Q&A with Carolyn Oliver

 

Photo by Benjamin Oliver

 

 

Carolyn Oliver is the author of the new poetry collection The Alcestis Machine. Her other books include Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble. She lives in Massachusetts.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the poems in The Alcestis Machine?

 

A: About three years; I wasn’t consciously working toward a collection, so it’s a little tricky to pin down.

 

Q: What intrigued you about the myth of Alcestis?

 

A: Oddly enough, of all the poems in this book, “The Alcestis Machine”—the sequence whose title I borrowed for the collection—was written second-to-last.

 

Years ago, I tried to write a short story about a machine that would allow one to donate part of one’s lifespan to another person. The story didn’t work, but the concept stuck with me, as well as the name I’d given it: the Alcestis machine.

 

The mythological Alcestis gives up her life for her spouse (who seems, in my reading, not worthy of such a sacrifice), and subsequently—unexpectedly—returns from the dead. She’s almost an inverse Eurydice.

 

And she’s a psychologically opaque figure: does she give up her life out of love, or out of duty? What did she experience in the underworld? How does she feel upon her return? Someday, I’d like to return to these questions.

 

Q: The writer Rachel Mennies said of the collection, “Celestial and lush, Carolyn Oliver's second poetry collection, The Alcestis Machine, vibrates with connection.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It’s very kind, and I hope the book lives up to it! I remember—I wish I had a record of it, somewhere—Maggie Smith once saying or writing that there are texts that give us permission, as writers to press on with our work. Rachel Mennies’s second collection, The Naomi Letters, is that kind of text for me.

 

I’m so grateful to Rachel, and to Hannah Larrabee and Jose Hernandez Diaz, for their support of the collection.

 

Q: How did you choose the order in which the poems would appear in the collection?

 

A: Once I realized I’d been writing a collection, the order came together quickly.

 

I knew the “in another life” poems should be spaced throughout the manuscript, in order to give it cohesion and structure, and that further, I didn’t want those poems to appear in any particular chronological order (by setting or composition date).

 

“Blueshift” is the only poem I considered to start the collection, and “Mast Year” felt like a collection-ender when I finished it (which was before I knew there was a collection to end).

 

The title sequence belonged in the penultimate position, so I placed another longer piece at the end of the first section, for balance. Once I had those elements set, I strung together sequences of poems by looking for echoes (in phrasing or image) or variance (especially in length and/or form).

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m drafting and revising my usual miscellany of poems (and maybe percolating a longer project or two or five in the background), thinking about classes I’d like teach, turning my attention toward seed-starting for this summer’s garden, trying to make some headway on the precarious bookstacks on my nightstand before the next library hold comes in, attempting be useful in various capacities.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Requesting that your local library order copies of books published by small presses is a lovely way to help out authors and small presses alike!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb