Episode 10: Olena Kalytiak Davis
Rachel Zucker speaks with Olena Kalytiak Davis, author of three books and a chapbook, about her daily writing practice (or lack thereof), writing autobiographically, and what it means to not fake it in her work. The two discuss a new poem of Rachel’s, “Enough Is Enough,” in which Olena is prominently featured as a subject without her prior knowledge. The poem sparks an animated conversation that explores questions of shared memory, the ethics of writing about people you know, and what it’s like to be concretized in poem. Olena reads two short poems during the podcast: “I Was Minor,” and “My Own Self Still Unconcerned.” Rachel’s poem “Enough is Enough” and Olena’s poem “Late Summer Ode” are available to Patreon subscribers of Commonplace.
Books by Olena Kalytiak Davis
The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems (Copper Canyon, 2014)
Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities (Copper Canyon, 2014)
On the Kitchen Table from Which Everything Has Been Hastily Removed (Chapbook, Hollyridge Press, 2009)
And Her Soul Out of Nothing (University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)
Other Books Mentioned in the Episode
Seeing is the Name of Forgetting the thing One Sees, Robert Irwin
Other Relevant Links
“You and Me Both,” an article about Olena’s writing by Dan Chiasson, published by the New Yorker
Their True and Untrue Confession of Olena Kalytiak Davis by Ira Sadoff on the Poetry Foundation website
“What To Read Now” by Arielle Greenberg in American Poetry Review mentioning lots of books from 2014 and comparing Olena Kalytiak Davis’s The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems and Rachel Zucker’s The Pedestrians
Big Love (Polyamory and its Discontents) Dear Sugar episode with Arielle Greenberg
