Fritz Ward’s poems have appeared American Letters & Commentary, Gulf Coast, Blackbird, and many other publications. His manuscript has been a finalist and semi-finalist for the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Prize, the National Poetry Series, The Four Way Books Levis Prize, and several other contests. He currently lives just outside of Philadelphia and works at Swarthmore College.
His poem, "Reenactment as America's Most Wanted #48," appeared in Issue Fifty-Six of The Collagist.
Here, he speaks with interviewer, Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes, about slippery you's, little so's, and houses that eat you up.
Could you tell us about the genesis of “Reenactment as America’s Most Wanted #48”?
I was collaborating with Simeon Berry and Cecily Iddings on a series of doppelganger poems several years ago. “Reenactment” never made it to the collaborative phase of the project, but the initial seeds of the poem were sown while thinking about the implications of inhabiting other personas and voices. An earlier variation of the poem was entirely cast in first person, but over time the first-person approach felt too much like an act. As much as I wanted to climb into the persona I had created, something about it felt hollow. It got to the point where the I in the poem felt more like an actor than a speaker. That feeling lingered for a year or two until I became mildly obsessed with the idea of an actor actually playing the part, and then the idea of reenactment quickly surfaced. Somewhere in this messy timeline, I also started thinking about America’s Most Wanted, a show that held a powerful and frightening place in my memory. The reenactments from that show, along with Emilia Philips poem “Entra Tutto,” about a Civil War reenactment, finally pushed the poem into its current version, which in many ways is a reenactment of that early first-person poem.
The “you” in poetry is ever shifting, ever being discovered by the reader. In this poem, I felt like the “you” was in a very different mode than I was expecting, until the end, with “Shhhh, you’re only here to hurry the rain // into my heart.” This felt like the “you” was suddenly a beloved. Could you talk about the use of the “you” in the poem?
The “you” is a god-damn slippery creature in this poem. Perhaps because it was absent from the poem for so many years, the “you” still feels a bit surprising to me when I reread the poem. I wanted the “you” to immediately indict/implicate the reader, the speaker, and the other. I wanted to blur those lines to create a measure of ambiguity and discomfort within the false security of the reenactment trope. Since this is a reenactment, we’re not experiencing the actual events but the recreation of them, and yet we’re experience this recreation for the first time. I wanted the “you” to embody this idea as well—of being both the thing and not the thing. I’m not entirely sure what to say about the shift in the final two lines. The poem wanted something tender and ominous, yet sad and yet complicated. I complied.
Even though the “so” at the end of “You stand just // so” is a little word, it’s given a lot of emphasis by being both on its own line, off set, and italicized. Could you talk about this little word and the weight you’ve given it?
I rarely employ one-word lines, but the line break after “just” and the loneliness of “so” orphaned out there on its own line felt absolutely right. It’s a familiar phrase, maybe even a little worn, but placing the emphasis so heavily on “so” felt like it planted depth charges in the phrase and reminded me how hyper aware you can be of someone else’s body language when you’re obsessed, afraid, or even infatuated. The way they stand sends your heart into a manic episode of panic, fear, or excitement depending upon the circumstances.
What have you been writing recently?
I’m attempting to build a house of poems. My wife and I became homeowners for the first time three years ago and I’ve noticed how significantly my relationship to habitat has changed since then. Each poem focuses on one room of the house, but the room is never named in the poem. So far, I’ve built the kitchen, living room, hallway, and an unfinished basement. It may all collapse in on me at any minute, but until then I’ll keep hammering. Houses eat you up.
What have you been reading recently?
On the poetry shelf, I’ve recently read and loved Bone Map by Sara Johnson, Cecily Iddings’s Everybody Here, and How to Dance as the Roof Caves In by Nick Lantz.
Last month, I got my fiction fix by feasting on How The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor. Also, Dr. Seuss. My two-year old is obsessed with The Lorax right now.