Miranda Mellis joins Naomi for a discussion that indexes Michael Eigen’s book
The Psychoanalytic Mystic. They discuss the resonance between annotation and free association; the experience of narrating oneself in analysis, losing the thread, doubling back, and having one’s speech be received by the other; the index as a branching form, a poem of the subjective reader; writing as social practice through collective annotation; and how sometimes a text pours salt in the wound while sometimes it serves as a balm.
Miranda Mellis is the author of the novel
Crocosmia (Nightboat Books); three novellas,
The Revisionist,
The Spokes, and
The Quarry; and a short-story collection,
None of This Is Real. Her poetry and nonfiction books and chapbooks include
The Revolutionary,
Demystifications,
Unconsciousness Raising, and
Materialisms. She is the co-author of two book-length dialogues:
The Instead with Emily Abendroth and
Passing Through with Rick Moody (forthcoming, Solid Objects 2026). With Tisa Bryant and Kate Schatz, she was a founding co-editor at The Encyclopedia Project. She grew up in San Francisco and now lives in the woods of the Pacific Northwest where she is a professor at The Evergreen State College. Read her intermittencies at:
You Are in Love with the Impossible.