Dale Tracy : On Trish Salah’s “interview”

interview

In her picture

no ghost of words

this latest episode

within the detour

don’t ask,

does she

draw a line in time

recall her mother’s house?

every day of rewind

at the clinic

our awesome fatality

front loaded,

buried or burnt out

here recitation stalls

what slow explosion

to appear?

her “after”

is condensed

dreads the heart

to differentiate

a once lover’s glance

to seize upon

other scared bodies

a long line of “I had no idea”

Trish Salah’s poem calls itself an interview but refers to a recitation and describes a picture. While “interview” implies questions eliciting responses, “recitation” means “repeating from memory a poem, passage, prayer, etc.” (“recitation,” Oxford English Dictionary). Reciting an interview suggests a repeatable self, like the fixed image in a picture. Is this poem a recitation of identity? Does it express the desire for a stable self that can be re-cited? The poem opposes these ideas with a complex account of the plurality involved in a human life.

Rather than provide answers about herself, the speaker says, “don’t ask” (5). And this poem is about “she,” not “I”: the only “I” appears in the last line as quoted speech, an appearance that highlights its earlier absence. I understand the narrated “she” as a version of this unstated “I,” and I refer to the two together as “the speaker.”

Evidence for this split self comes in the reference to “her ‘after’” (17). If she has an after, then she also has a before, two versions of the self. That “her ‘after’ / is condensed” suggests a point in time after which she finds coherent identity, the re-cited self (17-18). However, the scare quotes around “after”—which writers use to distance themselves from a word or to show they mean otherwise—tell us that this before/after way of thinking is flawed.

Even without the scare quotes, we might be skeptical of this “after” because the speaker has already said, “don’t ask, / does she / draw a line in time” (5-7). Not only does the poem not take for granted that the line between before and after exists, but it forbids the question. The other censured question is about remembering origins: “don’t ask / does she / … / recall her mother’s house?” (5-8). Her “mother’s house” could be the house the speaker grew up in or even the house her mother is (the womb the speaker grew in). Her mother might be literally her mother or even an idea of inherited woman-ness (a foremother). Whether literal or metaphorical, it is a question about the relationship of the after (recall) to the before (her origin in her mother). Does she draw a line between origins and recall? Remember, don’t ask! These aren’t the right questions. There isn’t a “line in time” after which the self fixes into the condensed self.

The “line in time” might be renamed “our awesome fatality” (11), where the plural self (“our”) ceases to exist, breaking into before (not me) and after (me). But just as the speaker might not have drawn a line in time (meaning either drawn into the medium of time or drawn fast enough), the fatality might not have happened. The fatality, “front loaded” (12), seems future-oriented, anticipated. Because one can’t recite a self that hasn’t happened, “here recitation stalls” (14).

In contrast to the censured ones about the past, the speaker asks a question about the future: “what slow explosion / to appear?” (15-16). In this slow explosion, the fatality (the line in time) becomes inaccessible. The explosion would make fatality “buried or burnt out” (13), hiding it to suggest that the self has only existed since “after.” An explosion would “appear” to disappear the break between before and after, to bury or burn out the complexities of the self, leaving only the illusion of a whole self condensed into a portion of time. But “after” is suspect because this front loaded fatality hasn’t happened. Without the fatality, the plural self keeps existing.

In the opposite direction of the front loaded fatality moves the “every day of rewind / at the clinic” (9-10), suggesting a form of healing in seeking to allow the whole life to be accessible—not buried or burnt out. The opposite of a front loaded burnt out car is a car that can drive out of this “detour.” If her picture is “this latest episode / within the detour” (3-4), then the speaker positions this part of herself outside of her actual self, as a deviation. But rewinding moves to include all previous images of herself in her self.

Her “after” doesn’t really have the heart “to differentiate” between before and after. In fact, it “dreads the heart / to differentiate” (19-20). Despite dreading it, the speaker differentiates “a once lover’s glance” (21) from “to seize upon / other scared bodies / a long line of ‘I had no idea’” (22-24). “Once” indicates no more and relegates the glance to the past. In contrast, the infinitive “to seize” emphasizes the ongoing potential for this action, without a sense of past, present, or future. Literally “a long line” in the poem, this line underscores its meaning with visual ongoingness.

This “long line” undoes the differentiation and opposes the dividing line the speaker may or may not have drawn in time. The “long line” of bodies the speaker’s glance seizes might be her own. Remember, this speaker has always been plural. Instead of her lover’s glance, the speaker seizes on herself, as on “her picture” (1), the image of her own recalled body. That each body “had no idea” opposes the re-cited self (24). In fact, “her picture” is not only without words but has “no ghost of words” (1-2). This is a vision of the self that recognizes its necessary incoherence. Salah wrote about the self’s plurality with two other scholars in the introduction to a special issue of the scholarly journal Transgender Studies Quarterly. In this introduction, they observe “the democratic plurality of bodies and genders” and “the potentially endless proliferation of imagination, accommodation, and desire that exists in ongoing intimacy with the body’s concrete material forms” (474). Gender transition highlights plurality and proliferation rather than condensed afters standing in for a re-cited stable whole. The word “transition” does not draw a line between before and after but connects them. What a wonderful concept for living.

Yet to read this poem as a celebration of life not shut off within certain lines is to read for its implications on a social register. The poem takes place on a personal register, where its implications are much more ambivalent. “Seize” is not a gentle verb, and it is so difficult not to read “scared bodies” as “scarred bodies,” a slip that makes fear permanent. While the speaker works against the line drawn between before and after, she watches proliferate “a long line of ‘I had no idea.’” There is pain in not knowing, and that’s where this poem ends.

Note to Readers

I appear here as a reader of these poems offering models of response, aiming to open up possibilities for other readers. I’ve connected with the poets, and I’d now love to connect with other readers. How do you respond to these poems? Do you have questions or comments about my readings? Or about this project? Please get in touch with me at deicticpress@gmail.com.

Works Cited

Carter, Julian B., David J. Getsy, and Trish Salah. “Introduction.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 4, 2014, pp. 469–481, DOI 10.1215/23289252-2815183.

“Recitation.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford UP, 2020.

Trish Salah lives and writes in Toronto and is associate professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston. She has published two poetry books, Wanting in Arabic, which won a Lambda Literary Award, and Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1. She has also co-edited a special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.4 on Trans Cultural Production.

Dale Tracy, a contract faculty member, is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. She is the author of With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s, 2017) and the chapbooks Celebration Machine (Proper Tales, 2018) and The Mystery of Ornament (above/ground, 2020). She received an honourable mention in Kalamalka Press’s 2019 John Lent chapbook award contest.