wood chip in her mouth, and you’re like, “No, why are you doing that, child?” And then you realize that a wood chip is like the same size and color and texture of a lot of the foods that we write about—like, why wouldn’t you think to eat that when you’re new to the world? And so, closely watching a child will defamiliarize us. Why don’t we think everything else is food—it’s only because we’ve been taught, right? I say this to say there are cleaner fuels for everybody. And for me, I just have to choose between being alive or, as someone described it to me once said: you can either choose this 1% of narcotic experience and give up the other 99% of life, or you can have that 99% of life and give up this 1%. And to me, that math checks out.

Badmus: In one of his lectures, Abdolkarim Souroush declared that “all religion is practiced, as an interpretation of religious knowledge.” Thus, separating religion and worship from the system of faith itself. Being familiar with your work, I noticed the way that you have interpreted faith, particularly in Islam. How do you navigate the conventional practices of faith and your lived experience? What do you intend to impart to readers with your poetry along those lines?

Kaveh: You know this—probably better than most—that in America, there’s this sense that if you say you were raised Muslim, everyone thinks that you came out the womb with a full beard holding the Quran. There are gradations of secularism within Islam, just like there are gradations of secularism within Judaism or Hinduism or Christianity, right? We all know the Christian family that only goes to church on Easter; they are Christian, as are the Christian family who, you know, goes to church every night of the week and homeschools and like, stockpiles guns for the apocalypse, you know. And so, I was raised Muslim, but fairly secular. That’s not to say that we didn’t pray or observe things, but, you know, my mom didn’t eat pork, except secretly—she would eat pepperoni pizza sometimes. Right? Like that sort of Muslim. I say that to say all religion is practice, is an interpretation of faith, I guess my interest in religion tends to be more sociological and anthropological. My interest in faith and doubt and seeking is intensely personal, you know? And maybe that’s where I should leave that.

Badmus: Thank you for that. Related to that question, your most recent project Martyr! is currently getting rave reviews. And it kind of has the semblance to your life—the protagonist shares some similarities to yourself. To what extent is the work autobiographical? And would it be appropriate to label the project as a coming-of-age story?

Akbar: Those are two big and different questions. I’m just sorting out my own thinking. Of course, the work is autobiographical, because anything that comes out of my pen will be autobiographical. Anything that comes out of my pen will be shaped by my unprecedented experience on the planet Earth, right? Like no one else in the world was born in Teheran, Iran on January 15, 1989, and then moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania when they were two and a half and then moved to Trenton, New Jersey when they were three, and then moved to Milwaukee and then—you know what I mean? No one has read the books in the order that I’ve read them and seen the movies in the order that I’ve seen them. It has my specific genealogies and geography, you know, and so like I always think about like—if I say “there’s the green door,” that is autobiographical, observation because a) I’m revealing that I’m an English speaker and b) I’m revealing that I can see color, right? I’m a sighted English speaker.

Lewis: And also that you’re colorblind because that’s a brown door (They laugh warmly and everyone follows suit, the room in a rupture of laughter.)

Akbar: Also, I’m revealing that I’m colorblind because that’s a brown door. So, everything that comes out of my mouth is going to be autobiographical. There are obvious biographical symmetries, between myself and the books, the sort of ostensible protagonist, Cyrus. But there are also biographical symmetries. I mean, it’s also true that when I was writing, the characters are sort of superficially resembling me. I just turned to face a different part of my brain and it’s just as autobiographical.

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David Lauterstein is a writer, therapist, and teacher. He is the co-founder of The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in Austin and has been writing poetry and creative non-fiction for over 50 years. His latest book is The Memory Palace of Bones.

Jubril Badmus is a poet and essayist from Ibadan, his works have appeared in prints and journals including Jalada.org, the Empress, New Thoughts, Offing Mag. He is currently an MFA candidate at Texas State University. He splits his time between Austin and London. Sometimes he likes watching chess games and analysis.