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Interview With Poet Jessica Piazza

Poet Jessica Piazza

Last week an interview with Poet Jessica Piazza posted on 32 Poems.

Please check out a part of the interview below, and give her a warm welcome.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

Usually I just tell people that I’m a word-nerd and that I’m generally ridiculous. I like getting that out there early. I also probably pipe in that I’m from Brooklyn, New York pretty early on, because I’m really proud of where I come from. Brooklyn has definitely become the trendy place to be for artists and hipsters of all ilk, but growing up deep in South (read: uncool) Brooklyn is a completely different story, and a very particular story at that. Other than that, I’m more likely to talk about my dog than myself. His name is Special and he’s seriously….special.

Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

Ha! Obsessions are my obsession. A quick Googling of me reveals that my entire writing life for the past few years focused almost primarily on ruminations about clinical phobias and clinical philias. I wrote poem after poem inspired by these weird obsessive fears and obsessive loves, and my entire manuscript is anchored by them. For me, that was subject was a natural one, since I get addicted to ideas or projects themselves and have to play them out until I’ve killed them in some emotional way. I mean, I *only* write poems in projects, and that’s beginning to bite me in the ass as I try to create a second manuscript. For example, how do you fit together a dozen strange ekphrastic poems with erasure poems made from news articles and tiny, technical poems about bridges? It ain’t easy, kids. That’s all I’m saying..

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I’m not much a reader of books on writing, but one did move me, years ago. It’s not specifically writing focused, even! It’s called “Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking” by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It contains this astonishing tidbit: “If ninety-eight percent of our medical students were no longer practicing medicine five year after graduation, there would be a Senate investigation, yet that proportion of art majors are routinely consigned to an early professional death. Not many people continue making art when – abruptly – their work is no longer seen, no longer exhibited, no longer commented upon, no longer encouraged. Could you?”

Reading that only articulated my already steadfast determination to provide artistic communities: spaces for the sharing and appreciation of poetry, in person and on the page. A year interning with Robert Pinsky (and Maggie Dietz!) at “The Favorite Poem Project” in Boston—an endeavor that set out to prove poetry touched ordinary Americans—was the perfect groundwork for me. As hundreds and hundreds of love letters to poetry poured in that first year, I realized that the power of great literature is not esoteric—it’s visceral, vibrant and necessary. It was right there…proof that poetry could have power as a pop-cultural force, not just an academic byproduct. I wanted to find a way to work with this idea, both expanding poetry’s place (and scope) in education, and simultaneously ensuring its recognition as a viable source of popular entertainment and inspiration.

To that end, over the years I helped to found a popular reading series (Speakeasy Poetry Series in NYC), a successful national literary journal (Bat City Review) and a small university press (Gold Line Press). Funny, though…it’s ironic that, at first, I never thought of teaching as a way to advocate poetry in the community. But when I started as a Teaching Assistant in 2003, I saw the impression that well-made literature could make on generally unimpressed students, and I’m proud to say that I’ve helped create many new poetry lovers over the last eight years of teaching at a college level. No wonder teaching became a passion—it doesn’t get much more inspiring than that.

Thanks, Jessica, for answering my questions. For the rest of the interview, visit 32 Poems.

About the Poet:

Jessica Piazza was born in Brooklyn, has a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She is a co-founder of Bat City Review, an editor at Gold Line Press, a contributing editor at The Offending Adam and has blogged for The Best American Poetry and Barrelhouse. Among other places, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, The National Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, Agni, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, 42 Opus and Forklift, Ohio. Her dissertation focuses on the intersection between literary analysis and neuroscience, which means she reads a lot of science articles, which also means she’s constantly tempted to shuffle around like a zombie screaming “BRAINS!!!!” at random poets and writers.

Check out a sample poem:

Eisoptrophilia
           Love of mirrors
                               Impression pressed upon the glass perfects
                               even the grossest forgeries.  Reject
                               the sea.  Reject the turning tide.
                               Just below clear water, I reside
                               as duplication of the lake.  Take me
                               away, another underneath again.
                               What mirrors cannot ditto isn’t sin.

Eisoptrophobia
        Fear of mirrors
                                What mirrors cannot ditto isn’t sin
                                simply performed behind the glass.  Within
                                the frame of windowpane, negated dark.
                                Those fleeting squares reveal our darkness back.
                                Aloof, the rain plays taps.  Above, the trees
                                are inimitable.  Distinct, thus blessed.
                                Reflected, I am never at my best.

--Originally published in Mid-American Review, Volume XXX, Numbers 1 & 2 Fall 2009/Spring 2010

Interview With Poet David Mason

Poet Dave Mason

This week an interview with Poet David Mason posted on 32 Poems, and he was a pleasure to interview because he’s one of the only poets I can remember interviewing that is involved in writing operas and other librettos for plays. 

Please check out a part of the interview below, and give him a warm welcome.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

I would recite a poem by someone else. Mother Goose, for example. Then I would recite another poem by someone else. Auden or MacNeice or Dickinson, perhaps. I might ask the audience to repeat a poem after me, to join in the recitation. I wouldn’t say much of anything about myself unless I was asked in a question and answer session.

Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Poets don’t have any obligation to do anything. Nor do readers. It’s a free country. I like a certain level of access in a poem, but I also love a whiff of mystery, a sense that the inexpressible has been cracked open or exposed to me in some way. I wouldn’t want to dispel any myths. Myths are there to cast a spell, not to be dispelled.

Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

I’ve never had any trouble writing anywhere I’ve been in the world. I did until recently have a lovely office that used to be an artist’s studio, with north light and brick floors–a beautiful room. Now I live in a tiny cabin, 380 square feet in the shadow of Pike’s Peak, and it serves just as well. People who need the perfect space in which to write are sissies. Your brain is where you write. It’s portable.

What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers? The most exciting work involves my collaboration with composer Lori Laitman. Our first opera, The Scarlet Letter, will have its professional premiere at Opera Colorado in Denver in 2013. My libretto will be published as a book in 2012. Our oratorio, Vedem, premiered in Seattle last year and is now out on CD from Naxos. And we’re at work on an opera based on my verse novel, Ludlow. Also, I seem to be writing a lot of love poetry lately. The dam has burst.

Check out a sample of his poetry:

SEA SALT

Light dazzles from the grass
over the carnal dune.
This too shall come to pass,
but will it happen soon?
A kite nods to its string.
A cloud is happening

above the tripping waves,
joined by another cloud.
They are a crowd that moves.
The sky becomes a shroud
cut by a blade of sun.
There’s nothing to be done.

The soul, if there’s a soul
moves out to what it loves,
whatever makes it whole.
The sea stands still and moves,
denoting nothing new,
deliberating now.

The days are made of hours,
hours of instances,
and none of them are ours.
The sand blows through the fences.
Light darkens on the grass.
This too shall come to pass.

–first published in The Times Literary Supplement

Thanks, David, for answering my questions.  For the rest of the interview, visit 32 Poems.

About the Poet:

David Mason’s books include The Country I Remember, Arrivals and the verse novel, Ludlow. His book of essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry, appeared in 2000, and a second volume of essays has appeared from the University of Michigan Press. Author of a libretto for Lori Laitman’s opera of The Scarlet Letter, Mason won the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Prize for the development of a new libretto. He teachers at The Colorado College and serves as Poet Laureate of Colorado.

An Interview With Poet Rachel Zucker

Poet Rachel Zucker

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Rachel Zucker was posted. She’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview.  I really enjoyed her comment about no one really being “just a poet.”

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

Is anyone “just a poet”? I don’t know anyone like that. I’m also a professor and teach at NYU. I’m also a doula (labor support assistant). I’m studying to become a Childbirth Educator (so I can teach birthing classes to pregnant couples). I’m a mother of three sons. I’m a devoted wife to my husband, Josh Goren. I’m always starting new projects and hobbies. For example, I just started a blog, where I post one sentence descriptions every day. I also write prose. Is there a room where a crowd hangs on my every word? I guess, maybe a room full of students who are there for extra credit . . .

Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

I have many obsessions. I wish I had more time to watch television. I really love television but don’t watch at all now. I want to watch the new Game of Thrones mini series. My husband has read me all the books — thousands of pages — we have 200 pages left in the last book.

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I recently posted a list of books that was most useful to me on 32 poems blog. None of these are writing manuals but all of them functioned as how-tos. I started a writing group many years ago — a peer group — and the group stayed together (with members coming and going) for almost 10 years. It was tremendously helpful to have that group, post MFA. I met Arielle Greenberg that way! And worked with these great writers. I stopped wanting the group because I was mostly writing prose. Now I miss it. But I have my correspondence with my dear poet friends: Arielle, DA Powell, Laurel Snyder, Sarah Manguso, Sarah Vap, Wayne Koestenbaum, David Trinidad, Matthew Zapruder–just to name a few who have given me invaluable feedback on my work and supported me in my writing.

I think I read a lot of books that are really thinly veiled “how to” live books and these help me write. I read memoirs and parenting books and cook books.

Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?

I really love coffee but have had to stop drinking it all together. I have really debilitating insomnia and the caffeine makes it worse. I feel really sorry for myself about giving up coffee. I’m sitting here mentally smelling it and just feeling sad.

Check out some of her poetry or prose.  Here’s a poem I found on Poets.org from her:

Hey Allen Ginsberg Where Have You Gone and What Would You Think of My Drugs?
by Rachel Zucker
A mouse went to see his mother. When his car broke down he bought a bike.
When the bike wore out he bought skates. When the skates wore down he ran.
He ran until his sneakers wore through. Then he walked. He walked and
walked, almost walked his feet through so he bought new ones. His mother was
happy to see him and said, “what nice new feet you have on.”
—paraphrase of a story in Mouse Tails by Arnold Lobel

hey, listen, a bad thing happened to
my friend's marriage, can't tell you
only can tell my own story which
so far isn't so bad:

"Dad" and I stay married.  so far.
so good.  so so.

But it felt undoable. This lucky life
every day, every day. every. day.

(all the poetry books the goddamn same
until one guys gets up and stuns the audience)

Then, Joe Wenderoth, not by a long shot
sober says, I promised my wife I wouldn't fuck
anyone, to no one in particular and reads a poem
about how Jesus has no penis.

Meanwhile, the psychiatrist, attractive in a fatherly
way, says libido question mark.

And your libido?
like a father, but not like mine, or my sons'—

"fix it."

My friend's almost written
a good novel by which I mean finished
which means I'd like to light myself
on fire, on fire
with envy, this isn't "desire"
not what the Dr. meant
by libido?
                        I hope—

not, it's just chemical:
            jealousy. boredom. lethargy.

Books with prominent seraphs: their feet feet feet I am
marching to the same be—

other

than the neuronic slave I thought anxiety made me
do it, made me get up and carry forth, sally
the children to school the poems dragged
by little hands on their little seraphs
to the page my marriage sustained, remaining
energy: project #1, project #2, broken
fixtures, summer plans, demand met, request
granted, bunny noodles with and without cheesy
at the same time, and the night time I insomnia
these hours penning invisible letters—

            till it stopped.

doc said: it's a syndrome.        you've got it,
                                      classic.

it's chemical,
mental

circuitry we've got a fix for this
classic, I'm saying I can

make it better.

Everything was the same, then,
but better.

At night I slept.
In the morning got up.

Kids to school, husband still a fool-
hardy spirit makes
me pick a monday morning fight, snipe! I'll pay for that
later I'm still a pain in the
elbow from writing prose those shift+hold+letter,
I'm still me less sleepy, crazy, I suppose
less crazy-jealous just
ha-ha now at Jesus' no penis his
amazed at the other poet's kickass
friend's novel I dream instead about
the government makes me put stickers
on my driver's license of family members
who are Jews, and mine all are.  Can they get us
all? I escape with a beautiful light-haired man,
blue-eyed day trader, gentile. 

gentle, gentle, mind encased in its blood-brain barrier from the harsh skull sleep, sleep and sleepy wake and want to sleep and sleep a steep dosage— 

            "—chemical?"

in my dreams now every man's mine, no-
problem, perhaps my mind's a little plastic,
malleable, not so fatal now 

the dose is engineered like that new genetic watercress
to turn from green to red when planted over buried
mines, nitrogen dioxide makes for early autumn
red marks the spot where I must
watch my step, up one half-step-dose specific—

            The psychiatrist's lived in NY so long
            he's of ambiguous religious—
            everyone's Jewish sometimes—
            writes: "up the dosage."

now, when I'm late I just shrug it's my new improved style missed the train? I tug the two boys single file the platform a safe aisle between disasters, blithely I step, step, step-lively carefully, wisely. I sing silly ditties play I spy something pretty grey-brown-metal-filthy for a little city fun. Just one way to enjoy life's trials, mile after mile, lucky to have such dependable feet. you see, the rodents don't frighten I'm calm as can be expected to recover left to my one devivces I was twice as fast getting everywhere but where did that get me but there, that inevitable location more waiting, the rats there scurry, scurry, a furry till the next train comes

"up the dosage."

Brown a first-cut brisket in hot Dutch oven
after dusting with paprika.  Remove.  Sauté
thickly sliced onions and add wine. (Sweet
is better, lasts forever, never need a new bottle).
Put the meat on onions, cover with tomato-sauce-
onion-soup-mix mixture, cover. Back in a low
oven many hours.

The house smells like meat.
My hair smells like meat. 

I'm a light unto the nation.

I'm trying
to get out of Egypt.
This year,
I'll  be better.

Joseph makes sense of the big man's dreams, is saved,
saves his brothers those jealous boys who sold him
sold them all as slaves. Seven years of plenty.  Seven
years of famine.  He insomnias the nights counting up
grains, storing, planning, for what? They say throw
the small boys in the river (and mothers do so). Smite
the sons (and fathers do it.) God says take off your shoes,
this holy ground this pitiful, incombustible bush.

Is God chemical?
Enzymatic of our great need to chaos?

We're unforgivable.
People of the salted
cheeks.  Slap, turn, slap.

To be chosen
is to be
unforgiving/ unforgiv-
en, always chosen:
be better.

The Zuckers are a long line of obsessives. 

This served them well in war time saw it
coming in time that unseeable thing they
hoarded they ferried, schemed, paced, got the hell
out figured out at night, insomnia, how to visa—

now, if it happens again, I won't be
ready

I'm "better."

The husband, a country club Jew from Denver, American
intelligentsia will have to carry me out and he's no big
man and I'm not a small girl how fast

can the doctor switch the refugee gene back on?

How fast can I get worse?  Smart again and worse?

Better to be alive than better.  

            "...listen:" says the doctor, "sleeping isn't death.
            All children unlearn this fear you got confused
            thought thinking was the same as spinning—"
            Writes: "up the dosage."
            don't think.  this refugee thing part
            of a syndrome fear of medication of being better...

Truth is, the anti-obsessional medicine works
wonders and drags me through life's course...

About this time of year but years ago the priests spread
rumors of blood libel. Jews huddled in basements accused
of using Christian babes' blood to make unleavened bread.

signs and wonders.
Christ rises.

Blood and body and babes.
Basements and briskets
and bread of afflictions.

I am calm now with my pounds of meat
made and frozen, my party schedule, my pills
of liberation, my gentile dream-boy, American
passport, my grey haired-psychiatrist, my blue-
eyed son, my brown-eyed son, my poems on their
pretty little fleet-feet, my big shot friends, olive-skinned
husband, my right elbow on fire: fire inside deep in the nerve
from too much carrying and word-mongering, smithery, bearing
and tensing choosing to be better to live this real life this better orbit this Jack

Kerouac never loved you like you wanted.
Blake.
Buddha.
Only Jesus and that's his shtick,
he loves

everyone: smile! that's it,
for the camera, blood pressure
normal, better, you're a poster child
for signs and wonders what a little chemistry
does for the brain, blood, thought, hey,

did you know that Pharaoh actually wanted
to let them go?  those multitude Jews
but God hardened Pharaoh's heart against them [Jews]
to prove his prowess show his signs, wonders, outstretched
hand, until the dosage was a perfect ten and then
some, sea closing up around those little chariots
the men and horses while women on the far shore shook
their tambourines.  And then what?  Forty years to get the smell
of slavery off them. 

Because of this. Bloody Nile. My story one of
the lucky.  Escape hatch even from my own
obsess—

            I am here because of this.
Because of what my ancestors did for me to tell this
story of the outstretched hand what it did for me this
marked door and behind this red-marked door, around
a corner a blue-eyed boy waits to love me up with his
leavened bread, his slim body, professional detachment,
medical advancements, forgive me my father's mother's
father was the last in a long line of Rabbis—again! with this? This
rhapsody of affliction and escape, the mind bobbing along
in its watery safe. Be like everyone. Else. Indistinguishable but
better than the other nations but that's what got us into this, Allen,
no one writes these long-ass poems anymore.  Now we're
better, all better.  All Christian.  Kind.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

Interview With Poet Stephen Cushman

Poet Stephen Cushman

Poet Stephen Cushman

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Stephen Cushman was posted. He’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview. His answers are very short and to the point, but I’m intrigued by those who play Frisbee golf.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet? What else should people know about you?

People should know I play a mean game of Frisbee golf, am fluent in Maineglish (ayuh), am told I can make anything naughty with the lift of one eyebrow, and am the go-to person for old school drinking songs.

Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

If I am elected Miss America, I vow to work for world peace, mostly on the written page, although I’m happy to perform or do spoken word, if I can wear my overalls. Poetry is 4,300 years old; if it could help humanity become more tolerant and collaborative, it would have done so by now. And perhaps it has. Who knows? If it weren’t for poetry, we might be even worse than we are.

In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

As a writer I fly least turbulently below the radar. Luckily, therefore, my friendships are not related to or dependent on my writing life.

How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

I’m currently co-editing the new edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, so hoisting the page proofs of that around keep me pretty buff.

He also included a poem, originally published in 32 Poems, for readers to check out:

Supposing Him to Be the Gardener

Supposing this to be the sun
And this to be the rain,
Supposing clouds to be caviar
And wind to be champagne,
How can one tell divinity
From a tree turned red
Or Do not hold me from what else
Its leaves might well have said?

About the Poet:

Stephen Cushman is Robert C. Taylor Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He has published four collections of poetry, Riffraff (LSU, 2011), Heart Island (David Robert Books, 2006), Cussing Lesson (LSU, 2002), and Blue Pajamas (LSU, 1998). He is also the author of Bloody Promenade: Reflections on a Civil War Battle (University Press of Virginia, 1999) and two books of criticism, Fictions of Form in American Poetry (Princeton University Press, 1993) and William Carlos Williams and the Meanings of Measure (Yale University Press, 1985).

Also find him at Public Poetry, The Writer’s Almanac, Drunken Boat, interLitQ.org, The Cortland Review, University of Virginia Department of English, Amazon.com, and Archipelago.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

An Interview With Poet Casey Thayer

Poet Casey Thayer

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Casey Thayer was posted. He’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview. I’m especially impressed with his answer to the elitist myth about poetry, since I feel the same way about the issue.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

This sure is a question with very large implications, and I don’t necessarily want to dive into the print versus spoken word debate, but I will say that poetry adapts much more easily to performance than other written forms—it was, after all, historically an aural form—and I do think that spoken word can delight in ways written forms can’t. For me, however, this adaptability doesn’t necessarily mean that poetry is better or more accessible when performed. Personally, when I hear a poem in performance that catches my ear, I need to see it on the page. This could very well be a shortcoming in my ability to stay attentive or process spoken poetry, but I can’t escape the page. The page, that tactile experience of holding a book, allows me to sit with the work, to mull it over at my own pace. That reflection time is what initially drew me to poetry. I don’t find this same satisfaction with spoken word poetry.

At the same time, it might be pointless to evaluate them by the same measure: I classify them as different forms that simply strike different chords. If I’m trying to engage young readers, I forego Ashbery for Taylor Mali. If I’m curling up on my couch, I reach for Sandra Beasley’s new collection instead of queuing up Youtube clips of Saul Williams. I see performance poetry as walking a middle ground between print poetry and hip-hop freestyle and improvisation. It satisfies my need to be engaged visuals and audibly, but it doesn’t replace my desire to see poetry on the page.

To answer your second question, one of the arts’ most-enduring benefits is its ability to foster tolerance, to expand one’s perspectives, and to encourage reflection and non-linear thinking. We hear the ignorance and apathy of younger generations continually bemoaned, but there perhaps has never been a time in our history where more younger people can engage with art: computer programs have opened the door to self-recorded CDs, design programs to DIY chapbooks, Youtube to greater recognition for independent films, the internet to vloggers and the rise of Justin Bieber. As for bringing artists together, I think mash-ups and the popularity of bands like The Hood Internet and GirlTalk (among many other groups) illustrate that we’re hungry for collaboration.

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

For me, inspiration comes less from any rhetorical text or how-to manual and more from collections of poetry, though I did find Triggering Town very influential in forming my aesthetic and Bird by Bird served as a good introduction to the world of writing. When I feel directionless, I will pick up a collection of poems, searching for techniques I can steal. I don’t feel any of Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence.” Jude Nutter’s Pictures of the Afterlife is especially inspirational, as is Cecily Parks’ Field Folly Snow. Jack Gilbert never fails to inspire, and Sandra Beasley’s work (especially her recent collection I Was the Jukebox) spawned so many poems that I should probably send her a bottle of wine.

As for writing groups, I have trouble joining them. It’s not that I don’t want to commit myself to the work of others or to help them improve (I am a teacher, after all). However, it’s difficult to know whether all the effort of fully giving oneself to a poem in workshop will be appreciated. One time, years back, I responded to a batch of poems sent to me by an old friend with copious commentary, suggestions, praise, and constructive criticism. I suggested readings, enclosed in the manila envelope poems, and photocopies from essays. I never heard back. It was such a deflating process, to give so much of myself and to have that dedication ignored, that perhaps I’ve been guarding myself from that disappointment ever since.

Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Poets, just like any writers or communicators, have an obligation to their readers. Unless a poet has developed her craft, obscuration frequently reads as a lack of control. Young poets (and here I’m talking more about undergraduate writers than young professional writers) too often hide behind the John Ashbery defense—if he doesn’t make sense, I don’t have to. He even says in his book Other Traditions: “Unfortunately, I’m not very good at ‘explaining’ my work… I am unable to do so because I feel that my poetry is the explanation. The explanation of what? Of my thought, whatever that is. As I see it, my thought is both poetry and the attempt to explain that poetry; the two cannot be disentangled.” I find that young writers point to this same defense, though Ashbery has already staked that territory. Young poets need to find their own.

All that said, although there are examples of unnecessary obscuration in poetry, this cry of elitist and inaccessibility is often not due to faults in poems but in the inability or unwillingness of readers to engage with poetry. I do think that poets should and should be able to demand more of their readers. Readers simply are underdeveloped critically; they have not been given the tools to appreciate poetry. The way to solve this, in my opinion, is to stress the teaching of poetry by those who know how to crack open a poem for students. In my creative writing courses, I have student boldly proclaim their hatred for poetry, yet when I take them slowly through “To His Coy Mistress,” they sit amazed that way back in the 17th century, boys were trying to pull the same tricks they do now: “C’mon, we’ll be dead soon, so let’s quick have some sex.” The key is to take poetry slowly, to analyze and fully understand each line before moving on to the next. With the short-attention spans bred by twitter, aggregating blogs, etc., teachers may find it very difficult to slow students down. But this meticulousness is necessary in understanding and cultivating an appreciation of poetry.

He also included a poem for readers to check out:

Aubade

Leaving Hotel Skandia in the grey dawn’s growl

of car horns and red light district litanies—

Oh little boy, you run an ache through my bones.

We trade our hands for luggage, haul off

what I’m carrying home: a bag of salt licorice,

a list of useless Danish words—My ham

is frozen and Spot me. I have nothing

for moments when grief comes heavily

like a mouthful of peanut butter and sticks

in my throat the whole way down.

I choke out an order for two train tickets,

lights flicking off at Tivoli, the terminal

hunkering over us as the clock tower

calls out the hour and keeps on counting.

When I tell you, The stars like your hipbones

shine, and, If you sing, you mold me like

a pastry in my crude translation, I misspeak.

I mean to say that love is hard when we

have only our hands to help. The train car

filled with passengers asleep on one another,

winds its way through tunnels to the airport.

The morning nearer now, we press our lips

together. Where we open, we close.

The city like a book covered in words.

About the Poet:

Casey Thayer completed an MFA at Northern Michigan University and has published poetry in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hunger Mountain, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. New poems are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, North American Review, and Devil’s Lake. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Rock County.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

An Interview With Poet Hope Snyder

Poet Hope Snyder

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Hope Snyder was posted. She’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview.  I’m especially impressed with her answer about what writing manuals and workshops have helped her most.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I do not belong to any writing groups, but I have attended workshops at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Gettysburg Review’s Conference for Writers, and the Latino Writers’ Conference in New Mexico. Workshops at Gettysburg and Bread Loaf were helpful. I’ve also taken a couple of workshops with Stanley Plumly at The Writers’ Center in Bethesda. These were very beneficial.

When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

Even though I think I should listen to music while I’m writing, I don’t always do it. That is something I would like to change. I think music can be very helpful while writing. In the past, I’ve listened to classical, Latin American, Spanish, and Italian music. Among my favorites, Beethoven’s 7th symphony, a Spanish singer named Rosana, the sound track for the film “Frida.”

How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

I try to walk or engage in some sort of exercise every day. Most days I walk 30 to 40 minutes. This year I joined a gym. I’m seriously considering hiring a personal trainer.

She also included a poem for readers to check out:

In The Changing Light

At first he believed she would be back, and that he would open the door.

In the meantime, he kept his job, adopted a dog without a tail,

soaked in the hot tub, and lounged on the couch they had bought

on sale. “Custom made,” the sales woman had explained

stroking the velvet. In the afternoon light, it shimmered

like silver. After four years, the other woman

has learned to cook rosemary chicken and threatens

to fill his days and his bed. She goes through the house,

gathers sweaters, pictures, and paintings. Now there will be

room for her pills and her make-up. With a drink and Barry White

on the stereo, he rests on the couch in the changing light. In his hand,

the pearl earring he found while re-arranging the cushions last night.

–Published in The Gettysburg Review (Summer, 2009)

About the Poet:

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Hope Maxwell Snyder received an MA in Latin American Literature from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. in Spanish Medieval Literature from the University of Manchester. Her poetry has appeared in Alehouse Press, The Comstock Review, The Gettysburg Review, International Poetry Review, OCHO, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, and other journals. Hope has been the recipient of scholarships to attend Western Michigan University’s program in Prague, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Hope has also been awarded poetry fellowships for The Gettysburg Review’s Conference for Writers and the Peter Taylor Fellowship in Poetry at The Kenyon Review’s Conference. She is the founder and director of the Sotto Voce Poetry Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

An Interview With Poet Charles Jensen

Poet Charles Jensen

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Charles Jensen was posted. He’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview.  I’m especially impressed with his answer to the elitist myth about poetry, since I feel the same way about the issue.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

I’m pretty sure none of them are secrets. I love some aspects of “low” culture like trash pop music. I aspire to find ways to sew that into my work as a poet somehow. I am also really connected to film, both as a narrative art and as a form. Physical aspects of film are closely related to the work of poetry for me. I give extensive thought to sequencing, montage, collage, and narrative. Any two things placed in juxtaposition create a narrative. There’s a great story of the Kuleshov Effect, wherein an audience’s construction of narrative changes when the same photo of a person (mostly expressionless) is interspersed with a shot of soup or a shot of a baby, for instance. In the soup narrative, the audience describes the man as looking hungry. In the baby narrative, he looks happy. That effect of context is something I carry with me–how do individual poems, individual lines, individual images speak to each other?

Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Poetry itself is none of those things. It is the attitude of the reader that determines what poetry is. The only way to dispel the myth is for people to encounter poetry on their own. I always liken it to television. If you had never seen television in your entire life and then one day turned it on, only to see Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, you might say, “Gosh, I hate television.” But most of us realize that television is a multi-dimensional form with various strategies aimed at different audiences. If you watch television long enough, you will find something that speaks to you. This is true, too, of poetry. But because the poetry world has a reputation of being closed, or because it is taught in high school as a “symbolic” art practiced by dead white people, it loses a lot of its contemporary allure. I think now, more than ever, poetry strives to be egalitarian in a lot of ways–people just need to look.

Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

It is always a total disaster–I would change that! My apartment is very small and my desk is very big–about 30% of my living room. The window is behind me. The room gets almost no natural light. It is absolutely not my ideal writing space. In Phoenix, I had a loft apartment with 20′ ceilings, 17 feet of which were windows. My desk sat up in the loft area, overlooking the living room, facing all the windows and light. That was an amazing place to write. I miss it every day.

He also included a poem for readers to check out:

IT WAS OCTOBER
–for Matthew Shepard

I was love when I entered the bar
shivering in my thin t-shirt and ripped jeans
and I was love when I left that place, tugged along at the wrist
as though tied, with a man I did not know.

I was love there in the morning
when our sour kisses bore the peat of rotten leaves,
fallen October leaves. And it was love that we kissed anyway, not knowing each other’s names.

I was love in that bed
and I was love in the hall and down the stairs and into the freezing rain.

I was love with hands punched deep
into the pockets of a coat.
I was love coated in frozen rain.

Back home, I was love stripped of the cigarette-stung shirt, love pulling the stiff jeans from my legs.
I dried my hair and I was love.

It was October. What did I know of love that year,
shuddering in my nervous skin. Miles away, the boy was lashed to a fence and shivering.

Where that place turned red and the ground soaked through
with what he was, I was love.

What did I know of love then
but that it wasn’t enough.

About the Poet:

Charles Jensen is the author of three chapbooks of poems and The First Risk, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County and is a co-chair of the Emerging Leader Council of Americans for the Arts. Check out his Website. He’s also a poetry editor with lethe press.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

An Interview With Poet Kathleen Winter

Poet Kathleen Winter

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Kathleen Winter was posted. She’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview, especially since we share a love of trees and dogs.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

I love living in the country, being outdoors. After growing up in Texas, I shipped out to Massachusetts after college, then to California and lately to Arizona to get an MFA at Arizona State University. My favorite job ever was night-shift in a Brookline bookstore, working with lots of other writers. I love the Pacific. I’m not religious; yoga is about as spiritual as I get. I’ve worked as a baker, tech editor, lawyer and writing teacher. I’m a sloooow reader. The last time I had a TV was in 1989–can’t take that stuff. Also, I’m looking for a teaching job! Within two hours drive of Glen Ellen, California.

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I’m a junkie for school, so I’ve loved being in an MFA program, and all the workshops, classes, readings, conversations that involves. Before going back to school I was in several workshops with poets in Sonoma County, Calif.,  and at Esalen Institute at Big Sur. Those experiences helped keep poetry at the forefront while I was working as a lawyer.

The essays in Stephen Dobyns‘ collection “Best Words Best Order” and Jane Hirshfield’s “Nine Gates” have helped me to better understand what I want to accomplish technically, and how to go after it. Maybe more importantly, I find that reading good non-fiction can inspire me to immediately want to write. Donald Hall’s anthology of essays by poets, “Claims for Poetry” is useful but frustrating, because Hall includes far too few women poets and far too few poets of color.

In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

Many more writers now. ! Halleluja !

Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

Now, while I’m finishing up the last semester of the MFA program in Tempe, I write in a rented room in a house that’s two states to the east of the house in California where my partner and dog live. So the ideal writing space is back in Glen Ellen with Finnegan lounging next to me in the ratty dog bed. My desk right now is two filing cabinets with a board across them; I’m looking at drywall. Back home I often write in bed, and look out through the windows at douglas firs, toyon, and madrone trees.

She also included a poem for readers to check out:

Wrong Sonnet:  Multiplicity

My husband asks Why don’t you write a poem
about why you like Virginia Woolf when
nobody else does.
The excruciating detail of a marriage
is what I like, I say, the drifting
in and out of Clarissa’s mind and into Peter’s,
how they notice the flow of London traffic
as a living animal, how they feel
themselves distributed in sub-atomic
bits into each other and over the city’s squares
and towers, out into the hedgerows, the waves.
But Clarissa wasn’t married to Peter
he would say, if he’d read it, she was
married to Richard. And I’d say
maybe she was, maybe she was.

–Previously published in The New Republic.

About the Poet:

Kathleen Winter has published poems in Tin House, Barrow Street, The Cincinnati Review, Anti-, The New Republic, Field, and other journals.  In 2010, the City of Phoenix selected her poetry for its 7th Avenue Streetscape Public Art Project, and she received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Virginia G. Piper Center.  Her chapbook Invisible Pictures was published in 2008.  Kathleen is poetry co-editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review.  She attends the MFA program at Arizona State University.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

An Interview With Poet Jeffery L. Bahr

Poet Jeffery L. Bahr

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Jeffery L. Bahr was posted. He’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

I have been in love with computing for almost 45 years, back to a time when I could go to a large social gathering of 1000 people and be the only one involved with computers. I’ve studied every facet of computer science, been a professor and been in the industry all my adult life. I’ve only written poetry the last 12 years. I think there is tension in my poetry between the analytical and the mysterious.

Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Poetry can be quite excellent and still span a very wide range of aesthetics. Some of those aesthetics take time to understand or acquire a taste for, and some are more readily accessible. For example, I think Bob Hicok, G. C. Waldrep, and Mary Jo Bang are terrific poets, but a “lay person” is probably going to connect more quickly with one of Bob’s poems. I don’t think there’s anything you can do about this, and the same phenomenon takes place everywhere in the arts (music, visual art, sculpture, . . . ).

How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

Well, I quit smoking and joined the Y. As a working software engineer, I’m in front of a monitor a lot (like 60+ hours a week), so I’m not worried by the sedentary nature of writing, I need a way get out of my chair periodically anyway (like taking a 15 minute break on my treadmill).

What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

I have finished a manuscript of poetry that I think represents the arc of my life in the last decade. I will tinker with it and submit it to lots of contests and cross my fingers.

He also included a poem for readers to check out:

Walking Reliquary

Primitive, and so, face
of stromatolite, glottal-stop
cilia, pre-Cambrian gut.

Derivative, and so, grackle’s
nest mate, jackal’s familiar.
Nose like a nocked arrow,
eyes like a lemur’s, only lonelier.

Fatuous, and so, bag of bones,
old bones, some close to broken,
others opposable. Scot organs
and pipes, blood of a Choctaw,
stretched skin of a Norse war drum.

Inattentive, and so, collapse
at the waterhole, hair growing
gray like the seat
of a prayer bench.

Ebullient, and so, grief
of a treed raccoon,
arms like a starfish. Grin
like the wolves
at a timberline.

Acquisitive, and so, Isles
of Langerhorn, rings
of wild cypress, rings
of dead Popes.

Transitory, and so, brain
of an ocelot, brain
of a cockatoo,
mind of a lilac.

Heretical, and so, postprandial
half-life, quarterstaffs
for thighs, three-fourths
of a pumpkin’s DNA.

Incorruptible, and so, knuckles
like gambling stones, shroud
of a leper, eggs like a fossil find.

Redeemable, and so, water-logged
flesh, airborne ash, sedimentary compression.

–The title is taken from a line in G. C. Waldrep’s “Confessions of the Mouse King”

About the Poet:

Jeffery Bahr is a software engineer who lives in Colorado. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Science and a PhD in Operations Research and Statistics. He has created and managed a number of online poetry forums, and served as a co-director for the literary journal, Many Mountains Moving. His poetry and reviews have been most recently published in Black Warrior, Chelsea, Colorado Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades and Verse. His manuscript, Anabasis, was a finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s First Book Award.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

***Please also stop by the next National Poetry Month Blog Tour stop at Diary of an Eccentric and Read Handed.

An Interview With Poet M.E. Silverman

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet M.E. Silverman was posted. He’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview, especially since he loves Nina Simone, my dinner music companion Telemann, and Vivaldi.  You’ll have to check out all the great writing and poetry book recommendations.  Unfortunately, he’s a bit camera shy, but we do have an interview and a sample poem.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

I am a Dad first and often introduce myself as Vice-President of Isabel Inc. I actually once had someone inquire in these tough economic times about a job opening there, and if he wasn’t so serious, I might have continued the joke.

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I have taken several online workshops from 32 poems with Deborah Ager to Mid American Review with Craigo and I find them all helpful and inspirational. I tried the Dnzanc one on one critique but found it less than helpful. Kooser Poetry Home Repair Manual by far is one of the best how-to books, but also Triggering Town and Cleave’s Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes. I could not put down either Kim Addonizio‘s how-to books nor Padgett’s The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms.

Of course, there are many anthologies I also enjoyed just to get exposure to other writers, including Chang’s Asian American Poetry, Collins Poetry 180, Yale Younger Poets Anthology, Feinstein’s Jazz Poetry Anthology & The Second Set Vol 2, Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of New Formalism, A Formal Feeling Comes ed. by Finch, A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry by Seaton, the KGB Bar Book of Poems, American Poetry Now (Pitt) and the Copper Canyon Anthology. Also, there are quite a few portable workshop books but by far the most enjoyable is Jack Myers Portable Poetry Workshop.

When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

I find strong violin sax and trumpet to be the most inspiring instruments. Naima by Coltrane is a beautiful sweet song. Clifford Brown Portrait of Jenny with Strings. Any Miles Davis but I love the album Seven Steps to Heaven. Who could resist writing with music and a title like that? Nina Simone is a goddess of the vocal chords. Occasionally, I will go to Norah Jones but mostly it is Beethoven, Telemann, Vivaldi.

He also included a poem for readers to check out:

Bubbie’s Kitchen Secrets

We cooked in her kitchen,
a small square room
with a large double sink.

The refrigerator zapped
its electric ache
and like an old noir film,

the lights flickered in response.
For herbs, she had me climb onto the counter
and open the one window,

to reach the basil, the thyme,
the sunflowers potted on the fire escape,
a hazardous garden

the whole building used.
Two or three steps were lined
with mason jars full of cucumbers,

for pickles crisp from sunlight.
On this particular Sabbath,
I did what I always did, helped her make

the kugel,
a pudding made of noodles and eggs
with a dash of her secret:

the caramel color from sugar burnt,
not too little, not too much.
We were finishing up

when we smelled the cigar smoke
and heard heavy boots
pounding down the fire escape.

Then glass breaking,
a curse, that curse!,
quick and sharp

in gun-shot German.
Bubbie screamed. Scared,
I ducked under the table.

She whispered one word
before feinting:
Nazis.

Her war from long ago. Startled,
the man stepped back,
slipped and fell

to the pavement,
dying in agony.
Later,  she told me

she thought she saw
the guard from the camp.
The guard who gave the orders.

She told me this
as we huddled on the linoleum.
No one discovered how it happened.

I should have told somebody
when I read the paper and learned
he was just a student,

a young boy, like me.
I never did.

About the Poet:

M. E. Silverman moved from New Orleans to Georgia and teaches at Gordon College, with work appearing in Mizmor L’David Anthology: The Shoah, Crab Orchard Review, 32 Poems, Chicago Quarterly Review, Tapestry, The Los Angeles Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Cloudbank, Pacific Review, Sugar House Review, and other magazines. M. E. Silverman was a finalist for the 2008 New Letters Poetry Award, the 2008 DeNovo Contest and the 2009 Naugatuck River Review Contest.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

***Also, please check out today’s National Poetry Month tour posts at Layers of Thought and Read Handed.

An Interview With Poet Terri Witek

Poet Terri Witek

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Terri Witek was posted. She’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview, especially since she’s got some interesting things to say about Brazil and Elizabeth Bishop.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

I love ephemeral creations, and as I have been working with Brazilian new media artist Cyriaco Lopes since 2005, have become more and more enamored of doing things that disappear—words and images (he uses photographs and video), sound pieces. We did some ipod voice pieces for an installation and I loved that…watching people lean into the rooms to catch fragments, etc. Of course I still love words on the page. But I really like staging “events” with him where we switch out—it feels unexpected, even when I know what’s going to happen, as I do now with the day you left, a 50-minute piece we’ve done several times. Actually, I find collaboration deeply mysterious and satisfying. I make no larger claims for it except that it puts you right into someone else’s technical stuff in a way that seems pretty magic. Is this equalizing? More that to play together in the same space feels temporary and precious. Maybe world peace would feel just like this.

When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

I listen to music in the car and in the cardio room—usually only playlist rule is that it has to be in Portuguese. But my husband Rusty made a playlist of R&B hits from the year of the Civil Rights Act (1964) that Cyriaco and I used in an installation, and that’s now completely internalized.

But not when I work—I get the rhythms mixed up. My husband works with music, so I hear it in the distance during the day and evening. But I write early—before 9am—so it’s bird cacaphonics for the most part. School busses. Trash pick-up. The girl who crosses the lawn to the bus stop talking to friends on her phone.

Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?

You sound like a gym rat yourself—and maybe a CSA member! Rusty is a great cook and as one or another of our kids is usually a vegetarian he’s very resourceful and skilled. Loves doing it, thanks goodness, as I’m impatient and inattentive (bad kitchen combo). Ost of our local friends are foodies so I just let them do it. My contribution is putting fruit in different colored Pyrex bowls

(Unfortunately, I’m not a gym rat, so much as an outdoor hiker and walker, but I do love food.)

Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

Well, I’m completely enthralled by museums, galleries, and contemporary art sites. I now go to Miami Art Basel every year. I have had some of my very best moments in the presence of great art—-sometimes even not great art that just catches me in a certain way. Fill in your own amazing experiences with such things here.

But mostly something just sorts of presents itself and then I follow it without trying to think too much. For example, last summer in Brazil I slept in a pouso in Ouro Preto where it turns out Elizabeth Bishop had stayed. I felt such a hit from that room I’m going back alone this year to try to write in the room. We’ll see what this is about—I have a few mini-stirrings, but am ignoring them, as it’s early days. But I have the plane ticket, and a folder that says “Ouro Preto.”

She also included a poem for readers to check out:

Ale’m

q. Where am I?
a. Ale’m (Beyond)
q. What am I tripping over when I try to wake up?
a. Rock underwater
a. Rock awash at any stage of the tide

Given that one eye, the forgetting one, plays it close to the vest, stays small. Given that from here no mar with its fault line horizon, no broken tide of the mouth.

No greeting but green. Fanned (given) but no veil, no dingy velvet curtain yanked to burlesque in a banana hat, Tem Banana na Banda. The ship depends on frapping line, flares, buoys, subjected people. Today’s left eye, opening first, depends on palmetto, the understory, what can be eaten without collapsing into some telenovela loop of how the bus left Arlington without her. How the man said my puppy’s in the car. A palmetto, one or more handed, fibers by the brown millions curled at the base. Green motionless wavings. The lid palpitating a little–not in memory’s exhaustive enumerations (palmetto), not in surprised-in-sand lanterns (palmetto), but in green (verde, verdade) the truth.

About the Poet:

Terri Witeks books include The Shipwreck Dress (Orchises Press, 2008), Carnal World (Story Line Press, 2006), Fools and Crows (Orchises Press, 2003) , Courting Couples (Winner of the 2000 Center for Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Contest) and  Robert Lowell and LIFE STUDIES: Revising the Self (University of Missouri Press, 1993).  A native of northern Ohio, she holds the Art and Melissa Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing at Stetson University, where she teaches both literature and poetry workshops.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.

Interview With Poet Natalie Shapero

Poet Natalie Shapero

This week at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Natalie Shapero was posted. She’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview.  You’ll have to check out the videos and songs that inspire her writing.

First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

I used to be more of a full-time poetry person than I am now – I wandered away somewhat to go to law school and spend summers at some great organizations that work on civil rights and poverty issues. I also make music occasionally, insofar as jumping and yelling may be, by some, considered singing.

Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

When I lived in Columbus, Ohio, I was really taken with Open Line with Fred Andrle, this amazing call-in show on the local NPR affiliate, but Fred is retired now. This has allowed for the head-rearing of various other fascinations, including Wallace Shawn, trends in Wikipedia vandalism, and pocket Constitutions. I am also pretty interested in fashion – much to be obsessed with there, from eastern European street style as documented by college students in Krakow to the alarmist tabloid coverage of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt’s tomboy aesthetic.

When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

Music, yes! Usually it is sad music I know well enough that I’m not distracted by the lyrics, because they’re already sufficiently ingrained in me to sound more like low noise than words. Here are five good dorky songs:

She also included a poem for readers to check out:

Implausible Travel Plans

He said, the water down there, it’s so clear

you can’t see jellyfish. That indicates

nothing, I said, and he said, I don’t care

is the hardest line to deliver in all of acting,

as though he knew of an acting laboratory

where researchers developed hardness scales

and spattered across them devastating fragments.

show me the steep and thorny way to heaven.

I liked to rehearse my Ophelia during blackouts,

the traditional time to make the worst mistakes

and, later, soften the story. Nothing working

but the gas stove. God, I felt so bad

that time we used the crock instead of the kettle

and watched it smoke and shatter. I was the one.

I was the one who wanted stupid tea.

–First appeared in FIELD.

About the Poet:

Natalie Shapero’s poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Conduit, Poetry Northwest, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.

Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.