Some Interrogation Questions
by Kevin Carollo
We soldiers were like sheep, fighting comic book wars. —Hassan Blasim
Does it matter that the above epigraph comes from a work of fiction?
Is it important to know that the author was born in Baghdad and now
lives in Finland? The translation from which the above epigraph comes
dates from 2013. Would fact-checking the above author’s current location
(i.e. Google search) make this poem more accurate, more of the moment,
more authentic? Is reality indeed stranger than fiction? Is it more brutal
or graphic? If I turned this poem into a comic book or graphic novel—
if I put names to faces, as it were—would it be more effective? Should
I add that a heavily edited version of the above author’s stories appeared
in Arabic only to be immediately banned in Jordan? How relevant is it
that the above epigraph was originally published by Penguin Books,
an American publisher now potentially profiting from the U.S.’s illegal
invasion and continued occupation of Iraq for over twenty years? a) not
relevant b) somewhat relevant c) somewhat ironic d) totally relevant
e) N/A. Another way to pose such a question: can one write a decent
poem without mentioning the material conditions in which the translation
that inspired the poem was produced, such that the poem’s omissions
become complicit in promoting a geopolitical narrative of hegemony
that assumes an absolute separation between the language used to
describe genocide and genocide itself? In order to answer this question,
react to the following synopsis on the back cover of the translation: an
explosive new voice in fiction emerges from the rubble of Iraq to show us his war-torn
country from the inside. Does it matter that the story collection was originally
sent to the poem’s author as an unrequested instructor copy almost ten
years ago? What is the statute of limitations on complicity? On poetry?
On genocide? On empathy? Name at least three things you are willing to
do to gain your freedom, then sign your full name with a loved one’s blood.
With the time remaining (i.e. the rest of your life), compose a better poem.
“The poems ‘Some Interrogation Questions’ and ‘My War-Porn Country’ are the first two of a series of ‘fugue sonnets,’ both riffing on the short story collection The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq by Hassan Blasim. I invented the form last year—essentially a double-sonnet of 14 ghazal-like couplets (each with an epigraph, intertextual and dialogic references, etc.)—to reflect on the colonial-imperial, military, late-stage capitalist, and institutional imperatives of English as mother tongue, particularly in light of teaching world literature in translation at a university which has gutted its arts and humanities. The fugue sonnet is therefore a dialogue ‘between a between’ (Darwish), between ‘East’ and ‘West,’ and between the linguistic imperatives of the institution and the literary possibilities for revolution.” —Kevin Carollo
Kevin Carollo lives in Fargo, North Dakota, and has taught world literature and writing at Minnesota State University Moorhead for 20 years. He is author of Elizabeth Gregory (Rain Taxi/OHM Editions), a chapbook of poems about early onset dementia, as well as the forthcoming hybrid nonfiction work Shred: Running and Being in the End Times (NDSU Press). His father, Jack Ronald Carollo (3/26/42-6/8/18), was a U.S. Army veteran, having served in the Vietnam War a couple years before Kevin was born (on 9/11/68).