John Compton’s ‘the castration of a minor god’ speaks to the legacy of family. Effectively wielding both
a precision of detail and the necessary of context one only finds through a wideangle lens, Compton’s subjects
come alive in their wholeness; Loving and broken and trying their best. It’s that tenderness, a palpably hard
fought earned empathy, that helps pull the reader through all of this suffering. Who are we to each other, to
our futures? How do we stake forgiveness in these legacies of pain?

This interview was conducted by Katharine Blair on the 20th of November, 2022 via email.
The questions and answers appear here in their unedited form.

john
I read this first with me in the child space. I killed mom's marriage and, saving her the indignity, let's just say deaths can be good things. I read it again as the mother. My children have killed so much of my timid. They've made me louder and fearsome in all the best ways. It isn't often that I read a birth narrative from a man that strikes quite so insightful. I guess I'm just wondering, are these conversations you're having? How do we build men who can see us? To what or who do you credit this gift?

i love how you read this poem. one of my favorite things in poetry is interpretation and the sharing of the interpretation. i chuckle you put "from a man" i always say my homosexuality helps write in the perspective of a woman/mother. plus i was raised by women. my mother, my grandmother (not mary, my other grandmother lol) so it eased into my system.

about conversations: maybe i am having conversations with the reader. to invite them into my life. as with "john" (which is me), i describe my birth. i tore my mother and caused hemorrhaging. i was gone for a bit (stories i was told of course). i don't remember how long i was away as they fixed her, so i use the number 3 — which is the christian number for how long jesus was dead before resurrection. the poem is the soothing force out of a horrible situation. the idea is a mothers love no matter what the child does. i literally almost killed my mother but in the same breathe she loves me and wants me and lulls me.

how do we build men to be better and to see us? firstly we change the way masculinity is defined. and we destroy it. we change the way we raise boys. we let them have emotions and we encourage them to cry. boys and men are not robots. we have to get over the idea of men are this way and women are that way and in no way can they cross over.

i will answer about the gift in a few ways, as interpretation can be expensive:

the gift of seeing the world in a very full lense is credited to my mother and to being bullied. i am not applauding being bullied but it let me venture on my own. i never had a circle of friends. i was never forced to be a certain way. bullying is horrible and should be illegal. humans should love humans and we should join together. and to my mother again: i was taught that everyone is equal, no one is better and we all bleed. never judge.

“let's mix mud & blood & meat”
the waltz; or, how one becomes more clean

I've been thinking a lot about this reaction to prudism and puritanical persecution lately. Perhaps because I'm deep in edits of The Maenad's forthcoming that also digs in here or maybe just because it's terrifying to live queer here again. It's always the sex in sexuality that these bigots hone in on and like looters on game night we tend to figure, well, why not go out on a high? Call me a ____ and I'll be the ____-iest _____ to have ever _____. Do your worst and I promise, I'll still have more fun. And yet, "i fancy how many more women / they've tasted than i have men". And the question remains, who is the true hedonist? And, what does it mean to be made human shield?

the answer to your question is them. but they hide behind jesus and think that is going to make them good and blessed. that it is going to make everything alright. as long as they hide their doing and make a big scene against someone else, they won't be realized and they can continue talking blessed and righteous.

and a human shield is how they go about their day. bringing what they don't like, because they pick one little thing out the bible and roll with it. let's jump topics to abortion and how the christians are trying to make it illegal, (another shield). here is a quote:

"The word "abortion" does not appear in any translation of the bible.

Out of more than 600 laws of Moses, none comments on abortion. One Mosaic law about miscarriage specifically contradicts the claim that the bible is antiabortion, clearly stating that miscarriage does not involve the death of a human being."

and yet they want to praise how god and jesus condemn this act, saying the fetus is a living child except the Bible states:

life begins at first breath; clumps of cells don’t breathe air in the womb. Genesis 2:7, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being.”

just one example. and a quick note: god killed many first born.

also the bible doesn't speak about homosexuality. and the verse they like to bring up about sodom and gomorrah states about violence and lack of hospitality, not homosexuality.

"her pyramid scheme of love / is ancient"
mary

Generational trauma underpins so many of the poems in this collection. Hurt people hurt people or whatever the the newest wood burned reclaimed pallet-wood sign on Etsy would have you believe. I'm more interested in desperation. Of the call of the bottle, the turn to strike outward, the ways we fold in to conceal our own need. Fuck your star sign, tell me when you're cornered, who would you have bleed? Many of us pride ourselves on taking that inward only to, as in John, 2,'thunder & bomb" and pass that pain on. Despite our best intentions, the legacy of failed systems is just far too long. How then do you write so tenderly about the mother in sobriety? How do you hold space through the fallout to offer such grace?

you mentioned the poem "mary" which is my mother's mother. the poem is all true. my grandmother drove 100 miles to tell me she found out "through the grapevine" that i was a homosexual and she was going to pray for me a good wife and children. after, she asked if she could come in the house which i declined.

my mother is human with human mistakes. but she has also learned and grew. writing poetry about her flaws are my way of forgiveness. we have walked a rocky road, and sometimes it is smooth and beautiful — while other times we don't speak. when she was an alcoholic i left and we didn't speak for years. she went into recovery and after some time we began to mend the past. i am an adult so we have more of a friends relationship now. it is more helpful like that.

but time heals wounds. we may talk and laugh but the past is always there. yet we both have learned and became better people. she struggled with mental illness, and she fights it daily. like in my poem "john, 2" — she wears it. it is her. she struggles. it isn't something she hides. she is leaning daily. she will never heal. but it is something i know.

One of the challenges of such a personal collection is offering it up for interpretation and judgement first as submission then into the world. How, if at all, have you negotiated that progress in terms of your relationship to the work? I'm thinking about how time can double as distance. How intensity can ebb as we travel from feeling to phrasing to editor's eye.

i write my poems and become separated from them. as they say, poetry is therapy. i make my poems impersonal. i disassociate with them. i write the poem and let it go. i always tell people: i write the bad out and keep the good in. i can handle the good and the page can handle the bad.

people will come to their own conclusions. that is what poetry should be. they will find themselves in the poetry: comfort — maybe they will accept things or understand they are not alone. maybe they will hate that someone is so open about the trauma of their past or hate that they speak ill of christianity, or family. this book is full of life and its darkness.

maybe they will sit down and write their own past and maybe in doing that they too can become separate from it. maybe they can see this and read these poems and heal.

Tell us a bit about your experience with Ghost City.
How did 'the castration of a minor god' travel from hard drive to book?

i have known Kevin for about 2 years. i have loved what he has done and what he does. he really loves poetry and the poet. ghost city press is a huge undertaking. they have the magazine, the echapbook series and the publishing company.

in 2020, my echapbook "a child growing wild inside the mothering womb" was accepted for the series. the echapbooks are free with the option to donate to the poet. every poet gets 100% of whatever is donated to them. it is a wonderful opportunity. they publish around 70 echapbooks a year.

i am someone who enjoys digging in to the process. i like studying the publisher and what they do. i found that he also published paperbacks and so my quest began. unfortunately, he was busy with his mfa and really couldn't spend time looking at a manuscript — which for me was a blessing because the manuscript he choose wasn't yet born.

once he graduated, i messaged him and asked if he'd read my manuscript for the possibility of publishing it. he said he would. the next day he messaged me and said he loved it.

the castration of a minor god
by john compton

Ghost City Press
Publishing December 9th, 2022
Trade Paperback
Page count: 70 pages
ISBN: 978-1-7327347-7-7