from "Hairst"
by Susan Tichy
Very simply, the mixed form of Trafficke: An Autobiography (of which "Hairst" is a part) grew from the need to create a space for lyric within a highly particular and complex history whose details no reader could be expected to know, to liberate the verse without cutting it loose from its motivations and contexts. Working on this book, I have acquired great reverence for the dance between forms — how each translates and makes possible the other’s movement. The whole book is about needing to know, expanding one’s willingness to know . . . thus also about the limits of what we can know, what each of us is capable of knowing. The boundary of form demonstrates that sense of limit, but also the ways forward — including shape-shifting and disguise. Thus, Trafficke’s prose can become prose poem and the verse can embody narrative. Collage keeps both forms close to their linguistic and contingent origins. The rough texture of words, images, statements, rhythms, metaphors, variant spellings, foreign phrases, lies, and memories is also a form of storytelling, to which we must listen even as we seek a way through. Trafficke’s is dark world; it needs both song and light.
Susan Tichy’s most recent books are Gallowglass (2010) and Bone Pagoda (2007), both from Ahsahta Press. Trafficke: An Autobiography, her mixed-form book on family history both true and false, will be out in 2015. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at George Mason University, and when not teaching lives in a ghost town in southern Colorado. Visit susantichy.com.
Originally appeared in the online supplement to the Beyond Category issue 43.2-44.1