Space Exploration: G.C. Waldrep
Astronauts perform some strange superstitions before they shoot off into orbit to explore the vast expanses of space. NASA commanders play cards with the tech crew the night before a launch, continuing until the commander loses a hand. Russian cosmonauts pee on the right rear tire of their transfer bus on the way to a launch. These are strange quirks, but they are crucial for these space-explorers to feel comfortable before and during a mission.
Writers also have rituals that must be performed in order to shake off bad vibes and get into a zone where they feel comfortable putting words on a page. When we read a great book, we only see the final product, and not the obsessive care put into the work environment that allowed for its creation. In SPACE EXPLORATION, our goal is to demystify writers’ environments and explore the ways in which they’ve been created and curated, and how they affect the mental spaces of the authors who inhabit them.
We asked writers to tell us about their necessary spaces; the physical spaces as well as the desired headspace to write. We asked about their rituals— special meals that have to be eaten pre-writing sesh, only writing in purple ink, lucky pieces of clothing that may have once inspired a particularly powerful passage. We asked them to engage our senses and tell us which aspects of process must be deliberate and what is arbitrary. These are the spaces they shared with us.
Our first feature was written by G.C. Waldrep, professor at Bucknell University. His most recent work feast gently was published in 2018 by Tupelo press.
My physical work space is actually more of a revising-space than a writing-space. For many years now my writing-space has been, essentially, a notebook. There's usually either a walking-and-writing connection, or more often a reading-and-writing connection, sometimes both. But that's an interior nexus, a triangulation.
And then there is the prayer-space, which for me is a sort of extra-dimensional space, writing-wise: it stands alongside but outside that writerly triangulation, and yet it is always present. I’m never quite sure what the relationship is between the prayer-space (what goes on in the prayer-space) and the writing-space (what goes on in the writing space). Years ago I compared them to two contiguous apartments at the top of a tall building with no connecting door between: when you’re in one, you know there are people in the other, doing things; you sometimes hear noises, smell odors, speculate. Except that I’m the same person, occupying both apartments, simultaneously.
I obsessively curate my revising-space. I meticulously number and collate drafts; I sometimes pin drafts to the wall; I move poems from pile to physical pile (and from file to file on my computer). This elaborate revising-space has evolved over twenty years. I think it originally stemmed from my archivist tendencies (I come by these honestly, having trained as a historian), but I think I also find it satisfying because this work we do, this writing, this poetry, so often seems doubtful, of evanescent value if of value at all. Certainly the culture tells us this. But we all work so hard at it. I think my revising rituals serve the psychological purpose of proving that work is being done.
As for more superstitious writing rituals—the special ink or notebook, Flaubert’s smelling apples, etc.—no, not really. Walking is good. Ekphrasis is good. I think of my work as a poet, as I think of my life in the body, as a conversation, variously among things and beings. One thing that has not ceased to convoke a quiet sense of wonder in my spirit is the idea that, for poets, everything has value, nothing is wasted. No experience is wasted, if one is a poet—or at least poetry confers that potential.
I once had a colleague who spoke with curled lip about what she considered my “prolific” output. It turned out that our rates of composition were actually quite comparable—with the exception that two or three times a year I go on something of a writing tear. This is where ecstasis intersects with practice, and I admit I court it: what combination of location, reading, other art, prayer, fellowship (or solitude), and/or grace might make it happen again? Because I want it to happen again. Because in those states, which might or might not resemble visionary/trance states, not only is nothing wasted, everything has value: numinous value. And that is not only the world I aspire to—it’s also the world I think is most real. Even if we can’t live there long for now.
G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are feast gently (Tupelo, 2018), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the long poem Testament (BOA Editions, 2015). Newer work has appeared in APR, Poetry, Paris Review, New England Review, Yale Review, Iowa Review, Colorado Review, New American Writing, Conjunctions, etc. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University and edits the journal West Branch.