Katy Bohinc
I hate bios. Georgetown. Who cares? Community college lesser? I worked hard but it didn’t make me. Mathematics & comparative literature, degrees. All my classes in French. Math is beautiful too. My dad taught me algebra when I was four & we always did it around the house. When I was older, I wanted to never again, then I missed it. Figured everything else I would teach myself but math was worth paying for; it was. Abstract Algebra, the best. Mandarin too, in Beijing. French in France. Geopolitics & economics in Buenos Aires. Spent 50% of 2001-2006 abroad, by ambition. Thought that’s how you were a writer: Joycean Departure. In China, activism, it was impossible not to. There are not words I know of in contemporary English. & people doing work there still at risk, not worth it, not worth .0001% chance (my Bush doctrine). I still help whenever, drop everything to do anything. Real heroes are the people all over the world who risk all for a principle, remain nameless.
When I came back, furious, felt Academia very mainly only appreciates the structured & official & past (& in America “the past” often like “50 to 100 years”). Everything important to me is beginning, writing its present in a language not yet invented. & then poems all the time. I lived in DC for seven years. Studied poetry at Bridge Street Books with the DC Poetry Community. Now I live in New York City. Paid labor in marketing doing data analysis. They told me I couldn’t; I did. It’s not sexy to have a non-writerly job, but what can I say- I’m a self-made woman from Northeast, Ohio. & MFAs too expensive and poetry no money and adjunctivitis problemicos.
When people ask for work, I give it. Now a bunch online. Published Dear Alain excerpts for a while; that book was coming soon. Heard a rumor ‘bout this guy Badiou did set theory. & he was French & Left. Was off theory, but figured I “should.” So I started, started those letters “Dear Badiou, screw you” and read him, wrote as I read to simulate the process of love. Then this guy Hölderlin & was a history to compete with, so. Turned out Alain’s rather beautiful. Who knew? We don’t remember everything we once knew, and probably more some other time, but now I’ve forgotten or circled back or, but that seems generally like... what has happened.
Dear Alain
and in the
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