Joe Milazzo is a writer, editor, educator, and designer.
He is the author of the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and two collections of
poetry: The Habiliments (Apostrophe Books) and Of All Places In This Place OfAll Places (Spuyten Duyvil). His writings have appeared in Black Clock, Black Warrior
Review, BOMB, The Collagist, Prelude, Tammy, Texas Review, and elsewhere. He
co-edits the online interdisciplinary arts journal [out of nothing], is a Contributing
Editor at Entropy, and is also the proprietor of Imipolex Press. Joe lives and
works in Dallas, TX, where he was born and raised.
1
- How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work
compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Publishing
Crepuscule W/ Nellie got me over that hump that casts a long shadow over
many a writer. I dare say it was validating, but mostly in the sense that
publishing that first book provided the strongest conviction that, yes, I could
finish a project of that scope. Beyond that, my life has not been greatly —
materially — altered because of my authorship. My writing since then has been
more likely to turn toward poetics. The novel is a big thing that can hold a
lot, and there's a distinct pleasure to be found in saving things up for the
sake of finding them a permanent home in a capacious narrative structure.
Although I now tend to write poem to poem, and to take satisfaction in smaller
bites, every poem I write seems to want to connect with likeminded language to
collaborate in a larger project. That is, I find that poetry is, for me, much
more sequential; it thrills with more cliffhangers, so to speak. (I'm positing
novel-writing here as a mode more lyric and reflective, I suppose.)
2
- How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I
actually started my career as a fiction writer. A novelist specifically, as I
am a terrible short story writer and have a stunted appreciation for that form.
(With exceptions made for writers like Felisberto Hernandez, Mary Robison,
William Goyen, Stuart Dybek, Nikolai Leskov and a few others). I don't believe
I really had a mind or heart that was prepared to encounter poetry in an
authentic way until I hit my early 30s. I recall just saying to myself one day,
"I need to read more poetry." And to be both a better writer and a
better person. (My other had just passed away, and my grief took many forms,
one of which was a desire not to waste myself.) And so I started reading
poetry. I think the first book I picked up as part of this endeavor was Charles Simic's Selected. I don't recall why.. Maybe because I knew he'd written
about Joseph Cornell's work? In other words, my reasoning was trivial. Its
outcomes less so, I hope.
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?
Years.
I am a slow writer, in part because I am naturally peripatetic and in part
because I make myself too busy with other things (like jobs). That said, often
premises arrive rather quickly and lead to an initial burst of writing, which
is followed by a long period of evaluation. I write in order to figure out what
it is I'm writing about. Getting there takes a great deal of generative work.
To accomplish that, I tend to rely on constraints which, in turn, inevitably
transcend the category of "inspiration" and become constitutive of
meaning within the work. E.g., in Crepuscule W/ Nellie, I established
from the start that the narration would never gain direct access to Thelonious Monk's point of view; in The Habiliments, the anaphoric titles. I rarely
take notes, then. I revise and revise, tracking consequences all along the way.
4
- Where does a poem or work of prose 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?
My
training as a novelist means I can't help but think in terms of books and
book-like experiences. I'm actually trying to break myself go this pattern and
become more OK with short, standalone pieces. To limit my possibilities —
better, to not exhaust them with elaboration. But this is a struggle for me. I
want to send the end before the beginning has been established. That's not
always a healthy desire.
5
- Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the
sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes
and no. I find attending readings to be inspiring, but I am less interested in
holding open such spaces for my work, unless that work has been conceptualized
specifically with oral presentation in mind. I do like organizing events, and
one of the things I'm most happy to have been a part of recently was Other
People's Poetry. This was a "repertory poetry reading series" I
organized. Each reading concentrated on one classic book of poems and featured
about 20 readers from the Dallas-Fort Worth literary community reading that
book in its entirety. Together, we read Rilke, Adrienne Rich, Bob Kaufman,
Sylvia Plath and Frank O'Hara. The kind of deep poetic saturation each of those
readings provided definitely helped sustain my own writing for weeks
afterwards. I learned so much — about form and rhythm and stress and connecting
with an audience — from hearing my colleagues voice these poems aloud.
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
like to think of my writing practice as expansive yet particular. Even though I
write across multiple genres (fiction, largely long-form; poetry; hybrid forms
that incorporate elements of personal essay, philosophical inquiry, and
satire), and even though I do rely upon my chosen medium to help me crack the
problem of about-ness, certain concerns seem never to slip outside my writing's
scope. I.e., maximalism and notions of the excessive; the manic porousness of
consciousness; the function of the imaginative faculties, and the consequences
of their exercise; frames, boundaries and "set-ups"; language as that
both private refuge and public domain. With whatever writing endeavor to which
I commit, I task myself with identifying and nurturing the unique voice through
which that endeavor would speak. That is, my writing practice is one in which I
work to disencumber myself of that voice I may be said to have found for
myself, and to explore that vast and coterminous, if not precisely contiguous,
territory of "other" vocabularies, grammars, and, I hope, realms of
experience. In other words, theories of consciousness are vital to my writing.
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
think I side with Ursula K LeGuin here: writers should be advocates of
possibility. Our world suffers from a paucity of imagination. The problems we
face as a species cannot be addressed without the imagination making a
contribution to the solutions to those problems, not least because those
solutions will always be contingent. Literature is social practice. Even the
alt-right understands as much, c.f. Timothy McVeigh and The Turner Diaries
and the Brietbart constituency's fondness for The Camp of the Saints.
8
- Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or
essential (or both)?
I
welcome all forms of collaboration, and have been fortunate enough to have very
creatively rewarding relationships with my editors. Only with their creative
input have I been able to translate some of my more hare-brained ideas into
legible texts. For example, the "layouts" that determine the
appearance of the poems in The Habiliments. The manuscript had been
completed within an 8.5 X 11 frame that simple was not workable in book form.
Yet the coordination — and I mean quite the literally the X/Y plotting of each
poem — is constitutive of the book's overall meaning. Better: vital to its its
attempts to make meaningfully. Mark Tursi and Richard Greenfield of Apostrophe Books, however, saw something I'd missed in my obsessive returning, tabbing and
margin-fiddling, which was the inevitable palimpsest effect that had resulted
from my efforts. Having them show me what I'd done, and what my own intentions
could never have prompted me to accomplish, allowed me to do even more with
notions of position within (and around) the text.
9
- What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you
directly)?
"The
victories are in the revisions." (I first heard — and subsequently stole —
this from Joseph McElroy.)
10
- How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What
do you see as the appeal?
Honestly,
I feel very uncomfortable calling myself a poet. I prefer to think of myself as
a kind of karaoke singer, one who has imitated his way into making convincing
gestures at poetry but probably couldn't really carry a tune (or remember the
lyrics) if he were fronting a real band. Yet I find writing fiction such a
lugubrious thing these days. Poetry provides me relief from the burdens of
fiction's continuities. My hope is that each practice — inasmuch as each is
separate — sustains the other. My education in the interdisciplinary incubator
that is CalArts has a great deal to do with that hope. We were not
"tracked" in our MFA program, and were given the freedom to explore
generic conventions so that we'd know exactly what we were ignoring when it was
time to pay them no mind. So maybe I really work in an unnamed, even anonymous,
third space. Or may that space is just called "writing" or
"language-based practice." I'm not sure. I like that genre constrains
(see above) and provides both a medium and raw material. That genres are
discourses. And I am always looking for new discourses to mine for interesting
expressions and conceptualizations.
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?
Since
March of last year, I've been working in a fairly demoing profession that has
me in the office at 8 a.m. editing other people's content (yep, I'll go there).
So my writing routine has recently had to make some adaptations. It's actually
become more routine in the sense that I'm now more attuned to the preciousness
of time available to me. I don't necessarily write every day, but I do make
something every day. Maybe I add another pitch to my year-long serial
composition, or take a photo on my terribly outdated iPhone 4 while looking up,
or post a pseudo-image macro to Instagram. I also have a notebook at my desk
which is reserved only for my personal notes. My waste book, if you will.
There, I write things and forget about them for a time, periodically flipping
back through it and reviewing what I've squirreled away there for the purposes
of starting something new and "serious" — but only in the sense of
being something I know I am going to spend some real time playing with.
Analogy! Each wastebook entry is, at the the moment of its recording, a fidget
spinner; later, upon rereading, each one becomes a Lego brick.
12
- When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of
a better word) inspiration?
I
walk. If I am not walking, I am probably not writing.
13
- What fragrance reminds you of home?
Wild
onions, as cut by a runaway lawnmower.
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?
Music
is incredibly important to my writing. I don't think I could have ever attained
an understanding of how narratives manipulate time without the more abstract
examples provided by music. Moreover, I'm
fascinated by the subject of improvisation and committed to exploring the role
of improvisation in literary practice. Also, I've written critically about
music, fiction about musicians, and my poetic practice is very much concerned
with sonority, prosody, all that jazz. I also maintain my own experimental
sound practice. I've not yet figured out how my tinkering around with modular
synthesis fits in (connects) with my writing, but I am working on getting
there.
15
- What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your
life outside of your work?
So,
so many, some of whom I've already mentioned. Nathanael West, Joseph McElroy,
Clarice Lispector, Gertrude Stein, George Oppen, Aaron Kunin, Bob Kaufman,
Michel Butor, Italo Calvino, Sesshu Foster, Eugenio Montale, Diane Wakoski,
Susan Straight (a very underrated world-builder), Christian Hawkey, Renee Gladman, Cesar Aira, Dara Wier, Rosmarie Waldrop, Clark Coolidge — to name
but a few — all routinely restore my faith in what both writing and reading can
accomplish
16
- What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Visit
every Anasazi site in North America.
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
grandfather was a surveyor. I worked for him one summer in high school, walking
since-doomed suburban developments and the muddy banks of the Red River for the
purposes of taking elevations. My grandfather continued doing this work until
he passed away at the age of 95. As I get older, many are the days when I
wonder if his might not have been a calling I missed.
18
- What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I
didn't think I was good at anything else. I feel like the first fifteen years
of my life were all about trying to find a creative outlet, only to be
frustrated by my lack of talent and.or the intractability of the media in which
I thought I wanted to work. Once I discovered doodling with words due to
chronic high school boredom, it all seemed to come together — that is, I
realized that language could be an artistic medium, too. In fact, that I'd been
treating as such all along, even — or especially — when cracking bad jokes or
making up fictional band names (it was the 80s).
19
- What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Ark by Ronald Johnson, a
symphonic work of experimental science-fiction whose (relative) optimism re:
the future of the human imagination feels incredibly poignant given our
species' present circumstances. I mean, Johnson wrote a poem that's also a
blueprint from a spaceship. Also: I'll never look at poetic meter or scansion
the same way again.
The
last great film I watched was probably Billy Wilder's The Apartment. My
wife and I watch it nearly every holiday season, and it still hold up. The
script balances cynicism and sentimentality, decency and smuttiness, in ways I
find endlessly fascinating. And corporate culture, while it may be slightly
less every in its misogyny, hasn't really changed all that much.
20
- What are you currently working on?
I
am currently at work on three discrete poetic sequences and a novel. The novel
(title still TBD) is set in Dallas in the 1970s and is something of a coming of
age story. But it is also very much concerned with the history of the region, a
history which many outside of Texas know nothing about and yet which is
quintessentially American. If Crepuscule W/ Nellie is a "jazz novel,"
this new one is a "prog rock novel."
Field
Recordings is
the first of these three evolving poetic sequences. The field in question is
contemporary and largely rhetorical. If these poems offer resistance — as I
hope they might — they do so by way of appropriating, repurposing and
recontextualizing (via various discursive strategies; that is, I have
endeavored here to preserve a thematic unity without relying on a univocality)
small portions of what is most awful about the current political regime's
discourse.
My
concern in the so called “name
poems” of Acrostic
Aspic is with the conditions of celebrity as they are lived by
non-celebrities, i.e., “you” and “me.” Or:
I suppose these poems are all about minor celebrity, as these titles borrowed
from the outer limits of fame suggest. Our subjectivities so often cohere in
the back and forth between narratives intensely our own and those widespread
narratives with which we cannot help but make contact, or which are in constant
contact with us. But the latter narratives are so much more easily represented,
not to mention “relatable,” while the former
remain largely untranslatable. So this self-exchange can never be equal. Still,
people live as they live, and their names mean something to them.
Finally,
the numbered poems that constitute homeopathy for the singularity represent
my attempts to undertake a slow study of online existence as it stands in
2017/2018.
