United States of Writing Blog

Hey mi gente, wishing you the best in this crazy time we’re living in. Here in Texas, smaller rural spaces and larger metro spaces are in heated battles as to what is appropriate for a “restart” as cities begin to open their businesses back up. Every day is an interesting day here in Houston. Despite the difficulties of this pandemic life, the literary world has been doing brilliant work and touching base with writers in ways it hasn’t done so before. So with this in mind, I wanted to continue conversations with writers here in the city and ask how they have been spending their time during stay-at-home orders. For this series, I reached out to writers and posed one simple question:

What have you been doing since the pandemic started?

This series started off with Katherine Hoerth and this week, we continue with Daniel Peña. A Pushcart Prize–winning writer, Peña is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston–Downtown and the author of the novel, Bang (ArtePublico Press, 2018).

Here is what Daniel had to say:

“I’ve been teaching a lot. Transitioning all of my classes online has been time-consuming but I’ve been grateful for the distraction. I record podcasts for all of my classes (Mexican-American Literature, Creative Writing, and Literary Magazine Production) so my students can get to the lessons asynchronously (meaning on their own time).

So many of my students are on the front line of this pandemic: delivery drivers, grocery store workers, EMS medics working twelve-hour shifts. I read them poems, stories, essays and talk about those readings with them, almost like a radio show or something. They can listen to it when they’re driving on their way to work or in those splices of moments between moments. Hit pause, hit play, hit pause again. I try to make each lesson a kind of artifact: heavily produced with bumper music, a monologue, a volta, some trivia, sometimes a rant. I try to mimic class more or less. And mostly, I’m just trying to keep them in the game, correspond with them when they’re free. And that’ll take up about two months of time if you get carried away with it (and I do).

I go to my home office in the morning, I record my lessons, I read the readings for the next class in the evenings, I write out the podcast longhand, and then I record that lesson the next day. I try to stay about two weeks ahead in case I get sick.

I get a little writing done when I can. I can’t wait to get back into my own writing this summer.”

Check back next week for the next writer!

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Benjamin Morris is the author of Coronary (Fitzgerald Letterpress, 2011), Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City (History Press, 2014), and Ecotone (Antenna/Press Street Press, 2017), and the editor or coeditor of four volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His work has received academic and creative fellowships from Tulane University and a residency from A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans. You’ll always find him somewhere in New Orleans supporting the literary community.

How has this pandemic impacted you personally and professionally?
In a word: multiply. During lockdown I’ve been grateful to stay healthy, but even having avoided the virus thus far, it’s hard to avoid that gnawing feeling of anxiety over so many everyday activities: It seems like everything we do now is laced with tension. That’s the strangest thing; because the virus could be anywhere, it’s everywhere. Every public move you make is a risk calculation. That said, like many folks here and across the country, I’ve taken a punch to the fiscal gut. Early on in the outbreak my hours at my day job were cut in half, and every gig, reading, and appearance I had planned since February has been canceled. Last month, I was supposed to give a lecture on trends in contemporary Mississippi poetry to the Mississippi Poetry Society, which has now been rescheduled for 2023. It’s not been easy.

What books are you reading while quarantined?
I’ve just finished The Everlasting by Katy Simpson Smith, which came out in March (so go buy it!). The novel is set in Rome, Italy, over four different time periods, following a structure not unlike David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Not only is it a gorgeous book in its own right, but mentally traveling through time and space has been an ideal antidote for the malaise of quarantine. Next up is poetry—I’ve got a stack of books from past presenters at the New Orleans Poetry Festival, such as Henk Rossouw’s Xamissa and Lee Ann Brown’s Polyverse. And just before Mardi Gras, a friend gave me a first edition of C. D. Wright’s Rooms Rented by a Single Woman published by Lost Roads Press—what a gift!

If you knew five months ago what you know now, how would you have prepared for this moment?
More exercise equipment! I’ve long held that the gym is like church for the body, and outside of church it remains the single best place to boost mental health. I was underprepared with gear when the outbreak broke out (apologies for the chiasmus), and have had to cobble together different implements since. Believe it or not, you can do more cardio with a rake than you think.

Have you attended or participated in any virtual readings? Is it here to stay or do you prefer to return to in person readings?
When we voted to cancel the 2020 New Orleans Poetry Festival, it was one of the most difficult decisions our board had ever faced. A small salve for the wound was our attempt over the original festival weekend to curate a virtual fest, soliciting videos of readings, panels, tributes, and odes to the kitchen sink—my own submission features a guest appearance from my cat. They’re all up on the festival’s website and I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who made it happen. But no, to my mind, virtual readings versus in-person events are like how Wynton Marsalis once compared listening to a CD versus going to a live performance: like looking at a picture of a steak.

What’s your hope for New Orleans during and after this pandemic?
One thing that has moved me these last few months is the outpouring of simple kindness from our citizenship. Like many have said—most recently Maurice Ruffin in the New York Times—in some ways this is like Katrina all over again. I well remember from those years the shared recognition that just about everyone you encounter on a given day—friend, family, stranger—is suffering from untold depths of stress, and a little extra patience, tolerance, and consideration can be the difference between a day they survive and a day they don’t. It’s like that all over again. My hope for the city is that we recognize the fragility of all our relationships, even transitory ones, and allow such gentleness and tenderness to reenter civic life for good.

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As of June 1, the stay-at-home order has been lifted in Michigan, however many of us are still taking extreme caution against the coronavirus. One silver lining to this extended time staying inside our home has been having plenty of time to spend with my wife Brittany Rogers who is also an active poet. She always stays three steps ahead of me with new books, so I thought that this would be a great time to share both of our thoughts on a new collection by someone we have both received mentorship from: Aricka Foreman.

I recently wrote about Foreman’s chapbook, Dream With a Glass Chamber published by YesYes Books in 2016. Now, I am excited to write about Foreman’s first full-length collection, Salt Body Shimmer, which will be released in August by YesYes Books.

When I asked Brittany how she would describe Foreman as a writer, she said, “Tender. Intentional. Interrogative. Complex.” These were all words we both agreed embody the writing across Foreman’s work.

After reading Salt Body Shimmer, Brittany said, “In these poems I feel very seen. They felt like an indication for me as a Black woman to tend to my mental health. Foreman teaches me consistently about nuance—about turning a vulnerable eye to things you wish not to feel.”

The four poems in particular that embodied these feelings best, and connected most closely to Brittany as a reader and writer were: “When the Therapist Asks You to Recount, You Have to Say It,” “Intake Interview,” “Consent Is a Labyrinth of Yes,” and “Before I Fire Her, The Therapist Asks What Is it Like to Be a Black Woman Here: A Monologue.”

For me, as I read this collection, I was brought back to something Foreman said to me during her time as my mentor, “Poetry is a documentation of history.” Just like that literary (and life) advice, Salt Body Shimmer captures moments at a pivotal time in Foreman’s history during a pivotal time in world history. The intersections are layered and far beyond the bounds of my conversation with Brittany. As I mentioned before, Brittany stays a few steps ahead of me, so I am still snapping my fingers at the first twenty pages. I can’t wait to dive deep into the other poems in the collection and learn another layer of lessons from one of my favorite mentors.

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Tad Bartlett is a fiction writer, essayist, and recovering poet. He was born in Ankara, Turkey; raised in Selma, Alabama; and married into New Orleans, Louisiana. Bartlett received his BA in theater and creative writing from Spring Hill College and a law degree from Tulane University. He earned his MFA in fiction from the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans, where he was a reader for Bayou Magazine. Bartlett lives in New Orleans, where he practices law and works on various writing projects, including a collaborative novel with fellow Peauxdunquian J.Ed. Marston, a new novel project, and various short stories and essays. He also serves as the managing editor of Peauxdunque Review.

How has this pandemic impacted you personally and professionally?
Personally, the pandemic has been, of course, anxiety inducing. It has had potentially devastating financial effect on me and, more guttingly and assuredly, the communities around me here in New Orleans. Friends and colleagues have experienced sickness and death in their families. I have lost a good friend, not directly to the pandemic, but to depression and substance abuse issues that were undoubtedly exacerbated by the pandemic. I am helpless as to so much of that. My family is scattered from Montgomery to Austin, but even my close friends here in New Orleans I have only been able to see through the magic of technology. I want nothing more than to give them long hugs, to share a drink with them, and I know I’m far from alone in that.

Professionally, as a writer and member of writing communities, the pandemic has been oddly galvanizing. We “meet” (through that technological magic) far more often than we did in pre-pandemic times, and with far more deliberativeness. I have more time to write, which still isn’t as much time as I would want, but my writing feels more clearheaded and focused, and in certain ways, more driven and less obligatory. And the journal for which I’m managing editor, Peauxdunque Review, has provided a great opportunity to engage more with other writers and hopefully bring some positivity to them.

What books are you reading while quarantined?
The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata, A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash, The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah, Pride of Eden by Taylor Brown, Exile Music by Jennifer Steil, and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon.

If you knew five months ago what you know now, how would you have prepared for this moment?
I don’t know what I would have done differently to better prepare myself for this moment. For example, if I knew even two and a half months ago what I know now, I probably would not have gone to the AWP conference in San Antonio at the beginning of March. As it is, for both personal and professional reasons, I am so glad that I did go, that I had those days of very carefully navigated closeness with old friends and new friends to talk about words and writing and community, even knowing in the back of our heads that this might end up being the last time in a long time for that to happen. There was a sad deliciousness to it that I am glad I experienced.

Have you attended or participated in any virtual readings? Is it here to stay or do you prefer to return to in-person readings?
I have participated in a few virtual readings. They have been invaluable in keeping the various writing communities, of which I am part, together and vital. Though, nothing beats the in-person reading. In my deepest wishes (fantasies?), we can all return to those evenings in a bar or a bookstore or a generous reading space, where we hug and dap and laugh over a cheap cheese plate and crackers and cheaper wine, and then all quiet down in joyful anticipation for the evening’s readers.

I do not fool myself, though. The world will be different coming out of this. I think we will have in-person readings again. But we may be masked. We will certainly be less physically intimate in our greetings and interactions. We will feel sadness in greater portions along with the joy.

What’s your hope for New Orleans during and after this pandemic?
My greatest hope for New Orleans during the pandemic has already been realized—that it will be New Orleans’s writers and artists who will do the good work of expressing our experience with the pandemic to the world. My greatest hope is that our writing and artistic communities will move forward with full respect for how we’ve changed, for how we are still a unique place in America and in the world, and for how we are all tied together.

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