Dorothea Lasky, Black Life

IT FEELS LIKE LOVE

When he and I are together, it just feels like love

And when we are talking and laughing together

It feels like love

And when we are hugging and going places together

It just feels like love, it feels like love

And his eyes on me and the way he looks

And what he says and the way I feel

And the things he does and the feelings I get

And the songs that play and my mind a racing

And the Spring racing before us and the sun and moon

And the low light of the evening

With the dark trees silhouetted and the birds aflame

It just feels like love

It really does

I don’t know

I must have said it all wrong

Oh, the sentences, the odd narratives by Dorothea Lasky that make up her second poetry collection, Black Life (Wave Books, 2010). I admire her performative confidence, the arms of her poems calling look, look. Lasky is a poet of sentences, of gestures, both grand and small, and many times concurrently, even contradictory, but rarely in opposition. Lasky is the author of grand gestures, open-heart narratives and a sometimes too-wise, nearly naïve narrator with childlike cruelty, writing “I’m not weird, like death / I am a turquoise woman who is gentle” (“YELLOWBIRD”), “But likeable in their strangeness / To thank a stranger is strange but I do so anyway / Because he is a child / Because that is what they think of me” (“THANK YOU TO JASON M. HELMS”) or her “POEM TO MY EX-HUSBAND,” that includes:

Dear husband, I miss you so much

Strange men who write bad poems

Tell me I disrupt their wives

I don’t even think they have a brain, let alone a dick

I would disturb nothing about them

If I ran into them on the train I wouldn’t even notice

How bland their jokes and voice

For those waiting for a follow-up to her magnificent first collection, AWE (Wave, 2007); who else do you know but Lasky has written a poem about their earlier work?

EVER READ A BOOK CALLED AWE?

Have you ever read a book called AWE?

I have. I wrote it. That’s my book.

I wrote that book. I wrote that one.

Some people read it. They said,

We will make your book.

I said, Really? I love you.

They said, We love you, too.

I said, Good then

I will love you forever.

They said, Great! And looked scared.

Some people I love

Don’t love me

Others love me

That’s good

When you sit in a landscape of snow

And you’re a bird, that’s Awe

When you look over a big green field

And the dead soldiers lie all around you, that’s Love

That’s Love and Awe

Say it

That’s Love and Awe.

There is nothing better.

Or if there is

Then I don’t care

Lasky’s deceptively straight lines don’t mean straight narratives, and I appreciate her odd turns of phrase, her odd sense of humour (or, being American, humor). Shouldn’t the strength of any work come out of its unexpected places?

photo at the carleton tavern, parkdale market, ottawa, by paul billowes; thanks paul!

Ongoing notes: mid-July, 2010;

[Marilyn Irwin launching her self-published chapbook at the Carleton Tavern] Another month, another group of little notices. I've two poems in the new summer 2010 issue of MiPOesias, Amanda Earl has something new in OTOLITHS, and John W. MacDonald took a photo of a previous Carleton Tavern reading. What else would you like to know?

Ottawa ON: For the above/ground press reading on Friday, launching (finally) spring chapbooks by Cameron Anstee and Marcus McCann, Ottawa poet Marilyn Irwin launched a lovely little self-published chapbook in an edition of 22 copies, her for when you pick daisies (2010). A chapbook she read in full for her reading, I admire the charming little twists, the elements of the small moment and moment twisted, twirled, that come out, through. For such lovely little poems, why haven’t we seen more of these in other places?

what stemmed there

catatonic mulch chips
pebble shift
beetle forage

grass sway
all that
flutters by

green saplings
greedy brown

lineage of root
extending circumstance

Hamilton ON: A recent chapbook by Hamilton writer, publisher and composer Gary Barwin is The Punctuation of Thieves (serif of nottingham, 2010), turning his surreal gaze onto punctuation itself. Some of these are quite interesting and inventive, but some pieces read as too easy; why not push as far as you can go, Gary Barwin? Why does it sometimes feel as though Barwin is holding back? And is this part of a longer series we might see somewhere else, down the road?

The ampersand dreams. Mother & child, the primordial &, a mother’s arms around her child, the Moebius umbilical, the inside out, the turning a portrait of itself, the between one thing and another, the ‘and other’ connected, the hand and its other, the breath and its shadow, the shadow’s curl, the ampersand.

hinge, a BOAS anthology

BOAS began when Jean, Nicole, Lauren, Erin, and Stefani met in an MFA poetry workshop at San Francisco State University in the fall of 1997. Because the class and the work they did together was so inspiriting, at the end of the semester, someone proposed meeting to continue discussing poems. The women from the original workshop, along with Elise, Sarah, and Tsering, also MFA students from SFSU, began meeting in 1998. They went by the moniker GOS (Girls of Summer), as it was summer. When winter came, the name turned to WOW (Women of Winter). Finally, the group decided on BOAS (Bitches of All Seasons), which was coined by Mark Latiner, a Bay Area writer. For the last three years, the group has met on Sunday afternoons, sometimes once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less, and eaten good food, chatted, and discussed writing and the writer’s place in the world.

I’ve always been taken by publications produced by writers’ groups, and there are more than you might think that attempt turn out writers of serious anything, as opposed to basement groups that never manage to make it out of the basement, from Vancouver’s informal TADS and even earlier TISH, to the Burning Rock collective (Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, et al) producing their first anthology in 1994, Extremities: Fiction from the Burning Rock (Killick, 1994), and even our own irregular The Peter F. Yacht Club (originally based on the irregular TADS). Despite being a few years old, something that recently made its way into my mailbox is the anthology hinge, a BOAS anthology (Emeryville CA: Crack Press, 2002), that collects the work of Jean Lieske, Elise Ficarra, Stefani Barber, Lauren Schiffman, Sarah Rosenthal, Erin Wilson, Nicole Stefanko and Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, an anthology of their writing group, well before any of them had done any significant publishing; where have they gone since, you might ask? Perhaps you already know.

I think bombs she thinks birth

the pulse of it

shape of city or sky

sun streaks reverberates

internal timbre

snare drum measuring

time or space

ideas manifest as edifice or informed voters

if air, air plane, but no air

if sky without people, scorched

from a distance, sweating

how dare you not, she said, how dare you not? (Elise Ficarra, “from the dog letters”)

I’ve always been taken by publications such as these, and the annual headlight anthology out of Concordia University, say, for the fact of discovering certain authors before they apparently “come out of nowhere” with a first or second collection. Did Lauren Schiffman ever publish a book-length version of her “Mirror Mirror: The Cock Poems”? Did Elise Ficarra’s smart and lingual “the dog letters” appear either, or as well? Or Nicole Stefanko’s “Manta Ray,” that includes:

The waterside. A man smiles and waves you in. You walked into it pooling around your ankles. He’s handing them to you faster than you can take them from a bag submerged under water, snuffling and wet. His red shirt soaked through. He’s a chatterer, says it’s fast work—like throwing loose socks into the laundry. Turns out they’re bull puppies and you’ve arrived just in time. There must be a pocket of air in the ballooning sack: they’re not dead. Round brown eyes speckled with bubbled droplets, blinking and mewling. All these spotted pelts pulled from the pale, indifferent stream. All these dogs, more than you can carry. You don’t know who you are in this event only that he occupies two positions, villain and hero.

The murderer and I stand nearly nose to nose, grinning, an armful squirms between us.

This bed floats/ what petals spell

Cosmos, dahlias rage

Infants carried

off

Still, I wonder why none of the “working notes” by this group of poets (I’ve always been a fan of statements as well, even if just for the sake of the author forced to self-clarify) note the fact that all are working on seemingly book-length projects? Is the idea of the long poem and/or the book-length project simply taken for granted? How do individual poems, individual pieces, become books?

Admittedly, the only author I was previously aware from this collection is Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, from her magnificent first collection on, and leave you with part of her “working notes” that end her small section, writing:

We are also heart things. We are nerves and of desire. So our writing is of it. If we allow for it—that we should question its worthiness as a subject is another irony. That we should separate our words from our breathing. So in that sense, these began as tests to see how I inform the world around me, which begins with feeling, which then becomes words and the way I am informed by it. The signifier and its text coming from hourly, minutey things. I am never resolute but in knowing that there are few absolutes. But life we are living. What better place to begin there? Even as we “open” computers, “put on” glasses, and “take off” coats. And for the existence of desires and the heart activities that are always existing. Why not that too?

Mammoth, Larissa Andrusyshyn

The Mammoth Sequences the Ivan Andrusyshyn Genome

Claustrophobia was his first obstacle,

then the heat. The mammoth’s coat became

somewhat matted (the lab had very poor ventilation),

but still he managed to map the Andrusyshyn genome

in eighteen months.

The trunk is surprisingly nubile so he was able to handle

data, microscopes and test tubes like any other geneticist.

The traceable graphs are ordered like dental records,

base pairs identified, a collection of letters and mutations:

ATCGAT

TAGCTA

The mammoth is optimistic, sends a letter

to Ivan’s daughter, says

we are very close.

Ivan Andrusyshyn was the only known specimen.

When the mammoth presents his findings

he brings a small cluster of lab technicians to its feet.

Between the loss of a father and ancient species, Larissa Andrusyshyn’s first trade poetry collection, Mammoth (Montreal QC: DC Books, 2010) is a book, basically, about extinct, can never be returned. A graduate of Concordia’s creative writing program, Andrusyshyn writes out a genealogy between lost species from the Pleistocene era and her late father, Ivan, writing out her ancient history, one so long ago it belongs in another era: “My father’s death is eighteen now and wakes, / stretching its long arms, mouth agape in yawn / with the thought of coffee and Lucky Charms.” (“In Which My Father’s Death Is Registered to Vote”). How far back is away?

Mammoth

Mammoth walks the halls of the museum after hours,

and here the quiet only breaks

with footsteps, the squeak of overgrown claws

on freshly waxed floors.

He comes to the display

where a model mammoth stands, a perfected species

in fake fur and longer tusks.

It’s good to know yourself, he thinks,

in the real of the real,

your uncertain place in this world.

Her small volume, Mammoth, includes writing filled with hesitation, a discomfort in so many lines; where does it come from? Is it simply a matter of her subject matter? This is a book of recrimination and regret, and coming to terms with the distance of this important loss.

It is only in some of the narrative pieces, such as “Oranges,” working out a distance of not just her father’s absence but his presence, do her pieces really bring out a fine resonance, and make me question her use of line-breaks. She seems far more comfortable in the prose-poem, and it makes me wonder what she might be able to do if she explored prose further, whether as fiction or the prose-poem. She seems more comfortable and confident there, than in many of the pieces broken up into poems. Why not simply explore this further?

Oranges

1946

This was the first year Phillip and Natalka could buy presents for the children and each of the four received a fresh orange. The children had never had one before. Maria ate hers first, right after dinner and it disappeared like a tiny drop of water in a long flowing river. Sasha had his for breakfast the next day and it was sweeter than syrup. Phillip waited until his birthday on the twenty-eighth and he remembers how it tasted even now. Ivan found that no day was good enough to be the day he ate his orange and so he carried it in his pocket, not trusting his siblings around it, waiting for the right time until his orange shriveled like a lump of dry and crumbling bone.

12 or 20 (small press) questions: Edward Smallfield on Apogee Press;

1 – When did Apogee first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?

We started in 1999 because we thought there was too much quality poetry that wasn’t finding a home. We still think that. There are lots of quality presses but there are many, many more quality poets. So our motivation remains the same. What we’ve learned has to do with the process of bringing the book in the world—stuff that’s of interest to publishers but not to anyone else. 

2 – What first brought you to publishing?

See above. There was so much wonderful poetry to publish.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

For us a small press is and should be different from a big press. We don’t want to get bigger; we want to do things in an old-fashioned, hands-on way. We want to create a home for work that would be overlooked by bigger presses for whatever reason.

4– What do you see your press doing that no one else is?

I don’t think we’re that unique. There are lots of small presses that are doing terrific work. I wish there were more—there’s plenty of that work to be done.

5– What do you see as the most effective way to get new books out into the world?

I actually think the poet is the key. The poet’s desire and ability to read and interact will get the book out. We can help, of course, but in reality the poet will be the important person in getting the book into the world.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?

When we accept a book, it’s accepted unconditionally. The poet doesn’t have to change anything. Then we suggest changes. Sometimes big changes, sometimes small changes. The poet can either accept them, or not.

7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

We distribute through Small Press Distribution in Berkeley. They’re absolutely essential; we would not exist without them. Our usual print run is 500 copies. We reprint if we sell out.

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?

Currently the three people working at the press are my press partner Alice Jones, our Associate, Sharon Osmond, and me. I should say that I consist of me plus my wife, the poet Valerie Coulton, but not necessarily in that order.

9 – How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?

Editing has made me open to a broader range of influences and has made me more flexible as a writer. Editing has made me a better writer.

10 – How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?

Alice and I have both done books with the press. When you publish books, it’s hard to cede control to someone else in the publication of your own text. We’re aware of the risks, of course. The main one is that you might really embarrass yourself. Hopefully we can keep each other honest.

11 – How do you see Apogee evolving?

The press will evolve as we find new poets who are doing new things. Luckily, that happens all the time.

12 – What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?

As a publisher I’m equally proud of each of our publications. I don’t know that anything in particular has been overlooked. My biggest frustration is that we pass on so many wonderful books because of lack of resources and that there aren’t enough presses to publish all of those books.

13 – Who were your early publishing models when starting out?

Too many to list. But certain early pioneers, for example, City Lights, or Cid Corman’s magazine Origin have to be named. And of course Burning Deck.

14 – How does Apogee work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Apogee in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?

Apogee’s work comes out of the immediate literary community. We’re in dialogue with more journals and presses than I can list, and even than I’m aware of because those journals support our poets without us necessarily knowing about. It’s the journals that create the dialogue initially, and they’re absolutely essential to us and to the poets.

15 – Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

We try to hold at least one launch for each new book. Readings are essential and our poets read a lot.

16 – How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

We have a website, of course. The press is in Berkeley and I live in Barcelona and those two things wouldn’t both be possible without the internet.

17 – Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

You should query us before submitting. We aren’t looking for work that a larger, more conventional press would publish. Other than that we’re looking for surprises, so we don’t know what we’re looking for.

18 – Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.

Our most recent title is Table Alphabetical of Hard Words by Pattie McCarthy. Pattie’s unique interest in the intricacies of language, and especially the history of language, coupled with her interest in all aspects of everyday life—babies, the subway, little league no hitters, the Mets—make her a compelling and unique poet.

Our most recent book before that was Elizabeth Robinson’s Also Known As. Elizabeth’s books are always different from each other, and this one is a fascinating exploration of the shifting aspects of the self explored in a variety of personas.

Our third most recent text was The Turning by Maxine Chernoff. The Turning is probably the most overtly political book that we’ve published. We’d like to publish more, but few poets have Maxine’s gift for channeling political outrage into an intense exploration of the language.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

from Barcelona, a novel-in-progress;

There were the stories she told of the wasted trees in this new country, those that refused to bear fruit. What was the point. When at home she could lift up one hand into any branch, and discover nourishment. Long before she a grandmother, or mother at all, far away from everything that she knew, sick a week for her ignorance, angry and embarrassed. How the doctor spoke to her like a child, admonishing. You should not eat what you don’t recognize, his forefinger wagged. Well then, she thought, perhaps I shouldn’t eat anything at all. Feigning spite, even under her breath. In her small rented room, she cried a long time, with no one to comfort her.

This was no city where men stood on the shoulders of other men, forming a human tower, but one where the other threats that she knew still held, a culture of language that quietly stewed and then steamed underneath the yoke of another. She had come quite a distance to hear the same frustrations along these Canadian streets, the same arguments, but with a breath as cold as a widow’s icy stare. The same arguments, yet unable to catch all the words, the nuance of meaning. She had devoted herself to such common sense, and this place made no sense to her. Not even the trees understood her.

This was a city with no sport, and no livestock, no fruit bearing trees. Where was the country in that.

The small moments and series of small moments that made up a life. When her husband had come to this country, fifteen years old, riding west to find work, a train starting Halifax, Montreal and Toronto to eventually Winnipeg. He had been but a week off a ship, and could still barely stand, find his footing. The train offered no respite.

They took his tickets and pointed, these train men. Kept talking, slower and slightly louder when they realized he didn’t understand. A foreign language will ever be that, no matter how loud or how slow, until it begins to seep in. Keep this pounding away from my temples and ears, he had thought.

But he was young, and too shy to ask, and not knowing the distance he had to travel, he remained on the train well past his mark. The distance from Moscow to Paris, he would tell to his children, from the city of czars to the city of lights, arriving not in Winnipeg but Edmonton. Once he realized his mistake, there was little to counter. From home, what was the difference. And so he began.

It would be another twenty years before he returned east, back to the city where she was battling trees and French-speaking snow, unaware of just who he was, and who he would be. After his years in the west, Montreal was the closest he’d found to his own setting, what he had left behind in Europe. After twenty years in the west, this was like home again, and he came back for good.

12 or 20 questions: with Robert Earl Stewart

Robert Earl Stewart is a poet, fiction writer and photographer. He received his B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Windsor, and followed it up with a an M.A. in Contemporary American Fiction from McGill University. His poetry has appeared in journals in Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain, including nthposition, This Magazine, Monday Night and the Moosehead Anthology X. His first collection of poetry, Something Burned Along the Southern Border, was published by Mansfield Press in 2009. He lives in Windsor, Ont., with his wife, Jennifer, and their three young children.

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 fist stated ambition was to be a clown that made balloon animals. Then, I wanted to be a baseball player. Then, I wanted to be a writer. Then, for a long time, nothing happened. Then, I started writing seriously when I was about 24. And then, for a long time, I lived in what I think is that standard writer’s paradox, alternating between a really inflated sense of self, and crushing self doubt. The publication of Something Burned Along the Southern Border didn’t so much tip the scale towards one extreme or the other, but helped create some balance in my life. There’s certainly a sense of accomplishment and a lot of excitement around have my first book published, and in some cases, I even felt vindicated. But the first book has allowed me to relax a bit, and refocus—not just in my writing, but personally. Nothing seems quite as urgent as it did even a year ago. It’s like I finally allowed myself to come up for air, which I guess makes me sound very driven. But really, I’m just that guy who wanted to make balloon animals. I haven’t missed the mark by that much.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Actually, I came to fiction first. I’d been the singer and lyricist in a crazy rock band called Elephant, but when we disbanded in 1994, I stopped writing anything that could even be (mis)construed as a poem and it would be 10 years before I wrote anything that actually was poetry. It was in the spring of 1998 while I was living in the McGill Ghetto in Montreal that I started writing short stories—and I wrote a few other’s over the next few years. I’m working on a few right now, actually. In Feb. 2001, I started working on a novel. The manuscript sits at around 700 pages and it is always on my mind, but it gets neglected. Poetry arrived in a big, inspired rush on Aug. 8, 2004—my son Nathanael’s second birthday—when I leapt out of our pool and ran up to my office and sat soaking wet at my computer, writing a poem called “The History of Baseball” which is in my first collection.

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?

Sometimes the project starts long before you realize it’s started. Sometimes a poem hits the page in a matter of minutes with no revisions ever required. Then, there’s ones that go through multiple drafts—5, 12, 17—before I’m satisfied. The ideas of “shape” you raise in the question is an interesting one, because I print up, date and number every version of every poem and I find I’m always squinting at the page, just looking at the way the lines look. I pay a lot of attention to line breaks, and often, it’s more of a visual thing, than a sound thing that shapes my decision.

4 - Where does a poem or piece of fiction 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 like poetry collections as collections—a little bit of everything: rangy, diverse, textured in form, sound, subject…. I’m working on a second book of poems, yes. I have an idea what that might look and sound like, but there’s no overarching theme. I don’t set out to write poems about depression, or heritage, or geography, but sometimes I end up writing about those things—sometimes in the form of people demolishing fruit with knives, or plane crashes in the tundra. I don’t know where these things begin for sure, but I can say some of the poems in Something Burned Along the Southern Border had their germination in off-hand comments made by friends which I frantically wrote down in my notebook; pictures in magazines; poetry exercises put forward by my editor Stuart Ross during one of his famous Poetry Boot Camps; driving to my in-laws place on Lake Erie during a late night thunderstorm.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Readings are an enormously important part of the process for me. I wish I could do more readings. My wife and kids bought me a huge suitcase for Christmas so I can go do more readings. They assured me this was the reason.

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?

I think being this kind of writer would result in me writing an entire book of sestinas about some deeply personal depression. I think what I’m doing when I write poetry is, partly, trying to eradicate any remnants of theoretical concerns that may still be in there from my grad school days. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m just saying I can’t do it. Poetry is fun. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. My agenda is totally opaque, even to me. And in it’s opacity, it’s almost totally transparent. See what I mean?

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?

Entertainer/shaman.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Absolutely essential. Working with an editor is what I’d been waiting for during those years of wondering if what I was doing was any good, and being convinced that I was working on something great—depending on the day and how much coffee I’d had. I loved the entire experience of working with Stuart Ross (Mansfield Press poetry editor). We worked over the phone late at night. Sometimes via Skype while he was in the Kootenays…. I had experience working with editors in a daily newspaper newsroom, and I am a news editor myself now—not so much crossing t’s and dotting i’s, but making decisions about what goes in, what works, what doesn’t. Seeing my poems grow, rewriting some of them wholesale—I learned a tonne, not only about the editing and publication processes, but about my own stuff, during the editing phase.

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

“If there’s anything else you can do, any other talent that you might have, do it. Get out of this business entirely.”—Prof. Michael Bristol to a room full of new grad students in the McGill English Dept., Sept. 1997.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to photography)? What do you see as the appeal?

(See # 14)

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?

No set routine, though my day usually begins with me stumbling around comically for everyone’s amusement (I have sleep apnea).

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

The best cure for a block that I know of, in the short term, is a shower. I do a lot of my best thinking in the shower. A scientist friend confirmed for me that the breaking of water molecules against my body increases oxygen levels in the shower, waking the brain up. To a lesser degree, brushing your teeth will achieve the same thing. On a grander scale, there’s a conservation area in LaSalle, Ontario (just south west of Windsor) called Petit Cote. It’s along the banks of the Detroit River and it’s a mix of old growth forest and marshland and there’s a hawk tower there and I seem to get some good ideas there. The beach at my in-laws place on Lake Erie seems to have some good poetry vibes happening. This café called Taloola here in Windsor… I guess what I’m saying is place--a change of scenery--is what gets me out of a creative funk. Maybe the best thing though, for me, is to always remind myself to be open to poetry—and by “open” I mean observant and receptive like a receiver. It’s happening out there, I just have to be willing to hear/see it—pick up the signal. Some days, I am much more open than on others. And this can also lead to the mistaken belief that everything is a poem. It is not. There are a lot of poetic cul de sacs. I’ve collected those into single pieces though.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Safeguard soap.

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?

Photography plays a big role in poetry. I love cameras. I love taking pictures. I’ve always had an eye for composition, and as mentioned above, the visual appearance of my poems on paper matters to me. For me, photographs are often like poems; poems are often like photographs. That goes for the finished product, and the creative process. When taking a photograph, I have to be open to possibility and whimsy—letting things be as they are in the moment—which is the poetry; when I’m writing a poem, I have to be patient and alert—ready to take an opportunity and get in close to the subject—which is the photography. Reading that, I realize there’s a very sensual, visual thing going on in both. Maybe it’s all about images? Taking moments of composition out of a narrative, or putting moments of composition into a narrative…. I’ve written poems flipping through old National Geographics from the 1970s-1980s and describing what I see in the photos. Film, too. There are some poems in the book based on Werner Herzog films. References to David Lynch, David Mamet and Richard Linklater films. I have this plan to ditch work one day and walk through the Detroit Institute of Art, as open and receptive as I can possibly make myself through meditation.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen Millhauser, Michael Ondaatje are some of my favourite fiction writers. Albert Goldbarth, Tony Hoagland, David Berman, James Tate and D. Nurkse are some of my favourite poets. I’m becoming a John Ashbery fan. Is this important? Jason Heroux from Kingston—that guy’s poetry leaves me laughing and transfixed at the same time. All these people represent a possibility—a way of doing things that gave me hope.

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

Publish a work of fiction. Also, I would like to have some kind of crazy adventure in the northern wilderness, involving snow forts, dog sledding, gun play, fist fights, espionage and witty repartee. And pemmican. I read my Farley Mowat as a lad and there has to be pemmican in this thing or it simply won’t work.

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?

I’ve always thought it would be fun to give psychoanalysis a whirl, from the analyst’s side of things. Had I listened to my high school guidance counsellors, I would’ve been a geologist. Had I listened to my parents, I would’ve learned “a nice trade.”

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

It’s sick, but aside from writing being the talent I was blessed with, one of the things that really drove me to write was proving doubters and detractors wrong. Short answer: blessings/rebellion.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

When I finished reading Joshua Ferris’s novel Then We Came to the End, I knew I’d just read something unlike anything I’d ever read before, with the possible exception of Catch-22, in which I see some structural echoes. That and Murakami’s novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. For films, Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is fantastic.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Poems, one at a time. That unfinished novel… when it’s meant to happen, I will finish it. Working on fiction is more time consuming and place sensitive than poetry. I can write a poem sitting in a forest or walking through the grocery store. To work on fiction, I need my computer, my notes, the manuscript. Plus, I have about a dozen short stories in various stages of undress that I need to get serious about.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 questions: with Jessica Smith

Jessica Smith is the editor of Outside Voices Press and Foursquare Magazine. Her first book, Organic Furniture Cellar, was released in 2006. Chapbooks include bird-book (House Press, republished by Detumescence), The Plasticity of Poetry and Telling Time (No Press), Shifting Landscapes (above/ground press), butterflies (Big Game Books) and What the Fortune-Teller Said (a+bend press) (Full bio: http://looktouch.wordpress.com/about-the-author/). Photo credit: K. Lorraine Graham

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

First off, I have only one book: Organic Furniture Cellar. I published it in 2006.


When OFC came out, there was a lot of excitement and support and a lot of backlash and bile. Since I saw (and outlined in the introduction) a specific aesthetic/social place for OFC in the poetics community, I didn't expect the kind of backlash I got. It was disturbing. OFC was weirdly polarizing, even within a community that considers itself experimental. I didn't like feeling like my work and I were a battleground for various peoples' little wars. OFC was idealistic. Poetry is petty.


After OFC, I haven't wanted to publish or engage with that wider poetry community. Instead, I keep to a small group of friend-poets who support me and my work and who inspire me to keep trying new things. I hardly ever write anymore, but when I do, it is for them, not for a wider audience.

 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I didn't come to poetry first. In elementary school I wrote stories and plays. I came to poetry in junior high and it proved a more challenging medium for me. I continue to write poetry because I don't feel "done" with poetry as a medium. It's so flexible. I don't feel the same need to write in other genres, nor do I find them as malleable to my need to make things look (or feel or smell) certain ways. Visual art would probably be the next medium for me if I switched from poetry-- not another literary genre.  

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 outline and draft first-- I have an idea for a project, I outline the poems that will fit with the project, and then I wait to see how the poems take shape. With some projects the poems just need to literally "take shape"-- I get an image of the shape of the poem in my head and try to replicate it. It usually shifts somewhat between the draft and the computerized version, and then it usually shifts a bit more during editing. With the project I'm mentally working on now, there are no shapes (the poems are narrative webs) so it's more like weaving together threads of stories. I'm not sure what all the stories are yet or how they interact, and I'm not good about putting things down on paper until I'm pretty sure of them, so the project is perpetually stalled. I've been working on this project-- mentally-- for probably 3 years, but have only written 12 finalized pages of it.

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 work on a book or chapbook as a set of poems from the beginning. I don't believe in suturing chapbooks together to make a book unless the chapbooks (published separately as chapbooks) were initially conceived as parts of the book (rather than as unique projects). A book is a book. A chapbook is a chapbook. An individual poem is an individual poem. Each thing has its own necessary length and character. None of these things is better than the other. It's not necessary to write "books." Personally, I like the chapbook form best-- a collection of related poems or a serial project under 30 pages. I feel like I can do "tighter" work by focusing on one particular subject or project and that it's usually a short project (not to be confused with a short poem). I think my best works have been condensed works (bird-book, butterflies, blueberries).   

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I enjoy the social mixing that happens at readings, whether I am reading or listening to someone else, but I dislike poetry readings as such (http://www.looktouch.com/poetics/silent.pdf). I dislike the politics of poet-audience interaction where the poet is a "man speaking to men" at a podium. I dislike it when poets read over time and have obviously not timed themselves and have no respect for the audience's time. I dislike listening to poetry without seeing it. I don't, say, download podcasts of poetry readings. The social gathering element of a poetry reading is the most appealing part for me.


I enjoy doing readings that are more interactive (with the audience or other readers) or where I have the equipment to show my poems as I read them (as I feel that reading visual poetry aloud without showing it is a terrible disservice to the poem-on-the-page).  

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?

This question might be better addressed by my interview in Area Sneaks (http://areasneaks.com/index.php?id=34). 

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?

I can't speak for the role of "the writer" in general.


Writing Organic Furniture Cellar, I felt that my role as a poet was to change language and perception in order to instigate larger social change-- a continuation of Language poetics. At this point, I don't feel like my job as a poet takes place within a larger sociopolitical realm. Instead, I feel like my job is to comfort or inspire one reader. Just one. I don't know who it is, or if they're even alive yet, or if they've been dead for centuries and I missed them. But if I wrote one poem that one person connected with, that would be enough. So I have started writing single poems addressed to specific people, like correspondence or like valentines. This isn't publishable work; it doesn't necessarily appeal to an audience greater than one. But it's satisfying to write a line directly to someone else. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Both. Although I self-published Organic Furniture Cellar, the feedback I got from other editors was essential.  It went through five editors and changed significantly over the process-- becoming more mature, full, and daring, rather than what one might expect, which is for an edited book to become less daring in the way that MFA workshop poems are often watered-down to appeal to a wider but less courageous audience.  To be "difficult" is not a bad thing. 

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

Do not accept work (for magazines, publications) from writers who are not also editors. This advice wasn't given in so many words nor do I follow it, but I think it's good advice. Poets who aren't also editors do not understand how much work goes into publishing their poetry and often act like divas. It's unacceptable. 

A similarly good piece of advice is "publish your friends," because publishing is a big investment of time and money and you don't want to do it for some jerk. Luckily, we are often friends with people whose work we like or identify with. Honestly, most publishers follow this advice even if they don't admit to it, and hundreds of poets go around thinking that their work isn't any good, when they just haven't made friends with the right people or have been brainwashed into thinking that they can't self-publish. That's silly. Someone needs to pull back the curtain-- the wizard is just some energetic poet with a bit of cash and the patience to publish other peoples' work. There's no magic. Anyone could do it.  

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 don't have one. I try to handle some poetry business every day (editorial correspondence, of which there is a lot, layout/design, mailings, etc.) but that quickly eats up any time I'm able to carve out for poetry. I am eager to cease all editorial projects and focus on my own work again.  I don't know how people (ehem, rob) are able to have jobs, write poetry, and be editors all at the same time.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I wish I knew the answer to this question.  My work has been stalled for years and I am not sure where to turn to make it actually happen. It's not that I'm not inspired or that I don't know what I want to write about. I have outlines and diagrams and some words for my next book-length project, I just don't have the time and clarity of mind to sit down and do it.  

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lavender! (I just blogged about this) (http://looktouch.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/elisas-parfumerie-part-1-lavenders-blue/) 

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?

Of course! In fact, poetry hardly ever inspires me to write poetry. Nature does, certainly-- especially highly organized nature (guidebooks to birds, flowers, etc.; botanical gardens with their little labels for everything).  And art: painting, sculpture, installation art, performance art, folk arts, fabric arts, book arts. Four things appeal to me in art and nature: detail, collection, repetition and craft. I enjoy seeing collections of things, like Robert Morris's 1968 "Untitled" collection of threads (http://flickr.com/photos/looktouch/tags/robertmorris/). I love impossible detail and craft, as is demonstrated in folk arts like quilting and embroidery or in works like Itchiku Kubota's Landscape Kimonos (http://subclassz.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/the-textile-art-of-itchiku-kubota/). And I love repetition, especially things that seem to happen organically, as in Tara Donovan's work (http://www.acegallery.net/artistmenu.php?Artist=8) or Katie Sehr's (http://www.katiesehr.com/) 

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

This changes-- when I wrote Organic Furniture Cellar I'd say Christian Bök, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Steve McCaffery, and my undergraduate friends Ric Royer and Chris Fritton. But that was a highly theoretical work, and I'm more interested in community, empathy, and the handmade or unique book-object now. There's a group of female poets whose compassion, support, poetry, and inspired use of materials keeps me going: Michelle Detorie, K. Lorraine Graham, Gillian Devereux, Elisa Gabbert, Maureen Thorson, Katy Henriksen, Hoa Nguyen, Robin Brox, Dorothea Lasky, Alixandra Bamford, Kathryn Pringle. I like the work of Robert Grenier, Alice Notley, and Stephen Ratcliffe these days. 

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Write a second book. 

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?

I would like to be an installation artist, but I don't have the training or the financing. If I'd gone to school for that and had time and funding to begin a life in that field, instead of going to school for poetry, I might feel more comfortable spending a few hundred bucks on materials and making something, but at this point I don't feel comfortable enough with my skills to make the investment. Instead, I think of poetry as sculptural and as installation-- I install words on the page with care. I also make small installations involving words, like Veils (http://krikri.be/festivals/infusoria/jessicasmith.html).

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

It's cheaper. Anyone can get a bit of paper and a pen or pencil. You don't need any special materials. It's like why so much of the world plays soccer-- all you need is a ball. 

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

There are two "last great books": Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (finally got around to this after years of having it recommended to me, and got to it at an interesting time in my life) and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which was recommended to me by my friend Maureen Thorson (Big Game Books editor and DC poet) and is one of the best novels I've read in years.  As for films, I haven't had the time or peace of mind to sit down and get lost in one for awhile.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I just graduated from my second Master's program (in library science) and am in the middle of looking for a job and moving. For me, poetry is something that I do when I have time-- when I can pay my bills, when I don't have a thousand other things to do. It seems like a frivolous art, so it's certainly on the back burner for me right now.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

(another) very short story;

The term "fantasy baseball league," he discovered, has absolutely nothing to do with "imaginary baseball league." He always presumed it was like his sister's book club, a social excuse for distraction, complaint and white wine, but even his sister would argue. "We read serious books," she snapped. Perhaps all his ideas were imaginary, his accumulation of life-long presumptions equally flawed. Where did this come from? His girlfriend mentioned that couples break up most over money. Depending on how you were raised, you were either spender or saver. He knows he a saver, but could he trust her judgment any more than his own?

12 or 20 questions: with Sasha Fletcher

Sasha Fletcher's novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS AND WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS is out now from ml press. He is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Columbia University in the city of New York.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
So far I honestly have no idea. I check goodreads a little more compulsively and wait for google alerts.

In actuality, the novella is the second book I finished. The first is a book of linked prose poems that was a finalist for octopus. I feel like the novella occupies a space between the first book and whatever book these poems I'm working on now become.

The novella was me trying to push the form more. Writing fragments that sort of went together was one thing, but I wanted to see if I could build something larger page by page.

The new poems are generally much longer than I used to write. The prose poems are all about 1.5-2 pages [where they used to average around 120 words or so] and I'm using line breaks, which I usually never did. In terms of actually talking about the work, I think a lot of it involved trying to raise the stakes, and to push things. There's still a lot of familiar stuff. The sky crashes down, bones get up and walk out of your body, there are birds, there are notes coming from unknown places saying things very loudly and lots of things get set on fire. There's still a lot of domesticity. There are boats. There is drowning. But I feel like I'm doing all these things in a different way right now.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
Well I came to fiction first because I hated poetry, then I quit fiction because poetry was a thing I could actually do [in that for years I could start stories and never manage to care enough to finish them, and suddenly when I started writing poems I could care enough to finish them].

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?
It really depends. The novella ended up being written in about six weeks. Then it went through five rounds of final edits over about a month. The book of poems I have took two years. I have absolutely no idea how long this current book will take, but either way I need to turn in a version of it next August to graduate.

The writing tends to come quickly some of the time, but a lot of it is crap. If it's not actually crap it may just be that it sounds crap, as the sound and rhythm of a piece tend to be as important as what's being said. We are saying that how a thing is said and what is being said should generally be reflective of the other.

I have a few pieces that came out as-is. Aside from a few adjustments for rhythm or word-choice, they just fell right out of me. I have a bunch of poems right now, some of which I've been working on since October, but all of them have these brackets where important parts are missing and unwritten. Sometimes the brackets are full of notes and plans. Sometimes I need to hold the idea in my head and go over how to deal with it. Other times the solution just appears.

I guess I am saying it varies, but that I work a lot and sometimes that gets me somewhere.


4 - Where does fiction 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?
It completely depends. With the book of poems, I set out to try to write a ten poem chapbook where all the poems went together and functioned as a body of work. I wanted to create a body of work. I started that in June 2008 and I think by that October I'd titled the book and started sequencing it and from there on everything was written in a big old .doc with EVERYTHING HERE IS OK in 72 pt Times New Roman on the first page.

With the novella, I'd written three longer prose pieces that I had no idea if they were poems of fiction and no idea what to do with them in a larger context, but they were all written one after another and in the same voice. J.A. Tyler had seen the poetry book and said he would be interested if I had a novella. So I sat down, wrote those three pieces together and then went from there.

Recently I've been freaking out a bit about this whole writing another book thing. Generally after three or four months I can figure out the direction of the work and sit down and just focus on the book. But I've been trying so hard to just to write really good poems that I haven't thought at all about how they'll go together. Reading over them recently I know they will. Some of them will. They all fit somehow. But I don't know how. I've been working on whatever these poems are since August 2009. Most of them are in completely different forms. But I guess, to answer it, I generally am trying to work on a book from near the beginning, or at least with one in mind, and right now I'm not, and it's been weird. I am just now, in the last two weeks, becoming really OK with not knowing everything in advance, or having some over-arching plan for things.


5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading out loud and it is a very big part of figuring out if a thing is working or not.


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?
I don't know. I am, personally, not a very big fan of theory or theoretical concerns. On the other hand, in terms of questions, I can talk about concerns I used to have, and then why I don't bother as much with them anymore. So. 1) I used to be really concerned with the idea of dealing with the fantastic and absurd, what is generally regarded as the surreal, in an everyday sort of way. It seemed really important to me that when bringing in these elements they were described exactly how the voice in the piece would describe brushing their teeth or filling out taxes or sitting on the bus to work. That nothing ever, in my mind, succeeded by calling attention to itself, but by sneaking in unannounced. Once I got OK at doing that, I decided to then work on more fantastic pieces that folded in elements of the everyday, and then tried write with the two encroaching on each other.

I think the novella was actually a pretty good synthesis of that, of having everything just there together, seeming like it all belongs. At least to me.

But so 2) I've found with my current work that maybe these questions would be helpful to start posing again, but that my genuine fear of models such as that are that they promote laziness. That by having a question to answer, rather than having to just make it all up and hold it all together, that you might not allow the piece to move how it needs to. That you'll limit it. And that you might not worry about anything other than your concerns. I find that idea terrifying. I am very much afraid of being lazy in my writing. I think it's safe to say that I sometimes have a problem with not cleaning the house enough and cluttering up my desk and I am wary of things I guess.

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?
I have no idea.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It completely depends on the editor. At this point my girlfriend edits everything, and she is really good at it. I think what you need in an editor is someone who is willing to see the work only for what it is trying to do [as opposed to what they would do] and who can see the ways in which to help you do it better. It's hard. Most of us want to talk about how we'd do it or would like to see it done, but that isn't a thing that's helpful, because it's about our vision and not theirs. Any single person that can look at what you have done, see what it is trying to do, and help you to do that better, any single person that can do that is probably the best fucking person you will ever meet.

Which also doesn't mean, I think, that you should ever be at a point where you need someone else in order to tell if your work is good or not. Or maybe. I want to take that back. I think whatever helps you to write better is whatever helps you to write better and writing better is a very good thing. That is what I think.

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

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 get up, I check my email, I have a shower, I make some breakfast, I dick around on the internet, I eat some lunch, I do some reading, I go for a walk, I read over what I'm working on, I read over it some more, I sit and think, I do some writing, I eat some dinner, I write some more, I go to bed, I maybe have sex.

During the semester is a bit different. Last semester I was turning in two assignment based poems a week. So I was doing that and also trying to do my own work and doing the readings for class and also reading the things that I thought would help me, so I am sort of taking it a little easier right now.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read. I go for a walk. I watch TV. I take in a movie. I bother my girlfriend. I call my dad. I put it away. I give it some space. I get a little mad. I try harder not to.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Clean laundry. Dryer Sheets.

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?
Yes. I listen to music constantly when I work, with the intention of having the tone of the music dictate the tone of the work. I have shit tons of mixes titled after pieces or after sections of books.

The film You, The Living by Roy Anderrson probably had more of an effect on me and my work and how I think and process information than anything else.

I still sometimes draw and I find it helpful to get me thinking about things in different ways. About depiction in different ways.

I spent a bit doing poems based on things I saw in Marcel Dzama Drawings. I think about how Jasper Johns does things a lot and how I can try to do that. I spend a lot of time sitting and looking at the sky. Often from one side of a window.


14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Right now: Josh Bell, Richard Siken, Emily Pettit, Rachel B Glaser, Objects for a Fog Death by Julie Doxsee, Bob Hicok, Ken Sparling, Ben Mirov.

In general: Donald Barthelme, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford, Frank O'Hara, David Berman, Amy Hempel, Zachary Schomburg, Padgett Powell, James Tate and David Foster Wallace.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
 Sell more books? Get a teaching gig? Get married? Buy a house? Have some kids?


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?
I really liked gutting fish. It was a good job. Alternately, I have no idea. I try real hard to worry mostly about the things I can actually deal with. That other shit just keeps me up at night and I like sleeping when I can.


17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I knew how to do two things moderately well. Draw and Write. When it came down to the jobs I could get with a BFA in Ceramics and the time that would be involved with getting better at something, I ended up picking the one that cost less to do.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just finished Pee on Water by Rachel B Glaser and it is incredible. I saw Micmacs the other week and that was pretty awesome. Before that I saw Altman's The Long Goodbye and I really really loved that. 


19 - What are you currently working on?
A bunch of poems that will be a book of poems. A lot of them have to do with the end of the world. As like a regular occurrence. Or something like that. Floods, the sky falling, various things being set on fire, people having trouble sleeping and making up stories to pass the time, rivers doing things they wouldn't normally do, like pretending to be kids, or being ominous. Stuff like that.


12 or 20 (small press) questions;