The Twitter-famous poets first novel moves between the body in space and the mind online.
No One Is Talking About Thisis out February 16.
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The internet deprogrammedPatricia Lockwood.
It didnt happen all at once.
At 38, Lockwood describes herself generationally as between the books and the ether.
Online is where, at age 19, Lockwood met the man she would marry at age 21.
Its where she published her first writing and found her first readers through early diary blogs and poetry forums.
This is the bogeyman scenario my parents talked about, she said.
But she could see that these women really, really want to be parents.
The author who previously published two books of poetry and a memoir,2017sPriestdaddy approaches the terrain as a disenchanted veteran.
If that sounds both intriguing and disconcerting, well, exactly.
Throughout, Lockwood articulates her ambivalence about the internet while owning its influence on her life.
She spoke of the excruciating pain she has experienced while typing.
It flares up when she feels stressed.
Im just not physically cut out for this life, for this world, she said.
My mind is insanely adapted to the present climate, the climate thats witnessed by this book.
Of course it was going to end this way for me.
After graduating from high school in Cincinnati, Lockwood found herself unable to afford college tuition and felt isolated.
She had to quit because she regularly fainted in the aisles.
Feedback could be merciless, but the regulars really cared about one anothers work.
Lockwood had been submitting her poetry to unknown editors since her early teens.
Inside are the addresses of various publications, with double crosses beside the ones that are especially selective.
In 2011, double-cross-tier publications started to open their gates, andThe New Yorkerpublished one of her unsolicited poems.
(A representative example: Sext: I am a living male turtleneck.
You are an art teacher in winter.
You put your whole head through me.)
Lockwood describes the editor of her past three books, Paul Slovak, as the least-online person she knows.
Ive accompanied her on this journey despite not knowing what a binch is, Slovak told me.
Im still not sure that I do.
Slovak and Lockwood connected when another one of his authors passed her work along in 2013.
(They eventually moved back to Savannah where they had lived before this crisis in 2016.
)Priestdaddywas a critical and commercial success, but the years after its publication were painful.
Soon after, Lockwood had to embark on tour forPriestdaddyin Australia.
It was disorienting to experience grief away from her family.
That baby also died, in 2019.
No One Is Talking About Thisdraws on these painful experiences.
The protagonists pregnant sister lives in Ohio, a state with oppressive laws restricting abortion.
They stay in Ohio, and her sister has the baby.
In another scene, the protagonist sits in a car with her mother as her mother weeps.
In real life, Lockwood sounded exasperated when she talked about her own health issues.
If Im suffering diminished capacity, am I still the person that I have always known myself to be?
But it also seems to ask, Who does?
Those old poetry forums welcomed everyone.
That doesnt mean they werent rigorous.
Writing with quirky humor and open, intimate voices.
No politics, really.
Where is Lockwood without the internet as a writer and a person?
I asked her over email.
now thats a horse … you cant … put back in the barn!
Later that day, she got back to me.
Without the internet Im Emily Dickinsons little ugly daughter, probably, she wrote.
I would have known how to bake.
