Rauan Klassnik is a literary wild man. A prose poet with a signature style that mixes the grotesque with the graphic, the violent with the surreal. Everything is dying or dead or bleeding out for the trees to watch. It’s an out of body experience to open one of his books, gaze at the haunts, maneuver through the open wounds.
With two prose poetry collections through Black Ocean (Holy Land in 2008 and The Moon’s Jaw in 2013) as well as the recent collection A Slow Boiling Beach (2019) and a collaborative book of plays with Jon Cone (An Ice Cream Truck Stalled at the Bottom of the World, 2020), I spoke with Klassnik about his writing process, his current manuscript(s), his dreams, and much more.
Let's begin with an icebreaker. What's the last meal you spit up and couldn't finish?
The other day I was at a taco stand and this happened:
Under the moon’s tightening wrists—Leaning down to pet yr dog, you looked up at me, & shot the dog in its face. We fucked: & we fucked again. & when I came to you were sucking me off. Like my brain—Slow & aching. A rat’s in a maze. It stops—Grows—& it is the maze. Futures—Stopped. Coins, chips—& rippling, cash. All—Bone white.and all I can say about that is:
It doesn’t matter how much you want to stay inside, make love and float in the bath all day long the world knows what you want, and it knows what you need. It brings you bodies. And it brings you a gun.actually, I’d like to say the following too:
——Undressed——Hands In Our Hair——Creation’s————Groaning——“Do You?”——“Do You?” & Yes!——I’m Raining———Up In Me——Lights——Etched In My Blood————Louder——& Louder——In Spirals Of Dark——The Same——Old——Lights Full Of Whores——Those are actually pieces of my first two books. if anyone reading this is halfway interested in my work I’d be happy to send them a book or two. They can just email me at ronklassnik2001(at)yahoo(dot)com.
If they’re respectful I’ll be happy to oblige. If they’re not then I’ll probably just ignore them. Please don’t be too chummy or loud. You may have read some of my work, you may have read this interview, but that doesn’t mean you know me. Or maybe you do.
I know. I don’t know. This is so cheesy. But, plz…
My six-year-old nephew saw the cover of A Slow Boiling Beach and said, "That person's not wearing any clothes." Care to comment?
My Schism editor, Gary J. Shipley, and I both like Louie Otesanek’s art. He has lots of great pieces that would have worked well as a cover for the book. But we thought this particular detail of one of Louie’s pieces best embodies the work inside.
p.s. I hope six-year-olds aren’t reading my book.
I'd love to hear you talk a bit about the grotesque and the perverse and the violence that seems to constantly be stirring and bubbling and rotting within your work.
I haven’t done an interview in a long time. I did quite a few for my first few books and what was published was sometimes interesting and sometimes entertaining but I look back at those interviews with a fair amount of disdain because I was bullshitting so much. I grimace now at how much of it was staged, posed.
But I’m pretty sure that in one or more interviews I mentioned that when Whitman was asked about his writing he said he didn’t really know how it came about. He compared the making of it to a hen who goes around a hedge to lay an egg.
He also talked about leaves and fruit growing from the trees. I don’t recall the name of a Renaissance artist (maybe it was later) who said every time he wanted to make something beautiful (a woman, the sun, a flower) he ended up painting a corpse.
I was sad and dark about the world when I was four years old. Rotten before I was half ripe. And that core of me continues to bleed on through. An oozing fig.
via YouTube
What's the last dream you recall?
Okay, I’ll take the easy way out again.
I’m lost. & I’m lost. But, I’m in a room with the president. & he’s on his knees: A long, thin curved penis: & I’m talking him into orgasm. “Hey, you’re that guy,” he whispers, “who shoves souls up into his crotch.” Buildings shimmer, violently, outside the window. Like a fetus, slow & heavy. “Yes, that’s me,” I sigh. “Yes, that’s me.” Bits of cum are falling everywhere.That’s from my 2nd book, The Moon’s Jaw. I hardly ever remember my dreams and they’re usually pretty silly. But sometimes when I’m under a lot of stress they’re sexually deviant.
And, fyi, that was written well before Donald J Trump (who ought to be tortured and killed really slowly and unprofessional by some amateur Narcos in a cardboard box in their first kill house) became president and traumatized a large portion of our population. Maybe it works better if you imagine it’s him?
I listened to one of your recorded readings, and you read poems by other poets in between your own work. Is this something you do often at readings?
I haven’t read in ages but I used to do a lot of readings and I liked to experiment with them. I think I mixed my work with other writers’ work a couple of times. Maybe more. Thinking back I feel like some of my readings were pretty successful. Some of them kind of sucked. I enjoyed meeting people. The terror of reading was quite a thrill. But, all that anxiety. It took a toll on me.
Like your readings, do you feel like your work is in conversation with other writers/artists?
I don’t. I mean no one grows up in a vacuum. No one springs fully formed. Blah. Blah. Everyone reads, looks, feels and has their favorites. Some impress. Some leave impressions. But I don’t feel like I’m writing to or around anyone else. Michaux said that he didn’t want to be circumscribed by anyone else. And he probably hasn’t been. I’m guessing I have been and will always be. And that’s kinda sad. But I don’t dwell on it. I just do my thing.
Also, I know it has some validity but when it comes to Art I really hate the phrase “in conversation with.” Lightly editing my answers now I am slightly tempted to delete the previous sentence. But I have to stick with it.
Every poet seems to have an opinion about the prose poem and (as an enthusiast) I always want to know more. Most of your poetry is in prose blocks. Is this a default format for you? What guides the line?
Jean Follain is the prose poet I’d refer to here. He talks about looking at (thinking about, embodying) one of his poems and then thinking something like “this needs a little red.” He goes on to explain that he isn’t talking about using the word “red.” When I first encountered this from Follain I didn’t really know what to make of it. But as I began to think more and more effectively in sound, heft, color and emotion while making my little word systems it began to dawn.
I make and change my chunks of writing through this sort of understanding and judgement. For better or for worse, at the end of the day you either understand Follain or you don’t. It’s like riding a bicycle.
I sometimes like to compare my pages to painting. Then I might compare a grouping of pages (a book of mine) to a gallery or museum exhibition of paintings. I’d like to think this is a successful way of talking about my writing.
via berfrois
In A Slow Boiling Beach, the format for each poem really matched a rather uniform structure. Not simple prose poem paragraphs, but split and divided and given breath. Did these all stem from one preconceived vision? Or was the format adjusted during the editing process?
The process for my books twist and turn so that by the time I’ve finished with a book I can’t properly remember how it all started. I mean, kind of. So, yeah, I did have a sort of vision or controlling sort of emotion for the book. Anxiety. But the form did take a while to gel. When my teeth finally sunk in that book began to purr, unspool. Not that it was easy. Not that it was quick.
I just had to keep going down into the pit and bit by bit I came up with the pieces.
You released a collection of poems in 2019 and a collaborative play in 2020, both new in the writing world, but can I ask what you are currently working on?
I have two manuscripts going. Perhaps I’ll end up making them one book. I often have the temptation to take a blunt knife to what I’m working on. Or a hand grenade. Spatter all over the canvas. But I also like to loaf and wallow in what I’m writing. Stay in the womb. Just enjoy the water. Keep working with the palette knife. And keep it nice and clean.
The first one’s tentatively titled TEN THOUSAND TREES and here’s an excerpt.
—A prostitute’s first time with a stranger in a car. Millions lined up for the tomb. The attack dogs waiting.—I’m helping an old lady across the street. She grabs you by the hair and drags you to the bathroom. The days are worn. And filthy. You’re not quite sure where to stand. Should you stab it in the eye? Poleaxe the face? Maybe you should lie down under it and stab upwards? —You snapped on rubber gloves. You couldn’t stop smiling. A ruined torso.I couldn’t see her face. She was standing in the doorway. She was asking for a small donation. Part of her face was missing. It was glowing, damaged, charred. She placed it under my bed. We went for a walk together. I was cured. I felt invincible. We should dig a pit here, she said, and trap some deer. The spiders fattened up, sweetening through our skin. We found an old field hospital. Some orange peel. We could breed them here. We were smiling through each other. We could make love in the weeds as the fog rolls in.—A post-coitus childhood flashback: that’s how good we were. That’s how sated. Trash and excrement. In sprays of light. —No one deserves anything. The trees held us down.The second one’s tentatively titled THE DOG SLAPS ME AROUND and here’s an excerpt:
Swimming Lessons
I watch her apply the lotion to the baby’s skin.She massages the butt, the chest, arms, legs. She massages his cheeks. Rubs his ears. You can’t help smile when a baby smiles at you, when it looks in the mirror, then turns away, and giggles. She applied the same lotion to our father’s feet a few hours before he died. He said it felt good. He smiled and then hummed along to his favorite song.A small figurine of a shark rests on the coffee table.My first girlfriend sneezed when you fingered her.You expect me to help you?Popcorn break.
Damn, I’m feeling so liberated for giving out my email, like walking around in my underwear. Dogs awake in the street. Some of them sound like they’re poisoned. Occasionally the desperate bray of a donkey. It’s too late for the birds. They’ll be around in the morning.
if my writing’s for you, great. If not, o, well. It’s all good.
And I do have fear. And shame.
Outside of your own art and writing, what albums/artists/plays/films have captivated you in recent months?
In recent months I have read almost nothing. I think Nietzsche said he didn’t like to read when he was stuck into his writing because he didn’t want any stray ideas sneaking in over the wall. That’s not exactly what I’m trying to say. We sold our house in Seattle a few months ago. I’m in Mexico with my wife and her mother now. We’ve been traveling around. Stray images do come in over the wall. Through the walls. Under and over it.
The moving, the chaos, the novelty, this all holds me captive, just as Narcos might. Of course that’s ridiculous. But I do often fantasize and tremble.
If you can, provide a photo of your workspace or describe with words. What are some essentials while you create?
Sometimes I like to write in complete silence. Sometimes I like to play three or four songs on loop at the same time, for hours and hours. The photo above is from the place we’re at now.
In closing, do you have any advice for early writers? Or rather, what's something you would have liked to have known when you first started taking your writing seriously?
There’s no replacement for hard work. You just have to keep at it. Also, it helps to be strange. I mean everyone’s different of course. But, it helps to be fundamentally unique. Lots of hard work and maybe a bit of grit gets in the oyster. But it helps if it’s there at the start.
But the hard work’s non-negotiable. And don’t bullshit.
What the hell am I talking about?
(I already said I’m most likely circumscribed)
via HTMLgiant
For this ongoing author interview series, I'm asking for everyone to present a writing prompt. It can be as abstract or as concrete as you choose.
Find a television. Change channels over and over. Before you change the channel write down a phrase or two. Maybe more. Do this until you think you have any enough raw material. You can use your music library the same way, shuffling over and over.
When you’re working with the raw material try to see it all at once.
Try to feel it all inside you. Like an animal, or a machine.
Some time, now or years from now, you’ll know when you’ve got it right.
Any final thoughts / words of wisdom / shout-outs?
I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with other writers.
I wrote a play with Judson Hamilton that was performed for a week in Chicago.
And I can’t remember the details of Jon Cone reaching out to me but we ended up writing a group of plays together that ultimately became a book, An Ice Cream Truck Stalled at the Bottom of the World. We’re both quite proud of this book. I think it’s fun and serious. I couldn’t have done it on my own. And I’m sure I’m better off for it.
Working alone’s the best thing, really. I mean it has been for me.
But, reach out. Sometimes people slap you. Sometimes ignore you.
But sometimes they’ll walk through the forest with you.
And they’ll teach you things about the forest.
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Good luck. Thanks for reading. Write your ass off.
