RogueAgent

Remi Recchia talks about embodiment
and writing Quicksand/Stargazing

Please describe your journey toward writing poetry that reflects on the experience of living in the body. Have you always written this way, or did you come to it over time?

For a long time, I avoided writing about my body. I think it started with the typical “baby poet” mindset: “But I want the reader to be confused!” There’s something thrilling about having a secret when you begin writing. But what do you do when neither you nor the reader is privy to the secret?  

The problem with such a secret, of course, is that you risk not connecting to the reader at all. While I don’t advocate writing to a specific reader—that is one of the pitfalls of workshop—I will assert that we need to be mindful that real people are reading our work. To that end, the body is something physical that I can present to the reader as a real, tangible thing to connect over. As a guy who transitioned from female to male through HRT about five years ago now, my body has changed a lot. These changes, ranging from facial hair to a deepened voice to top surgery, are represented in Quicksand/Stargazing. Post-transition, I was finally able to write about my body because it was finally mine.

In “Pastoral #1” (probably my favorite poem in the book), you write, “...I don’t want / you to know we’re alone, / so let me be your star.//We’ll paint the sky-canvas / splotchy cow colors / accented with sober love. // Keep me in the dark....” So many of the poems in Quicksand/Stargazing are what I would call love poems— to your wife, to family, to small moments of bliss. To what extent do you consider yourself a love poet?

When my editor, Adam Deutsch, and I had our initial phone call to talk about the book—or maybe this was actually in one of our first rounds of edits—Adam pointed out that one of the overwhelming themes of the book was marriage. As the two of us continued to work on the manuscript together, he was adamant that the collection retain its tenderness.

My mom says that when I was a baby meeting my grandparents for the first time, my grandma took one look at me and said, “(s)he’s right there!” What she meant by that, of course, is that at less than a year old, my personality was fully formed; you could see it on my face. That’s how I write poems: I’m right there (or, as my mom would say, I’m “all in”). When I’m sad, it’s the end of the world. When I’m in love, no one else has ever felt such ardor (I’m kidding as I write this!). But in all seriousness, I do feel things very strongly, so if I’m any kind of poet at all, I wholeheartedly embrace the title of “love poet.”

PASTORAL #1

The cows are misting
silent, burrowed in white
softness & sky-down.

I’m driving & you are
golden, counting seconds
against the digital

clock of our old car
(three accidents later,
motor still warm, dash

dented with a yellow
bruise). Do you ever
wish we weren’t here?

We are fixtures of other-
ness, one brown cow
among the spotted herd.

Rural eyes & cardinal 
sins, they are our gate-
keepers, as if we need

one reason to leave.
I want to say I’m used
to this turning, these fists

hovering over my small
face. I’m used to this 
orange scrutiny. But you

are not & I don’t want 
you to know we’re alone,
so let me be your star.

We’ll paint the sky-canvas
splotchy cow colors 
accented with sober love.

Keep me in the dark. Hold
dirty towels, always, stark
neon against the pasture.

The closer to this book is one heck of a powerful statement, kind of like the grand finale at a fireworks show. Unlike other poems in the collection, “Family Histories” makes such huge poetic leaps, from stanza to stanza and even within stanzas. Please comment on the writing process for this dazzling poem.

As its form suggests, “Family Histories” was drafted when I was in a manic episode. Nothing was planned ahead of time. I didn’t sit down and try to write about XYZ trauma, but I had just biked home from a therapy session and gone to my study, which faces the front yard of my wife’s and my two-bedroom apartment. We live in a quiet yet sketchy part of town—there aren’t a lot of college students in our neighborhood, which makes it peaceful, but there also aren’t any streetlights, which means that people can—and do—deal drugs literally under cover of night. Anyway, it was in the late morning and the summer Oklahoma sky was peaceful in a way that didn’t reflect at all what was going on in my head. I don’t have a great sense of time, but “Family Histories” came out all at once in maybe two to three hours. I shared it, quite trepidatiously, with a professor, who guided me in making some minor revisions. And that’s it. The sprawling, spiraling, rhyming lines and leaps in time from margin to margin? That’s what it’s like in my head about 40% of the time.

Please share with our readers a list of 5-10 books you think we should read right now.

1. American Sunrise by Joy Harjo (Norton, 2019)

2. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (Dial Press, 1956)

3. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter (Graywolf Press, 2015)

4. Hard Damage by Aria Aber (University of Nebraska Press, 2019)

5. Hiding in a Thimble by Roseanna Alice Boswell (Haverthorn Pres, 2021)

6. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Vintage, 2012)

7. The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert (Knopf, 1996)

8. The New Testament by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)

9. The Spectral Wilderness by Oliver Bendorf (Kent State University Press, 2015)

10.  True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Emily Skidmore (NYU Press, 2017)

Some Rogue Agent fans are just beginning to explore what making poetry about the body would look like for them. What advice would you give to someone looking for new ways to imagine embodiment, beyond the literally described experience of the body?

You know, this is something a writer asked me just last week, and I gave a response that I worry was incomprehensible, so I’m glad for the chance to try again. I would say, first and foremost, if you’re not sure how to write poetry about the body, read all the poetry you can about it. In his book The Spectral Wilderness, Oliver Bendorf describes gender transition in such a way that is simultaneously lovely and firm.

But I think if someone is feeling shy about it, they should start with research. Is there a part of your body that you don’t know how to name? Do you have an underlying condition or chronic illness? Look it up and find all you can on the Internet, at the library, from a doctor. In my experience, at least, my brain knows when it’s done all the research it can and then needs to shape something with it. Hopefully that something turns into a poem.

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