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 my first book (Reveilles) made it possible to write my next book. It made it possible to move on from the writing I was doing in my 20s. It made space, it cleared a pathway. The recent work feels of the same mold. In the immortal words of Popeye, I yam what I yam. But (hopefully) better, stronger, clarified like ghee.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
As if I had a choice! Poetry came for me in the thick of the night. Something moved my hand. I couldn’t sleep.
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 feels both fast and slow. I’m almost always writing poems. Most of them are pretty awful. The ones that become parts of books usually have little resemblance to their first drafts. I have many, many notebooks, digital and analog, through which the work is always shifting and evolving.
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?
Sometimes a poem begins with a phrase or word that gets lodged in my head. Sometimes what happens is I start to mix and match various fragments I’ve jotted down in notebooks. I tend to write clusters of poems and then I try to figure out how they talk to each other, what kind of community they form, and revise accordingly into a book. With most of my favorite poems, I have very little recollection of how or why or wtf was going on! They all involve extended processes and other parts of myself and the cosmos that I can’t always access.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes and yes. They are important and yet they are quite distinct from what poetry means to me as a form of solitary writing and reading. I cherish both modes. Readings are communal—they help me feel connected to other travelers, which in indirect but definitive ways is vital to writing poems. In a practical way they also give me a chance to try out new work and go back to the lab with findings. I think I dread them as much as I enjoy them, but the truth is I almost always say yes to them.
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?
How do I make language talk back? What else can a sentence do? What word combinations alter consciousness? What’s living in my basement? Who’s there?
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?
To explore the verbal imagination by challenging language and exploring the consciousnesses it makes available. To invent strange or marvelous verbal constructions. To wake us up. These tasks have obvious social and cultural value. Whether or not anyone’s listening is another question.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I am humbled whenever someone gives attention to my work!
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Start small (Richard Hugo). Gardening, not architecture (Eno and Schmidt).
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to translation to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
In my practice, poetry and translation are natural extensions of each other. I approach critical prose the way I approach house work. I like to clarify ideas like I like to have a (somewhat) orderly house; but it ain’t easy.
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?
Like the academic calendar, my routines come and go and are often subject to arbitrary, incomprehensible, and invisible administrative processes and planetary alignments.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Tarot cards. AP News’ oddities. Walking. The Dead Kennedys. The Cure. Meditation. Yoga. Brian Eno & Michael Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cinnamon. Pancakes. Woodburning stove. Windex. Dog hair. Chips Ahoy dipped in milk. Bergamot. Coffee (Metropolis’s light roast, Schweik’s blend).
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?
All of the above. And donuts. But more in a “vibe” kinda way. Moss, for example, influences my process. I aim for airborne spores in going from draft to draft. I spend a lot of time with visual art and music. For my work, the most direct influence is always other poetry.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Some things I often come back to include: Wuthering Heights, Blake, Bataille, Ashbery, Murakami, 1000 plateaus, Koch, Rothenberg’s Technicians of the Sacred, Kim Hyesoon, Bly’s Leaping Poetry, Tzara’s manifestos, Basho, Issa, James Tate, Notley’s The Descent of Alette, Homer, Hopkins, Keats, Lorca’s Poet in NY, Whitman, Dostoyevsky, the Tao Te Ching.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to get my kids through college.
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?
The answer to both questions is televangelist.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Some weird combination of ego and compulsion.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
20 - What are you currently working on?
I have a collaborative project with the poet Joseph Bienvenu in the works. Spitball Ballet, the first of a 3 volume set called Bad Arguments for Living, is now out! I also have a manuscript called Astronomic Gargle. Like the cosmos, some days I think it’s finished. Other days it looks like total chaos.
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