by Ty Phelps
Margaret Rozga’s fourth book of poetry, Pestiferous Questions (Lit Fest Press, 2017), focuses on both public issues and private facets in the life of Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902). Rozga’s work has appeared recently in the Mom Egg Review and Los Angeles Art News. She served as managing editor of the chapbook Turn Up the Volume: Poems About the States of Wisconsin and as co-editor of Cries for Justice: Poems for Dontre Hamilton.
Come listen to her and other fabulous poets at the Where I Want to Live reading at Arts and Literature Lab on July 21 at 7 pm. The ALL Review spoke to Rozga about her work, the writing process, activism, and community.
ALL Review: Your most recent work is about Jessie Benton Frémont. What drew you to her life, and in what ways is her life and work relevant today?
Margaret Rozga: Several years ago traveling in Arizona, I picked up a copy of The Letters of Jessie Benton Fremont. I opened the book at random to a letter she wrote to her husband, John Charles Fremont, best known for his mapping paths from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast. In that letter she said she'd write his biographical sketch to accompany his published account of his exploration, but she didn't know how old he was. This was after they'd been married five years. So I wondered what that lack of knowledge said about their relationship. It was immensely complicated.
Even more what kept me interested were the politics in the lead-up to the Civil War, especially the role slavery played in western expansion and the shaping of what we now call the United States. At one point Jessie said, "I would as soon place my children in the midst of smallpox, as rear them under the influence of slavery." But though her mother freed the enslaved people who worked for the family, Jessie seemed unaware at times that they had lives and dreams of their own. So I saw in her life roots of and parallels to the conflicts, hostilities, and contradictions we face today.
ALL: The upcoming reading at ALL is about envisioning community. What do you think comprises a vibrant, inclusive community, and what does Madison, Milwaukee, or Wisconsin as a whole need to do in order to achieve that vision?
MR: We need to take action these days to push back against all the cruel policies of the current administration on both the state and national levels. In the process we begin to define what a more just world would look like. It's important also to work on refining our image of this world we want to bring into being. That's why I was happy to commit time and energy to this chapbook project: Where I Want to Live: Poems for Fair & Affordable Housing.
ALL: What other poets or writers do you recommend reading right now?
MR: I just finished writing a review of Sarah Browning's Killing Summer for Connotation Press. A line in the first poem propelled me to read the entire book at one sitting: “I want to tear history from my throat.” When the editor asked me to write beyond the quote I had as a conclusion, that helped me see more deeply into the overall structure of the book. I loved Natashia Deon's novel, Grace. Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law does a powerful job of showing how government policy helped to create the racial inequality we struggle with today. I recommend it to everyone.
Next up on my reading list: Claudia Rankine's Citizen.
ALL: People often seem fascinated by a writer's process. When you begin a project, what does your writing process look like?
MR: Writing sometimes doesn't look like writing, especially at the start. It looks like going for a walk or a swim. It looks like wasting time on Facebook. It looks like being fidgety.
Once I have an opening line, once I push myself to write what I know I'll likely delete later when I work my way toward that opener, then sometimes it looks like I'm glued to my chair and like I've given up eating and answering my phone.
Sometimes only months later—months of forgetting even that I wrote it—do I see what I need to change to bring a piece to what I think it can and should be.
All of which is to say it's a struggle even though there's almost nothing I'd rather do.