An Interview with Lindsey Alexander

Lindsey Alexander is a Kentuckian who lives in East Tennessee with her dog and husband. She was named after a 1970s TV star and a broadcast journalist. She holds degrees from Indiana University and Purdue University. Her debut poetry collection, Rodeo in Reverse, was published by Hub City Press in 2018. Her poems have appeared on Poets.org and in Crazyhorse, Waxwing, The Southern Review, GRIST, and other publications. A poem she wrote won the 2015 Devil’s Lake Driftless Prize, and in 2014, she was a scholar at the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute “Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor.” You can visit her on the web at www.ldalexander.com, or on Instagram @zeeblondone.

Rebecca McKanna

In reading your newsletter, I love how you focus on imposter syndrome. I think it’s something that plagues so many writers, but few actually discuss it in detail. What made you want to address it, and how has it affected you personally as your debut poetry collection, Rodeo in Reverse, made its way to publication?

Lindsey Alexander

I’ve written before about how I grappled with impostor syndrome when I had to re-title my book. My original title for Rodeo in Reverse had “impostor” in it, the first word. I wanted that word on my book bigger than my own name. While I have a robust sense of humor, and I still like something about the idea (anyone reading the book would have “impostor” covering their face), I now realize that this was preemptive. If I called myself an impostor, essentially called my work fraudulent, no one else could call me a fake without being redundant.

Also, and I hesitated to talk about this publicly, but then I figure, what the hell? I had a birthday, got notice my book would be published, and went on a tremendous vacation all within a week or two span. When I returned, I had a—I don’t know if “mental breakdown” is too melodramatic, I wasn’t Gina Rowlands in Cassavetes, but I broke down. I woke up one morning, waited for my husband to leave for work, and just began sobbing. I couldn’t focus. Via text a friend talked me down, and I entered therapy. So really Rodeo in Reverse has become a sort of rodeo in reverse for me, becoming more stable and accepting of myself, deciding to land softly rather than be thrown. My impostor syndrome meant all the good things happening for me—I couldn’t accept them. It made me jump out of my skin. 

While that might be a little extreme, I think many artists can relate. If you can’t even take a compliment on your shoes without shouting the person down with how cheap they were or how you didn’t pick them out yourself, how can you accept you actually have God-given talent? In my case, I couldn’t. Gifts made me uncomfortable.

I figure if I’m dealing with a feeling, other people must be too (the conceit of most art methinks), and if my writing can help other people with their work, I’d love that.

Rebecca McKanna

I really like how you put that: “My imposter syndrome meant all the good things happening for me—I couldn’t accept them.” How has that feeling changed or intensified with the book actually in the world? 

Lindsey Alexander

Mainly, I think (though who knows what the book tour will bring), that feeling’s been released—toward this project anyway. I’d like to think this is because of the personal work I’ve done over the past year. Talking to friends whose work I admire who struggle with the same feelings has helped alleviate it somewhat, too. Like, “You’re not the impostor! I’m the impostor!” conversations are hilarious and disappointing. 

Considering what kind of writer I aspire to be has helped me avoid playing the comparison game I used to love-hate. Now that I have an idea of who I aspire to be, I can work toward that and take my time. There’s less anxiety around not being the Next Big Thing, and way less jealousy, because it’s not what I’d want. I can be happy for or oblivious of the Next Big Things and continue writing. Comparisons tend to lead straight to impostorism because they’re pointing at something I want but am too chicken-shit to go after or something I think I should want but don’t. They muddle.

The final thing that I think has helped is that I’ve been writing in the meantime. So I don’t feel like I’m lying when I say I’m a poet or a writer. My self-worth isn’t tied up with this book. A book is a time capsule for an author (though it exists as a new thing for everyone else). I’m excited to tour and to meet other artists. I’m grateful for all my friends and family members who helped me. I’m proud of the work I did and the work of others, and I think it’s a good book. (Okay, a very good book, I’m a Leo.) But it’s my first book, not my last book.

Rebecca McKanna

I love the idea of a book as a time capsule for an author. What’s in the Rodeo in Reverse time capsule? What sticks out to you when you reread it?

Lindsey Alexander

Oh man, my twenties are in there. [Laughter] I mean my speakers’ twenties. In that, I look at this book and think I wrote most of it when everyone I loved was alive and I could covet or create dramas that didn’t exist off the page because I lived a life that was nearly devoid of external hardship. You age, that changes. In “Spiritualism,” there’s this line about a widow claiming “Everyone who’s lost someone knows the meaning of butterflies. … // I didn’t … .” And since writing that poem, I have lost people. I still don’t know “the meaning of butterflies,” but whenever I see one I think of that now, then inevitably, those people. Things like that.

But besides that, I do think Rodeo in Reverse in particular functions as a time capsule, or as a time capsule that recovers a lot of objects from other time capsules, mixes them together, and buries them again. Abraham Lincoln and his contemporary General Sherman are in there. But so are Sonny and Cher and George Harrison’s cheekbones, the Buddha’s wife. So are beliefs about the soul that date back to Ancient Greece. So is Keats. So are the Impressionists, Patty Hearst. This book re-inters my versions of them with a version of me. Now they rest in unrest together.

Rebecca McKanna

Speaking of the mix of objects and times, Rodeo in Reverse has such diverse preoccupations–the South, nature, the Midwest, art, history, marriage, and so much more—but it pulls together into this really cohesive collection. I’m wondering how you shaped the book. How did you decide what poems to include? How many poems naturally ended up fitting together just based on your preoccupations as a writer? How many were written specifically to flesh out or shape the collection? And finally, what revision techniques did you use to shape the collection as a whole? 

Lindsey Alexander

The longer I took to write it, the more it would become large and whittle away again. Now I think right under half of it is from what I thought of as my original manuscript (my MFA thesis), the rest from the time after. Time is a great reviser.

Some strands, such as the series of Good Me/Bad Me poems, needed to go in a particular order for narrative clarity; but mostly, I was trying to create an emotional arc. Over time, the book became much more about the tension between domestic life and a life of adventure (to me; I don’t mean to impose my view onto readers).  A friend, the poet Corey Van Landingham, read through the manuscript when it was much rougher, much longer a couple years ago and encouraged me to radically cut, which I did (and what a relief to do that—a favorite anecdote is when asked why she didn’t publish more work, Szymborska said, “I have a trash can.”). Corey also suggested that I start with “Saudade [All You Pioneers]” and end with “Homestead, Sure.” I thought that was smart, and so I did. Having these two poles made it much easier to order the book and to make cuts. Leslie Sainz, my editor at Hub City Press, helped me fine-tune the order of the final poems. I feel like I learned the most about ordering from reading lots of plays growing up—all the things you learn about balancing humor and conflict—and also making failed mix CDs. (They were glorious but failed in that they never wooed anyone.)

A student asked me the other day whether I tend to write about current events in my life or about past events. I told him that I am not all that wise, and so they usually end up being one in the same. As far as preoccupations, I figure this is also an applicable answer. 

I think a collection of poems is the shape of a mind, and so, if honestly attended, it tends to mostly adhere with a few odd ends. That’s how I feel as a reader about the collections I like most, anyway.

As far as revision techniques once I was at the stage of ordering the manuscript: lots of cutting (entire poems and stanzas within poems), changing a few endings, re-breaking stanzas—Leslie has a good sense for demanding honesty from a poem and for how white space works in a poem, which helped loads with those.

Rebecca McKanna

I’m fascinated by your editor demanding honesty for a poem. What did that look like? Where and how were you shying away from things? What did you have to do to dig back into the poem in a more honest way?

Lindsey Alexander

Humor can make a point or evade it. So there is one ending in particular (in “Constitutional”) that I can think of where I went for a laugh instead of the more vulnerable honest truth. After I removed the joke, it took a while, but it was about sitting with it, rather than trying to make it entertain. 

In other poems, I’m not sure I was shying away from the truth, but diction is a way we can all usually increase our level of honesty, through how well we observe. When Leslie would question word choices, I’d have to re-observe and push toward more accuracy (for instance, the word “roughly” in “Love from Paris,” which wasn’t in the draft in my original manuscript).

Rebecca McKanna

Have the lessons you’ve learned revising this book changed the way you draft? Or do you have a distinct drafting brain/revision brain divide?

Lindsey Alexander

I don’t know! I don’t think anything in particular in the editorial process has changed how I draft, although I do think how I draft has changed over time to accommodate life. I still tend to amass a lot of work and then see what shakes out, whether full poems or single lines to play with. I still like working with constraints or formal structures to draft. TBD on whether these strategies remain effective. I think I tend to do what Marianne Boruch calls “hospital rounds,” checking in on poems, but I also do large-scale revisions, though usually much later. In more of a generative writing state right now I guess.

Rebecca McKanna

What advice do you have for poets (or any writers) who are submitting or preparing to submit their manuscripts? 

Lindsey Alexander

Be prepared to submit it more than once. Be prepared to submit it more than 100 times and to revise it as you go.

Rebecca McKanna

When you were submitting and submitting and not getting a yes, what kept you going? A belief in your book? Stubbornness? A little of both?

Lindsey Alexander

I think probably both. Maybe more stubbornness than belief, although stubbornness makes it sound stronger than it was. It was maybe more habit than stubbornness. Sometimes I think we like to make rejection out to be harder than it is, or maybe we’re displacing a lot of other rejections onto our artistic rejections. I don’t know. In a small group of women I meet with, we’re considering persistence. In trying to come up with an example of my own persistence, I brought up writing and revising and submitting my manuscript. But I also said I’m not sure this is persistence, because while I don’t want to negate how it was sometimes difficult (the writing, submitting is mostly saving money and pressing buttons), it wasn’t the persistence of say, someone long-distance hiking or caregiving to a family member, although I guess one could say it’s a little bit of habit in those scenarios, too. “Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?”Plus, I grew up doing theater, and that could often feel like I myself was being rejected. With writing it just feels like my work, or maybe my ideas, are being rejected. I generally have enough confidence to dust that off and moveon.org. I trust my own taste and know when my work is up to snuff. Having my own standards, rather than depending totally on outside publication, helps.