When reviewing Caroline Cabrera’s debut poetry
collection Flood Bloom, Publishers
Weekly wrote, “Cabrera
is confident and humble, distinctly postmodern in her hyperawareness.” In her latest collection The Bicycle Year (H_NGM_N
Books, 2015), Cabrera brings the same voice and play to her work with a wiser
voice. This voice doesn’t offer answers,
but seeks to complicate.
Carolina
Cabrera is also the author of the chapbook Dear
Sensitive Beard, published by dancing girl press in 2012. She was educated
at Stetson University and the University of Massachusetts MFA for Poets and
Writers. She has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Florida Atlantic
University, and Metropolitan State University of Denver. She currently lives in
Denver with her cat, Yossarian, and her husband, Philip.
**
Christy
Crutchfield: Your book is made up of two long poems. How did the book take shape? Did you know you
were writing sections of longer poems or did you surprise yourself?
Caroline Cabrera: The first
section actually began as named, discreet poems, each titled after cards in a
deck. The two parts correspond numerically—52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks in a
year; the first section had the card poems and the long poem evolved in
diary-esque, week-to-week sections. I wrote one part of each every week for a
year. Or, at least, that was the plan;
in reality I got ahead of and then behind schedule, so the book took me sixteen
months. Once I had a first draft to Nate Pritts he questioned the card deck titles. I realized that though those titles helped to
inform the poems while I wrote, they weren’t necessary to the poems as they
stood. So I lost the titles—removed the scaffolding, in a sense. Since they
were conceived as a sequence from the beginning, they seemed to work well as a
long poem.
Crutchfield: Your first
poem is titled with a series of triangles and the cover of the book features a
pattern of triangles. What is the
significance of the triangles? How did
this concept develop?
Cabrera: Following from
the first question, once I lost the individual titles I had no clue how to
title that section. I knew I wanted a symbol, something that would recall the
four suits and their symbols. Anna Pollock-Nelson is responsible for the
triangular interpretation, both cover and interior, with which I immediately
fell in love.
Crutchfield: I remember one
of my first writing teachers telling us to stay away from pop culture
references in our work. Something to do
with making our work timeless. Years
later, I read Frank O'Hara and began questioning this advice. Your book is full of pop culture
references. Alice from the Brady
Bunch. David Attenboro. Simba.
In your early poems, you've written about Jaws and Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid. I find that in your work,
these appearances are often used for humor, but are also used to catch us off
guard before you bring in the hard stuff.
How do you see pop culture working in your poems? Any advice for writers when it comes to
balancing these references?
Cabrera: I have a sort
of “everything in” approach to my poems.
And then of course, a lot gets edited out. I remember Jim Haug saying in
workshop once “there are so many cell phones in the real world and so few in
poetry,” or something to that effect. And I think that while I don’t want
brand-named vehicles or products littered in my poems, I also do not want my
poems to feel divorced from the real world. And pop culture, in moderation, makes
up part of that real life.
I
think you’re spot on with noting how lighter things act as diversions before the
real stuff. I’ve always admired Dean Young’s ability to do humor and pain at
the very same time. Chris Janke told me once, in regards to my earlier poetry,
that I use humor to avoid sentimentality and that instead I needed to push
through sentimentality and see what exists on the other side. I tried for that
with this book, and even more so in my more current writing. Not sure I’ve
reached that yet. But even as I push through to more raw and real emotions—even
as I try to stop using humor as a diversion—I still find that when my writing
goes dark, it gets darker and funnier in equal measure. I don’t aim for the
humor to serve as comic relief, but for those two things—the pain and the
humor—to exist at the very same time. That’s the way I like to see and deal
with the world, I think.
In
some ways The Bicycle Year takes
things I noticed about my writing in my first book (the “everything in” nature,
the humor/emotion) and pushes those a little farther—turns up the volume on
those tendencies. Sort of like, ‘well, now that I know these things about my
writing I can abandon them or I can really see where they might take me.’
Crutchfield: The Bicycle Year is a book about many
things: relationships, family, and place.
It's a book of returning home, leaving home, and of wondering where home
is. I know you were in some periods of
transition while working on the manuscript.
Do you feel that place affects your writing?
Cabrera: Yes! So much
transition! I didn’t plan the manuscript thinking about those transitions, but
I do think the premise of the book—the year of “everything in”—benefitted from
all these changes. In the sixteen months I wrote this book, I had a cancer
scare (it’s benign! everything’s okay!), finished grad school, moved 1500 miles,
got my first real post-grad-school job, had my first book published and got
married. And to some extent the book documents what ended up being the most
tumultuous year of my life thus far.
Place
has a major influence on my writing.
Personally I am very affected by place and I think that comes through. I
spend a lot of time looking out my window waiting and thinking, and the change
of scenery, from my cabin-in-the-woods, Massachusetts home, to my lush,
sub-tropic Florida backyard (my landlady obsessed about the yard; it was really
spectacular) definitely came in. I also went from feeling very cold all the
time to very hot all the time, neither of which were particularly bad things,
but both of which I was constantly aware.
Crutchfield: You recently
moved to Denver. How have you found the
writing scene there? Where is the best
place to get a beer when I come visit you?
Cabrera: Socially I am
a big disappointment. The writing community here is very warm and welcoming,
but I’ve been a bit too much of a homebody to take full advantage. I intend to
be better about that, as I settle in here.
But honestly, teaching is so EXTROVERTED that I tend to be a loner on my
off time.
As
far as beer, there are so many good places—excellent breweries and every bar has
an extensive beer selection. I am
partial to Finley’s, the Irish pub around the corner from my house. (See above,
regarding introversion.)
Crutchfield: You thank Anne
Cecelia Holmes and Gale Thompson at least three times in the book. Can you speak to how you all influence and
support each other?
Cabrera: I am lucky to
have so many smart, funny, and talented friends. Mike Wall and I were talking
once about how AWP differs so much, tonally, from other conferences. At any conference, you have exactly one thing
in common with all the other attendees; at AWP, that one thing is writing, at
once a way of life and a super intimate act, so friendships with writers can
spring very quickly. My friendship with Anne and Gale sprung quickly. They were
in their first MFA workshop together and then the three of us were in the next
workshop together. We’ve been reading each other’s work for over six years now.
And somewhere along the way they became my first readers for new works, and
then my first editors, and then, ultimately, my last editors, who give
something the okay before I let it out the door, or out into the internet. (I
will likely send them this interview before committing to my answers.) It’s a
codependence, maybe, but one that helps us each write our best work. We involve
each other at every stage in the life of any writing we do. We allow each other
that access, I think, because of closeness and trust. We know each other’s work
enough to know what’s a risk, what’s a crutch. Also, in the earlier stages, we
have enough confidence in each other to read generously and trust the direction
something might be going. We also understand and truly appreciate our differing
aesthetics. There’s a real honestly and openness and supportiveness. We
understand each other as people and as writers and we communicate very
well. I’m realizing that last sentence
sounds like an answer to, “What makes your marriage work” and I don’t think
that’s even a little off base.
Crutchfield: What's outside
your window right now? Could you write a
poem about it?
Cabrera: I’m answering
this question in one of my classrooms while my students peer review, and the
window looks out at Elitch Gardens (Denver’s downtown theme park) with the
Front Range mountains in the background.
I have issued a personal moratorium on mountain poems for the time
being. I have always written perhaps a
bit too often of mountains, and since moving out to Colorado, that’s gone
haywire. So yes, I could write a poem about this view, but I won’t.
Crutchfield: What should we
be reading?
Cabrera: Oh wow! I want
to ask you the same thing. How about I just tell you some things I’ve read
recently and loved: The Heart is a Lonely
Hunter by Carson McCullers, This is
How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, Citizen by Claudia Rankine and If The Tabloids are True What are You?
by Matthea Harvey. Also, I’m rereading I
Live in a Hut by S.E. Smith because I just love it so much—a big thanks to
Katie Mertz on that recommendation.
**
Purchase
The Bicycle Year HERE.
Visit
Caroline HERE.
Interviewer
bio: Christy Crutchfield is the author of the novel How
to Catch a Coyote. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Mississippi Review, Salt Hill Journal, Juked,
and others. Visit her at christycrutchfield.com
