Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us

June 23, 2015 5:14 PM

Richard Siken (previously) published his second book of poetry, War of the Foxes, in April. Supernatural fans thought it was fanfic - specifically Wincest - and have used many lines to fuel their own slash. Meanwhile, Siken himself has become involved in Sherlock slash. The Awl's Adam Carlson interviews Siken about all this and more, including I Can Haz Siken.
posted by Athanassiel (14 comments total)

I adore Siken's poetry and that interview is pretty fantastic! It's rare to see an interview so thoughtful. I love how they both handle fanfic, how they talk about the emotional meanings and the way they translate or don't translate, especially this phrase from Siken -- "concurrent, coexistent, and aligned, but they are not similar" is a great way to frame the interplay of fanfic and community, as well as the interplay of fans and fandom with the source material.

I think in some ways he underestimates how much resonance those phrases have, in a latter discussion of his poetry being chopped into matchsticks, but I can see how it comes across that way. For me, in my milieu, a lot of us have read the poems entirely, or Crush in its entirety. I've shared Crush with a lot of people, some of whom shared it with me previously, and there have been times where we've pasted lines back and forth to each other until the entire poem accumulates in the window and it's like touching a part of something so very understood that it isn't usually touched, something that isn't love and isn't faith but that space for doubt and inevitability in between that is usually encapsulated in many, many more words by the bittersweet end of a novel.

There's a lot of resonance to the things I care about, in Crush, the way I process and reflect, and that one reviewer quoted had it right in some ways I think, that Crush was about panic, a rushing sense of going towards, or perhaps not, a sense that there is a phrase where one can hold still but that stillness can't be taken out of context, because if it is then what's the point of celebrating that moment of stillness or resolve? And that feeling resonates a lot, and it still does. So yeah, I get where he's coming from with that, and I'm sure that there are a lot of people who do break it up like matchsticks, and I do agree with him for the most part but I think I do want to believe there is a space between "matchsticks" and "entirety", perhaps something like "connecting with the spirit of the poem as communicated through phrase and the emotional movement of what it's been connected to as a reflection or indicator or communal call-back to that feeling"? But again, I can see how that is still in the framework of making matchsticks out of a scaffold.

Hmm. I need to think about this some more. Fantastic post, thanks!
posted by E. Whitehall at 6:37 PM on June 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

I would just like to share that my mother-in-law bought me Siken's "Crush" because she saw it on my amazon wishlist and assumed it was dull, proper, culturally-improving poetry and not intense, visceral, super-gay poetry pushing the boundaries of the English language. (Which is of course also culturally improving but not in the way she means!)

And then she wanted to know how I enjoyed it. "It was so great! But not in a way that you're going to understand or appreciate!"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:39 PM on June 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'd not heard of him before - ran across this article thanks to a friend - and now want to read him at greater length.

It just really impressed me that rather than getting on his high horse about how his work was being appropriated or misused, he acknowledges that he produced it with certain intentions but once it is out there in the world, people interpret it and use it in ways that you never imagined, and that's rather lovely. (If Barthes had managed to express himself like that, I might not loathe post-modern litcrit so much.) At the same time, he acknowledges that it is possible to go too far, and questions whether changing the words means cheapening the original, or at least robbing it of its power. Basically, nothing is simple. I like his honesty.

Or maybe it just made me nostalgic for days of being able to sit around and talk about this kind of stuff without getting blank looks of non-comprehension, or scornful "stop being such a poser" looks. Nice to dip back in. Even though I had to look up ekphrasis.
posted by Athanassiel at 7:04 PM on June 23, 2015

That's nothing - James Merrill ships Destiel.

*returns to ouija board*
posted by betweenthebars at 7:27 PM on June 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

What a great interview! I'm going to do my best not to blockquote the whole thing. I've been casually following Siken's interactions with the Sherlock fandom and it's been fascinating to watch - he's engaged with fandom in a very interesting and deliberate way, and the fans I've seen have mostly been great and respectful (if a bit overzealous or thoughtless at times...). Anyway, Siken has some very insightful thoughts about fanfic:

In the driest language possible, I would say that fan fiction successfully undermines the traditional American heteronormative dynamic in ways that can’t be undone. In wetter language, fan fiction sexualizes. It’s transgressive because it suggests the possibility of the erotic. It’s political, because it complicates power structures. And it’s personal, because it grants permission for range of previously unacceptable expressions and interactions. I think my poems enact a space for complicated, multivalent relationships. I think that’s the draw. ...

Here’s the biggest question and the biggest problem: What are the consequences of sexualizing these relationships? The possibility of erotic desire may or may not be hinted at in the original work—but ignore that. The probability of romantic love could be low or high—but ignore that. The suggestion that these partnerships are necessarily monogamous, supersede all other potential loves or lovers, and could be considered a type of marriage—ignore that. The question, the problem: How can I possibly convince anyone that I could like my best friend for non-sexual reasons? How do I make room for the possibility of deep care and tenderness between men who aren’t fucking if I sexualize every male/male relationship I encounter? Perhaps the subtleties come later. Perhaps we need to push all the way into highly erotic realms to allow ourselves the room to pull back into places of possible non-sexual tenderness.

I also loved his comments about seeing his work get taken apart and remixed:

A good line is a good line. A good line well placed is an experience. That was the goal: an experience, a larger unit, enough space to move, to hold propulsions, to let the intentionally unsaid things shimmer in the highly charged spaces between the lines. I crafted poems—units made out of lines placed in a specific order—and the poems have disappeared. My loveseats have been broken into chairs, into matchsticks.

Anyway, for anyone interested in how he's engaged with fandom, his tumblr is here, though it looks like he hasn't posted much lately (probably busy with the new book!).
posted by dialetheia at 7:51 PM on June 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ha, so many fics across so many fandoms use Siken lines as titles or summaries. There is indeed some resonance there, beyond even just the Supernatural fandom which at least has some actual parallels in subject and content, that's difficult to put your finger on.

One of my favorite poems is Richard Siken's Boot Theory. The final lines express something I've never been able to express or even think about in any other way:

A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he’s still left with his hands.
posted by yasaman at 8:04 PM on June 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

God, I am SO relieved to see this. I've been running around slash fandoms since long before Siken and watching them take up his poetry this past decade I was always a little uneasy that the (mostly queer women) were appropriating a real live gay guy's very raw, very personal art. It looks like instead, fandom loved his work because it hit at something deep, and he really seems to grok fandom/remix culture in return.

It is hilarious that the fandom to suck him into its orbit is SPN, though, like, assimilating their favorite serious/literary poet into the collective is an even bigger thing than inventing a/b/o or the other fandom highs/lows they've hit. Although they also got SE Hinton writing fanfic *for* the show, so there's precedent.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 10:39 PM on June 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Perhaps the subtleties come later. Perhaps we need to push all the way into highly erotic realms to allow ourselves the room to pull back into places of possible non-sexual tenderness.

Wait... in order to explore tender but non-sexual friendship between men, we may first have to sexualize it?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:13 AM on June 24, 2015

Wait... in order to explore tender but non-sexual friendship between men, we may first have to sexualize it?

In order to get bros to stop saying "no homo," we may first have to publicly acknowledge and agree that sometimes yes homo.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:56 AM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

What does that mean? How do make bros less homophobic by taking non-sexual male friendships and making them homoerotic? I can see how this stuff can be good fun for the shippers, but you and Siken seem to be suggesting it also ultimately benefits straight dudes and I'm not understanding that.

I'm going to quote myself from a comment I made last year:

The whole "slash" thing often plays into the idea that men can't be close friends without them secretly being gay for each other, which in our still-homophobic and f'ed-up culture helps make straight menfolk even more squeamish about expressing feelings for each other or emotion of any kind. (See, Kirk and Spock can't love each other as friends, it's REALLY that they secretly wanna bang! Frodo and Sam can't just care deeply about each other, they're ACTUALLY secret butt bodies! Sam and Dean can't just be brothers with a complex, troubled history based on years of mutual disappointment and self-sacrifice... Wincest!) Dudes banging is great, but slash fiction frustrates me the same way that it frustrates me that strong, platonic male/female friendships are so rare in pop culture. It normalizes the idea that people can't just love each other without wanting to get all up in each other's mess. (Not that there's anything wrong with people getting all up in each other's messes! I'm a big fan of that too.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:02 PM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

To go back to the way that Siken put it: Perhaps the subtleties come later. Perhaps we need to push all the way into highly erotic realms to allow ourselves the room to pull back into places of possible non-sexual tenderness.

I could be wrong, but I think he's just saying that while this is a valid concern, for him it's not a concern that outweighs the goal of normalizing queer desire as an acceptable thing. He might also be implying that people might actually feel more secure in their masculinity while expressing strong feelings if they actually accepted those erotic possibilities: to put it crudely, not a kneejerk defensive "I love you bro but no homo", but "well, I actually thought it through with an open mind, and really, I'm 100% sincere when I say: no homo, although I do still love you".

I mean, it's not like men just got skittish about expressing feelings and hugging each other after slash started up, right? This has been an inherent problem in masculinity for a long time. To the extent that men were hesitant to express strong feelings of platonic friendship for other men, it was generally based in some sort of homophobia anyway; I think he's just saying that becoming more accepting of queer erotic possibility might counterintuitively remove some of the defensive pressure from that kind of intimacy. It's the kneejerk defensive denial of possibility that prematurely shuts that deep platonic friendship down in that case, not the erotic possibility itself.
posted by dialetheia at 2:17 PM on June 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Dudes banging is great, but slash fiction frustrates me the same way that it frustrates me that strong, platonic male/female friendships are so rare in pop culture.

Next time you want to read fanfic, check the box marked 'gen'. I write gen, as do many, many other people. Some exchanges, like Yuletide, have been mostly gen. Slash is a genre of fanfic, but it's not the only one.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:36 PM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

"I love you bro but no homo", but "well, I actually thought it through with an open mind, and really, I'm 100% sincere when I say: no homo, although I do still love you".

Perhaps, but it sounds like some convoluted reasoning to me. What I'd much prefer would be less sexualizing of platonic male friendships (or sibling bonds) and more actual LGBT characters in mainstream fiction. What we've got now is a lot of franchises with close male friendships but zero LGBT characters, while the fans are snickering and going, "Of course, they really only care about each other because they secretly wanna bang!" And that strikes me as a rather grim state of affairs all around. Genre show creators are becoming more inclusive, but it's a slow process so in the meantime I suppose I can't blame frustrated fans for sexualizing the hell out of everything.

(Although I've always found the Wincest thing kind of creepy because it feels like such a violation of who those brothers are. Those two would rather die than bang each other. There is no secret attraction they're denying. Now, Dean and Crowley, or even Dean and Castiel? I have a hard time seeing Dean going for that, but it doesn't feel 100% contrary to the characters the way Dean banging his little brother would.)

Slash is a genre of fanfic, but it's not the only one.

Oh, I know not all fanfic is slash! I've known people who wrote whole fanfic novels, without any bedroom hijinks. But slash stuff seems to be what's under discussion here.

I must confess, I'm not a big fan of fanfiction in general. I've read some good stuff, but if it's not canon it feels "unreal" to me. Of course, all fiction is unreal by definition, but for me fanfiction falls outside of a show's "reality" so it's hard for me to get engaged.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:48 PM on June 24, 2015

There can be though... There's plenty of fanfic where they are just friends. But amongst all the directions fanfic writers can go, there are some where they aren't. And that should be OK.
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:48 AM on June 25, 2015