Jon Riccio is the author of Agoreography and the chapbooks Prodigal Cocktail Umbrella and Eye, Romanov. He serves as the poetry editor at Fairy Tale Review.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Thank you, rob, for giving me the opportunity to discuss my work. Also, for your stewardship of, literally, hundreds of writers. Happy 30th anniversary to above/ground press! Rachel Mindell’s rib and instep: honey is how I became acquainted with the ways, large and small, in which “you’re [poetry’s] one in seven billion.”
My first book was the culmination of poems written over a seven-year period tied to my MFA and PhD degrees. Agoreography changed my life in that I now have a ‘spokescollection’ for a poetry movement I envision, The Confurreal or Confessional Surrealism. Picture Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, WD Snodgrass, and Sylvia Plath on a 1920s airship gabbing with James Tate, Dean Young, Joyelle McSweeney, and Aimé Césaire. Whatever germinates cerebrally and tonally in those quarters jumps to the present day. Vulnerability’s Petri-dish think tank, by any other.
My most recent work’s leaning more towards Surrealism than Confessional, with a peppering-in of where science fiction and occult speculation were about twenty-five years prior. Infomercials, spacecrafts, little stargates that could.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I tried fiction. And I tried fiction again. Poetry’s a better swim. Two books I bought, circa 2011/12ish, when they gave readings at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, were Kay Ryan’s Elephant Rocks and Patricia Clark’s North of Wondering. Spending time with their poems after a three year-ish hiatus from reading any poetry was a way of quieting my brain, which at that point was immersed in all things OCD with frequent stops in agoraphobia. In August 2012, I joined a writing workshop mentored by John Rybicki. That September, I joined another, led by Traci Brimhall. Both gave selflessly of themselves to the point where I felt ready to send my MFA application portfolio to six schools. The rest is University of Arizona history.
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?
The snails come to me for advice on how to slow things down. Glaciers have better responses to starter pistols. My first drafts are overwritten, then pared anywhere from weeks to months before I consider a draft in submittable shape. In between, I have a quartet of readers who see the work at its newest. We encourage, we trade. Then, it goes to an online critique group. We trade, we encourage, we fawn over each other’s pets.
I love your question about copious notes. I had, at one point, a red notebook called Operation: Island, filled with lines from poems that were beyond stalled. Many a revision benefitted from those Island plug-ins. I should write an essay on the difference between rummage and salvage. Vetted by mollusk.
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?
Lately, my poems are coming from a two-month generative project I’ve described as The Cantos meets I Remember. I’m just now revisiting the work with the intention of “what can I harvest?” Poem lengths vary: my chapbooks Prodigal Cocktail Umbrella and Eye, Romanov contained pieces on the shorter side. Agoreography has longer work. Rare is the current poem where I go over a page.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I LOVE giving readings, in-person or Zoom, because they remind me of the recitals I gave as a violist. You read your poems, see what flies and what doesn’t (even though you thought it would in the revisions leading up to said reading). On the flipside, I LOVE organizing readings, whether during school days or now, in my work with the literary organization 1-Week Critique.
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 about staying true (and nuancing) to my aesthetic without completely alienating readers. I traffic in density and allusions not everyone gets if they haven’t sponged pop culture (mainstream to obscure, peak window 1977 - 2000). The denser, allusion-heavier my poem, the more I’m apt to put it in couplets, which assist rather than mire. I’m worried about influence: do I innovate or mimic? That’s when I’m reminded of a phrase I hear at least once a month, “Nothing happens in a vacuum.” This calms me.
Currently asking myself: How, to paraphrase Lucie Brock-Broido, do I cultivate the patience of a taxidermist? Patience is my Achilles, yet I am at a point where patience is a life preserver in a sea of sea changes, but gosh, is it slippery.
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 interested in the linkages between poetry and the pedagogy I pass along to my students. Since June of 2021, I’ve been working with graduate-level writers at the University of West Alabama. I also teach composition and literature, so I look at reverse-engineering aspects (Poem Process: what have you taught me and how can I channel it outwards?) We never know who is just one draft away from the decision to lead a life in letters (or realizing the value of a life in letters). My eyes and ears are peeled, and if that’s my impact on larger culture, I’m fulfilled.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Three times where an outside editor has revolutionized my approach to poetry: A) Dr. Charles Sumner, who served on my dissertation committee (so, a reader, but . . .), asked me seven or eight questions that took my critical introduction from idea-spouting to The Confurreal’s inception. B) Dr. Jaydn DeWald, who as the editor at COMP: an interdisciplinary journal, had a similar method of question-oriented feedback, which helped me turn my revised introduction of The Confurreal into a manifesto on The Confurreal, published as “The Florist’s Crossroads.” C) Andrea Watson, the founder of 3: A Taos Press and publisher of Agoreography, whose (wait, wait, let me guess) editorial line of questioning took the collection from what it was to the book it became. Again, “Nothing happens in a vacuum.”
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
From Paul Tran’s “The Cave,” which appears in All the Flowers Kneeling (2022): “Keep going, the idea said.”
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 keep a log that records how many minutes I write each day. I aim for fifteen to a half hour, sometimes more. The day begins with either an hour of grading or reading. Before that, about fifteen minutes of personal journaling.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Back-cover bios; past issues of Poets & Writers.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Meatballs frying in a spa of olive oil.
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?
Classical music//soundtracks: Sibelius Violin Concerto in d minor, Khachaturian Violin Concerto in d minor, Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 in g minor, Prokofiev Violin Sonata No. 1 in f minor, Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 4 in d minor, Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Wieniawski Violin Concerto No. 1 in f-sharp minor, Franck Symphonic Variations, Sibelius Symphony No. 1 in e minor, Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major// Psycho, Halloween II, Halloween III, The Fog, Salem’s Lot, The Star Wars Trilogy, Blade Runner, Alien.
Nature: Walks that last anywhere from one hour to eighty minutes.
Science: Any and all questions related to time travel and UFOs.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Anne Sexton, everything she wrote, including the play Mercy Street; pedagogically, Graywolf’s The Art of Series has made all the difference in how I approach classroom discussions about creative writing (Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness, Donald Revell’s The Art of Attention, Carl Phillips’s The Art of Daring); recent collections by Sandra Simonds, M Soledad Caballero, Jayme Ringleb, Tom Holmes, Bob Carr, Jessica Guzman, Charles Kell, Jaydn DeWald, Jonathan Minton; my Unexplained Mysteries calendar.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Edit, distribute, and steward an anthology of writers whose work falls under the umbrella of The Confurreal. I have my solicitation list but lack the funding to make it a reality.
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?
In no particular order, I would attempt: literary agent, manuscript editor, paranormal bookstore owner, Ufologist, craft services caterer (infomercials, television production sets). In my twenties, I had a two-day interest in meteorology, then a few weeks where dairy farming was entertained. Parallel universe Jon, he’s a concert violinist or world-renowned mathematician.
If not for writing, I would have stayed at my data-entry job in a Michigan food bank.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
In my best poetry self-excerpting voice: “I'm a writer because I ran out of zip codes to be fired in.” (“Parenting Wil Wheaton”).
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
DaMaris B. Hill’s 2019 poetry/prose collection, A Bound Woman Is A Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland. Cinema-wise, The Whale.
19 - What are you currently working on?
My stove burners are kettling student papers for a mythology class, essay drafts, submission screening at Fairy Tale Review, free-writing projects, and reaching out to poets for permission to write about their work in my monthly craft articles at 1-Week Critique.
Thank you again, rob.
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