12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ted Rees

Ted Rees is a poet, essayist, and editor who lives and works in Philadelphia. His most recent book of poetry is Dog Day Economy, published by Roof Books in February 2022. Thanksgiving: a Poem, published by Golias Books in April 2020, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His first book of poetry, In Brazen Fontanelle Aflame, was published by Timeless, Infinite Light in 2018. Chapbooks include Dear Hole, Big Dearth in Whir, the soft abyss, and Outlaws Drift in Every Vehicle of Thought. Recent essays have been published in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Libertines in the Ante-Room of Love: Poets on Punk, Full Stop Quarterly, and ON Contemporary Practice’s monograph on New Narrative. He is editor-at-large for The Elephants, as well as founder and co-editor of Asterion Projects with Levi Bentley. Since summer of 2020, he has been running Overflowing Poetry Workshops, an extrainstitutional online workshop space.

1 - How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My most recent book, Dog Day Economy, is indebted to the prior book, Thanksgiving: a Poem, in that the latter is a book-length poem written entirely in haiku, and probably marks the first time where I really wrestled with "the line," so to speak. Previously, much of my work had relied on the rhythms and sonic textures of the longer line, but the syllabic restraint of the haiku forced me to reckon with the way shorter lines can allow more ambiguity and uncanniness into a poem. Dog Day Economy takes up many of the same issues that my previous work has addressed— nihilism, personhood, autonomy, the third landscape, drugs, violence, queerness— but does so in a way that hopefully feels less didactic and more about being a person within those concerns rather than person describing those concerns. It's also important to note that the book was written over the course of about nine months, six of which were the first six of the pandemic, so that references to surveillance, exposure, and catastrophe are much more present than in previous poems, in which these themes played no small part.  

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Honestly, these sorts of even broader genre boundaries don't mean much to me, because everything is poetry in one way or another.

Also honestly, when I was younger, I was told that my poems were more interesting than my fiction, so I focused my attention on poetry. I've always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I'm not sure I have the patience or discipline for it.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I have no idea how to answer this question— poems come how they come, and each has its own demands and constraints that can be broken depending on mood and whim. I do usually conceive of some sort of general idea for some poems in my head, but that's more to keep me on track whilst writing them, as I glide away from that general idea all the time when I'm actually writing.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Like some of my favorite poets, I tend to arrive at a loose subject or constraint as I begin a project— that is, I will often be writing a poem and think to myself, "You could keep writing poems within these sorts of boundaries" and things go from there. That said, I began Thanksgiving with a book-length poem in mind.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
The poet Evan Kennedy described Thanksgiving as a book of "honky ventriloquism"— that is, me utilizing the cadences and gestural utterances of white people as a way of getting at the soul death at the heart of whiteness. Doing public readings for that book allowed me to really push the idea that I never want to sublimate these voices into my own, but rather have them work as spoken gestures that are meant to be read and heard as other than my own. Almost like interruptions, or bad impressions.

I love giving readings, and I love attending them, too.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
The theoretical concerns of my recent writings have much to do with the boredom of suffering, but that's not really what you asked. In one of her essays on closed and open poems, Lyn Hejinian writes about the space between lines, phrases, the leaps in logic of parataxis that marks so much Language writing. I like to think that my writing is concerned with the space of those leaps, the unsaid elements of those spaces in language that are often elided. Instability.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The larger culture is mind detergent and soul rot, so I'm mostly interested in writing that works against it.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have loved working with every editor I've had, and also love sharing work with others who are not necessarily the publishers of my work, but the readers and supporters of my work. Eric Sneathen has been particularly helpful in this latter regard— perhaps someday we will work together in a more formal capacity!

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait."

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find any prose writing to be torturous, and I agonize when I'm writing essays and reviews.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I write every day, though sometimes more actively working toward a goal in mind. I do have a very active reading practice which begins in the morning, when I make sure to wake up early enough to read for about 30 minutes while drinking coffee and eating breakfast. This practice is essential to my mental and emotional well-being, and I become angry when it is interrupted.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Music with lyrics is a big one for me— dumb pop music, Guided by Voices, nasty lines from obscure R'n'B songs. I also listen to a lot of instrumental music, particularly jazz, but have recently been inspired by the band Crazy Doberman, a midwestern group that plays truly out there freeform music.

In terms of writing, I am always inspired by Hejinian, Jean Day, Prynne, Lisa Robertson, Clark Coolidge, Norma Cole, and recently, James Purdy.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My parents are also book fanatics, so their house has a sort of musty smell of books and old carpets. I like that.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I don't really think I can answer this question in any sort of sufficient way, partly because I don't think of my work as separate from any other forms.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I don't really think of an inside or outside of my work, but the writing of my friends is immensely important to my life, even if that is rarely evidenced in my work.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Impossible question!

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
If I'm being real, I'd probably be a lawyer. I hate the legal system, grounded as it is on a field of pain and death, but I've done legal research and paralegal work, and I have a knack for understanding its machinations.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I love reading more than most activities, so that's a big part of it, probably.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I recently finished Far Out West by Clark Coolidge, which I enjoyed quite a lot. I admit to having a pretty lazy and uninspired film-watching practice at present, but we've been doing horror movies since the month began, and I loved Basket Case— so much of a world that no longer exists contained in a single film, kind of incredible.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I just finished a newish manuscript on cancer and counter-narrative, so at the moment, I'm mostly prepping for a commissioned essay on the cult gay filmmaker Curt McDowell, and searching for my next poems.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Lawrence Giffin

Lawrence Giffin [photo credit: Michael Ian] is the author of several books of poetry, including Untitled, 2004 (After Hours Editions, 2020), Plato’s Closet (Roof Books, 2016) and Christian Name (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012). He is a co-editor at Golias Books.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, Christian Name, changed my life in two ways—for the better, because I was finally done with it and done wondering whether or not I was really a poet, and for the worse in that it fooled me into believing I really was poet.

Certainly, publishing has nothing to do with being a poet (I’m unclear how one is ever a poet when not actively writing a poem); still, as meaningless as it is, it really is everything. As far as how my work has changed, I’m not sure I’m the best judge, since I can only describe my side of it. There is a greater desire to say “something real,” but also a greater suspicion as to the very possibility. There is a greater fear of turning out to be a bullshit artist and greater recognition that likely this is the case. Does any bullshit artist think of themselves as such? The value recognition of praise, even simply in the form of a publisher’s willingness to print it, inevitably diminishes, and one is forced to reckon with the various motives, noble and ignoble, that have been driving one’s practice for so long, often unconsciously, and which now may appear shameful or misguided. This revaluation generally has a positive effect, but it is equally painful and frightening.

It’s good to have something else to fall back on. Adam Phillips tells a story of a poet who told him it’s good for poets to have day jobs, “otherwise they start to believe that they really are poets.”

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I didn’t. I tried my hand at fiction first, but I wasn’t very good at it, and I didn’t have the smarts or attention-span to write non-fiction or, god-forbid, philosophy, so I became a poet. I have a hard time putting myself in the reader’s shoes, and poetry rewards that.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
If the work comes at all, and it does, though rarely, it comes out fairly close to its finished form. For me, if a poem requires heavy revisions, it’s because something isn’t working on a fundamental level—in my case, usually, it’s trying to do too many things at once, without a cohesive frame—and quickly falls apart under the tiniest of revisions.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I begin by writing. It always begins with actually writing something, whatever, on and on—abandoning some poems, returning to others, starting over—until something takes, that is to say, a line or a phrase, some actual string of words, seems to me compelling and generative, and then I follow that until I get bored or feel like it’s over. It doesn’t mean that what I write will be any good, only that I have to stumble on it—I can’t plan it out ahead of time. I hardly ever come to the page with an idea or theme. I always have to start with some bit of text that happens to evoke more text.

I rarely set out to write long poems or short poems. Since I never set out to write this or that kind of poem to begin with, it’s equally unknown ahead of time how long a particular poem would be. I’d like to try writing shorter poems because I think most people prefer to read less rather than more.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t often enjoy attending them, and rarely enjoy giving them. That said, they aren’t counter to my process any more than they are necessary to it.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Nothing explicit, though I certainly have interests and preoccupations which cannot fail to give the work a vague sense of coherence. Poetry is particularly poor at answering questions (or even forming them), and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you a load of bullshit. If poetry is anything, has any being, it can’t be the sort of discourse about which questions can be posed ahead of time, as if the answers already exist and are merely waiting to be uncovered. People who look to poetry for answers to life’s most pressing questions are already beyond help.

I do think poetry can bring us into contact with our insignificance and congenital fragility without turning it into the substance of a supreme (and supremacist) nihilism, though it might do that as well (the Iliad is an example of this danger, though Thersites’ objections to the war and his subsequent humiliation gives the poem a whiff of the absurd). Poems make fools and knaves of us all, writers and readers.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Clearly the role of the poet is to assuage our fear that, really, no one knows what is going on. Poets relieve us of having to hope or believe ourselves. They believe for us, on our behalf. Maybe this answers Hölderlin’s question, “what good are poets in lean times?” They get us through rough patches by spouting reenchantment propaganda.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both. Neither.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Make mistakes.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I can’t keep any routine at all, much less one around an activity as frustrating and demoralizing as trying to write a poem. I long ago gave up on the hope that I would learn to schedule things with a sufficient level of granularity or wake up early to compose my silly little verses. As long as my kid is safe, my partner feels supported, and the laundry is done—success. Were poetry a similar prerequisite, I’d have given up long ago.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
If the writing gets stalled, it’s usually because I’m trying too hard. The only way out I know is to keep writing, to stop trying to write and write, whatever comes out. Like I said, something has to take, but that something has always to be already written before I can stumble upon it. It's a dilemma, like Baron Munchausen pulling himself up by his own ponytail, and one which can be addressed only by a mad scribbling.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Foul river mud. Diesel exhaust. Casseroles.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Philosophy, physics, psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, game theory, algorithmic information theory, Greek mythology.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Perennially returning to Bataille, Heidegger, Schuyler, Ashbery. Have of late been reading Wittgenstein, Adam Phillips, Montaigne, Nicole Loraux, Seth Benardete, Hans Blumenberg. Diderot still manages to scandalize me. Recent poetry that sticks out includes the late Iliassa Sequin’s collected, John Coletti’s Deep Code, Josef Kaplan’s Loser, Denise Riley’s Say Something Back (reprinted by NYRB with the remarkable Time Lived, Without Its Flow), and Gordon Faylor’s Want.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Inherit a fortune.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Who can say? For one, writing is not my occupation, if that means what occupies the greatest amount of my time or where I get my money. Certainly, thinking I am a poet occupies great swathes of the day, but actually writing, no.

Were I not who I am—every capricious decision and accident of fate—I would be someone else, and since there are plenty of other people, I am already doing all the things I would be had I been somebody else.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’ve always found reading—holding onto an idea, following a thread, understanding the stakes—difficult. And people are a mystery to me—their motives, why some things make them happy and other things sad, why they want the things they want. I suppose writing addressed those twin mysteries and promised not only access to them but the privileged access of a poet. But such access is not truly possible, and even if it were, certainly poetry would not be the means.

I find the idea of a reader to be utterly incomprehensible, so that when I try to write for an idealized reader, the figure in my head quickly becomes monstrous, and when I don’t write for the reader, I seem to default to addressing some bitter and hateful deity.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was either Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy or Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past. I think Thor: Ragnarok was probably the last time I left the theater perfectly satisfied.

19 - What are you currently working on?
Either a pretentious and likely fatuous book on the uselessness and unavoidability of mythic delusion in daily life or an inspired and fascinating book on the uselessness and unavoidability of mythic delusion in daily life. Regardless, it will never see the light of day.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;