Q&A with Carol Moldaw, author of "Go Figure"

Carol Moldaw is the author of six previous books of poetry—Beauty Refracted; So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems; The Lightning Field; Through the Window; Chalkmarks on Stone; and Taken from the River—and a novella, The Widening. She has received a Merwin Conservancy Artists Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. Her writing has appeared widely in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Yale Review, as well as many anthologies, including Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry and Contemporary Literary Criticism. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Go Figure directs readers to the trope of the figure as a body in art and a person under observation. Taking ekphrastic poetry beyond the museum, the poems skillfully render a reconsideration of the role of the muse, from the viewpoint of both muse and maker. Exploring gendered topics from Botox to abortion with astute political and emotional clarity, the poems present an extended and nuanced view of family. Spouse, child, upbringing, siblings, aging mother, and friendships all come under critical and caring inquiry, as does the poet’s role in these relationships. The image-driven poems meet beauty with discomfort, never averting their gaze from imbalances of power and questions of influence.

How did you choose the evocative title of Go Figure?

The poem “Go Figure” was one of the earliest I wrote for the manuscript and by the time I was well into it and beginning to think about a title for the collection, I could see how that poem itself, as well as its title, embodies many of the book’s central themes. In it, the complex issue of women and art, of how women are portrayed and how we see—and portray—ourselves, plays out in multiple ways.
Figuration can be thought of as image making; it also implies ‘figuring things out.’ I have a sharp sense as I write that I’m trying to figure things out—for myself and, especially, for the poem. Often, it is images that do the figuring for me. My notes show that poem first being called “The Mirror of Art.,” and also “Kajuraho,” after the Indian temple whose façade begins it. But those titles were facile, so I kept going, and when I hit on “Go Figure,” I liked the wit of it, and it seemed right for a poem that concludes without self-summation or explanation.

Once I thought to use Go Figure as title for the whole book, I knew it was right, for all the reasons I’ve already named. I like that it’s quizzical and challenges the reader to make their own sense of things. I have to say that almost to a person, everyone who asked me about the title of my next book, smiled or laughed with pleasure when I responded Go Figure.

How long did it take you to write this book, and how does that compare with your experience writing your six previous books of poetry?

It’s unfashionable to take so long, but 6-7 years between books is typical for me. My last book, Beauty Refracted, came out in the spring of 2018, so that’s about 6 ½ years, but a very few of the earliest poems from Go Figure were written before that, in 2016 and 2017. I tend to let things gestate slowly. It can take years for contexts to build around lines or images, or for me to find a way for a poem to approach a scene or idea that haunts me. I didn’t start drafting “Agra” and Mumtaz and Jahan” until 2019, but notes for those poems date back to 2008, when I went to India to be part of the first Delhi International Literary Festival.

What were you reading—and perhaps viewing—as you wrote these poems?

Three books come immediately to mind. Two are by the luminous British painter, Celia Paul: Self-Portrait and Letters to Gwen John. The third is Home: A Short History of an Idea, by Witold Rybczynski. In both of her beautiful and absorbing memoirs, Celia Paul is concerned in particular with the dilemmas and conflicts that face women artists; her writing and her understanding of her own experience resonated deeply with me. This is reflected, I think, not just in the two “Painter and Model” poems, but throughout the book. I loved and was obsessed by Rybczynski’s Home and pondered it extensively. It inspired many many failed poems that I still hope to resurrect. Those failures aside, I think it, along with Diane Fuss’s The Sense of an Interior, came to influence my poetics. They led to my being more accepting of my aesthetic inclination toward the domestic or the domesticated. I’ve begun to see my territory as hidden and unexplored spaces within what are thought of as known spheres.
I don’t keep notes on art exhibits and books the way I do on my reading, but I certainly looked at many Celia Paul paintings (in books), and a few collections surveying women artists. I know that early on I saw a Modigliani exhibit at the Stanford Art Museum. I’ve always loved his paintings and at this exhibit there were two quotes in the supporting material that influenced me. One was from Modigliani: “The function of art is to struggle against obligation.” The other was anecdotal: “’Why have you given me only one eye?’ demanded a Modigliani sitter. ‘With one eye you are looking at the outside world. With the other you are looking within yourself,’ replied the artist.” Those ideas became talismanic for me.

Were there poems that you wrote and then left out of the collection, and if so, how did you begin to define what wouldn’t fit within the book’s expansive look at art and life?

There were a handful of poems that didn’t make the cut and then many many more that I worked on to no avail. For the most part, those that I finished and didn’t include were left out not for reasons of subject matter but because they seemed too slight, too narrowly personal, or too obscure. I don’t start out with a thematic intention—I find intentional ideas inhibiting and need to let the poems lead me as they develop—but as poems accumulate, preoccupations and obsessions start to define themselves. That said, I did know early on that many of the poems I was writing had a gendered point of view—an early working title was “Repurposing the Feminine”—but I think, in any case, that most of my work has come out of my strongly feminine perspective. With this book, I was more conscious of it.

How would you characterize Go Figure—more as a continuation or departure from your earlier work?

Both. While I’ve written ekphrastic poems and poems about the act of making before, I don’t think I’d previously approached the topic of the muse from either the point of view as being seen as one or of having one, even though I’ve thought about both sides for quite some time. In terms of poetics, it continues my pursuit of the lyric, the meditative, with sometimes a buried spine of narrative. I think that maybe I felt more freedom and trust while writing, and less self-censorship.

Over your career, how have you found your process to shift?

I still find starting a poem—finding a kernel of it, finding my way in, and hearing its particular music—the most daunting aspect of writing. Once I’ve started, I’m pretty patient and dogged, but the time it takes to get going, which often feels deceptively fallow, is difficult for me. It’s still in my nature to write from the past, even the immediate past, more than from the present moment. I think that perhaps I do less of a kind of repetitive, obsessive, circling over the same unproductive ground than I used to. I’m a little more flexible in my approach. And while I love shaped poems, I seem to write less in regularly rhymed stanzas that I used to.

Is there a poem in this collection that surprised you the most?

“Game Face” surprised me the most! It’s a bit of a departure in terms of its tone and directness, and it brought together things I’d been mulling over, on and off, for years. While it’s about aging and female sexuality, it’s certainly not an erotic poem. Even its longer lines and the jaggedness of its lines is a departure for me. I was pleased that it has a humorous bent.

How did you decide to dedicate the book to writer Miriam Sagan, and what would you like for readers to know about her work?

While writing “Keisaku Palm” for Miriam, I realized that I absolutely wouldn’t be the same person if we hadn’t known each other, something I’d say about hardly anyone. I met her through her roommate when, as a freshman, I interviewed the roommate for an article about the newly opened Women’s Center. I immediately fell in love with Miriam, who was a junior and exuded bravado, smarts, humor, and openness. I also fell in love with her poetry which, with its image-driven romanticism and bravura, seemed miles ahead of mine. Her example bolstered me; she was a great catalyst; with her encouragement I applied for a poetry workshop; she invited me to join a “consciousness raising group” that she was part of and where I learned to talk more openly and think more freely.
Miriam’s qualities as a person are reflected in her prolific work: her poetry and her prose, both fiction and memoir, have an intimate, engaging voice; an immediate presence; an easy way with a depth of knowledge. Influenced by Haiku and the Beats as well as the Romantics, and in keeping with her grassroots sense of community, Miriam has always published in and championed the small press world. She has a devoted readership. Her poetic handbook, Unbroken Line: Writing in the Lineage of Poetry, should be better known.

Over the vast years of our friendship, I’ve grown reliant on Miriam’s wisdom and humor—her perspective. Once I thought of it, dedicating Go Figure to her was a no-brainer.

Would you also comment on how you found the stunning cover art for the book, Untitled (After Bosch and Boldini), 2015, by Cecily Brown?

I feel so fortunate to have come across Cecily Brown’s watercolor and pastel piece Untitled (After Bosch and Boldini), 2015, and am deeply grateful Cecily gave me permission to use it. I’d been absorbing her work mostly through books and monographs and came across that piece in an online review of a show of hers that was at The Drawing Center. The minute I saw it I knew I wanted it to grace Go Figure’s cover. I’d been looking for something that was thought-provoking and evocative of the puzzlement and perhaps amusement that the phrase Go Figure calls up. The elements in Cecily Brown’s piece, the number and variety of figures—women, birds, and other animals—both immediately visible and more hidden, correspond so directly with much of what I was aiming for in my work. I also love that it contains both stillness and energy. And that the longer you look the more, and deeper, you see.

What books are on your nightstand now?

My nightstand is not a good place for books! They get parked there and remain unread until they’re back in my study. Right now, I’m re-reading James Longenbach’s The Resistance to Poetry, and Tomas Tranströmer’s Selected Poems, edited by Robert Hass. I’m looking forward to starting other books I’ve already pulled from the pile: Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey; Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind, by Lyall Watson; and Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of An American Master, edited by Dana Levin and Adele Elise Williams (and published in the wonderful Unsung Masters Series).

Can you say what you will be working on next?

After finishing a book, I usually feel a bit lost. Starting from nothing is daunting, so I’m reviewing drafts of some unfinished poems to see if anything catches my attention or sparks something new. Having recently finished an essay on mentors, I’ve been thinking about putting together a collection of essays and reviews from over the years. With that in mind, I’ve begun a new essay which takes as its starting point the fraught topic of my mother’s influence on me as a writer.