The book as exhibition and an exercise in self-compassion

I met Anne Carson many moons ago during a reading she gave at Dey House at the Iowa Writers Workshop. She had her customary blunt bob and said she only painted volcanos and bats and wrote things. It was my first formal introduction to the interchangeability of writing practice and art practice. She was a painter, a poet, a linguist, a sculptor, and a classics scholar who self-identified as an artist. I looked at this formidable small woman and thought, I want to be a similar version of you. I walked to Prairie Lights Bookstore and spent the money I’d reserved for my phone bill on a hardback of Plainwater. Here is a picture of the original book and the original bookmark. This book has traveled to four continents with me. 

I remember sitting at my desk reading the section The Anthropology of Water, a travelogue/journal/essay/prose poem about three different stages of a woman’s life when the telephone company disconnected my phone. I have to admit disconnection was a common occurrence in my utility timeline, and I didn’t care because a noise that I hadn’t known to notice before was suddenly gone. If you’ve ever had your electricity shut off in the middle of a midwestern winter, you learn to be philosophical. I lived in a single bedroom in the attic of an old house converted into bedsits; the telephone pole and box were outside my window. Suddenly, there was true silence. I remember sitting inside this total silence and thinking about how I might become who I wanted to be. Incidentally, despite getting closer, I still mull over that thought repeatedly.

I was nineteen and had just returned from a Degas exhibition in Chicago. A friend had a spare ticket and asked me if I wanted to drive up and stay the night with their sister. It was free, so I said yes. It was my first time in an art museum of any description. I did not grow up around books, art, or conversations about world topics. I grew up around Jesus and cattle and knew how to gut a fish. Therefore, who I wanted to be, a writer like Anne Carson, seemed entirely out of reach. I was embarrassed as I stared, awestruck, at The Blue Dancers, embarrassed that the blue of their dresses instantly reminded me of the blue of new fish scales before the air and time turned them colorless and grey—the blue of fleeting moments. I pushed the very thoughts I needed to embrace away. 

I was very young, and it felt like a lifetime behind my contemporaries, so it would take twenty years of scraping at the superfluous before I could connect the type of writing I desired to create with the curatorial examination of self. I now understand that what I was responding to in Plainwater, and why Anne Carson stood out as a prominent role model compared to many of the writers I was reading at the time, was her ability to be unapologetic, yet un-rigid, unfixed. I now know the rigidity I’m speaking of comes from unexamined anger. While I fully appreciate the power of anger, I realize that explored vulnerability is how we connect, especially when that examination comes from self-compassion. Writing a novel is like walking into the gallery of yourself and shining a light of introspection over carefully chosen scenes. And genuine reflection doesn’t work without compassion. 

I recently talked with my sisterlike friend, Rachael, about the book In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova. We both love and reference this book as though it were a living neighbor. Reading this book is like stepping into an exhibition where the artist is present and explaining their process. There is the artwork in the vitrine to examine, painting on the walls, evidence, letters, and artifacts to search through, and, of course, an interior commentary threading everything together. That commentary is, like in any exhibition, personal. 

Anne Carson accomplishes the same level of poetic illumination. She shines a light on each display: a play here, a poem there, a painting, a short essay, a journal entry, a conversation, all a part of one book that examines a time, idea, and emotion. The culmination of mediums exhibited in a single work touches me beyond any one piece on its own. Of course, I know this as a writer, but visualizing it makes me feel free and unlocked. 

I’m writing a script, a novel, poetry, essay, and I have an idea of colors I’d like to paint on a canvas. I’ll exhibit everything as a whole when I’m finished. I imagine people will respond differently to different aspects, reflecting their interior commentary, and the only goal is to illuminate each scene with precision. The light of curated accuracy is something I keep repeating to myself. Thinking of my novel as multiple mediums means I can segue into other rooms as a method of writing practice. Art practice is writing practice is scientific practice, and so forth because we are not one dimensional, and each section of our exhibition illuminates another room of self. Using this method to examine ourselves and our work allows us to visualize the shameful alongside the honorable as a part of the whole without judgment. 

Most of the time, anyway.