From History to Poetry, and Back Again (Pt. Two)

This is the second of a two-part interview with Tyehimba Jess, an author, teacher, and winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his most recent book, Olio. For part one, here.

If you are a young writer, you have undoubtedly experienced the feeling of uncertainty that can turn a simple ten-minute writing activity into a stressful hour of pulling hair and wishing you’d chosen another passion. You write and delete the same word over and over again. You are your own biggest obstacle, and you know it, but you still let yourself get in the way.

Tyehimba Jess has been writing for years, yet in this interview, he shares some of those same challenges.

STREET: What was the most difficult part of writing Olio?

JESS: Starting. Starting the book. I think that’s the hardest thing ever to do. And I wish I were better at it, but starting took a long time. And figuring out what it was actually going to be took a minute, too. I think that that’s a lesson in the way I work and process things. Everybody has their own method of working. So you have to figure out what yours is, and I was in the process of figuring out mine. Which seems to be, work on a project for a very long time and then take a break for a little less than half that time. And then, start again.

STREET: You took a break? For how long?

JESS: It took a minute. It was just after my first book. It took about three or four years to start writing again.

STREET: Were you writing anything else during that time?

JESS: I was trying to write. I was just not as successful as I wanted to be. I’ll put it like that. I started out on one project and it really didn’t happen, and then the first character I started writing about in the Olio was Blind Tom. It just kind of went from there. From Blind Tom, then to the Mckoy twins, then came the Fisk Jubilee Singers. It was all building up, some of it simultaneously.

STREET: Like a domino effect.

JESS: Yeah. You know when you’re researching one you find out a little bit of information that isn’t really about that person, but somebody around them. Then it becomes like, “Oh, I didn’t know that! That sounds fascinating. How come I didn’t know this? How come I didn’t know that?” When you’re really interested in something, a lot of times your researching subject A, but there’s subject A2 and A3, and then A3 turns into B. Especially when you’re talking about history, you know. Everyone’s connected in very intricate ways. And you just start seeing those connections and saying, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” So you get distracted very easily.

STREET: What would you say the most rewarding part of writing Olio was?

JESS: Straight up, you know, holding the book in my hands for the first time. My publisher did a fantastic job. So, having worked on it for seven plus years, and then holding the book and holding the very first notebook in which I wrote the very first poems, that was the moment.

STREET: That’s amazing. Was it a surprise to you when you won the Pulitzer for it?

JESS: [Laughs] Oh yes, definitely. When you’re writing, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know. All I can say is that I followed some advice that I think Toni Morrison said. Something like, “Write the book that you wanna see in the world.” You can’t write the book that you think other people wanna see. It’s not worth it. You know what I’m saying? It’s not worth it to do that. It’s not following your own vision. No matter how crazy your vision is. I think the idea is that part of your integrity is about following your ambition, and doing it as thoroughly as you possibly can. And then being able to step away from it and say, “I did my best. That is the best I can do. The absolute 100% best I can do at this particular time.” That’s what we all hope for when we write our little poems and whatnot.

STREET: I wish I could write poetry. I love poetry, I do. I just I feel as though I try to write it and it never… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.

JESS: You know, the thing about poetry is this: People are introduced to poetry mostly in grade school. Teachers have a really difficult relationship with poetry, so they tend to teach it in an alienating way. In other words, they teach it like, “This has to be this many syllables…and this is about meter and you have to count the meter…” and all that stuff. That’s not as important as using the least amount of words to paint the most moving picture and to do that in such a way that is effective, graceful, and strong. That’s the major thing, you know. People tend to kill poetry in 7th and 8th grade, and in high school. They tend to walk away with the idea that it’s only written by people who are dead. They tend to walk away with the idea that it’s about people that have nothing to do with them, and that’s actually just not the case. Poetry is really the most experimental literary form. It is. It just is. Because poetry isn’t obliged to tell a story, it isn’t obliged to even paint a picture necessarily. Poetry is all over the place. There is no directive for it. In a short story, there’s a directive: You’re gonna tell a story. In a novel, it’s the same thing. In an essay, you know, there are all kinds of other things to consider. Poetry doesn’t even have to make immediate sense. There are all kinds of ways that poetry is very experimental but also capable of doing all the things that fiction can do.

STREET: So how do you tell a good poem?

JESS: How do I tell a good poem? Well everybody has their own aesthetic. I tend to lean toward the idea of the image. Painting the image. People will remember an image more than they remember anything else. That’s generally true with all writing. People remember things that happen and whatnot but people really remember the lines that have the resting image. That’s just the way people are built. Read Yusef Komunyakaa, read Sharon Olds. It’s the image, the image, the image. That’s what they do.

STREET: So, is there any specific piece of advice that you might have for young writers reading this?

JESS: Read a lot, because creative writing is essentially autodidact, and when you’re reading other people you’re listening to their music, and you’re learning how to play your own song. And keep writing.

I would also say be familiar with the history of the country you’re living in, or the country that you’re from, or both. Because history is a very deep well in which there are many many metaphors and many different kinds of similes and echoes that you should bring into your work. If you are a young writer, then you should find something which intrigues you. For me it’s music, in particular, black music. You need to find something that intrigues you and look into the history of it. The way that the laws of a country have influenced it, and the lives of the people that have practiced it. Find something interesting to you, and look into the history of that particular subject, and take it from there. It could be marbles, it could be football, it could be glassware, it could be the history of hats, it could be a city, it could be the history of your family, it could be the history of somebody else’s family, it could be the history of whatever it is. There are all kinds of fascinating stories out there and it’s up to you to make it sane. You’re the one best equipped to do it.