I remember the first time I saw “Figure with Meat” in high school. I wasn’t shocked by the grotesque, nightmarish image of this zombie-like pope sitting between two bisected halves of a cow, but instead, I was awed, eager to know more about the painting and to understand how Francis Bacon could create something that was so unsettling. Nearly a decade after I first laid eyes on this image on a computer screen in my art class, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago, where Bacon’s painting is housed, and upon seeing it in person, upon studying the color and brush strokes and the seemingly simple layering of paint, I think I finally understood how Bacon saw life, how he used the medium to portray a world equally deserving of damnation as it was of salvation.
For Jory Mickelson, their newest poetry collection Picturing evokes the same reaction I had in the presence of Bacon’s work. This is a book that engages with everyday life through the eyes of painters, poets, filmmakers, and anyone of the past or present who interacts with the world through a sympathetic and curious lens. What results are portraits of love and compassion, snippets of what it means to create art in the face of obstacles, and narratives that bring the personal into the public sphere.
Jory, thank you immensely for your time. I’m glad to be talking again, and it’s always an honor to immerse myself in your work. I wanted to start by looking at the last stanza in your poem “Chicago,” from your your newest collection, Picturing:
Those buried around me have been still for
more than a century, I wouldn’t call it rest.
All our stories are only repetitions, like light,
gathering and dispersing, each day indifferent,
a variation of the same. Never reaching
what we call Chicago. Never knowing
what this really means.
Our stories are sustenance, and through this “gathering and dispersing” between writer and reader, we are able to continue sharing ideas and traditions through the written (and spoken) word. How do you see Picturing as a variation of your own work? What about the work of others?
Jory Mickelson: That is a great question. My poems in Picturing are a response to artistic work in several mediums, and also in conversation with the subjects and creators of those works–sometimes in sympathy and sometimes in critique.
Additionally, I see my own writing in the long tradition of ekphrastic poetry. I am just one writer in an unending line of those who came before me and who will come after. Because Picturing looks at primarily artists that we would categorize today as “queer,” I also see myself in the tradition of queer makers. So many LGBTQIA+ artists have had their identities erased, glossed over, or dismissed in connection to their work in the Western canon. This book is both an immersion into this lineage and an attempt to reclaim some of those stories.
ER: You speak about erasure, and given the new administration’s policy regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion within governmental institutions, and its effect in the social and private spheres, it’s quite urgent that we in the literary community move to advocate for art that doesn’t exclude. How did you navigate balancing your depiction/reinterpretation of the artists of the past, putting forth your own voice, and laying claim to an identity that isn’t watered down by the current political and cultural environment?
JM: Well, these poems were all written before the current political and cultural environment we are living in right now. I started writing these poems in 2022 when I was selected as a fellow in the Writers Program at the Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle.
There is always some negotiation between my own voice and of other people and identities that are being tried on as personas or speakers in the poems. As a non-binary person, I am usually living on the outside of gender norms, or at least carefully observing them. Trying them on for myself. Discarding what doesn’t seem to fit.
I always try to be mindful that how I understand gender identity, sexual orientation, and gender identity today is not how it was viewed, classified, and thought about in the past. In my poem “Ladies” I looked to a photograph of women dressed as men in 1891. This was a crime at the time and people could be charged with public indecency or even taken to trial. I can’t claim anything about these women’s sexuality or gender from a photo, but I can certainly comment on their willingness to take risks and to record themselves doing so.
I’ve been reading a lot of Canadian poets lately and what has struck me is how (for lack of a better word) bold their author bios are. A majority of them acknowledge or center on the Aboriginal (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) peoples on whose land they reside. It’s refreshing to say the least.
In a similar spirit of boldness (though in no way am I comparing Indigenous people to transgender people), I’ve made a commitment in my own author bio to say that I am a transgender, nonbinary person. In our current culture wars and hyperfocus on trans people, it is a big risk. I am sure some readers for literary magazines read my bio in the cover letter and never get to the poems. I am okay with this. I refuse to disappear.
ER: You mentioned Canadian poets, and I wonder if there are writers from other nationalities who do certain things (in their writing, their bios, their lectures) that you feel American, or English-language poetry, can incorporate to grow as a medium?
JM: I wouldn’t claim to be well read enough to have definitive summaries of other countries’ poets, their habits, or specific literary movements. I do think that a portion of American poetry is tied to making sure a reader knows a poem is ending, maybe to its detriment.
The closest analogy I can draw is to American comedies. It seems to me that in many American comedic films, a joke has to be repeated more than once, as if the audience can’t get it on their own. Sort of like a bad SNL skit that just won’t end, but probably should have half way through. It can be excruciating to sit through. You don’t find this habit in much of European comedy. They tell the joke, assume the audience gets it, and move on. So too with poetry. I think overall, we need to better trust that our readers are going to “get it.”
This isn’t about accessibility or difficulty in poetry. But I often feel like we can trust our readers to come with us, wherever the poem goes. We probably need less road signs in the poem for the reader.
ER: I think your commitment is something we should all admire, and I saw this in “Performance,” where the speaker states the following:
How did you get the point of getting a little “serious,” “ridiculous,” and embracing your role as poet? How do you continue to strike that balance?
JM: After 15+ years I keep writing poems and I can either feel embarrassed about it or get over myself. I take the craft of poetry seriously. I always want to grow as a writer, to do just a little bit better than I did previously. In some way, I view poetry as an Art (capital A) that I am doing my best to serve. No ego there. I just want to do my best by poetry. It is something I will never “win” or get to the bottom of. It is inexhaustible for me. That is the serious part.
It is also ridiculous saying I have no ego as a writer. I definitely have enough ego to believe people should hear what I have to say. I want my work published. I want recognition for myself as much as anyone. I also use envy of others’ accomplishments to spur me on. “Someone in my writing group got into Poetry Magazine? Well, dammit I am going to as well!”
I think most of the writing community could have more honest conversations. It would go a long way in showing us how ridiculous all of us can be. It would go a long way in helping us hold our work more lightly.
ER: That reminds me of Midnight in Paris and Ernest Hemingway’s character in the film. At one point at a bar, Hemingway tells the protagonist, Gil Pender (portrayed by Owen Wilson), that he doesn’t want to read his manuscript because he would be jealous if it’s good. There is an honesty in that remark that I’ve always thought about, and I’m curious what else beyond honesty can help move us forward as writers?
JM: Honesty is a good first step to move us forward as artists. A close second is curiosity. No one ever says, “I HATE painting.” No one hates painting in the same way no one hates music. There may be genres we can’t stand or actively avoid, but we don’t categorically despise all music or all types of painting. It takes exposure to and immersion in an artform to figure out what we connect with and find pleasurable. Yet, how easily people declare they hate poetry!
Being curious about my own responses to things has helped me grow as a writer. There are particular movements in poetry, or particular poets whose work I can’t abide. However, slowing down and remaining curious about what exactly I don’t like in the work, or noticing my specific thoughts and feelings in responding to work has a lot to teach me. It helps me to define and refine not only my own aesthetic principles, but also shows me my own set of values or what I privilege in poetry. (We can call those personal biases too.)
I will tell on myself here–for years I avoided the work of Jack Gilbert. An older poet told me several stories about Gilbert’s behavior that were unflattering, so I never bothered to explore the poems. I formed an unfavorable opinion of a poet’s body of work based on a single person’s commentary on the poet’s personal life, without having read the work. That is about as un-curious as you can get!
Let me say that bad behavior is bad behavior. It needs to be called out and folks need to be held accountable for their creepy, predatory, or unethical actions. Absolutely! But at the same time, my opinion of somebody’s writing was based on another person’s bias and nothing else.
So when I finally read Gilbert’s poems, I loved many of them. Then, when I read the poems in conversation with Linda Gregg (his former romantic partner) I loved them even more. There is some unflattering stuff happening in their poems, but the poems themselves are at times pyrotechnic. I let myself get curious about Gilbert, then even more curious when I learned about his relationship with Gregg, whose work I admire. My curiosity took me beyond my own opinions into a new experience.
ER: You bring up a great point about unflattering behavior, and I always find it interesting on how we as writers navigate the person versus the writer. I think Ezra Pound is a good example of someone who, in certain literary Instagram circles (I won’t mention any specific accounts/names here), is experiencing a revitalization, one that appears, at least as an observer, to be overlooking his troubled antisemitic past (yes, The Cantos can be quite enlightening poetically). So, how should emerging and established writers alike approach this literary landscape, and what advice would you have for anyone who wants to be conscientious about the work they’re reading?
JM: I always flinch a little at the word “should.” It sounds so definitive, and I tend toward pluralism–or at least acknowledging that my own approaches might not work for others. I think one important point is to just be informed. Read the work. Love what you love. But also read the criticism and critique and let it inform you. W.H. Auden said, “Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings” and we as readers and writers bear some of that responsibility as well.
I can appreciate the imagination and skill of John Berryman’s Dream Sonnets and also find his use of Mr. Bones from minstrel shows repugnant. I can be dazzled by Sylvia Plath’s work and at the same time see there is a good case that she was also racist (see Emily Van Duyne’s essay “Dark Hooks: The overt racism of Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’” in American Poetry Review Nov/Dec 2021).
We live in a world of polarization, division, and fragmentation–politically, socially, economically, etc. Most of the systems that we are caught up in want us to live in an endlessly divisive, zero-sum way of being. We’ve mostly lost our ability to see the world and its people as both/and.
My favorite recent example of this is the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana. It’s a former open pit copper mine a mile long and a mile and a half wide, filled with acidic water laden with heavy metals. It just keeps filling up and will one day be the United States’ largest Superfund site. It’s a horror. However, driving to my aunt’s house on the edge of town, I looked up to see the walls of the Pit lit up by the sun. The colors were stunning. It was so beautiful, I pulled the car over on the side of the road to watch how the light played against the earth. Both/and. One does not diminish the reality of the other. Both are present at the same time.
ER: In the third section of the “The Falls,” you have the following lines:
People say
that life goes on and it
does and no one tells you
that’s not a good thing.
Where do you find the good things in life? How can we become a part of that journey?
JM: Thinking directly about the speaker in the poem “The Falls” it is Warhol’s Marilyn, or some version of a ghost of Marilyn Monroe speaking. Those words hold a little irony since the speaker’s life is going on in an image, the painting, instead of her flesh and blood one.
Finding good things is really dependent on us looking for them these days. It is strange, if I spend a day outdoors or in the woods, or along the bay here, I feel pretty positive. But this is contingent on me not checking the headlines on my phone. I think we need to look for the good in the hyper-local, present-moment.
I joked with someone this week that my nervous system is used up and done with. It doesn’t feel like too much of a joke in some ways. I believe we need to find the good things in our lives, the reasons we continue to live, otherwise why keep on going? There is so much easily available bad news that I have to cultivate a list of “why the heck am I still getting out of bed.”
So you have to make your own list. Currently on my list is: my two young cats–who are indoor chaos agents, poetry, fresh lime and cilantro as a garnish on my chicken dish, also getting to help people through my job. Those things make going on possible for me today. What is on your list right now Esteban?
ER: “Indoor chaos agents,” I love that! We have two cats as well, Lenny and Pynchon, and we just added a third one, Sonny, to the mix (he hasn’t been introduced to the other two yet, but I can already imagine the “chaos” that will ensue). It’s also my family. As we spoke about offline, my mother just passed away. She was an incredible woman who did everything she could to provide my sister and me a good life, and she was especially proud of my literary work. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been searching for the right piece to adequately describe her loss. I was reminded of A.E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad, XL”:
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
What book, poem, literary project would you recommend to someone experiencing the loss of a loved one? What happy highways do you hope you’ll leave behind?
JM: What immediately comes to mind is Bruce Snyder’s series of “Afterlife” poems in his second book Paradise, Indiana. They are elegies that I still return to. You can read one of them here.
Another book of poems that I associate with loss of all kinds is Scattered Snows, to the North. Maybe especially “Rehearsal,” the final poem in the book. You can see the poet, read his poem here. It is a little more lyric in nature, but still knows my losses.
I don’t know what I will leave behind or who will remember me exactly. As a queer person, I am not leaving any kind of biological legacy. As a poet, I would like a few poems to last beyond my lifetime. Hopefully, someone somewhere in the future will read one aloud so that I can speak again through them.
As a person, I hope some of the kindness and care I have been shown and do my best to pass on to others, gets passed on by others again and again. We never know how our actions play out in the lives of other people. I hope we keep passing poems and gentleness among one another as long as there is someone to pass it on to.
Jory Mickelson is a writer and educator living in Xwotʼqom / Whatcom / Bellingham on the homelands of the Lummi and Nooksack peoples. They are the author of three books of poetry: Picturing (2025), All This Divide (2024), and Wilderness//Kingdom (2019), which won a 2020 High Plains Book Award. Their work has appeared in Poetry Northwest DIAGRAM, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Jubilat and other journals in the US, Canada, and the UK. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and have received fellowships from The Desert Rat Writers Residency, the Lambda Literary Foundation, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. To learn more about their work visit www.jorymickelson.com.
Esteban Rodríguez is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently The Lost Nostalgias, and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us. His work has appeared in New England Review, Seneca Review, Poetry Daily, and American Life in Poetry. He is the interviews editor at the EcoTheo Review, senior book reviews editor at Tupelo Quarterly, and associate poetry editor at AGNI. With Jennifer De Leon and Ben Black, he co-edited To Never Have Risked Our Lives: An AGNI Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing. Esteban and his wife own and operate Love Letter Coffee in McAllen, Texas.