The Rumpus.net » Emily Rapp

Weekend Rumpus Roundup

Lauren ONeal — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:00:41 +0000

We hope you were so busy taking your mamas out to brunch and showering them with love and appreciation that you simply had no time for The Rumpus this weekend.

We celebrated Mother’s Day with two very different interviews that ended up being the same in many ways.

First, Sara Finnerty talked to her grandmother about love, marriage, and motherhood in a short but powerful mini-interview:

And you know what gets you through the day? The love for your family. When you have a child, you run home. I used to leave work and run to catch the train.

But of course, Mother’s Day can be fraught for some, including those, like Emily Rapp, who have lost their children. Amanda Eyre Ward spoke with Rapp about being a “dragon mother” and a “parent without a future”:

…until his care became more about nursing care than childcare, it wasn’t so different from any other mother’s experience. I loved my baby, and I took him out in the world, and other people loved him, too. He was a little presence on the planet, innocent and good, and that felt blissful.

The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Emily Rapp

Amanda Eyre Ward — Sun, 12 May 2013 13:00:04 +0000

Editor’s Note:

This Mother’s Day, The Rumpus would like to recognize all the women who have lost their children, and the children and adults who have lost their mothers. Interestingly, these categories of existence include many of the writers whose sensibility has shaped The Rumpus’s unique flavor, from its founder Stephen Elliott to others like Cheryl Strayed, Emily Rapp, and Antonia Crane. A day of celebration for many, this Sunday can also count among the most brutal of the year for those to whom it is tinged with memories and loss.

The Sunday Rumpus has published Emily Rapp several times over the past couple of years, as she burst like a dervish into the blogging and online publishing communities, writing passionately through the pain of her son Ronan’s illness. Notably, with typical generosity of spirit, Rapp has also referred at least four writers who subsequently ended up adding their voices to our ongoing conversation. To commemorate this complex holiday, we’re honored to offer this dialogue between Rapp and her close friend from graduate school, the writer Amanda Eyre Ward. —Gina Frangello

***

When Emily’s first son, Ronan, was nine months old, he was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder.

The previous sentence leaves me silent, white-knuckled. What happened next is that Emily began to write The Still Point of the Turning World, a glorious, harrowing memoir about Ronan’s life, and by extension, about her life as his mother.

Ronan died peacefully in February, surrounded by his family, his beloved stuffed animals, and the prayers of loved ones around the world. A few days after his death, I asked Emily is she wanted some busywork, and she said yes. I sent her an exhaustive list of questions, and she answered many of them below.

An aside: I stopped by Emily’s adobe home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, last December. In her sunny living room, we drank tea and talked about love, booze, and motherhood. Ronan sat in his mother’s lap quietly. His toenails were painted with glitter: “A little David Bowie,” said Emily. At one point, she said, “Amanda, do you want to hold him? He’s warm.”

I did, and he was.

***

The Rumpus: You call your memoir a love story. Why?

Emily Rapp: Although I don’t think love is quantitatively measured—in other words, I don’t believe that you “don’t know love until you have a child,” that whole thing—I do believe it is qualitatively different. In other words, it’s a more primal love, a love driven by a need to protect and nurture, and when a parent is unable to do this, the loss is gutting. And yes, it’s a love story of unconditional love. Ronan never expressed “love” in the way we’ve come to understand it, through words or actions or expressions, so in some ways, it’s a story of unrequited love, which I struggled with for a long time. If you love but the love is never known by the other person as the love you bear for them, is that love wasted? I eventually realized that this way of thinking was more about ego than anything else, and that no love is ever wasted; in fact, the most precious love is often the kind that isn’t returned, and that is given freely. And I do believe that great love brings with it the terror and possibility of great loss, and that was certainly true in the case of Ronan, who was slipping away for most of his life (in a very real sense, more than the rest of us are, although of course that’s also true), and is now gone.

Rumpus: You describe the moments after you were told Ronan’s diagnosis with great clarity. As a memoirist, how do you find your way back to the intensity of those moments? Can you do it at will, or do certain times in your life come back on certain days?

Rapp: I will never forget that day. It’s so clear to me—although “clear” might be the way my memory, that strange beast, has twisted and turned it— it feels like a war scene, or the way I’ve heard veterans describe a battle. Time slows down and speeds up, it’s a kind of “world out of time” feeling, and when you feel as though you’ve broken the time/space continuum in that way, you never forget it. It’s like a chip carved off your life, and you can examine it more objectively. My life changed forever and for good that day—a line drawn clearly on the wall, the sand, whatever—and I don’t think I’ll ever have trouble remembering it, although I’ve often wanted to forget it.

Rumpus: You were surprised to find yourself writing after Ronan’s diagnosis. Could you talk about this?

Rapp: I was a wild thing after Ronan’s diagnosis. I was scaring everyone—Ronan’s father, my parents, myself. I remember my mom sitting on the edge of my bed and saying, “Okay, its time to get up now,” and me just screaming and crying and rocking back and forth and trying to hit my head against the wall. I did not think I could live with that level of sadness in my body, and I would look at Ronan and feel like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. And I dreaded the next few years. And I felt horrible guilt. I was feeling, I think, the most extreme human emotions in one go—great love, huge sadness, helplessness, rage, panic, fear—and so of course I couldn’t sleep, or eat, or really do anything for a bit, and I honestly turned to writing because I didn’t know what else to do, and because a friend had gently suggested it.

Believe me, it’s the last thing I expected. I have been, earlier in my life, a lazy writer. I’d spend three hours at the gym to avoid writing, or I’d just find other distractions—reading, doing laundry, talking on the phone, etc. But suddenly I was like a laser beam: I was relentlessly focused, sometimes to the detriment of other things. I had what’s called hypgraphia (there’s a great book about this called The Midnight Disease), and couldn’t stop writing. That went on for almost a year, and ended with a two-week period of exhaustion, some of which I hardly remember at all. After that it calmed down a bit, but it was still very strong, and is quite strong now, although less so, as I’m coming down from the loss of Ronan, and the grief is different, more settled and deep. It is deep sadness without the panic, so I’m able (now) to sit with it more fully. I need less to do with my hands. Also, I know he’s at peace, and that his final moments were as peaceful as they could have been, given the circumstances. And just as he was liberated from this shitty illness, I am liberated by his release. It is better to be dead than be that sick. People don’t like to think about this—they romanticize, I think, this notion of life. But life at all costs is not life, it’s ego-extension. I wanted Ronan to die. His body had failed him, and his unraveling, the labor of his death, was as “easy” as it could have been. But he was ready. It was time.

Rumpus: You asked yourself, “How do you parent without a future?” What answers did you find?

Rapp: Last night, a yoga teacher of mine did a class where she talked about what Ronan had taught her about being fully present in the moment, and I think that was the task of being his parent, although obviously, if you’ve ever tried meditation, you know this is almost impossible to do. For Ronan, it was a way of life. There was no obsession or anger; just moments passing. As a result, there was no inquiry and no growth, so he gave up that part of life to be a kind of Buddha, but he was one hundred percent innocent presence, and that gives rise to interesting reactions in people, and it did so in me. He was wonderful to just be with; holding him, sleeping with him, changing him, walking with him. There was nowhere to go except where we happened to be at that moment.

Rumpus: Why do you describe yourself as a “dragon mother”?

Rapp: In some ways it was a response to the Tiger Mother phenomena, and I also felt like these parents of terminally ill children were being left out of the parenting discussion, and I wanted to give them an animal that would express the great strength and courage I learned from them in these years of Ronan’s illness. Dragons are fierce and protective and loyal, but often misunderstood, and there aren’t many cuddly dragon toys (although I have a few). I wanted to give the parents a voice, a symbol, and it also resonated with me, how huge and loud and fiery I felt, but also how easily slayed by just sitting at the edge of Ronan’s crib and letting all that anger drain away. And dragons are medieval and mysterious, much like Tay-Sachs disease itself.

Rumpus: You write, “Tragic as the situation appeared from the outside, the inside of our lives was often blissful.” Could you elaborate on this?

Rapp: Ronan was just pure joy—before he lost his faculties, he was a bubbly, sweet guy. He did funny things, like laugh when you jumped on the bed and he was lying on it. I used to drive with him to my parents’ and go to the bathroom with him on the front pack, and he thought sitting on my lap in the carrier while I was on the toilet was the most hysterical thing in the world. He loved parties; he’d go to anyone and just sit and be. So until his care became more about nursing care than childcare, it wasn’t so different from any other mother’s experience. I loved my baby, and I took him out in the world, and other people loved him, too. He was a little presence on the planet, innocent and good, and that felt blissful.

Rumpus: You write, “How could I create order from chaos and find underlying patterns of meaning in a situation that, from the outside, looked inviolate and incontrovertibly meaningless?” Did structuring The Still Point of the Turning World help you “create order” and “find underlying patterns”?

Rapp: It totally did, although I have to give Rachel Dewoskin and Tara Ison credit for the structure! I don’t know if I created order, but I did create a shadow of order, or a narrative that was traceable, meaningful, and that felt triumphant in some way. The only pattern I found was one of chaos—that chaos rules. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in that chaotic reality, and also this: that none of us knows anything about anything. Period.

Rumpus: How do you structure a memoir? In some ways, the book is chronological, but each chapter seems organized thematically. Could you write a bit about how you created this beautiful book?

Rapp: I had good editors, smart readers, and finally, the smartest editor in New York who helped create this book. I wanted a chronological structure, but I wanted to maintain thematic elements in each so that the book was not “the story of a dying baby” but the story of all kinds of things—art, philosophy, religion, etc. So that was the idea behind that structure, which took a while to sort out, given that the original mammoth manuscript was a collection of all the essays I’d written on the blog, all of which were designed to stand alone. Like any book, I think, it was a process of rewriting, asking lots of questions, revisiting, and rewriting.

Rumpus: “For Ronan, there was no sense to be made, no change to seek out, no potential to actualize.” Could you elaborate on this?

Rapp: There is the Aristotelian teleological principle that uses the image of an acorn growing into a tree, and that life is about actualizing the growth potential present in that acorn, letting it become something else. Ronan never had a chance to “become” anything except sick, honestly. He never had a chance; from the very beginning, his brain and body were compromised, so that unraveling was kind of like Aristotle’s principle in reverse, which is terrifying, but also liberating. Think of how much we stress about living up to our “potential,” and how it creates anxiety and terror in people; in short, stops them from living their life as fully as they might out of fear and self-loathing. What a liberation to be free of that, but of course Ronan paid the ultimate cost for that freedom.

Rumpus: You write, “There are many horrible things about living with a terminally ill child, but the hardest is the way in which our parenting approach approximates an old archetypal story but without the redemptive ending.” Please elaborate.

Rapp: Ronan’s care was intense. Of course, like any child, there is childcare and work to balance and juggle, but as Ronan’s condition progressed, there were machines to master, up-all-nights with medication and suctioning and oxygen and worry. If he’d been just another sick kid, this kind of vigil and work would feel like it had a positive end goal. But it’s terrible to know that no matter how you try to help your child, his condition will worsen. In the end it was just about making him comfortable, but even that was a full-time job. And then he died. There was no final screen movie moment when he runs off into a field, healed of disease, and the parents look relieved and finally well-rested. There was only loss waiting for me and Ronan’s father at the end of a very arduous journey. Facing that day after day is a physical and emotional challenge.

Rumpus: Could you tell us about Tay-Sachs?

Rapp: It’s the shittiest disease of all time. It is a progressive neurological disorder with no treatment and no cure; essentially, the brain shuts down, and that means that the body shuts down.

Rumpus: You were tested for Tay-Sachs, and the test was negative, is this correct?

Rapp: No mutation was detected in my test, because the standard pre-natal test only tests for nine out of one hundred-plus possible mutations. Mine was not one of the nine.

Rumpus: What has the community of parents dealing with Tay-Sachs meant for you?

Rapp: It has meant everything to me. Honestly, I can’t answer it in any other way.

Rumpus: “When you’ve got a visible disability or if you’re the parent of a disabled child, I quickly learned, your story is up for grabs.” What do you mean “up for grabs”?

Rapp: It means that people forget their manners, disregard your personal boundaries, and ask you all kinds of prurient questions. It’s like being the subject of a freak show. To me, it reveals the ways in which people walk around with a normative “body standard” in their heads, and they impose that on the people they meet. We all do it; I’m not exempting myself. Part of it I think is benign—just general human curiosity, and part of it is prurient and gross, because people often use other people’s experiences of the body as mirrors for their own. Like, “Wow, I’m so glad I’m not you,” which believe it or not, people have said to my face more than once. Or, in the wake of Ronan’s diagnosis, “I would just die.” That one really made me mad. First, it’s rude; second, it’s simply not true. People wouldn’t die, but they cast it in those epic terms in order to pretend as though it won’t happen to them, which is very isolating to the person who is experiencing these terrifying earth- and heart-shattering moments. It’s cruel, and it shows the ways in which people mistake sympathy for empathy.

Rumpus: You write about growing up with a disability in your memoir, Poster Child. How was the experience of writing that memoir different from the experience of writing The Still Point of the Turning World?

Rapp: More felt at stake in the writing of Ronan’s book, and I felt I was (and am) a completely different person, a very different writer. I hemmed and hawed and bitched and moaned when I wrote my first book, and I didn’t have the time or patience or energy for any of that crap when I wrote Still Point.

Rumpus: Do you write fiction as well? How do you think writing fiction differs from writing nonfiction? In what ways are they the same? How about poetry?

Rapp: I write one poem a year, usually in January or February. I love poetry, but I find it so difficult to write well. I do write fiction, and I find it more difficult, but also more liberating. On the one hand, you can make up the story, but you have to make up the story. Nonfiction ties your hands a bit, and just like writing poetry in rhyme, it can force you to make more brutal decisions in terms of word choice, plot, etc.

Rumpus: What do you make of the attempts to become “healed” or “whole”?

Rapp: I don’t think we get there—I think these are false terms, much like “transformation” and “redemption,” which are presented as simple concepts but are actually quite complex and hard to pin down. I think it’s more important to concentrate on trying to be, simply, happy. Once you’ve known deep despair, you feel even more motivated to be as happy as possible. That’s how I feel.

Rumpus: So many strangers know about Ronan. How can they, and those that know you, help? What should someone say to a mother who has lost her child?

Rapp: Say, “That sucks.” Don’t say, “I can’t imagine,” because of course the horror is that everyone can, but to say so feels isolating and cruel.

Rumpus: Why do you call Ronan “the little seal”?

Rapp: His name means little seal in Irish.

Rumpus: What is your favorite book?

Rapp: War and Peace.

Rumpus: What was Ronan’s favorite book?

Rapp: Fishy Tales.

Rumpus: What were Ronan’s favorite stuffed animals?

Rapp: His dragon toy, his stuffed seals, and his stuffed badger. He also liked his stuffed turkey and a small bunny from my friend Julia.

Rumpus: What is on Ronan’s “magic shelf”?

Rapp: Crystals from friends, ornaments, a statue of Ganesh, a little goat statue, small glass seals, rocks from Cape Cod, a few reiki rocks, a postcard from a cathedral in Zurich, and many religious-ish objects from Chimayo in New Mexico.

Rumpus: I know Ronan loved swimming and loud wrapping paper. What else?

Rapp: He loved food, especially cheesecake. He loved to be carried and to be outside, and he loved gospel and jazz music. He loved parties!

Rumpus: What did Ronan smell like?

Rapp: Rice and shampoo. Sleep.

Rumpus: I know what it felt like for me to hold Ronan. What did it feel like for you?

Rapp: It felt like holding the world.

Rumpus: Ronan had the most amazing eyelashes. What other physical attributes of your son brought you joy?

Rapp: I loved his nose, and the green-gold-brown color of his eyes. I also liked the red mark between his eyes, and his tiny hands. I loved the way his hair got curly and wild after a bath and when it was humid. And I loved his big teeth.

Rumpus: What was your favorite hike with Ronan?

Rapp: The Borrego Trail in Santa Fe, because I could still have on the front pack until he was nearly two.

Rumpus: What was it like the night that Ronan died?

Rapp: It was bitter cold, and he was with me, my boyfriend, and my parents. It was as peaceful as death can be, I think, in light of the fact that both birth and death involve a kind of labor, a kind of unraveling. I was glad I got to see his tiny body at peace after it had been through so much.

The Rumpus Book Club Discussion with Emily Rapp

The Rumpus Book Club — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 07:01:56 +0000

The Rumpus Book Club chats with Emily Rapp about The Still Point of the Turning World, the universality of grief, constructing a memoir in real time, and divinity school smack talk.

This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every month The Rumpus Book Club hosts a discussion online with the book club members and the author and we post an edited version online as an interview. To learn how you can become a member of The Rumpus Book Club click here.

This Rumpus Book Club interview was edited by Rebecca Rubenstein.

***

Brian S: So it’s the top of the hour—who wants to dive in with the first question?

Charlotte: Hi Emily! How are you doing?

Emily Rapp: Good! Hi! I mean, goodish.

Noah: How do you think the book would’ve been different if you’d written it after Ronan’s passing?

Emily Rapp: I think it would have had less urgency, because I was writing it facing an inevitable end, and I very much wanted the book to be about Ronan’s life, about what it meant to me, and I wanted him to be alive in the book when I looked at it years later.

Noah: That’s lovely. Have you read it again since it came out?

Emily Rapp: I have not read the book. It’s very hard for me to read it, in fact. I mean, since it came out. I’ve obviously read it.

Jack W.: One particular part that really resonated with me is when you wrote, “One thing I knew: Ronan would not, like Frankenstein’s monster, be sitting out in the middle of a dark forest, lonely, perched on a log and wishing somebody loved him. Not my boy.”

Emily Rapp: Thanks, Jack. That story was such a touchstone for me—this idea of a “wrongly made” man being cast out. It used to make me physically ill thinking about poor Frankie.

Anonymous Guest: Has any mom, whose son has been diagnosed, read the book? Or its first draft?

Emily Rapp: Yes, several moms read advance copies and sections of early drafts.

Anonymous Guest: I’m glad they got the chance to read something that was written by someone who went through the same things they did. What did they have to say about it?

Emily Rapp: The other moms were happy to have their story told, although obviously everyone’s story is different.

Charlotte: Did writing the book make you stronger while facing it all?

Emily Rapp: I wouldn’t say stronger. I would say it gave me a way to focus all my despair, rage, sadness—all of it. Tremendous focus. And putting words down and sending them out into the world was a nice antidote to wailing and hitting my head against the wall and being hysterical.

Brian S: How long ago did you finish the principal manuscript for the book, I mean before you did serious editing and proofing and all?

Emily Rapp: I finished the first draft of the book in November 2011, and then edited it for many, many months. Many agonizing months.

Brian S: Are there plans for you to do a book tour? Or is everything on hold right now?

Emily Rapp: No, there are plans. Book tour [started] March 6th.

Brian S: I really enjoyed the way you wove in other writers, quoting from them and then riffing off of them into your story. How did you come to that decision?

Emily Rapp: It happened naturally. Part of being a writer is being a reader, and the wisdom from other writers helped me hone my own ideas.

Brian S: So in a sense, this book is also a literary bio of you? You’re sort of giving us a glimpse into who you read and how they’ve affected you over your lifetime?

Emily Rapp: Yes.

Rebecca: This is tangentially related to an earlier question, but: what do you think this book would’ve been like if you’d waited to write it, say, twenty years afterward like Cheryl Strayed did with Wild? What would be different? What would be the same?

Emily Rapp: I think the grief would still be very much alive, but it would be qualitatively different if I had waited twenty years. Writing the book in the midst of the wild grief was an experience that was incredibly cathartic, and I hope I never have a similar experience again. It was tiring—exhausting, really—but absolutely necessary for me to survive the slow fade of Ronan’s life.

Rebecca: I totally understand that. I’ve been writing through a lot of pain in dealing with my father, and I always hear to have distance, but for me it’s cathartic and raw to write right now. I appreciate that about your memoir: it’s very raw. And I mean “raw” in a good way.

Emily Rapp: I think “raw” is a good term, but I will also say that I edited a lot, and I had a great editor.

Rebecca: Oh no, please don’t misunderstand: I know a lot of work went into it—a lot of revision. This is a beautiful, well-written, well-edited work. I just mean “raw” as in not numb, not dispassionate, not watered down. Strong.

Noah: Agreed. I love the anger that is present in it. You really beautifully rail against the obnoxious clichés associated with someone having a terminal disease.

Emily Rapp: I’m super angry. I’m still angry! I mean, not violently so, but yes, it’s hard to hear those clichéd statements that sound like someone knitted them on a napkin, and you’re holding your dying child in the marsupial pack at Trader Joe’s.

Noah: What do you do with that anger now?

Emily Rapp: I run. And do cross-fit. I abuse exercise machines.

Noah: Are you writing about Ronan’s passing now?

Emily Rapp: I am writing some about him, but not tons. He died February 15th, and I’ve been consumed with plans for his memorial, sorting through feelings, etc.

David B.: I thought your book was a guide for living.

Emily Rapp: Thanks, David. I learned so much about what it means to live a big, beautiful life from a child who never had the opportunity to make any choices in his own.

Anonymous Guest: Having followed your blog, I was surprised to find the book was placed in the past (past perfect?) tense. It felt like less of a chronicle, more of a looking-back. How was that editorial decision made?

Emily Rapp: I wrote the book in past tense because it already had such an urgent, breathless quality. It was too overwhelming in present tense in book form.

Noah: What made you want to end the book with the description of the dream sequence?

Emily Rapp: I wanted to end with a vision that had come to me often as a comfort. Something that paid homage to the idea of an afterlife without expressing any ardent belief in one, which I don’t have.

Brian S: When the club members first got the book, a number of us noted that we had a hard time reading in large chunks, myself included, because we had similar stories in our lives. My nephew died of SMA seven years ago, and for the first six to seven chapters, at least, whenever I saw Ronan, I saw my nephew as well. And I’m glad I kept going, because it reiterated a lot of what I felt, even from a distance, watching my nephew.

Emily Rapp: That’s interesting, and makes sense. It just goes to show that everyone has an experience of loss that guts them, changes them, whether it’s their own child, or a close friend’s child, or a parent, or a partner, or a friend.

Melissa: Yes, it was hard for me to reconcile the reader in me with the mother in me. I was dazzled by your beautiful way of storytelling, but I have to say it took everything in me to be able to read it. I cried pretty much the whole time.

Emily Rapp: I cried pretty much the whole time I wrote it, so I totally relate to that.

Melissa: But I will say that I truly feel like I will be a better parent because of you. And Ronan. So thank you.

Emily Rapp: Thanks, Melissa. Ronan was an incredible teacher in his way.

Noah: Surprisingly, and not to say I didn’t find it a sad experience, but the first time I cried was the very last paragraph of the Acknowledgements when you talked about your husband. And maybe it was because I could relate easier to Rick because he’s a male character, but every section with him was so hard for me.

Emily Rapp: Many people have said that same thing to me.

Noah: How did you decide what moments featuring your husband ended up in the book?

Emily Rapp: I looked at the narrative and figured out which moments were most salient. In terms of plot, because nonfiction also must have a plot!

Anonymous Guest: About this incredibly sad, truly heartbreaking experience you are going through now: is it similar to what you imagined (anticipated), or is it completely different? I’m talking about Ronan’s passing. You wrote a lot about this moment in the book—how you thought it would be, how much you feared it, dreaded it—and I wonder if any of those feelings were…accurate? (Such a bad word, but I can’t think of any other.) Could you have felt, back then, what you are feeling now?

Emily Rapp: I couldn’t have predicted how I felt after his passing. I felt relief that he was no longer suffering, and a deep fear of living the rest of my life never seeing him again.

Rebecca: What I really appreciated throughout the book was that you had this strong grief, this bullshit thing that was happening to Ronan, but you very much didn’t make your grief to be worse than anyone else’s. It always seems so empowering to be able to grieve but not make your grief worse than anyone else’s. And also made us relate more.

Emily Rapp: There is no grief ladder, truly, I believe this. Sadness is not qualitative, you know? It’s flat and intense and also unique to everyone.

Rebecca: I think that’s something I had to get older to learn—that grief wasn’t a ladder. I really appreciated that you wrote that.

Brian S: Yes, that there’s no hierarchy of pain.

Emily Rapp: Thanks. It took me a while, too.

Deborah: Totally loved your thoughts about the grief ladder. I lost a few young family members, including my sister, and found it so challenging not to feel, well, more hard done by, than someone facing another loss.

Rebecca: I also really liked that you were able to incorporate C.S. Lewis’s grief into your work even though you talk about not really believing in a god/afterlife the same as he does. Your vision was very inclusive of religion without buying into all of it.

Emily Rapp: I love that weird book Lewis wrote. It’s so wise and gripping, and it wrangles with issues without coming up with “answers,” which are always bunk.

David B: I read that C.S. Lewis book when my mother died. It was a help.

Willie: Jumping off of that: I found it very interesting when you wrote about C.S. Lewis’s belief that “it is impossible to truly care about the sorrows of the world until they are own,” while simultaneously reading this wonderful book about sorrows that were just that—not my own. Did that influence the way you approached writing the book?

Emily Rapp: I don’t know. It didn’t influence the way I wrote the book, but I certainly think that’s a wise and true statement.

Brian S: I identified a lot with your moments as a teenager in that Evangelical world. I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness (stayed one until my mid-twenties), but can so relate to those questions about healing and such. How long were you in that world, and how did you wind up leaving it behind?

Emily Rapp: I was in it to make friends, for about three months, and then I just couldn’t take it anymore. I love the study of religion, but I’ve never been so into the practice of it.

Brian S: Ha! I feel that way now.

Anonymous Guest: Were you ever in trouble with your parents (your father) for not practicing it?

Emily Rapp: No, my dad is a very cool dude.

Melissa: It must have been a very, very difficult task to edit this book. To have to guide you in how to tell this intensely personal story.

Emily Rapp: I actually welcomed my editor’s thoughts because she’s a genius and she totally got what I was doing. We had a weird mind-meld.

Anonymous Guest: Which one was harder, writing it or editing it?

Emily Rapp: Writing. Absolutely.

Rebecca: What do you feel like your narrative arc is? It’s not a Freitag’s pyramid, I think. But maybe more like a snake? What was your vision of plot?

Emily Rapp: I wanted the book to have a nine month arc, for obvious reasons, and I wanted people to see Ronan and to witness how my moments with him transformed me, and others as well.

David B: I’m reading your first book now and loving it.

Emily Rapp: Thanks, David.

David B: Like Brian, I enjoyed the authors you mentioned who gave you inspiration.

Charlotte: I wrote down all the writers you mentioned and I am inspired to re-read or try somebody new…grew up in Sweden. Loved the way you incorporated them all.

Emily Rapp: Writers must read! This is essential. You can’t write well if you don’t read a ton. I believe that.

Brian S: Who are you reading lately?

Emily Rapp: I’m reading a book of stories by my friend Betsy Brandt. And We the Animals by Justin Torres.

Deborah: I love We the Animals! I read it right after your book. Wonderful together.

Emily Rapp: It’s a great, slim, deliciously brilliant book.

Noah: Do you still read philosophy, Emily?

Emily Rapp: I do in spurts. I read philosophy when I’m blocked as a writer, because it’s like doing gymnastics with your brain. Loosens stuff up.

Anonymous Guest: I cried a lot when I read that on the day Ronan was diagnosed, you called your parents every ten minutes for seven hours until they finally got to your place. It is the same thing, the first thing I would have done. I’m glad they were there for you.

Emily Rapp: They were very present with me throughout this journey.

Noah: Has your husband read the book?

Emily Rapp: I’m not sure. Rick and I are no longer married, and I think his experience is very private to him. He was a wonderful father to Ronan.

Noah: It’s interesting to be asking questions about a memoir, because it makes me, at least, feel like I know you on a more personal level than I actually do. I keep writing questions and then deleting them because they seem intrusive.

Deborah: Me too, Noah.

Willie: I agree Noah—and on the other end, nerdy, writerly questions feel a bit cold.

Brian S: That’s something the book also did for me—helped me really understand why the things we say are empty. I mean, I’d always known they felt like they weren’t enough, but I get why now.

Emily Rapp: I think that’s part of writing memoir—I feel the same way when I read other memoirs. I think part of this is that when you read a book, the person is frozen in time, but in reality, they’re a person who is moving on with their life, changing, growing, moving along in the time-space continuum. It’s like watching a movie and then seeing the celebrity on a talk show, and feeling weirded out that their hair is fourteen inches longer or something. Lots of distance between the process and the person.

Ana: One part that interested me was a bit where you talked about other people’s invasive stare and categorization of the lady on the the plane as a freak—the “big reveal” of our otherness, or our wounds. You’ve put so much out there, on the page. Do you feel a bit naked—or a bit lighter—when the knowledge precedes you? Or is it entirely different?

Emily Rapp: I do have a lot out there, but it’s controlled, edited and polished. Memoirists are actually private. If someone asks me, “What was it like to have a dying child?” I can hand them the book, but those are the things I have decided to share. Other things will stay private.

Noah: Have you done other publicity events since Ronan passed?

Emily Rapp: No. I’m in the process of moving house, believe it or not. So I’ve been going to Goodwill and packing boxes of shoes.

Noah: How are you feeling about the book tour?

Emily Rapp: I want to share this book with the world. I’m very motivated to do that, because Ronan was such a huge teacher for me, and as I’ve said, for others. I will say that the last time I was on book tour, someone came to a reading and thought I was the cookbook author. So I hope that doesn’t happen again, since I can hardly pour milk over cereal in an efficient way.

Brian S: Ha!

Jack W.: Has your writing method changed in the past few years? Ie the feverish writing you mention from your time at Yaddo when you were pregnant? Are the things you plan on writing henceforth altered?

Emily Rapp: My writing method has changed a lot. I used to whine and groan a lot about the writing process, and now I have no time or space for that. I write with intention, and I don’t have patience for my neurosis. It’s a relief.

Melissa: At what point did you choose the title, and why? It’s perfect, by the way. I love Eliot.

Emily Rapp: My editor helped with the title! I wanted Dear Dr. Frankenstein, but we ended up thinking that it didn’t say enough about what the book is about.

Melissa: Would you consider selling the rights for a film, if approached about it?

Emily Rapp: I don’t know, Melissa. That had never even crossed my mind.

Rebecca: I have questions relating to this being a memoir. What do you say when someone says they can’t approach this memoir critically because it’s about your life? I mean, there’s that famous V.S. Pritchett quote, “It’s all in the art. You get no credit for living.” Do you give someone a pass for saying that? Do you welcome the criticism, given that it’s about this book that is so very personal and yet so polished.

Emily Rapp: I welcome criticism as much as any writer, because I’ve made what I consider to be a piece of art. I don’t think you get credit for living, but i do think you should want to be, as a writer, part of trying to make meaning from chaos.

Rebecca: I totally understand that. I write creative nonfiction, and I really dislike when someone says that about memoir—that they can’t pull it apart because it’s someone’s life.

Emily Rapp: It’s a story, pure and simple, in my mind. If people don’t like the way it’s told, that’s fair. If they don’t like the person or the subject matter, that’s not criticism, it’s more of a kneejerk opinion. In my opinion.

Noah: Do you think you’ll continue writing as a memoirist? Is there a novel or a book of short stories kicking around in there?

Emily Rapp: I’m working on a novel.

Noah: Why the decision to jump from memoir to novel?

Emily Rapp: I started as a fiction writer, in fact, and I’m very jazzed about this book. And it’s a very different experience from memoir writing, and as you know, writers crave novelty!

Brian S: So you’re saying after the novel, a book of poems?

Emily Rapp: I wish. I love poetry, but no dice, I think. I write one semi-decent poem once a year, usually in January or February. That’s all I’ve got.

Rebecca: Have you heard about Poetry Lent? Heather Sellers does it every year, to give out instead of take away. I tried it. It’s…hard.

Emily Rapp: Ooh—no. I will look that up!

Rebecca: The idea is just to write a poem every day. It’s on the Brevity blog.

Brian S: Oh, like the poem-a-day thing for National Poetry Month.

Rebecca: Apparently she said it’s what started a piece she got published in Brevity.

Emily Rapp: Interesting. I’ve done Tony Hoagland’s “Five Powers of Poetry” class, which was fantastic. Poetry boot camp.

Rebecca: Ooh. I’ll have to look that one up and do it.

Brian S: Are you still teaching in Santa Fe?

Emily Rapp: I’m on leave this term, but yes, I’m still at Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

Noah: Did your separation from Rick affect his presence in the book at all?

Emily Rapp: Not really. I think he is very present as a father to Ronan in the book. Ultimately, though, I think the book is about my experience, and because every grief experience is different, and because it’s not a book about our marriage, his presence is mitigated by those factors. I mean his narrative presence, to be clear.

Noah: I actually really appreciated that about the book, it had a sort of cast of characters, but the book was your story. You didn’t try to explain how other people grieved.

Emily Rapp: Grief is so personal, and yet everyone will experience it. Strange.

Noah: It’s always amazing to me that grief is really something that we will all face in our lives and when we’re growing up, learning up on wars and algebra, no one ever thinks to do some general description of the generic grieving process.

Emily Rapp: I agree. We need a lesson in grief. My friend Gareth wrote a guest blog for me about that very thing.

Noah: Just like a, “Heads up, this is going to happen and it’s going to be really, really hard.”

Emily Rapp: Exactly.

Rebecca: I used to teach at my university as a grad student, and turning thirty was really hard for me—all sorts of awful things happening, not even related to my age—and my students would say, “Something has happened to you.” And I wanted to tell them that things would change as they got older, that the hurts would pile up, that they would really grieve. But I didn’t know how.

Deborah: Nothing prepares one.

Brian S: Because so much of what we do get about grief is, as you put it, ultimately empty.

Emily Rapp: Yes, true. People are so afraid of death. If we were less death-phobic, we’d know how to “do” grief better, I think. Or differently, at the very least.

Noah: Yes! I loved, loved your idea about a Day of Mourning.

Brian S: Yes! Although I noticed that when you described the Day of Mourning cards, you didn’t have birds on them. Fucking birds.

Noah: Death is a terrible thing, but an inevitable thing, so why not make it part of our existence?

Emily Rapp: We have a kind of Day of Mourning at the Tay-Sachs family conference. Very powerful.

Willie: Well, in terms of being death-phobic, that gets back to the Montaigne quote that learning how to live is about learning how to die.

Melissa: Well, and on another note, I wish someone would tell you how fucking judgmental other mothers can be when you have a child who is late on milestones.

Brian S: How judgmental other parents can be, period.

Emily Rapp: Seriously. The “smug mother” syndrome. Unlike button. Children are people, not projects. Some parents don’t realize this sometimes. It makes me sad for everyone involved.

Melissa: It’s awful. It’s something I never expected. I imagined I would connect so easily with other mothers. Not so. A-holes.

Rebecca: I really liked how much you talked about how goal-oriented parents are, how much of parenting is about the future and future accomplishments. It made me re-think parenting, if I ever were to become a parent. I want to put the book in the hands of every parent I know.

Emily Rapp: Yes. None of us knows what the future holds. To think that we do is just, well, wrong. And I think it blocks us from fully living and making choices that make us (and hopefully others) happy. I’ve been to such a sad place, such a despairing place, that I feel like my gift to Ronan is to live a big, beautiful life. For him, because of him, in honor of him.

Deborah: You will, Emily.

Brian S: And when you spend your life, as I did until my mid-twenties, planning for a future existence beyond this one, it cripples your ability to live in this one.

Emily Rapp: Yes, no more future existence. I could log off this chat and get hit by a car. Anything can happen. That’s a terrifying thought, as well as a liberating reality. I think.

Brian S: I think the piece of knowledge that really did it for me was learning about the future death of the universe. No matter how immortal I could potentially make myself, eventually this is all going to end.

Emily Rapp: And maybe the end is the beginning? Nobody knows. I am, however, planning to go have a nice Italian dinner with one of my closest friends.

Brian S: Mmmm. Italian.

Jack W.: Mmmmm. Entropy.

Emily Rapp: Nothing better than butter and oil and bread. And wine. All on one table.

Donna: Did you realize at some point the blog was really a book, or was it all just writing, writing, writing? It seems like there would be a major difference between writing for a small community of friends and a manuscript, but your blog was like few others.

Emily Rapp: My friends told me I was writing a book. I was writing those blog posts because it was a way of staying alive and connected and I couldn’t always talk to people on the phone.

Rebecca: I’m glad you listened to your friends.

Noah: Agreed. I also loved your thoughts on good and bad luck.

Brian S: Yes! Luck has long seemed to me as a substitute for being blessed (or not), and I was glad to see you pair them.

Emily Rapp: Thanks. I think luck is such a dubious term. I go around and around in my head about that one.

Noah: Yeah, luck is like religion for us atheists.

Emily Rapp: I don’t like the idea of being “blessed,” either. I think it’s great to be grateful and happy about certain things in your life, but who is doing the blessing? We use it a lot in secular culture, when it’s actually a very religious term.

Brian S: Yeah. I mean it’s good to acknowledge that there are things that just happen, good and bad, which are out of your control. You wind up like a character in an Ayn Rand novel if you believe chance has nothing to do with outcomes.

Emily Rapp: Think of it this way: Ronan was horribly unlucky because he hardly had a chance to live before he died, and he experienced suffering. On the other hand, we’re all going to die, and he was completely and wonderfully and fiercely loved. So there you go.

Rebecca: Very true. That was a very powerful thing to think about in the beginning of your book.

Emily Rapp: Although one can study religion and not be religious. Like, at all.

Noah: What draws you to the study of religion?

Emily Rapp: Religion is a nice blend of history, philosophy and literature. All of my favorite nerdbag things.

Rebecca: One of my best friends went to Vanderbilt’s Divinity School and was surrounded by atheists, Mormons, and very devout Christians. They instructed everyone there to call God “Her.”

Brian S: Really? Vanderbilt?

Rebecca: Yep.

Brian S: That place just rose in my estimation.

Melissa: My best friend’s mom was on her way to an A.A. meeting and was going to make them change the Our Father to Our Mother, but a bird came crashing into her windshield before she got there. True story.

Emily Rapp: Wow.

Rebecca: I once sat next to a man on a plane who was Christian. I told him my best friend was going to Vanderbilt Divinity School, and he narrowed his eyes and told me that it did “bad things” to Christians.

Emily Rapp: Ooh!

Noah: Wow.

Emily Rapp: Divinity school gossip!

Rebecca: Ha!

Brian S: Something I had no idea even existed.

Emily Rapp: Indeed.

Rebecca: I was wondering if Harvard was similar in some ways?

Emily Rapp: Harvard was. People were very thoughtful and interesting there.

Willie: Now let’s just wait for a divinity school to refer to God as “phe.”

Brian S: What does divinity school smack talk sound like?

Emily Rapp: Hmmm. Div school smack. Well, we used to covet the cafeteria at the Business School. Sinful!

Brian S: “You can’t even read Aramaic!”

Emily Rapp: “Jesus spoke Coptic! For reals!”

Brian S: Yes!

Emily Rapp: I was in a cubicle most of the time, attempting to read Aramaic. Or something like that.

Brian S: I learned the Greek alphabet when I was an undergrad—part of a fraternity thing. That’s as far as I go.

Noah: Brian, I’m proud that you just fessed up to fraternity life. How’s the party scene at divinity school?

Emily Rapp: Lots of beer. True story.

Brian S: As well there should be.

Rebecca: “Those Div School kids know how to party!”

Willie: Party scene in the Bible > party scene in div school.

Emily Rapp: It’s hard to study God. One needs a bit of relaxation at the end of the day.

Brian S: And in the beginning, I might think.

Rebecca: I would’ve thought wine for div school.

Emily Rapp: Or just water. Spiked water. That converts to wine with very deep thinking.

***

Weekend Rumpus Roundup

Lauren ONeal — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:00:57 +0000

Here’s what happened on The Rumpus this weekend:

We welcome our newest comics contributor, Yumi Sakugawa! She’s been doing Saturday Rumpus comics for several weeks, but now they’re officially part of a series called Yumi and Everyone We Know. Here is this Saturday’s.

As we posted on Friday, Emily Rapp just lost her two-year-old son Ronan to Tay-Sachs disease. Her friend Jennifer Pastiloff has written an essay in honor of Emily and Ronan. Here’s a tiny piece of the shining, heartbreaking whole:

My friend Robert held him for an hour yesterday. I asked him what it was like. Everything, he said. It was everything.

The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Getting Made (in honor of Ronan Louis and Emily Rapp)

Jennifer Pastiloff — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 14:00:34 +0000

This time a year ago I was leaving Mexico.

I was on a boat. I was on a boat leaving Mexico and if I knew that it was the last time I would be seeing my friend Steve Bridges I would’ve asked the boat to turn around and I would have gone back and back and back farther. All the way if I could where nothing was blinding and everything was dark and still in the way things are right before they go bad.

A year ago I sat on a plane, like I am as I write this, and I ordered a glass of wine as I looked through my photos of the retreat and I laughed at the videos of Steve and thought How I love this man. How I love this man.

A year ago I came back from Mexico and laid on my sofa feeling pancake flat and Steve texted me I am laying on my friend’s couch and I can’t stop thinking about our trip. I wish we were back there. Wow. I wrote back me too and in my pancake way I stood up and put on shoes to go teach my yoga class but I knew something had shifted, something was gone, and maybe that was why I felt flat or maybe it was natural after a trip like that to feel so much I want to be back. To feel it so much in your bones that they won’t even carry you. They turn you into a pancake. Pancake yoga teacher. Nothing. Flat. Pancake person.

When he died, I texted him I want to be back. I want to be back even though I knew he was dead.

We made videos the night before we left Mexico. Like little time bombs with messages on them that we planned to watch in a year’s time. When it was Steve’s turn he looked into the camera and said, That was fun. Let’s do it again next year. Hell, let’s do it again next month.

He died within the month.

This morning I got the text that I had been waiting for, the one I knew would come today or tomorrow or yesterday. Ronan died. One of my best friends, the beloved writer Emily Rapp, lost her two year old son this morning as I zipped up my suitcase to head for the airport for my Hawaii yoga retreat. His suffering is over she wrote. His short and remarkable life she wrote. I am numb she texted me privately.

I am numb too. I am on a flight to Maui and I feel nothing. I am hungry. I am not hungry. I am sad. Am I sad? I feel nothing. Where does the pain go? It’s floating up here on the airplane and I am sure will make its way up to my seat if we don’t crash. What happened? How does a mind process this? (I will have the cheese omelette and not the cereal, please.) Ronan died and it’s for the best say the very best intentioned platitudes. My friend Robert held him for an hour yesterday. I asked him what it was like. Everything, he said. It was everything.

What’s it like to hold a dying baby for one hour? One hour in a short life is like ten years in a normal life span. (What is a normal life span?) What’s it like to hold a dying baby for ten years? He got to feel his last little oomphs right there in his arms (imagine that!) and hold his small fingers (maybe he intertwined them in his own?). He got to brush a few hairs from his eyes and pass him back to his grandparents or his mom and he got to feel a life right there in his arms which would disappear in less than 24 hours into That’s it and It’s over but he got to hold that and stop time for ten years because in a dying baby’s life one hour is equal to ten years. He got to do that and I am glad for that. I love him for that. For being there for Emily and Ronan when I couldn’t.

It makes you want to stop lying.

Why lie when this can happen? When a person can be born and then just like that It’s Over, It’s done. He’s gone.

Why tell untruths as if people care?

I keep having this recurring dream where I am driving and the brakes don’t work. The other night I had it again. I was driving in Philadelphia, over the Benjamin Franklin bridge. The brakes wouldn’t work. I tried pressing my foot into the brake and it only accelerated the car which wasn’t even my car. I swerved in and out of lanes so I wouldn’t hit anyone. It was all my untruths rushing at me. In the dream I somehow made it to safety and pulled out a paper where I had put a big X through a box that said “Brakes.”

I had shut them off myself.

The greatest lie that was ever told was that you are safe. It’s the lie I still want someone to tell me though. (Say it to me?)

Say it to me.

Other lies have been both monumental and petty but with the news of a baby’s death comes a yearning for honesty. There is nothing else. I love you to all the people I love. I don’t care to all the things I don’t care about, and there are as many as the things I do care about. I am happy. I am not happy. All of it. Truths and lies and some half and half.

Once, on a road trip, there was this deer along Route 70, just outside Cody, Wyoming. His eyes the color of headlights. He recognized me immediately. (He was no stranger to regret and he spotted mine immediately ). And with his four-chambered stomach and eyes on the sides of his head, I knew his type too. The cautious, the time-takers, the digesters.

Unlike him: I am impulsive as a flood.

But we knew each other, me and that deer. For the ten years or two seconds he stood there in the road in front of our car.

A basic law of the universe: the implications of what’s been said always mean more than what actually has been said. My deer understood this algebra, this economy of language and therefore didn’t say much. Me: I spit it out as I feel it when and if I feel it. Unlike my deer, I do not contemplate my cud.

I love you!

The lies I have told have mainly been to myself but others have been to save face.

There is no more of that. Do you get what I am saying? It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks because once you have held Ronan in your arms for ten years or one hour you see that what is important is the life we make, right here and now. You may not have been the one holding him in your arms for ten years but you get the metaphor, you get the as if. You can almost smell Ronan in his baby and old man smell. The life you make here and now. Not the lies or the I dropped out of college because I was half dead and freezing but I will lie about it so you don’t judge me because no one cares. It does not matter. It’s the life you make here and now because after you get the text that he dies you realize that all you ever had were the moments of holding him, the minutes with Steve in Mexico, the half-seconds with people you love. I don’t know how fast it feels at the end, but my guess is that it feels like ten years. Or maybe 6 months. Maybe less or more. But it won’t feel like much. It will feel like all you had were breaths and moments and a few snapshots with the sun in your eyes like that. You will squint to remember the way the light felt in your eyes, to recreate that and everything else that was blinding and bright and yours.

I love you. The words alive like velvet antlers. Words made of bone. They need a way out! I must speak them. I must tell no more lies. The life that you make here and now. Here and now.

Words: make, here, now, love. Remember them.

The old deer had made it through once more, one more near miss across an ocean of cars, a scuffle of rain, and a sky full of mistakes. He’d found a pair of eyes (mine!) to lock into before going back into the world, alone and foraging.

It makes you want to stop lying, to climb onto the wing of the plane and hang there if you knew you could and sob and swing and fall into clouds like you would if you were a cartoon and could always be safe in a cartoon world. You could sleep on a nimbus cloud and wake up and ten years will be ten years rather than an hour. It makes you want to stop lying and run into the arms of all your beloveds (you’re lucky if you have even a handful) and tell them to keep you there. Hang on to me, tight like this. Tight like this. Keep me here. It makes you want to admit that lying is worthless and dirty and that nothing matters, not really anyway, so might as well buck up and say I love you or I don’t love you or I am so broken or I wish you didn’t die or Yeah, I get that your spirit is with me forever but God damn it I want your body. Forget the spirit! I will trade it for your body and smell and fingers. It makes you want to forget everything and remember everything with equal measure. It makes you want to cry for days and beg the gods or the scientists or luck to leave you alone and leave everyone alone that you love. It makes you want to live like you were meant to all along even in the moments of self-hatred. It makes you all these things.

It makes you.

Condolences

Brian Spears — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:43:29 +0000

It was with great sadness that we heard the news this morning of the passing of Emily Rapp’s son Ronan. Ronan suffered from Tay-Sachs, a genetic disease caused by the absence of a vital enzyme called Hex-A, which causes cells to become damaged, resulting in progressive neurological disorders. Rapp’s most recent book (and our Rumpus Book Club selection for this month), The Still Point of the Turning World, takes the reader through this experience, through what Cheryl Strayed described as “the way a woman loves a boy who will soon die.”

Emily has been a part of The Rumpus for a while now, having written for us three times over the last year, and we share her loss.

Emily Rapp posted the following on her Facebook page this morning: “In lieu of flowers or cards, please make a donation to the NTSAD – www.ntsad.org — in honor of Ronan as well as all the other children and their parents who have suffered from and continue to live with this disease. Thanks.”

We send you all our love, Emily.

A Rumpus Book Clubs Update

Brian Spears — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:30:23 +0000

The Book Clubs are rocking right now with this month’s selections, George Saunders’s Tenth of December and Camille Guthrie’s Articulated Lair, but there’s some great stuff on the horizon.

We’re pleased to announce that our February selection for the Rumpus Book Club is Emily Rapp’s The Still Point of the Turning World. Publishers Weekly had this to say about it.

Her elegant, restrained work flows with reflections and excerpts from writers and poets like Mary Shelley, Pablo Neruda, and Sylvia Plath, as well as supporters who helped her during the difficult unraveling of her son’s condition. Writing about Ronan allowed her to claim the sorrow and truly look at her son the way he was. Her narrative does not follow Ronan as far as his death, but gleans lessons from Buddhism and elsewhere in order that Rapp could “walk through this fire without being consumed by it.”

The Poetry Book Club will be reading Kate Greenstreet’s Young Tambling, which Greenstreet describes as “an experimental memoir.” The Ahsahta Press website says this about Young Tambling:

Greenstreet does not dabble in teleological platitudes: the lives crosscutting these poems are not singular but plural and sublime, full of sacrifice and empathy for the lost. In Young Tambling, a life’s meaning is born of its poet’s song, and a memory cannot reveal its truth until it finds its ballad.

We’re also excited to announce that our March selection for the Book Club will be Matthew Spektor’s American Dream Machine, out from Tin House on April 9 (that’s right–members get the book a month before anyone else does). And our Poetry Book Club selection will be Lynn Xu’s Debts and Lessons, out from Omnidawn Books April 1.

In other book club news, T Cooper, author of November selection Real Man Adventures is on tour right now. He’s in Nashville tomorrow and Asheville on Saturday with special guests Peg Hambright (at both shows) and Clay Aiken in Asheville. Check the website for future dates in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Coldfront Mag is currently listing their 40 best books of poetry from 2013. They’ve only released numbers 21-40 so far, but it’s nice to see Rumpus Poetry Book Club selectee The Ground by Rowan Ricardo Phillips come in at number 33. We expect to see other books we’ve read appear in the top 20.

Why wouldn’t you want to be a member of one or both of these book clubs? Click here to join.

Weekend Rumpus Roundup

Lauren ONeal — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000

If you were away from your computer this weekend, here’s what you missed at the Rumpus.

Remember when we blogged about the responses Emily Rapp gets when writing about her terminally ill son? Here’s some of that writing, an emotional steamroller of an essay titled “Dirty or Clean?”

I was “connecting” with people, sure, but it was not intimate and it did not fuel or nurture me at a time when I was already running on emotional reserves I didn’t even know I had until they were tapped out. I felt like an arrow of sheer desire, flying through the air in a small town and emblazoned with this unfortunate tag line: “Newly single mother of a dying baby.” Not exactly the description of somebody’s dream girl. And I didn’t care. I wanted to fuck and be fucked. I felt like I had a t-shirt that read TRAGEDY stenciled across it in rhinestones; I was bedazzled by bad luck.

Also, if you couldn’t make it to our Kickstarter party in New York, just watch this video montage and pretend you were there. (Then make plans to go to our LA Kickstarter party this Friday.)

Dirty or Clean?

Emily Rapp — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 14:00:22 +0000

Desire is not simple. – Anne Carson

(For Juliana Jones-Munson)

On my dishwasher is a magnet; one side reads DIRTY and the other reads CLEAN. I flip it around each time I load or unload the dishes, and it creates a weird sense of satisfaction in me; this notion that something can be so easily turned around, every day, that in such a simple, steady habit there exists an important reminder of the little mundane demands of life: you eat, you load the washer, you empty it, you flip the magnet. Life goes on, no matter how difficult it might be.

And each day when I flip this magnet around, I think of boundaries and how they’re marked, how they shift and morph; how they’ve changed so deeply for me during the process of grief; I think especially of how my attitudes about intimacy and sex are so different than they were even a year ago. In other words, I’ve become a bit of a pervert, meaning that I have turned away, in some sense, from what I was taught, in my Protestant upbringing, was the “right” approach to sex; namely, we don’t discuss it, you shouldn’t do it until you’re married, and you definitely shouldn’t enjoy it too much. Oh, and never ever talk about it.

Early this year I had a conversation with two good friends who are also writers. We were talking about how a person “presents” him or herself and about general perversion and who gets to draw the line and why, and we were categorizing one another. “Are you dirty, clean, clean/dirty, or dirty/clean?” The categories had less to do with actual practice than with vibe (and nothing to do with hygiene, except that if you are actually dirty, you are not really capable of being classified as clean). But someone who presents as outwardly edgy and pervy might be secretly shy in the bedroom; someone who presents as generally a bit uptight or conservative might love trash talk in bed. Clean/dirty and dirty/clean, then, referred particularly to a secret self underneath the surface energy or social presentation.

In other words, I’ve learned to be a switch hitter.

Years ago in my early 20s, when I was engaged to my first husband, I was having coffee at a Montana diner when I picked up a copy of the local personal ads. Next to the announcements for furniture and car sales were earnest requests: Old carpenter who likes to fish and camp seeks woman who can sing for companionship, long walks, more? Or Divorced white female, 42, seeks a good man who likes kids and can balance his own checkbook. I sipped my coffee and giggled meanly. How pathetic! I remember thinking, because I was about to be married to a man I thought was a super hot stud, I was young and hopeful and smart, and I would never have to look for love again. Check. Off the list. I thought about that diner – the bad coffee, the sassy waitress, the view of the mountains through the window – when my first marriage ended a year after it had begun, and I was moving my furniture and books into a sweltering hot storage unit in Austin, Texas with my sweating and worried parents helping me move boxes from the back of a rental truck.

I thought of those ads again this past year after my son Ronan was diagnosed with a terminal illness. I thought of them when I drove home from a nightclub, my hair full of sweat and smoke, my shirt askew, wondering “what just happened?” I thought of them when I looked at a bar menu on a date, ordered another gin and tonic and wondered if Ronan was having a seizure, and how the babysitter or his father would be managing it. I thought of them when I tried to pick out an outfit that was sassy without being trashy, and talked with my friends about how far it was appropriate to go on a first date. Most couples do not survive the loss of a child. My second husband and I fulfilled this statistic probability, although in the midst of our great sadness we made valiant efforts to reach each other. We failed. Grief morphs people; it dissolves direction, focus, desire, supposedly unbreakable bonds. We decided to separate and then we decided to divorce. The gap between us had become unbridgeable; the lives we imagined going on with after our son’s death incompatible.

Living on my own again, I realized that I had returned to a place I had happily abandoned for five years: the weird world of dating. At first this was exciting. I was gripped, compelled, shoved around by this desire to live, which manifested in some bad decision making and situations (late night booty calls and the kind of drunken hook-ups I hadn’t had since my 20s, only I’d end up weeping when it was all over). Some of these experiences felt exhilarating at the time – it was so good to feel something other than sadness – but they left me feeling emotionally strained, confused, and more shattered than I already was. I was “connecting” with people, sure, but it was not intimate and it did not fuel or nurture me at a time when I was already running on emotional reserves I didn’t even know I had until they were tapped out. I felt like an arrow of sheer desire, flying through the air in a small town and emblazoned with this unfortunate tag line: “Newly single mother of a dying baby.” Not exactly the description of somebody’s dream girl. And I didn’t care. I wanted to fuck and be fucked. I felt like I had a t-shirt that read TRAGEDY stenciled across it in rhinestones; I was bedazzled by bad luck. And I also had the sense that I was always about to fail a pop quiz. It’s like the dream when you imagine you missed math class and didn’t get your degree and then all of your teeth fell out. You wake up worried that all of your accomplishments are lies, your fingers groping frantically inside your mouth. In other words: dating created anxiety as much as it provided much-needed distraction. Would I ever have sober, enjoyable, connected sex again?

Of course it’s not all a bad dream reenactment. I enjoy the conversational aspect of dating, the literally “going out” to have new experiences with someone who sees the world differently from you. It feels like receiving a new pair of lungs to spend time with someone who doesn’t know that they’re facing the death of their most loved one in the very imminent future. I love getting to know new people (which isn’t unlike building a life in a brand new city or country, which is also a great love – and a unique talent – of mine). But I don’t like what seems to be the necessity of subterfuge, which constitutes the bulk of recommended behavioral currency in the (truly, not-so-modern) dating world. A sampling of advice: by their nature men like to chase and are hunters; women should play hard to get, make sure they see (and present) themselves as “prizes.” I am a sad mother watching her baby die who spends a lot of time alone in bed, picking the chocolate pieces out of trail mix, snuggling my son, weeping and watching action films and yes, writing. I also like to have dinner with my friends, hike, hear music, dance, drink martinis, and I have two full-time teaching jobs. Do I want to be saved from this existence? Not really. I just want someone to be able to hear about it without getting up from the table (literally or metaphorically) and running away.

Some other dating world beefs: I don’t like that being honest and trusting has become a totally unsexy liability. I grew up as the child of a pastor, in a world where you could sit on any man’s lap with zero fear of being molested, where people were true to their word, and where most of us were poor or on the edge of being poor and the winters were long and windy, and where my parents loved me even when I was acting like a maniac, which in my teenage years was most of the time. I hate that trying not to be self-conscious about an old-fashioned Midwestern-type farm upbringing (which involved working on an actual farm) makes me feel more self-conscious and uncool in a world where we’re supposed to be slick and street smart. I don’t like being told to quiet down or that I’m “too much” when I’ve spent most of my life working my butt off to be a writer, a teacher, and a decent person with a life full of purpose and meaning. I spend plenty of my life in utter quiet, happily whirling away in my inner life, which is a secret and complicated place, a world that is wholly my own and that I will never again give up in service to a relationship. But I do not want to be a nerdy hermit all of the time. When I’m with another person I want to know them, which requires talking and listening, not just observing and trying hard not to reveal anything that suggests vulnerability. Otherwise I’d rather be reading or writing or watching one of my favorite police procedurals on Netflix. I like to write stories, but I don’t want to be one. I like to have sex, but it’s not super fun to have a lover who bursts into tears when you’ve untangled yourself from her.

“What would you want in a relationship?” my girlfriends have asked me, while gently advising me that now may not be the best time to begin one. I thought long and hard about this. Did I want to keeping having ill-timed liaisons with people who cared little for me, or who, like me, were subconsciously seeking the distraction of drama and connection without true intimacy? Should I start dating women? (Tried that. Nope). Was “sex without attachment,” as I had rationalized it, a way of proving that I could live when I’m often so sad I think it would be better to die? No. That didn’t reduce attachment; it just made me feel empty and inauthentic. And who wants to feel more shattered than we already do in this sad and wacky world? I was giving myself a nasty head trip. I was flipping from dirty to clean and back again so much I was making myself sick.

I wanted dating to feel like connecting, not strategizing, and I didn’t want to feel like I was required to buy someone else’s farm on the first date or worry that they might want to buy mine, or whether we’d soon be negotiating which parts we want back. You can have the pigs, but I want half of that cornfield back, dammit. And get those chickens out of my back yard while you’re at it. I wanted a situation that feeds my soul, not just my ego. I didn’t want to rent any UHauls or think about renting future UHauls to live in homes where I might live with future children, although I would like to be a mother again, whatever that might look like. I didn’t want to make any promises but I wanted to have integrity in thought, word, and deed. (A VERY clean and Protestant wish). I wanted to live like it might be my last day without tapping into utter wildness and irresponsible behavior. I didn’t want to decide what I wanted to do with the second half of my life after Ronan dies, because I have no idea how I’m going to feel or in what direction my desire will run. I was dancing around in my living room to candy pop music one moment and the next I’d be catatonic on a friend’s couch weeping about how the future is a black hole of hopelessness. My emotions are not predictable; and frankly, I don’t think anyone can calibrate how they’ll feel from moment to moment unless they’re heavily medicated or trying not to feel anything at all, or anesthetized by a drug or an activity of choice. The only way, I think, to live on after an almost unfathomably shitty situation is to actually experience it, and that’s what I’m trying to do, and it’s messy. But I’m human. I want connection, true connection, for however long it lasts, and I want space for my complicated and deeply sad but also full and happy life. I’ve realized that people have trouble holding contradictions when they think of “dating.” They have a checklist of criteria to match up against a list of their own fears and phobias and issues, only this latter list is often invisible to them, even though it dictates their actions. Oh, it’s confusing. I’m vulnerable. In this social arrangement, who isn’t? To not be seems a much more frightening concept. Why can’t we just be as clear as possible?

I don’t expect anyone to love my child the way that I do, because nobody can or will. I don’t need anybody to fix my big fat broken heart, because nobody can or will, although that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be happy. I do. I want to live. I want to be, quite simply, accepted and desired for the sum total of who I am, and who I might become, and for the experiences that have contributed to both. I don’t want anybody to feel as though they have to prop me up, but I also want – and need – support. And yes, I want romance. Long walks, maybe more?

I would never judge those Montana ads now. I would hope the best for those people. I would hope that they got what they wanted without giving up an essential part of themselves, as so many people do, as I have done. I would understand that none of us knows when we might be abandoned. I wish I could meet them and say, “Hey, Other Human Person, you’re so great! Hold out for what feels good! And just remember that nothing lasts forever!”

This newly found compassion doesn’t mean that being the mother of a dying child has made me a better person in the superficial way we have come to understand that phrase, which is usually meant to describe someone who does the “right” thing, whatever that means. As Nietzsche would argue, our notion of ethics and morality stem from a source that itself might be completely bunk and doesn’t provide an appropriate baseline for assessing our activities as right or wrong, because these words don’t mean anything on their own or when randomly applied to real-life scenarios that are not just abstractions. Mothering a child who will only live for three years while being robbed of all his faculties has made me edgier, but also softer; it has made me more authentic and less judgmental, but also less tolerant of superficial concerns. It’s made me totally fearless and absolutely shit scared. It has dissolved the person I thought I was and helped me find the girl who used to write in the closet with a flashlight without thinking about if what I wrote was any good, just loving the feeling of creation, the sound of the words in my fingers. I’m 38. My life is over. My life is just beginning. I feel like a two thousand year old teenager.

I find that my previously quite detailed dating criterion has disappeared. I don’t really care about finances, or occupation, or education, or age, or a particular “type” of look or even a series of common interests or “shared goals” or “deal breakers,” these last two being overused and pointless phrases that people throw around in therapy and in casual conversation. I care about how I feel; it’s taken me almost four decades to understand that I don’t need a checklist, I need a heart match, and this latter requirement is not quantifiable and its physical manifestation cannot be anticipated. But if I say that on a date, I feel like I’m quoting dialogue from a Lifetime movie, or sound like a new age hippie, or maybe have a secret drinking problem that I’m afraid to admit. As if having a dying baby wasn’t enough of a melodramatic plot that makes people want to run from the room.

In my previous dating life, long before I went through anything from which I might have needed saving, I wanted to be saved: from uncertainty, from the possibility of loneliness, from the inevitability of loss. In short, I didn’t want to die, and I thought yoking myself to someone else’s life would stave this off. Unpacked in this way, such thinking is completely idiotic but all of us do it unconsciously all of the time. Of course I only made this connection fifteen years later. I look at my son and know that I am more yoked to him than I have ever been to anyone, that I would kill anyone if I thought it would save him, that I would die with him if I thought it meant I could go where he’s going and help him out in that place that nobody has visited but hope exists. I don’t believe that you don’t know love until you have a child. Love is not quantifiable; to say so is to demean both its power and its mystery. I do know that I’m capable of loving more deeply now than I was before my son was sick and dying. Why? Because I am bereft of certainty, cleaned of at least this one misguided desire to be saved by anyone or anything. I’ll never be okay again, mothers of children with terminal illnesses often write to me. But are we ever?

So, if not salvation, which most people are subconsciously looking for, what is there to want in a romantic relationship?

I want a witness. I want to be held while I weep like an animal and not be told that I’m strong or that things will get better. I also want to cry on my own and sulk with a good book and bad television. I don’t want to be lied to. I want big-hearted accompaniment in this wild and frightening place of grief that is unexpectedly beautiful, shimmery, weird, and unpredictable; which is to say, it’s just like life, only magnified, deepened. I want someone who can see me in the ultimate moment of weakness and view it as an expression of human strength, because that’s what it is.

Every year, the citizens of Santa Fe build a giant puppet – Zozobra – and watch him burn in a public park in the middle of town. Everyone is invited to place their gloom, whatever it might be, in a box, and that, too, is set on fire. My good friend is the mistress of gloom, and being late to the gloom table, I almost didn’t get mine into the puppet. Break the rules! I begged her, but I wasn’t the only one. She slipped some gloom in the pot for me, texting me from the stage I wish I could see you. This is what grieving people truly want – to be seen. In all their mess and humanity and roaring, groaning, rock-back-and-forth sadness.

Most people think they don’t want complication. But it comes anyway.

To let go of the thing you most want to hang onto is to experience desire with all its unmatchable threads, its sharp and feathery edges, its weird geometry and turbulent mathematics, its dark corners and wacky, spontaneous bursts of light. To say that someone is the love of your life is to admit that if they are taken from you, your life will be unfathomably altered and there will be a hole that’s impossible to fill. What I’d like to say on a date: “To love is to burn. You dig?” And then wait for the answer before asking (or not) for the check. I do not want solutions, platitudes, or promises. I want to cry in the dark. I want to cry in the car. I want to pound my fists against a surface and scream. I want to listen to the rain on the roof, that slow and steady rhythm that is so like the beating of a heart, so unmistakable, so easily changeable so ready to stop. Everything still stop. The heart will stop: Ronan’s, mine, everyone’s. So here’s my ad:

SWDF, both dirty and clean, depending on the day, seeks someone to put their arms around her and say, “I’ve got you.”

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