Narrating Beyond Narration

by | Jun 17, 2015 | Faculty News, Thoughts and Musings

Tarpaulin Sky has just published Part II of an interview with Jan Clausen about her recent book Veiled Spill: A Sequence. Here’s a quick excerpt:

For me, “Veiled Spill #14” is an effort to narrate beyond narration. To tell a kind of story in the space beyond story. This relates back to an earlier piece that riffs on a quote from Janet Malcolm, who inquires, “How can one see all the ants on the planet when one is wearing the blinders of narrative?” My version wonders how one can “bear/the blinders of narrative” given that “what is veined/is spilling everywhere?” On one level, I read my own lines as being about violence and suffering—how can you justify the selection that “story” entails, since it is bound to exclude some part of an ocean of damage? But it can also be about the proliferation of points of view, the limitlessness of sentience in any given moment. This burgeoning cannot be directly experienced—after all, “My I is right here.” And yet: it must be honored, metaphorically apprehended. It’s this overflow of experience, perspective, sensation, consciousness, and event that “Veiled Spill #14” endeavors to set to the music of pouring language.

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Jan Clausen

Jan Clausen is the author of a dozen books in a range of genres, including the hybrid text Veiled Spill: A Sequence (GenPop Books, 2014). Her 1999 Memoir Apples and Oranges: My Journey through Sexual Identity will be reissued by Seven Stories Press in 2017. Recent poetry titles include From a Glass House and If You Like Difficulty. Prose titles include the story collection Mother, Sister, Daughter, Lover; and the novels Sinking, Stealing and The Prosperine Papers. Jan Clausen is the author of a dozen books in a range of genres, including Veiled Spill: A Sequence, from GenPop Books (2014). Other recent poetry collections are From a Glass House and If You Like Difficulty. Prose titles include the story collection Mother, Sister, Daughter, Lover; the novels Sinking, Stealing and The Prosperine Papers; and the memoir Apples and Oranges: My Journey Through Sexual Identity. Clausen’s poetry and creative prose are widely published in journals and anthologies; her book reviews and literary journalism have appeared in Boston Review, Ms., The Nation, Poets & Writers, and The Women’s Review of Books. She is the recipient of writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He website is ablationsite.org.

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