Joyelle McSweeney : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

My introduction to poetry was extremely random and archaic-- two qualities which may be found in my poesie to this day. An important and dubious early accident was the gift of a red-vinyl bound anonymous-feeling anthology of 'best-loved American poetry", which included poems in supposed regional and racial dialects, patriotic ballads about George Washington and Paul Revere, "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley (the famous  "Hoosier" poet who wrote the supposed "Hoosier" dialect) and also weird bits of decadence, like Thoreau's poem "Smoke" which begins "Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird!" or "I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying" (John Crowe Ransom) and then, like, "Casey at the Bat." 

I had no fucking idea what any of this was, it all seemed so cryptic, cartoonish, violent, boisterous and random, but I felt compelled to read and re-read it. Something of its hectic exclamatory nature and its random throngdness has certainly stuck with me, and made me at least a fearless reader, a reader who goes by ear and loves a crowd. I think there was some Sandburg too to balance it out, which is sort of shocking in retrospect, given his socialism. The people, yes. Of course the chaos and racial violence of American languaging was also evident in this book, entirely audible and threatening. Even alphabetical order felt like being pelted with pebbles, and what was this thing at the back--this index of first lines, which just mashed the whole thing up and regurgitated it again, this time with rhythmic, quasi-religious delivery? 

Next up I read a sexily-illustrated edition of Poe, which introduced me to a lot of decadent logics, decor, costumes, hair-styles, architectures, motifs and narrative mechanisms. These would seem far-fetched and thrilling for a long time until they just started to seem true. 

Later our own little baby would live and die at a hospital built and named as a memorial to James Whitcomb Riley, The Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Indiana. Whenever I was not in her room I was in a little Gothic-style library, which was v. quiet, since literally not one of my fellow Hoosiers  (except for Johannes Göransson) were ever in there. A very Bruce Wayne feel to this library, and a very haunted feel to this hospital. I continue to be haunted by this hospital, and I would like in turn to haunt it. I would like to live there as the library ghost.