Books, Interview
Reality, Truth, and Memory
An interview with Deborah L. Davitt, author of Bounded by Eternity
I particularly want readers to question their assumptions of their own identities, their reactions to the world around them, as based on their memories. Memories are malleable. Changeable. More so than we like to admit.
The poems in Deborah L. Davitt’s Bounded by Eternity lead us to ask: what might we lose if we chose to give up memories of what we’ve lost? Linking human and fey, reality and myth, the bridges between worlds bring the woman at the center of the poems back to her memories and, ultimately, back to herself. T.D. Walker spoke with Davitt about her novella in verse.
Interstellar Flight Press: Bounded by Eternity tells us the story of Eliza and her realities in the human and fey worlds, so I was fascinated by the ways in which you chose to allude to how reality manifests itself. Eliza is taken from one time in the human world and returned to another, as if our concept of the way in which we inhabit time is an illusion. The fey are “the Real” and humans “are but shadows on a cave wall,” referencing Plato and his ideas of the nature of reality. Later, the king goes back in time and faces the possibility of unmaking himself and his relationship with Eliza. And Eliza’s own reality as she experiences it shifts with the memories she loses and regains.
What do you want readers to question about their ideas of reality, particularly since you bring in human experience, enduring lore, and ancient philosophy? Did anything about your exploration of reality through your characters surprise you?
Deborah L. Davitt: That’s a great question, Tammy. I particularly want readers to question their assumptions of their own identities, their reactions to the world around them, as based on their memories. Memories are malleable. Changeable. More so than we like to admit. The fey are unchangeable perfection, the “real.” Objective truth, after a fashion. But human subjectivity, while it means that we’re flawed, also means that we can change and grow, which is something that the fey cannot do.
This brought me close to some of the themes explored in my Edda-Earth novels, but I was pleased that I didn’t repeat myself, focusing more on perception and reality this time.
IFP: Many of the individual poems use rhyme, though not all. Some, like “12. Uncertain Memory,” use repetition of lines, and “13. His True Face” more so in its form. Others, like “6. The Anodyne” resist form.
What lay behind your decision to include poems that call on form and those that are strictly free verse? And how did that tension between form and resistance to strict form play in your telling of the story?
DLD: I love both free verse and formal poetry. Sometimes, a poem demands to be written as free verse; sometimes, form becomes your copilot, changing meaning as you go. Some of the form poems were written at the very inception of the project, and thus the meaning became what the form suggested. Some of the free verse poems were written when I knew where the story was going, and I needed a specific meaning *here*, as opposed to letting form assist me to find meaning, if that makes any sense at all.
IFP: You write short stories and novels as well as lyrical and narrative poetry. What parallels are there in your fiction writing process to your process writing Bounded by Eternity? And how did the process differ?
DLD: There’s a distinction often spoken of between writers as “plotters” or “pantsers.” A plotter has an outline and has nailed down every detail before they even begin writing. A pantser writes by the seat of their pants, never knowing where the words are going to take them till they get there. In prose, I’m somewhere between the two — I have a loose outline, and write towards what I call signpost scenes, but the characters can tell me at any time that something in the outline is ridiculous, they’d never do that, and thus things can change.
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In writing a novella in verse, I found myself plotting less, and pantsing more; I didn’t know that the story was going to have a happy ending till I arrived at it. It felt more organic, and some of that had to do with allowing form to shape meaning along the way, as I discussed earlier.
IFP: There is such poignancy in the poems that built the relationship between Eliza and Owen, the soldier. (I wondered whether you had in mind WWI poet Wilfred Owen, who was killed in battle, or Sir Owain of Arthurian legend.)
In particular, “37. A Frail Bridge” gave me pause, as the poem ended with Eliza’s compassion: “as if simply treating him as if he were human / reconnected him with his humanity — / a frail bridge, but a true one.”
Eliza seems to be building on the bridge she built back to herself in “33. When You First Meet Yourself.” Can you tell us a bit more about developing these two characters, in light of each others’ experiences and their decisions at the end of the book?
DLD: I’m really glad you enjoyed the relationship between Eliza and Owen. It’s definitely part of the experience that allows her to reintegrate her selves successfully. Owen wasn’t named for anyone in particular; I wanted a simple name that would contrast with Oberon, yet remind the reader of him at the same time.
Coming from a military family, I have an abiding interest and concern for wounded and disabled veterans that certainly informed my portrayal of Owen. In my experience, most veterans have barriers to integrating back into society and reaching out to people around them, and I tried to portray some of those in Owen. But since he’s able to reach out to Eliza and then to others, he does so in the spirit of caritas — disinterested love, not passionate. That’s an important note about him, I think.
IFP: Last, I’d like to ask about Bounded by Eternity in the larger context of narrative speculative poetry. Are there other long-form narratives that you’d like to recommend to readers of Interstellar Flight Magazine?
It’s a form that seems particularly well suited for speculative poetry — are there directions you’d like to see the form in general take?
Most of my experience with narrative poetry actually comes from older sources. I’m a huge fan of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen and Boiardo’s Orlando Inamorato, which Arisoto continued as Orlando Furioso. I’d highly recommend the recent translations of the Inamorato, as they’re surprisingly accessible. Most modern readers will find Spenser pretty hard going, but that’s what the footnotes are for. A lot of what I do is with an eye back on the classics, I’m afraid.
About the Author
Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Reno, Nevada, where she graduated first in her class from UNR in 1997 (as Deborah McRann). While an undergraduate, she focused heavily on medieval and Renaissance literature from Beowulf to Shakespeare. She received her MA in English from Penn State, and later found work as a technical writer on projects ranging from nuclear ballistic missile submarines to NASA to computer manufacturing.
She currently lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and son. Her poetry has received Pushcart, Rhysling, and Dwarf Star award nominations and has appeared in over fifty journals including F&SF and Asimov’s. Her short fiction has appeared in Analog and Galaxy’s Edge.
For more about her work, including her poetry collections, The Gates of Never and Bounded by Eternity, please see www.edda-earth.com. You may contact her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/deborah.davitt.3 or Twitter @davittDL.
Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
