Dan
Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, and translator.
1 - How
did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to
your previous? How does it feel different?
I don’t
know if my life changed, but a certain anxiety eased—at least for a little
while. It gave me a little more confidence to think I could make a life writing
poems. In some sense, it didn’t have to do with getting published, but a sense
that being at work in the work itself is what is most worthy. I found an ethic
that I’ve tried to hold to for nearly 30 years. The early work is so long ago,
I feel like I have no idea—though I think, I suspect, that certain concerns
trace through, even though the poems have grown wider in their approach and
cares—a poem as ethical form, a leaning toward the philosophical, a need to
honor other poems and poets.
2 - How
did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I had an
extraordinary high school teacher who could actually teach poetry. I remember
distinctly understanding a poem for the first time—John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” I simply didn’t know a human could do that in words, and
I was desperate to learn how to do so myself.
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?
There’s
not much rhyme or reason here for me, I’m afraid. A sense of whole book can
come in a flash, and I’ll spend the next year working on it; sometimes I’ll sit
on a single line for months, waiting for the next line to appear. I think I
have an intuitive sense of a direction--& then sort of blindly stumble in
it, blind until I learn to see.
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?
A line
that comes to my ear as a gift, often at random, walking the dog or
bird-watching or reading a book. If I don’t forget it in two days, I know it’s
likely a poem. Sometimes a book; sometimes not.
5 - Are
public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort
of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Not
counter, just apart from. I am the sort of writer capable of enjoying giving a
reading, who often doesn’t. It makes me much more anxious than it used to do. I
say “yes” with much trepidation.
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?
Yes,
almost always. My work is most often agitated into being by something I’ve
read. I think I’m mostly trying to learn how to think, and the poems are
laboratories of a kind, an epistemological laboratory, to find out if I can
learn to think for myself the thoughts another person thinks. I’m not trying to
answer questions; I’m trying ask them. I suspect—and this comes from 15 years
of translating from Ancient Greek—that the current questions are the questions
that have always been questions. Not “current questions,” but a currency
of questions.
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?
I’m not
so sure it’s different now than it’s ever been. I sort of think of a poet writ
large as a sleepy watchman at the periphery of…of the knowable, I guess. I
don’t think of it as a role, per se. I’m with Emerson when he says, “Do your
work, and I will know you.” Poets get itchy in a uniform, and the art itself
wants to dismantle any authority a given poet might feel as their mantle. The
role of the poet might be to refuse the role of the poet.
8 - Do
you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential
(or both)?
The only
work I do that is heavily edited is art and poetry reviewing. I think of it as
a collaboration; I’m grateful for another mind.
9 - What
is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you
directly)?
Heather McHugh to me: “All you need to do is make friends with the dead.”
10 - How
easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)?
What do you see as the appeal?
I like
to know how words behave in different genres, how words think when out to
different uses. A long time ago, inspired by Emerson and Thoreau, and inspired
by Susan Howe and Lyn Hejinian, I decided to try to form myself into a
poet-critic, poet-thinker, I’m not sure what the right designation is…I don’t
find it a hard transition, just a different use of the same muscle.
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?
For 15
years I’ve been nearly religious about waking up around 5:30 in the morning and
translating for an hour. It humbles me into the day. For my own poems, I avoid
routine. I labor with translation and reading in hopes of being worthy of a
poem coming to me—and when one does, I set to work, and stay at work, until it
feels done.
12 -
When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a
better word) inspiration?
I
memorize poems I love. I read. I go to the gym. I go birdwatching.
13 -
What fragrance reminds you of home?
Blue
spruce.
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’m very
attuned to visual art as a primary influence. I’ve written a book that
parallels a work of Robert Irwin’s. Working now on a poem pondering Duchamp.
I’m in active collaboration with the ceramicist/sculptor Del Harrow. Music,
yes—but music is for me a method more than a subject. Physics, yes—. And what
isn’t nature?
15 -
What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life
outside of your work?
The list
is very long, and I don’t want to anger the ghosts by any omission. Many
polestars. Each a worthy north. All my work is in the end to honor them by
following the direction they make possible.
16 -
What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I have a
real desire to develop a material practice. It’s my only real regret that I
don’t have one. But I have plans.
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?
My
back-up plan was to be an art historian of the Song Dynasty.
18 -
What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’ve
loved poetry since I was 15, & I’ve never looked aside. It’s the only thing
that ever made sense to me.
19 -
What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just
re-read all of Wallace Stevens. And then am doing so again. Great—. Film is
harder for me. I recently re-watched Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil. It’s
great. “They say ‘Time heals all wounds,’ but it’s more true to say, ‘Time
heals everything but a wound.’”
20 -
What are you currently working on?
Homer.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
