A Quote by John D'Agata
I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the time. That's why I joined the poetry program in grad school.
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I feel that I'm an essayist and that my best work gets done in that form. I wanted to do a book where the essays could exist on their own terms. A book that was neither a book of essays that were shoehorned into a memoir, nor [one where] the essays had been published elsewhere first, [because] then they would kind of bear the marks of those publications.
I graduated college in 2010, I thought I'd go to grad school then and I was accepted under a different program and I ended up moving away and pursuing fighting instead of graduate school, but I knew I always wanted to do it.
I remember getting out of grad school and coming to New York and not wanting to get a teaching job because I wanted to work on my own, to develop my own ideas. There isn't that time now. Artists are exhibiting while they are still in grad school. There isn't that safety cushion.
In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture. Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives. People aren't listening to poetry as if they're taking their vitamins. Instead, it's a popular vessel you can fill with anything. You could fill it with sass. You could fill it with rage. You could fill it with political statements.
When I was a first-year in grad school, there were 18 of us in the Ph.D. program, and four of us were women.
One of the reasons why I went to the Yale School of Drama is because I felt that I was acting off of instinct, but sometimes that is not reliable. When you're not feeling it, what do you do? So, going to grad school was about getting the tools to just use my instrument to the best of my ability.
I wish I had the luxury of time to read and write like grad students do. That sounds pretty awesome. When I was writing my first book one of my friends was going to grad school at the same time and I heard a lot of stories about drinking, too. I feel like everyone was having affairs.
As frustrating as my time in grad school felt, it also helped tremendously because it challenged me to figure out what it was I thought I wanted.
When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.
Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives.
By middle school, I said to myself that it's time I begin to speak. I joined the choir, not because I wanted to. I forced myself.
I was at Sussex University studying English lit and philosophy, I had two essays due in and three seminars that day, and at the same time I was messaging my manager because I'd just started to put together the pieces of like, 'Wow. I really don't want to be doing any essays anymore. Why don't I just give this music thing a go?'
I was allowed a freedom as a baby boomer to do whatever I wanted to do. My parents were able to give their permission because they just felt, 'Why not?' I joined my first band and dropped out of school.
In high school, I was so painfully self-aware that how I thought of myself was probably very different from what other people thought of me. I thought of myself as just painfully awkward and dorky. I had a lot of hair and was kind of weird. I sang a lot in the hallways.
I think, overall, there is a lack of diversity in the arts. I'm thinking about when I was in grad school: I could probably count on one hand the number of minority students in the graduate school program.
I felt a little lost as a student. At Iowa, I felt as if I had gotten into this program that was going to save me, and so I moved myself across the country for grad school and yet still didn't have a home. It was upsetting. And I know that's a common feeling.
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