Valerie Witte
A Rupture in the Interiors
Polyphony of silk and skin, A Rupture in the Interiors is a rapturous exploration of im/perfection, threading innovative form and histories of value—of the female body, especially, and of material worth—with dream logic and associative mastery. This is a modern tapestry of everyday traumas that, while seemingly minor, mark us all as participants in the human experience. Woven together, these images of disorder and defect tell a story of the superficial damage that runs deep, and that cannot slip from us unseen or unfelt.
Cover design: Beth Ford
ISBN: 978-1-950404-11-7
Paperback: $18
Publication date: October 1, 2023
Valerie Witte is the author of multiple poetry and hybrid books, including a game of correspondence (Black Radish, 2015) and, in collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal, The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), the first of a two-part project exploring the work of postmodern dancer-choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. The second book in the project, a collection of experimental essays, is One Thing Follows Another (punctum books, 2024). She currently edits education books in Portland, OR, where she lives with her husband, Andrew. More at valeriewitte.com.
Praise for A Rupture in the Interiors
“What does human skin have to do with the silken skein of the caterpillar’s cocoon? Each a garment that can unravel, that covers over the interiority of the subject—or ruptures the false binary of inner/outer. Valerie Witte’s ambitious, densely associative poems offer a “tissue of stories unfolding” in which she reinvents the very nature of skin: as map, as strata, as a process of reckoning. Here, Witte takes on the challenge of embodiment, its coils and fugitive film, bringing the reader into a richly lyrical disorientation. A Rupture in the Interiors is an original, gorgeous book. This poetry shows us emotional intensity forcing its way through the ostensible surface. The revelation? What covers us is really ‘a continual state of turnover.’” —Elizabeth Robinson
“Valerie Witte’s sensuous and harrowing A Rupture in the Interiors investigates the notion of skin as sheath, as protection, and projection. A “she” narrates in fragments and slippages the body as territory through films, threads, pleats, folds, through confine and texture, dyes, boundaries and all that is permeable. Also in question is the pronoun “I” and the punctuation mark of a slash or dash or cut that runs through each carefully, delicately constructed stanza. The wonder of this book is how it makes one feel as though one is holding not page, not book, but the fine texture of skin itself. Ultimately, this book strikes the song of the body’s largest and most visible organ, where we are the most vulnerable, where we first appear then finally disappear where “we are almost human anyway.” —Gillian Conoley
“Skin, the human body’s largest organ, is not just terrain but a castle wall. Most of its ruptures are inherently unwelcome—for skin to do its job, it shouldn’t crack after it’s allowed the thresholds of eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and genitalia. Valerie Witte’s poems record the aftermaths of such ruptures, including interiors suddenly visible. Punctuation’s vertical bars and brackets become visual poetry for scars and wounds. What’s articulated in between are metaphors for what else exists in the universe, both physically outside as well as psychologically inside. Thus, Witte’s poems accomplish poetry’s most empathetic aspiration: that to bring a poem into the world is to bring the world into a poem.” —Eileen R. Tabios
“A Rupture in the Interiors reads like an archaeological excavation where artifacts reveal themselves in unexpected combinations, torn from the contexts that would explain their presence. Witte writes of skin and silk, entwining these phenomena to explore boundary, containment, protection, invasion, constraint. We read of the invention of skin, the confines of skin, the oldest living skin. Silk carries its particular vocabulary, familiar words made strange here–reels, laps, frames, reckonings, rust. We can grasp intuitively the resemblances of skin and silk, their similar roles as membrane, covering, ornament; their shared vulnerability to injury or damage. There’s a larger story, of the nature of those injuries, their source, their severity, their consequences, their scars, that’s below the surface, lost or dispersed, beyond the reach of our excavation. That muted story divulges as it withholds, tantalizing us with uncertainty, impelling us to try to fill in the gaps between the details set before us.” —Mary Burger
Excerpt from A Rupture in the Interiors
7, A FAITHFULLY RENDERED MARK
[
If inborn
secretions, fed
leathering as
hands
a means
of smuggling
from the equator
to poles
[ 7.2 ]
When the baby calm throughout falls deeply
center to poles | To prevent tangling two
or more together, reeling | the lower jaw slack as sleep immediately
transmits signals across cheeks
forehead and ears | iridescent finishes our fingers
and lips of primates most tactile | a ring
to help find our footing, lineage hastened | smuggling
of eggs from the wild | (These threads would not unravel easily) |
peach-skin washed in a tumbler in which pumice stones are
addled | If she were composed only
of pinks and other plans, her luminescent, cones |