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 first book changed my life by showing me that culmination is less about arrival and more about departure. In that sense, the new work mirrors the old; it revisits the same enduring questions but through a shifting lens, say, the way Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames moves closer and farther from a single point of view.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to poetry thumbing around in an English textbook in the 6th grade. Our class almost entirely ignored the poetry section, but I stumbled across an Edgar Allan Poe poem, “A Dream Within a Dream,” and that made me a true believer in the magic trick of poetry that happens by virtue of breaking short of the margins.
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?
At this point, I write consistently, not in a set way; it’s become a recognizable feeling, a physiological pang no activity will satisfy but writing itself. It comes in stops and starts, and I don’t fight the rhythm it takes. Up to now, I have not been a project-based writer with a clear thematic subject in mind. The sonnets were an exercise in constraint that interested me, but they are tied together by an informal exploration of that form, not by any explicit unified vision.
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?
Poems can begin in a few ways. They can arrive in a flash, and I race to write them down before I forget them. I can misunderstand something in a way that feels interesting and write down a line or grab a group of abandoned poems, and then I dump what I have collected into something new and play musical chairs until it feels satisfying. Books come together the way poems come together, critical mass is reached, and some intangibly emergent quality arises, but no book I have published resembles its first manuscript in any way.
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; I rarely have the opportunity. I do think a poem working in its own way, read aloud, is part of its completion, even if it’s a challenging piece that would be hard for a reader to absorb on the spot.
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 have some personal philosophical preoccupations that come out sideways in the work, but I do not write about things directly, and philosophies are always provisional, always doomed to fail. If anything, I write to shed my philosophies rather than reinforce them. Answers don’t interest me, but refining questions in the open-ended theater of awareness does.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in the larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
There may have been a time when the writer played some kind of role in culture, but that seems utterly anachronistic at this point. And the notion of the sage, the shaman, the canary in the coal mine, and the prophet all seem to have become suspicious enterprises. I wholeheartedly reject the Shelleyan assertion that poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I can’t say as though I have ever had the experience of an actual, extensive discussion of my work with an editor or anyone, where poems or books are engaged with any degree of depth and consideration. That absence has probably shaped my independence of mind, for better or worse.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Yusef Lateef, an advisor of mine when I was a student at Hampshire College, once corrected me for using the word “jazz” in his presence. He said, “I have never heard of this jazz that you speak of,” then wrote on a piece of paper, “Autophysiopsychic Music Definition: Music from one’s physical, mental, and spiritual self.” That has probably taught me more about poetry than I am even aware of. He was a paragon of artistic integrity.
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 write when I feel the need to write, which is not to say I have something to say. My day begins with coffee, walking the dogs, and enjoying time with my wife before I drive her to work and then come home to do what I need to do for the gear engineering magazine I edit.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I don’t think in terms of my writing ever getting stalled. I trust the ebb and flow. Inspiration has never been a part of the equation for me. I do not wait for it; it only comes through making. Inspiration is a byproduct of action. If I have ever felt inspired to write something, it almost always ends in a disaster.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My wife loves to burn Palo Santo. And she has a ranging perfume collection, so every day there is a rotating sillage to experience.
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?
Too many visual artists to name, but lately I feel the closest kinship with Richard Prince and Paul McCarthy. Music in rotation lately is The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud, Magic Is Küntmaster, Amanaz, Broadcast, and Solid Space. Quanta magazine to stay up on physics. Too many movies to name, but I did watch Synecdoche, New York and Dead Poets Society again recently.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Eliot and Ashbery are poets I found impenetrable, and now I can’t imagine my life without them. Osip Mandelstam, Yehuda Amichai, and Alan Dugan were once indispensable to me. But not any longer, which saddens me. Albert Camus. Joseph Campbell. Gaston Bachelard. Haruki Murakami. Rene Ricard. John Berryman. Chögyam Trungpa. Denis Johnson. Mark Ford. Carl Jung.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Read for more than ten minutes at a literary event.
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?
My dream has always been to teach creative writing or return to editing a literary journal. I was the Assistant Editor of Poetry from 1998–2002 and that experience was the joy and education of a lifetime.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
The low cost. I loved painting, film, and photography, but those are expensive media.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The Cool School, edited by Glenn O’Brien, and rewatched The American Astronaut and Moments Like This Never Last.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I am writing a nonfiction book about DNA as the Dynamic Narrative Archetype.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
