Cara Benson
BY Jon Lathrop

At the recent City University of New York (CUNY) Chapbook Festival, where you represented the Kollektiv, I was intrigued by the diversity of models for exchanging poetry. Such exchanges will inevitably impact the poetry itself, don’t you think?

The spirit of cooperation in the Dusie project opens a space for creation that is free from market constraints and worries. Thus, to my mind, it is generative of far more interesting work than products executed by writers who have as the primary motivation a desire to sell well and/or be well-reviewed. This is not to say that I think no interesting work is for sale or that money itself, material needs/wants, needs to be antithetical to creativity. Or that I think it’s wrong to want one’s work to be appreciated. Anyway, it’s very difficult to operate completely outside of capitalism at this point, though we do talk about the gift economy in poetry. A whole lot of book swaps happen. Rarely of hard covers, I’ve noticed. By which I mean that a certain level of market success (and here I’m absolutely including academia) creates a need for more success. So less gifting possibly. This is conjecture.


Your work is clearly rooted in community and history. I’m thinking now of the Belladonna* Elder series where you honor foremothers Anne Waldman and Jayne Cortez. Can you tell us more about the series?

The Elders Series was the vision of Belladonna* founder Rachel Levitsky and Erica Kaufman who was co-curator at the time. (Belladonna* has since reformed into a collaborative, of which I am now a part.) The idea was for emerging feminist, avant-garde writers to host in a publication and performance one or two writers who have had influence on the up-and-comer.

Are we never to touch down in a textual moment? Should we never name because that name will always simultaneously delimit, fetishize, come unhinged from, pretend to represent when it cannot or is not actually anything other than the name itself?

Apparently, there were some criticisms levied at the Elders Series regarding ageism and entrenchment of identity roles. This is only hearsay on my part. I imagine there was some concern, perhaps among other issues, about a reductive sentimentality or fetishization of the role of the canonized forbearer of a purportedly sacred tradition, but I could be wrong. If that’s the case, it is a legitimate concern. From my perspective, the conceivers of the project and its participants (should we question even that role while we’re at it?) were/are conscious of the problems of language, representation, identity, relational subjectivity, etc. Are we never to touch down in a textual moment? Should we never name because that name will always simultaneously delimit, fetishize, come unhinged from, pretend to represent when it cannot or is not actually anything other than the name itself?

In your preface to the book, you write: “That with free will (liberated choice), we can choose compassion and equanimity” (“The Insurgent Imagination” aka Wild Mind). This does bring, as you say, “some relationship with choice,” which you exercise here.

Absolutely there are names that are harmful. And obviously, considering my response to the use of experimental, I can appreciate grappling with any given term. I didn’t receive this one that way. Perhaps that had to do with my initial contact with the project. When Rachel Levitsky and I were first talking about the possibility of my taking part, she was perfectly ambiguous in using the term. It was very clear to me that “elder” did not need to have anything to do with the chronicled age of any of the participants, etc. This was always about relational sites and as such as fluid and fixed as any triad.

That reminds me of your poem, “me-tooism,” from (made):

not to mention the gallowishly hysterical:

To return to your sense of community, your website also mentions “Artistic Acts in the Public Sphere, Artistic Acts of Compassion and Confrontation” as areas of particular interest. How does your work teaching in the prison fit into this?

This may sound too romantic, but really I feel like that work chose me. Maybe one of the things that is/has been so, oh, I don’t know, interesting? important? crucial? about this project is the unbelievable constraint of the situation bearing in on and thus pressing incredible weight on each and every word. Even the words we cut. This isn’t always true. We scribble out rough drafts that feel superfluous or ridiculous or trite yadda yadda. Like anybody writing anywhere. Ultimately, though, there is a different, I’ll say again, weight to the work.

The compassion is the commitment to show up every week and pay attention to their words and in what order.

I also think that the poems feel very close to the lived experience in there. Not necessarily the content, but the fact of them. The compassion is the commitment to show up every week and pay attention to their words and in what order. It is not pity, I want to be clear. I don’t “got” it over anyone, even when ego says I do. Which can happen in any situation, of course. I’ve supported a variety of approaches to the room over the years. That’s where my tolerance for many talking at once comes in, the Polyvocality previously mentioned. Allowing group conversation to take a bumpy course until I feel nearly negligent for not offering two cents, too. Other times I’m using the chalkboard and putting words all over the place on it. It’s a balance and like any teetering practitioner, I totter.

Could you speak more about the variety of approaches you’ve used over the years? In particular, what has worked, and what has not?


Early on I was very nervous, and so I always had a ton of poems as prompts. I read them aloud and kept going and talking and asking questions and dealing poems out like a croupier until finally I would say, Okay write. I was afraid of the silence. Of losing them. I didn’t want to go too deeply into anything too quickly and risk frustration or boredom. That was all my problem. Paulo Freire says you have to have faith in who you are going to teach. I don’t think I had faith in any of us. In the poems.

But the response was good. The writing and talking and questioning were happening, and so now I’ll risk a lot. As I mentioned overtalk without me is just fine for a time. Also, I was (and am) very conscious of my role as being a privileged position. So I was (and am) very hesitant to offer material authoritatively. That happens to be my personal potentially syncretic or anarchic bent anyway, but sometimes it’s frustrating for them. Sometimes they just want rules, and I provide (instigate?) too much chaos in the thinking. Jane Tompkins talks about vertigo in the room. Sometimes the right amount of structure is really productive. However, I don’t just mean structure for behavior or course of study, but in the material itself. So, we’ve worked through specific theory and movements, through accepted terms and approaches. Then we undo it.