Nathan McClain & Virginia Konchan Interview

Interview “Poetry Friendships” with Nathan McClain & Virginia Konchan conducted by Jefferson Navicky

Jefferson: I believe you first met through a poem by Nathan about a koi pond, yes? Could you say more about how your friendship began?

Nathan: The year was 2017 (ha ha). AWP. Washington, D.C. On top of all the other AWP madness, I was also primarily promoting my debut collection, Scale. So, like I’d imagine any debut author, I spent a good amount of my AWP experience circling the Four Way Books’ table with hopes the collection was garnering interest, maybe even a few copies sold . . . On one of my indiscrete visits to the table, one of the press’s publicity personnel, James Fujinami Moore (now an award–winning Four Way Books author himself!), had opened my book, mentioned my poem, “Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi,” and handed it to a woman who was browsing the press’s table. That woman happened to be Virginia Konchan, who silently read the poem and subsequently bought the book.

I know Virginia connected with me some time later, but I can’t quite recall the reason. Maybe a class visit or some such? Maybe you remember, V?

Virginia: 2017, a banner year! My short story collection Anatomical Gift came out that year, but I hadn’t yet published my first poetry collection. From 2016 —2017 I lived in the Hudson Valley, taught at Marist College, and was an Editor at Sheep Meadow Press, so I went to that AWP because it was harder to travel from Canada where I lived from 2014 —2022 other than that stint in New York. When I met Nathan, I was just moseying around the book fair, staring at books and new faces. In front of the Four Way table, James (forever grateful for his brio) approached and asked if I wanted to read a great poem. Yes, I said. He handed me a copy of Nathan’s Scale, opened to “Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi.” I remember thinking, as I read it, “Now is not the time to cry, Virginia.” Nathan’s ability to render, through careful detail, imagistic precision, pathos, and narrative told aslant, moments of epiphany, is a power that hasn’t ceased to amaze me since. “Because who hasn’t done that — loved so intently even after everything / has gone?” the poem asks.

I was stunned by the emotional intelligence of his work. I met Nathan at the table, gushed my appreciation, and he signed the book for me. Nathan and I kept in touch after that AWP, then he visited my Art of Poetry class at Marist that year, and my colleague Tommy assigned Scale to his class. We met at Leyenda in Brooklyn later that year when I was in town for launch reading, read together at the Tampa AWP the following year, and have continued the merry making since. Meeting Nathan at AWP was an absolute gift, a chance encounter with his beautiful work that has turned into an enduring friendship over many years.

JN: I appreciate hearing more about how your friendship began. For anyone who has spent time with the two of you together, it’s so obvious you have genuine affection for each other, and it sounds like that was there from the start. I realize it can be a bit hard to pinpoint why some friendships are such successes and others aren’t, but I wonder if there are any particular things to which you attribute your friendship’s success and longevity.

VK: That’s so sweet of you to say. The idea of a “successful friendship” makes me laugh, though I know what you mean . . . all my good friends are people with whom I can deconstruct or escape our culture’s race toward success and optimization. I think friendships that endure have a kairotic or fated element to them: something about how people meet, and at what time or intersection in their lives, that has meaning. I love that Nathan met his wife Jessica at the same AWP we met. I attribute our friendship’s longevity to our admiration of each other as poets, and also our mutual realness as people when we connect. Humor plays a huge role in our friendship; I cannot count the number of emails I’ve received from Nathan that made me die laughing, often during a time in my life when I needed comic relief, or the times when we started riffing in person and had to stop because it was an inside joke that could go on forever and potentially alienate other people (haha). As friends, I think we see the best in each other, not in an idealized or careerist, po–biz way, but as real people. We’re the same age (44), and have a shared understanding of what it took us to get where we are: different challenges, but ones we acknowledge.

I also think solid friendships are based on true seeing. Nathan’s complexity, strength, humor, and kindness recalls my better self, and he sees right to the heart of things, a quality that is reflected in his poems.

NM: At the time I met Virginia, I was not aware of her incredible craft and talent. Didn’t know about her many books, her ability to move so deftly between genres, her brilliant and analytical mind, or her infectious humor. I’ve had a handful of longtime friends. Or “successful friendships,” as you put it. I’m happy to include Virginia among those longtime friends, and I would imagine that part of what causes our friendship to continue to blossom and grow is our mutual care and generosity toward one another. Virginia’s also wickedly funny, and so incredibly quick with her wit. And there is a reciprocity in our reachings toward each other as well (I’ve been in friendships that felt far too one–sided, to be sure). In part, what causes us to be good friends is that we’ve discovered the ways we connect as humans, outside of the work, which might have kept us, while respectful of one another’s ability, at arm’s length.

Learning more about Virginia’s work, however, her skill as a writer and thinker continued to deepen my appreciation for her as a person, and we’ve utilized our respective platforms to lift and celebrate one another’s work. Her personal qualities — thoughtfulness, openness, Virginia is kind, understanding, perceptive, hilarious — make her a joy to be around. A long friendship requires a real commitment from both individuals, and regardless of where we’ve been in space, Virginia has remained committed to maintaining closeness.

JN: I love to hear about friendships based in a deconstruction of our culture’s race toward optimization! That reminds me of the Billy Collins’ quote: “While the novelist is banging away on their typewriter, the poet is watching a fly on the windowpane.” I know you’ve collaborated together for lots of readings and interviews, but I’m curious to hear about how you relate to each other’s poetry–in–progress. I know some poet–friends who don’t show each other work, and simply go out to lunch and gossip gloriously. Do you exchange poems or manuscripts, and if you do or have done this, how do you navigate talking about each other’s works in progress?

VK: I love that Collins quote and find it true: more of a microscopic, or condensed reflection, than telescopic (and in longer narrative form). Though I do also love stories, and Nathan is a great storyteller (in his poems, and life). I don’t think we’ve ever exchanged work in progress, N, have we? We’ve published each other’s poems though (Glenn Shaheen and I published Nathan’s poems “Bear” and “Excerpts from the Compendium of the Fig Wasp and the Fig,” in a 2019 issue of Matter — “Bear” was republished in Poetry Daily in 2023 as “Myth of the Bear,” and also appeared in Nathan’s incredible second collection Previously Owned, in 2022 — and Nathan, as Editor of The Massachusetts Review, published my poems “Psalm” and “Pretty Good Year,” which appear in Bel Canto, in 2021). Additionally, I had the honor of interviewing Nathan for The Common about Previously Owned, and having him as a guest speaker to my class at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2022 as well (I also visited his class at Hampshire College in 2022). During those conversations, I heard more about the craft considerations of his books (and prose), and also his works in progress (about which I’m very excited — brilliant poetry and essays). The thoughtfulness with which Nathan approaches his work, and the way his teaching informs his work, are inspiring, as everything he writes comes from profoundly deliberate meditation, labor, and witnessing. Nathan and I don’t exchange much literary gossip, but then again, I tend to be an ostrich. We do discuss other writers and their work, books we love, and trends we perceive in literary publishing, but nothing we wouldn’t discuss openly in the light of day. N, amirite?

NM: That’s right, V. As Virginia mentioned, while we have frequently supported one another’s work (it’s been such an honor to publish her fine poems in my first issue editing MR ), we have not necessarily shared poems, or other works–in–progress. We have, during our visits with one another, read finished or revised work that hasn’t been published yet to one another, but we haven’t shared work that is in early drafting stages. Now, we certainly go out to lunch (or brunch, more accurately) and gossip, ha ha. I mean, who hasn’t done that? No, it’s true. I’m not nearly connected or on social media enough to know anyone’s business. I am not against showing my early work or getting feedback from someone, and I know poets who rely upon their trusted readers once a poem is drafted — that simply hasn’t been part of my practice or regular process. Not entirely sure why, as I’m certainly one who enjoys collaborating . . .

JN: My final question is about lineages of friendship. Are there any particular literary friendships that serve as inspiration for you, or any especially full, supportive, long–lasting friendships that you might look to as models? I know when I feel disheartened I always value my friendships, especially my literary ones, as well as literary friendships of the past, as evidence of connections built upon a shared love. This sentiment feels even more important at a time now at the end of 2023 when so much of the world feels unsteady, disconnected, and bordering upon adrift.

VK: That’s a great question. A few that come to mind immediately are the literary friendships between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (their collected letters, Words in Air, is one of my favorite collections of epistolary correspondence), Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, and Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy. I’m also inspired by the 360 letters exchanged between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud between 1906 and 1914 (I don’t think you could call them “friends,” though). In terms of contemporary literary friendships, I am more inspired by my own friendships than those of others in the abstract, if I don’t know the details, though I am always moved when I see friends in the literary community who go out of their way to support each other, lift each other up, open doors, and encourage each other, outside of the careerism and self–promotion of the literary industrial complex and the institutionalization of creative writing. And it makes me a little sad (maybe you too, Jefferson, as an archivist) that hand–written letters won’t be preserved in the same way anymore: file cabinets of email printouts, if obtainable, don’t carry the same weight, quiddity, or charm. I used to write many letters by hand, but in recent years, much less. Having a friendship based on a shared love of literature and writing, a love that often involves a sacrifice of other life ambitions (financial capital, or a family) can be a firm, lasting foundation: the Venn Diagram overlapping in the area that is the most important to you and most intrinsic to your self, soul, passions, and dreams. I think the pressures (internalized or real) in our industry to market oneself and one’s writing, especially online, can give rise to a kind of cynicism, jealously, or superficiality, which are not the feelings or qualities that make for a solid friendship, because they limit your ability to see deeply, empathize, and be present for others. Having said that, I think the literary friendships that can survive and thrive under capitalism, and how that affects art, literature, and relationships, obviously have enough genuine love, admiration, and respect to have developed an alternative way of being together in the world. I definitely feel that about my friendship with Nathan, that when we talk or see each other, all the bullshit fades away, helping you zero in on the awesome reality and emotional truth of the friendship, and the person. In that way, a good friendship is very much like a realized story or poem. It came into existence against all odds, as a fluid, relational thing that needed to be cultivated, but once established, you can’t imagine life without it, and in a very real way, becomes part of who you are.

NM: “A good friendship is very much like a realized story or poem . . . ” — I love that so much! And Jefferson, I appreciate your framing of the question — situated in a time of such intense division, disagreement, rage, intolerance, and difference. I grew up in a religious household, and among the adages from one of our churches is, “People come into your life for a reason, for a season, or for a lifetime.” I always thought the adage was somewhat corny or hokey, but there is a certain resonance the saying holds for friends such as Virginia, friendships I’ve maintained for many years. Many of my closest and most cherished friendships were established in graduate school; my friendship with Virginia is one of the very few — possibly the only — friendship of mine that arose from a seemingly random encounter — a transaction, even! A good friendship requires commitment and investment, and Virginia, with no guarantees on a return, sows into her friends.

I’ve admired long–lasting literary friendships but I cannot say I’ve looked to them as examples, ha ha. I appreciate a good letter, though. The practice seems to have fallen out of favor for so many. Virginia and I still write them. Sometimes, there is great distance between them, but they arrive. Salutations! they shout. Salutations! You have been missed! You are loved. Do you hear me? You are loved.