The Knife in the Couch: On Writing and Privacy // Emily Mohn-Slate

 Emily Mohn-Slate writes about finding clarity through writing, and writing as a means of relating as part of Lauren Davis’ guest month, “Writing About the Living.”I like to make everyone happy—a practice I developed early in life and never fully shook. This desire is at odds with my work as a poet and writer. To get to the heart of any piece of writing, I have to say things that might make people uncomfortable, including myself. It doesn’t matter how old I get, or how hard my therapists have worked to help me—when I’ve said or done something that creates discomfort for someone else, I replay it over and over in my mind. My students often ask, “How do you deal with writing about people you know?” Sometimes I quote Anne Lamott, who wrote in Bird by Bird, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Then I think of the actual people that end up in my poems. I see my ex-husband in my head, or my children, and I say, “But we’re not only writers who deal with the page. We are also people who live in the world, whose lives are entangled with other complicated, imperfect people.” Lucille Clifton’s poem “why some people be mad at me sometimes” comes to mind:

they ask me to rememberbut they want me to remembertheir memoriesand i keep on rememberingmine.

Clifton draws us to the amorphous space between our memories and the memories of others, calling us to examine the way we’re all connected, all implicated, rather than pointing a finger at a particular person’s actions (although sometimes that is, of course, appropriate and necessary). Most of us will never face libel claims for what we publish—but every writer lives in an awkward swampland of memories, shame, and potential slights. How do we steer our boat through these tall, tricky grasses? When my poem “Landscape with Ex-Husband Lingering” was published online, a non-writer friend asked me, “Did you really do that?” Meaning: had I really driven a butcher knife into my couch cushions after my ex-husband left? “No,” I said, “but the speaker in the poem did.” I tried to explain the difference between the two: the person who had an experience that inspired the poem, and the speaker of the poem, a character who is a seed that started as me, but grew into a distinct tree—a character who needed to drive that butcher knife through the couch and did, in the very real but imaginary world of the poem. In my actual lived life, I fantasized about doing a lot of things to sublimate my rage, but I mostly only committed quieter aggressions, like drinking all of his Glenmorangie scotch bit by bit each night until it was gone. How do we stay true to what each piece of writing calls for, while also maintaining an awareness of the complex, independent life our work will have once it is in the world? It doesn’t help me to pretend I’m writing only for myself, as many writers suggest. I’ve tried. I know I’m fooling myself. When my son draws a creepy ghost, he calls me to see it right away. Like him, I want to share my work when it’s ready. How can I pretend nobody will read my work when I know I will eventually post it to Twitter or Facebook? I think of Mark Doty’s father not speaking to him again after he sent him his memoir, Firebird. In an essay on this experience, Doty writes, “If there is a meaning to be taken from this, it is that art cannot be counted to mend the rifts within or without. Its work is to take us to the brink of clarity.” For some, clarity is a balm; for others, clarity is a mirror, or, worse, a weapon. I’ve written a number of poems about my first marriage, which was to a man about whom I still care deeply and have a friendship with, albeit a distant one. I didn’t write these poems to accuse him of anything, or to explain who was responsible for the end of our marriage. I wrote them to move toward “the brink of clarity” for myself. When each poem started to take shape, when it was still only my own poem for my own eyes, I did not consider what he or anyone else would think about it. I was just writing the poem. But as soon as I considered sending it out into the world, I became anxious and thought, “I can’t submit this.” Here’s what helps me: I think of others who might be going through similar experiences and how my poem might reach out to them, how my words might offer those people some comfort or clarity. The act of imagining the way it might impact someone, as poems and essays and stories have helped me to survive my own life, is what helped me to decide: “I need to send this out. For me. For them.” Although I’m primarily a poet, I’ve been drawn to write personal essays in the last few years. In creative nonfiction, the contract with the reader is different. I know the reader will assume that these are the actual details of my life. Of course, the version of myself that narrates an essay is a construction as well, closer to the speaker of one of my poems than to the unbiased figure of a journalist. But in each essay, I’ve had to confront the question of whether to use certain material that might be controversial. One strategy I lean on heavily is to write from my own experience and focus on my own failings and issues, rather than those of others. In my essay, “I Feel Like I Live in Someone Else’s Body,” I shared some private details about my struggles with my postpartum body and depression. I’ve written a number of poems that explore the same subjects, but taking this on in creative nonfiction required a more intimidating measure of vulnerability, especially in our digital age, where the work is one click away from family and friends. In a recent essay about my postpartum breasts, I explore cultural expectations of women as they age. When it was time to submit it, I thought, “Do I really want to share this?” I submitted it anyway, but part of me has been relieved that it hasn’t been accepted for publication yet. Writing about my breasts feels much more exposing than writing about my postpartum belly or my depression. Nobody forced me to pull back the veil on my private life—I chose to do it—but that doesn’t mean it’s a comfortable or easy thing for me to do. But if a piece of writing is in the service of bringing clarity where there is shame and misunderstanding, then I want to publish it—for myself and others. And, I trust that I will be able to get to the place where I can share it eventually, even if my finger hovers over the share button for a long while before pressing it. Lately, my two young children enter my poems and essays a lot. They are still young enough that they can’t Google me or read anything I write. But what will I do when they can? When they’re old enough to be embarrassed by it, or to feel violated? They didn’t ask to be born to a writer. I imagine that I will ask them for their consent, and figure it out on a case-by-case basis. I trust that my approach will need to be continually revised, since my life and my memories are continually rolling back and forth like the tides, churning up new shells and stones. I have friends who will only publish certain poems in print journals as opposed to online journals because they don’t want others to see them. So far, I’ve simply chosen not to submit pieces I’m afraid for others to see. There are some poems and essays that are just for me (note to my husband: if I’m hit by a bus, you know what to do). I have changed names and details and created composite characters to preserve others’ anonymity. But ultimately, no matter how anxiety-producing it may be for me, the shifting landscape between my experiences and the experiences of others is one I will always be drawn to travel. Although my fear of treading this ground is real, if it is something I need to write, then I’m more afraid, ultimately, to be silent. I fear my own silences, which I’ve harboured for a long time—for the way it stunts my growth, for the way it cuts off the possibility of articulating a truth that can reach out to others who need it. If I censor myself, if I write the safe poem or essay, then I’m not doing my job, which I see as pursuing clarity, despite the risks. Adrienne Rich said, “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.” Our writing is best when it cuts close to the bone, when it doesn’t hold back from entering the uncomfortable spaces we are afraid to air out in our everyday lives. But my favourite writing is also humane, empathetic, and able to consider the effects of its confessions and questions even while fighting against silence. I’m thinking about the complicated miles between silence and speech, about silence as an act of kindness toward another person versus silence as self-censoring. I’m thinking about the costs of clarity, about trying to shake off my anxieties and just write.

Emily Mohn-Slate is the author of Feed, co-winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize, forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press (2019). Her essays and poems can be found in At Length, New Ohio Review, Racked, Crab Orchard Review, Muzzle Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Her full-length poetry manuscript, The Falls, has been named a finalist for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize offered by University of Pittsburgh Press and the Brittingham and Pollak Prizes offered by University of Wisconsin Press. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she’s part of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops at Carlow University.