Summer 2007 - the Wyoming State Library

Festival bringsauthor homePoet and author Paisley Rekdal neverwanted to tackle the issue of race. Shenever vowed to put people in her biracialshoes. She never even knew it was an issueto her.“Most of my life I never thought aboutit at all,” she says.She says it must have been an issue toher, even if she didn’t know it. Whileattending graduate school in Michigan,she realized it was a big deal to her and toothers.“I didn’t show up to this party someonewas throwing in the graduate department.I found out I’d only been invited becauseI was biracial and that later people werefurious at me for not showing up. Theythought I didn’t show up because I wasn’tsupporting my race. I just thought it wasanother dumb party,” Rekdal says.It was a rude awakening, she says. “Racereally matters to everyone and in bothstupid ways like this party and importantways.”It is this issue and many others thatRekdal explores through both her prosand poetry.Rekdal’s newest work, The Invention ofthe Kaleidoscope: Poems, still touches on racebut focuses more on failures: failuresin relationships, science and artisticexpression.“Toward the end it’s about howthese failures can be successes if youunderstand that this sort of perfection isimpossible,” she says.The title poem tells of the man whoinvented the kaleidoscope as a way tobring his death and fragmented familytogether by the invention of this toy. Atthe same time, Rekdal says, the poem isabout a bad relationship she had with aman who was trying to make her more orless American.“The book is really about a lot ofthings,” Rekdal says.The poetry she’s writing now hasher “obsessed.” Sheis crafting poemsand a photo albumbased on the work ofEdward Curtis, whophotographed NativeAmerican Indians at theturn of the twentiethcentury.“I was struck byhow beautiful thephotographs were, andthe more I researched,the more I found outabout this adventurous,self-educated man andthe controversy surrounding these iconicphotographs.”Curtis believed the Native Americanswere a “vanishing race,” but Rekdal saysstudies show they were instead marryingand becoming a mixed race.“He wanted to try to preserve the ideaof the authentic Native American Indianand because of that he sort of stagedmany of his photographs—which manypeople may or may not know,” she says.Being biracial, Rekdal says this questionof authenticity really frustrates her.“This comes back to what does it meanto be authentic? How do you get countedin the end? Are you another branchingout of the authentic race or are you yourown race?” she says.Rekdal says: “Most of my poemscome from a combination of intensepersonal experience but also that personalexperience incorporates intellectualexperience too.”To her, poetry is a very privateexpression in more ways than one. For awriter, it’s a private expression that’s sentout to the public, but at the same time, thepoetry is read by the public in very privateways.“Each person takes a little somethingaway from the poem. Each personexperiences it in a different way andgets to claim someone else’s very privatelanguage as their own feelings too,” shesays.“Everyone says no one’s reading poetry.I’m reading it.”Rekdal is an associate professor at theUniversity of Utah. Her works includea book called The Night My Mother MetBruce Lee and three collections of poems:A Crash of Rhinos, Six Girls without Pants,and The Invention of the Kaleidoscope: Poems.She has received a Village Voice Writerson the Verge Award, an NEA Fellowship,the University of Georgia Press’Contemporary Poetry Series Award, aFulbright Fellowship, several PushcartPrize nominations, and the LaurenceGoldstein Poetry Prize from MichiganQuarterly Review. Her poems and essayshave appeared in or are forthcomingfrom The New York Times Magazine, Nerve,Ploughshares, Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review,Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, NewEngland Review, Virginia Quarterly Review,Prairie Schooner, Tin House, Quarterly West,and on National Public Radio amongothers.Speaking: 12:45 p.m., Saturday, Poetry TentBook signing: 10:30 p.m., SaturdayPanel: Poetry Panel, 2:15 p.m., Saturday,Poetry TentWyoming Library Roundup • Summer 2007 25