The Poet as Cartographer

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• The Poet as Cartographer
• E. Ethelbert Miller (bio)

During a recorded Zoom conversation with Miho Kinnas, a Japanese poet and translator, I found myself thinking about why we had begun collaborating on writing poems together. Was this the result of a pandemic hangover? Had we become addicted to the daily exchanging of emails and the discussion of the work by Chilean novelists? What brings writers together when they step outside workshops and cafés? What is the relationship between collaboration and community organizing? What does it mean to share lines and stanzas of poems when walls are being constructed to keep migrants and refugees out? In our poem "One of Us Is Missing" Miho and I write:

I no longer know where I am going.I should sell my shoes for food.I cannot find a map.

I've always been curious about the cartography of collaboration. How does one follow another without a map? Which tends to bring me back to governmental policies adopted to deal with a crisis. How often does our leadership seem to be clueless or just lost? What is the connection between collaboration and democracy? What is the price of collaboration, and what must one sell to be successful?

Once when I wrote to Miho and told her I missed her, she responded back that she didn't know she was missing. I chuckled after she told me this, but reflecting on her comments much later, her response seemed to summarize the poem "One of Us Is Missing." We began the second stanza of the poem with this intriguing line:

How will I survive without the others?

So much is broken in today's world. War shatters peace. People become scattered pieces. There is a longing to connect, to return home, or to discover new homes. The invention of self is performance art. Every narrative is a [End Page 89] potential passport into newness and a conversation with oneself or another. Miho and I used the term "twoness" to describe what we were doing. We started exchanging lines back and forth by email. Since our work is very different in style and tone, Miho described our collaboration as improvisational while I considered it to be more call-and-response. I found our exchanges spiritual and, at times, having a Zen quality. But how does one construct a poem together? How does one build a shelter or home? What are the politics of collaboration? Is it shaped by form or content? Do we need a map to help us explore? I believe there might be four levels required for collaboration:

Intent

Process

Result

Transformation

Every collaboration has an origin story. Intent begins with desire. The wanting to create something new and different. The search for synergy and communion. The strengthening of vision and the extending of the capacity to love. Intent in many ways is the Beloved Community, an ideal community that many have spoken of and long to see in the world. If a Beloved Community doesn't exist, one must work to bring it into existence. Collaboration is a rose blooming. Art possesses a sweet fragrance. A poem is saturated with beauty. The desire to bring or restore beauty to the world is what I believe Miho and I have always shared. The joy of writing, the pleasure of words, is the foundation of our friendship.

A number of writers have asked Miho and me about our process. How do we collaborate? How does one "practice" twoness? Can it be taught? The poet must be a cartographer. If one wants to understand our process, then we have to explain longitude and latitude. We have to explain the mountains and valleys in the words we share. We need to know where land and water are. This shapes our process by creating what might be called blueprints. I think we started "sketching" our collaboration when we decided to read and discuss books together. We were able to assess each other's critical eye when it came to reading and understanding a text. We saw one paragraph through two pairs of eyes. Talking about books established the foundation for a common [End Page 90] language. Here Miho...