In Conversation with Katherine E. Young

University of Wisconsin-Madison English professor Jesse Lee Kercheval describes your new book, Woman Drinking Absinthe, as "stark with truth but alive with magic, and in it Young illuminates the broken but beautiful world we inhabit." How do you reconcile the brokenness of the world with its beauty?

Well, you can’t have one without the other—it’s like light and shade, how would you know what one is without the contrast provided by the other (and there’s also great beauty in some kinds of brokenness, of course)? As for reconciling one with the other, isn’t that the whole purpose of art? Go back to Homer, go back to prehistoric cave paintings—why were they made, if not to celebrate and sanctify life in the midst of war, hardship, and fear?

Written in Arlington, the poetry anthology that you edited, went to print during the pandemic. In an interview, you noted, "... at that point, it seemed even more important to produce a collection that reminded us of who we were collectively, rather than as individuals huddled in our homes." Why was that important to you?

Sometimes I get impatient with the very American worship of individual artistic vision—not that I don’t think individual vision is important, you can’t make art without it, but I also think there’s an important place for poetry that speaks to and for the collective as in, say, poetry of witness. And what better way to reflect on our collective, shared community, our shared humanity, than to turn our gaze on the place we call home? 

Arlington has long thought of itself as a bedroom community for Washington, DC, despite the fact that people have been living here for hundreds, if not thousands of years. I wanted to explore the lives being lived here now, and also to remember all those who’d come before us on the land. And while I think it’s pretty neat that we happened to publish this anthology during COVID, when so many of us were trapped in our homes and unable to come together as a community, the book’s timing was just accidental.

You have said, "I’ve always been quietly activist in my writing, but the last four years for me have driven home the lesson that we poets need to use our gift with words to fight for the values we hold dear." Why do you believe that?

Because poets have a superpower: words. Sometimes we forget how special that power is and how much non-poets envy our ability to use it. My own formal study of poetry took place a bit later in life with Russian-language poetry, not English-language poetry, so I come out of a poetic tradition where poets are respected—and sometimes martyred—for speaking truth to power. 

Not so long ago in this country you could hear people—good people—saying things like “I don’t enjoy ‘political’ poetry, why do you write that stuff?” without understanding what a privilege it is to be able to avert one’s eyes from unpleasantness. I’m not saying that all poetry has to be informed by political consciousness or explore sociopolitical themes—I’m just saying that I don’t think poets have the luxury of not using their special gift with words when we see our tax dollars being used to warehouse children in cages or pay police to kneel on the necks of people of color.