Read the full interview at the Bicoastal Review. This title is available for purchase here on our website.
In an interview with the Bicoastal Review, Marina Kraiskaya speaks with BOA author Jennie Malboeuf on “jump the gun“, her new poetry collection published this past April. Personal yet fundamental, these poems tap into the daily experience of living so near to both beauty and violence: in our language, on our streets, and within our own homes.
This collection highlights the ways gun violence has been baked into our society, making loud the implications that often simmer just beneath the surface of our words. “Our colloquial gun-related expressions are endless: ‘shotgun house,’ ‘shotgun wedding,’ ‘bite the bullet,’ ‘shoot yourself in the foot,’ ‘under the gun,’ ‘trigger happy’,” Kraiskaya notes. “What tones and conversations in life around guns have you found thought-provoking?”
“To the point, I reckon you are what you eat,” Malboeuf responds. “Maybe American idioms circle around guns because this violent tone is our true essence. We want others to see us as tough, so why not talk the talk too? And this is how we solve problems. […] I did want the reader to feel as I did: that we could be next. We are all soft targets. I graduated from high school in the same year as Columbine. Virginia Tech’s shooting took place early in my teaching career. Many older Millennials felt the seismic shifts in real time.”
In a kind of response to this alarming climate, the “cultural romanticization of motherhood is pushed against in this book,” says Kraiskaya, citing an excerpt from Malboeuf’s “blonde boy”. Through this poem, she elucidates fears around raising her son as she is tasked with carrying the weight of a long history of power.
…
but this world has always been yours.
throwing and hitting, we know now already
what you will be, could become.
a boy’s boy, a man’s man.
how do i raise another
in a line of so many who have done such harm?
i look at your face and see my father,
i look at your face and see my own.
“For me specifically, I was scared to death to have a baby. Nervous of how to mold a little person. And then the added weight of gender complicates the experience. Yet, I chose to take this on. I want to use my anxiety to my advantage: what should I look out for really with this little boy? If the universe isn’t just random, if we’re given a task, what’s my responsibility here? I always thought if I had to raise myself again, another girl, what could I do to help empower her? Now, in this position, what job am I presented with?”
The questions we are all asking—how do we keep living through this?—drive the elegantly arresting poems in “jump the gun“, available now in print and eBook editions.
