Interview With Thylias Moss

Abstract

Interview With Thylias Moss Marc J. Sheehan Thylias Moss is one of that select group of writers who is comfortable working across the various genres. She is best known for her six volumes of poetry, including her most recent Last Chance for the Tarzan HoUer, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. But Moss is also the author of a bookfor children (I Want to Be/, and her memoir, Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress. In that volume she wrote, "As long as someone wants revelation, there will continue to be an outpouring of art that defines, revives, encourages, and elevates people. I want us to be more, even if at the end ofexistence, it is allfor naught. When we are strivingfor more, an ineffable existence beyond mortality, an unfetteredpotentialfor consciousness to exceed all known bounds, then do we produce our most striking and moving art." Fourth Genre spoke with Thylias Moss at her office at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, about her own outpouring of art, especially her memoir Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress, and how the boundaries between the different genres can be overcome to produce that "most striking and moving art" which is the one true goal of any real artist. Thylias Moss Photo by D.C. Goings, University ofMichigan Photo Services, 1998 MarcJ. Sheehan Photo by Carole S. Berk 187 188Fourth Genre Sheehan:You're primarüy known as a poet. What was the impetus for writing Tale ofa Sky-Blue Dress, which is a memoir? Moss: I'm not sure I can identify the impetus to write anything. That would go back to early in my Ufe, in childhood, when I first became obsessed with relying exclusively on language to prove experience, or understand existence ofanything. That's when it started. I haven't been a strong advocate of identifying myself with any particular genre. I think that my poems are probably some kind of nonfiction statements. I tend to use language in a way that makes others—not myselfnecessarUy—caU them poems. I admit to faUing into a devotion to the musicality of it. I love the sound of words. I love the immensity ofwords. I like the idea ofan endless sentence. In a way, perhaps, that's what I'm Uving. It's just this continuous sentence fuU ofparenthetical information, semicolons, from birth to whatever the end may be—if there is one. What I'm getting at is that I don't see an essential difference from what I'm doing with words, what I'm trying to convey, in these things called "poems," in this thing caUed a "memoir." These things caUed "poems" tend to have line breaks, and that's what causes others to assume they are poems. I've decided that I'm not going to be obedient to margins, prose-type of margins, but for effect I wiU move on to the next line right after a certain word. I see no reason for that not to occur in prose. For effect, why shouldn 't the prose writer decide, "I'm not going aU the way to the end ofthe page limit, but rather, for effect, I want to begin the new Une here." In the poems there are stanzas; those could be paragraphs, couldn't they? The length of Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress would discourage anyone from caUing it a poem. And there, in the memoir, I'm not as interested in line breaks for effect, so it doesn't look Uke a poem. When I'm interested in line breaks, it looks Uke a poem. But my work is always behaving Uke what it really is—total enchantment with the language. Sheehan: You hit on one of the aspects of why I wanted to ask about the impetus for Tale ofa Sky-Blue Dress. How do you decide to begin on a project that's book length rather than a page, or a few pages, long? Moss: That is the delight for me. I don't ever set out on any project knowing the length. Everything I begin is of indeterminate length. The idea is entirely what...