Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Court Ludwick writes about These Strange Bodies from ELJ Editions.

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“In an introductory physics class, you learn that a body which leaves its origin and returns to it has a net displacement of zero. In these terms, it is indistinguishable from a body that never left at all. This analysis only stands because there is no equation that accounts for how the body felt during and after the experience. This is where physics ends and where poetry has to begin.”

—Dinan Alasad

Spoiler alert: bodies are strange. I think I first realized this when I was nine and dropped a frozen turkey on my big toe. The skin turned purple, and I sobbed for a good hour, and I stopped picking up things I wasn’t supposed to for the rest of the year. Ever since, I’ve had questions about the body. How does it heal? What is it made of? Can I just be a head in a jar like in that one movie? And when the dark bruise on my big toe disappeared completely, I was angry. What do you mean it’s gone? How will people know that I still hurt? 

In many ways, These Strange Bodies is an account of the body in constant flux, as well as a continuation of the questions I asked as a child and continue to think about now. A hybrid memoir composed of essays, prose poems, and experimental pieces, this collection navigates sexual assault, a mother’s arrest, a panic disorder diagnosis, and the challenges of representing traumatic experiences through language. At the same time, more speculative pieces in the collection place the body in reimagined situations and attempt to move beyond personal experience and speak to the widespread, collective violences women have been subjected to. 

When dealing with questions about something as complex as the human body, I’ve found that following the rabbit is more generative than searching for definitive answers. Here, I’ve attempted to retrace the steps I once took and outlined some of what I was thinking about when working on These Strange Bodies.

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The Fourth Humor is Melancholia and Bloodletting

As the first piece in the collection, I wanted “The Fourth Humor is Melancholia” to introduce readers to those feelings of estrangement that the speaker experiences. In humoral theory, diseases were not understood as separate from the body as we understand illness today, but as states of bodily imbalance in need of correction. Because several essays in this collection attempt the impossible task of representing the “out-of-body” sensations that can accompany traumatic experience, referencing the now disproven humorism felt like a cheeky way of nodding toward the complicated nature of the body, of feeling apart from your body, of those mental and physical sensations that really do feel impossible to deal with in the moment. 

“Bloodletting” returns to this thread at the end of the collection, even though a lot of growth can be found between these two bookends. I remember hearing about bloodletting for the first time and wishing it was that easy. Let some blood, and then you’re fine. 

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Anatomy Class Is For Lovers

Nearly every sentence in “Anatomy Class Is For Lovers” is a “fun fact” about the body. As far as my research process goes, I’m lucky enough to have a doctor for an older sister. That and internet access. A non-exhaustive list of questions I called my sister to ask when I was writing this one piece:

• Does your stomach lining really turn red when you blush?
• Do people’s hearts sync to music or no?
• Is dust actually dead skin?
• True or false: cracking your knuckles causes arthritis?
• And the tongue is a muscle, correct?
• Wait, did you just say acid in the stomach can dissolve metal? 

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Panic Disorder

“Panic Disorder” assumes the form of research itself, complete with an abstract, introduction, case presentation, and discussion sections.

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Ashes to Ashes

A few pieces in the collection arose out of my desire to know some oddly specific thing about the body in xyz scenario. I don’t remember how I started thinking about what happens to the body during the process of cremation, but I must have at some point because “Ashes to Ashes” exists. 

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Nude

“Nude” here refers to the artistic nude, and I’d say this work approaches the body in a way unlike many of the other pieces in the collection do. At the time, I was interested in distinctions between “art” and “pornography” and the twenty-first century “commodified nude.” Into which contexts are we placing ourselves? How are women’s bodies contextualized, seen, and subsequently harmed, by others? How do states of vulnerability change depending on the context or setting?  

As the speaker struggles with vulnerability in this piece, with feeling vulnerable in a body that has been subjected to emotional and physical pain, connections are made between individual “bare”-ness and artistic renderings of the body. 

I was also thinking a lot about the act of witnessing, the act of viewing, the process of taking something in—and then about the intent behind such sight. What is the role of the spectator today? What does my own gaze look like? Which gazes must we navigate when we leave the private sphere and walk outside, when someone engages with our work? As an artist, I do feel very aware of the external world beyond my writing. And as a woman, I am always aware of how I’m being seen. Lately, I’ve been struggling with how I don’t want my art to be consumed like my body is.

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Diastema

The second-to-last piece in These Strange Bodies, “Diastema,” leans into fragmentation, fractured text, and white space on the page in attempts to visually represent the gaps being considered throughout. 

When I’m writing memoir or drawing from personal experience, I find that most of my “research” is more internal brain sifting than anything—and often faulty due to memory’s inevitable instability—but I don’t exist in a vacuum. I enjoy putting my memories into contact with the world, with “artifacts” that either feel resonant or connected or that clash in seemingly generative ways.

I like seeing what the friction leads to. 

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Court Ludwick is the author of These Strange Bodies (ELJ Editions, 2024) and the founding editor-in-chief of Broken Antler Magazine. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and can be found in EPOCH, Denver Quarterly, Oxford Magazine, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. She has an MA from Texas Tech University and is a current PhD student at the University of South Dakota. Find Court on socials @courtludwick. Find more of Court’s writing and art on www.courtlud.com.