A Beautiful Name for a Girl

Kirsten Kaschock

 

An extended bio from the author

 

 

I was born raised in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, the middle of five children. I didn’t have an older sister until I was twelve and my second cousin moved in with us and became part of a family whose major principle is inclusion. My elder brother, younger sister, younger brother, and I all danced at a local ballet, tap, jazz, and tumbling studio. This scarily talented crew all eventually danced professionally—I have not.

Although I never stopped taking dance classes or choreographing, I have always been drawn to language in a way I still find difficult to reconcile with my more kinesthetic pursuits. One way I’ve tried to combine my passions is through scholarship. My academic background is long—some would say (have said) too long, but I prefer learning to almost anything else I do. Writing and moving to me are simply facets of this—ways of processing all that surrounds. In my estimation, art can be a profound method of education, as it has the power to move one beyond the receipt of information and into action.

I have received academic patronage from several schools. I attended Yale, and earned a B.A. in English literature. Then came two M.F.A.s: one from University of Iowa in choreography, another in poetry from Syracuse University. I moved from New York to Georgia, earning a Ph.D. in English with a creative dissertation (an as-yet unpublished novel). And I am now in Philadelphia pursuing a second doctorate in dance at Temple University. Somewhere along this meandering tour of universities, I acquired a partner—molecular geneticist Dan Marenda—and with him brought three boys into this world. They are Simon, Bishop, and Koen, and they are wonderful.

My artistic influences are drawn from every aspect of my life. The first poet I wanted to be like (at age 7) was Basho, and I lovingly, thankfully failed. The choreographer I most admire is Pina Bausch, who too soon passed away in the summer 2009. Paul Klee’s paintings are dear to me, as are Joseph Cornell’s boxes, Louise Bourgeois’s sculptures, and lately, Brian Dettmer’s sculpted books. The fiction of Italo Calvino and Virginia Woolf and James Baldwin got to me early on and stayed. I am constantly listening to music, watching films, reading children’s literature. Recently, I read aloud Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, for the third time. Next is a re-read of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass.

The connections I share with others are some of my most profound influences. My younger sister and I can recite Monty Python’s “Crunchy Frog” together, and have been able to since she was eleven and I was sixteen. My husband Danny and I share a love for grade B science fiction films which will sustain us. Maurice Sendak is a staple on my children’s bookshelf and in our shared pile of references. These source materials find their way into my poems with more frequency than the philosophy I like to read . . . or maybe it is that I like that they deal with the same subject matters more concretely.

I’m a bit old-fashioned for all my attempts at experimentation, I think. Although I can find beauty (and I do look for beauty) in much that balks at narrativity and the lyrical I, I like my own poems and choreography to have those threads. The more I learn, the more I learn to love—but interestingly, the more I realize my writing steals its forms from faerie tales, plays, and letters: the very first bits of writing that ever moved me. These are boxes that still seem fit for all my learning.