Natalie Eilbert and Dorothea Lasky Talk Milk for LARB

Natalie Eilbert interviewed Milk author Dorothea Lasky for Los Angeles Review of Books, and the results are as profound as you'd expect, e.g.: "I believe there is this cognitive turning point in every person where everyone already has what they need to live in their particular ecosystem — not the other way around," says Lasky. "I think that this is all tied to a Milk poetics." More:

In your poem “Milk No. 2,” you say, “Milk is not cum, it’s off-white blood,” but then later you say, “Not milk but cum.” A substance can be all of these things at once and by doing so, it can be the negation or accumulation of that substance. I couldn’t help but link that to what poetry is. At some point in your book, you declare, “I don’t think this is an article” — and I’m pretty sure this book is not an article — but I like that sometimes milk — this catchall substance — aligns itself so much with poetry in that way that it’s language without needing external information.

Not to be mean to cum, because I do love it so much (shout out, hi!), and not to say that it’s bad, but my unscientific conception of semen is that it is this construction of fluid that is already complete, that is saying its thesis to the world. You know, semen is an article — this is my load I’m going to give to you. It’s still in you and it has a plan, but it is complete, no matter what happens. In my cartoon conception of it, which I know I got from a bad health class in junior high, there are these little guys swimming and they’re going to get their material to you no matter what. They have a shtick. But milk is different. I once read that milk, when you have a preemie — again this feels like a breast milk advertisement — your body knows to make it extra rich so it can support the baby at their particular stage of development. Whenever you give birth, the body is going to make the exact configuration of vitamins and nutrients. It knows what to do because the nipple regulates information it receives from the baby’s saliva, and it all does something to deliver that extra creamy preemie milk when you have the baby in a certain early week. And as the baby develops and you’re feeding it milk, the milk knows what age the baby is.

Really?

Yeah, it’s something that the saliva communicates...

Read on at LARB.