12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kevin Gallagher

Kevin Gallagher is a poet, publisher, and political economist living in Greater Boston.   His most recent book is And Yet it Moves (MadHat, 2023) and recent books are The Wild Goose, and Loom. His poems and reviews have appeared in the Partisan Review, Harvard Review, ArtsFuse, Green Mountains Review, and beyond.  Gallagher edits spoKe, a Boston area annual of poetry and poetics.  He works as a political economist at Boston University.

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 started identifying as a poet when I was twenty, but didn’t publish a book until I was forty.  I had published poems in the Partisan Review and the Harvard Review a decade earlier but in those earlier days I spent more time focusing on publishing the work of others through the magazine compost I co-published.  When I turned forty I published two chapbooks,  Isolate Flecks with Gloria Mindock’s Cervena Barva press and Looking for Lake Texcoco with Mark Lamoureux’s Cy Gist.  When I held those collections in my hands they propelled me with affirmation and inspiration.  Now And Yet it Moves, published by Marc Vincenz’ MadHat Press, is my eighth book—my fourth full length book.

And Yet it Moves is quite different than my last book, The Wild Goose published by Paul Marion.  The Wild Goose was (largely) written when I was a poet in residence at the Heinrich Boll cottage in Achill, Ireland for two summers. I’m a quarter Irish if my last name didn’t give it away and my father had recently passed.  That book is an exploration of Ireland, my life with my father and beyond.

And Yet it Moves is a pandemic book.  I was shaken by the denial of science and reason in the United States but like Seamus Heaney during ‘The Troubles’ I saved my descriptive rage for the kitchen table but wanted to engage differently as an artist.  As I say in my introduction, this was not the first time we lived in such an era.  I delve into the Medici era in this book, a poetic journey of the rebirth of wonder followed by its denial manifest by Galileo’s imprisonment.  The book is a series of poetic monologues of that time, telling that story.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Our mother took us to the library every weekend and we had to get books.  I read mostly fiction and was taken by Orwell, Thomas Wolfe, Mark Twain.  I read poetry in school but would never pick it up on my own—until I heard Bob Dylan and it was all over.  Wow did he fuse the ‘raw and the cooked’ into one inside and out with a new post-modern sensibility but a meter that sang on its own.  From Dylan I worked backwards being most struck by Williams, Levertov, Rexroth, Patchen, PAZ, Seamus Heaney, O’Hara, Walcott, John Brooks Wheelwright, Muriel Rukeyser and Charles Olson and others before I hit a wall in the early 20th Century.  Then I time machined to Homer, Virgil, and Catullus.
 Through Rexroth I entered the world of Tu Fu, Li Bai and Japanese poets too.  Non-fiction is another story.  I’ve written nine books on the global economy.  Let’s save that for another day.

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 are two kinds of poems I write.  The first are those that just hit me, I’ve referred to those as ‘lightning bolt’ poems.  Something happens or I see something or reflect and then comes what David Hinton calls ‘contact’ and boom I start writing and yeah perhaps 80 percent of what happens when the lightning hits my tree stays on the page in the end.

The other kind of poetry I write are more ‘projects’ as you say.  My first book like that was LOOM, also published by MadHat.  That book, in method, is the most similar to And Yet it Moves because it is an exploration and conversation with a history to make sense of the present—an ‘archaeology of mourning.’   The older and busier I get—rhyming ain’t the day job—the more important these projects are because they are always there for me.  At this point in my life I’m dodging a lot of lightning bolts.

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?

To finish where I left on the last question I guess, for the lighting bolts I end up collecting those in loose books.  The ‘projects’ are seen as books.  My book Radio Plays published by Dos Madres is somewhere in the middle.  It is a collection of shorter set pieces many of which were lightning bolts—or short storms!

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

A poem doesn’t work for me until I’ve read it looking into a pond of eyes and seeing if I can connect.   Readings are essential for me.  I don’t think I’ve published anything I haven’t read in public or at least walking around my house beforehand.

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 we are all asking who are we, where are we, what are we doing, what are we being.  Like Duncan and Olson I see poetry as an open field for these 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?

The poet is the point of contact with a reality revealed in the creation of the poem and shared.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Most publishers and editors I have encountered either don’t like the book and won’t publish it or like the book and largely publish it as is.  Actually, And Yet it Moves is an exception.  The poems were originally all fairly straight sonnets but Vincenz helped me hone them a bit more to true projective verse and they are now more like those of Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer.  Since they evoke the ruins of the Roman Empire in Renaissance Italy I am calling them ‘ruined sonnets!’

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Don’t try to be someone else.  Sing your own songs and most importantly in your own voice.  Everyone’s is unique and each person is equally incredible.

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 work full time.   For the past five years I have had the privilege to be a poet in residence each summer for a few weeks but I use that to take things to the finish line.  In my case I turn off the work laptop at around half time of the Celtics game with the sound off and start working on my poems.  If the game is close I stop the poems and bleed green.  If not I can go on very late sometimes or hit a wall and go to bed.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

As I said earlier, the longer run ‘projects’ are what I move to.  I also write reviews, most recently for the Arts Fuse and Harvard Review… That can help.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The robust smell of my German Shepherd, REXROTH!

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?

And Yet it Moves is all of the above—triggered by science, but there are poems in there about Michelangelo, Vasari, Botticelli.  In the background the New York painters of the 1950s and slapping away on a big canvas above me when I write.  On many levels I am engaging with climate change in this book, so nature is there.   In The Wild Goose I evoke Dr. John playing his piano and Desolation Row is always playing in the background.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I listed a bunch earlier in our conversation.  I go back to those the most but am always on a new quest to learn something new.  Homero Aridjis is the poet I have been diving into the most lately, as well as Cid Corman.  I’ve been reading plays a bit more than poetry though, particularly Brian Friel and August Wilson.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Play for the Boston Celtics!

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?

NBA Basketball Baby!  But that’s a joke, I’m five foot nine.  That said one of my best friends’ grandma was the Red Auerbach’s secretary and I majored in Physical Therapy for a few semesters thinking I’d be the trainer for the Celtics.  Poetry broke through.  

I should say that part of the motivation for all this is a social justice.  The poetry can go in one way, action in the other.  In my day job I work as a political economist trying to get the institutions of global economic governance to align with the goals of financial stability, human wellbeing, and environmental sustainability.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I played instruments when I was younger.  My mother had us in art classes all the time too.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

That’s new?  I just read Ron Padgett’s DOT, Bernadette Mayer’s Milkweed Smithereens, and the new selected poems of Larry Eigner edited by Jennifer Bartlett. Best book though I’d say has been Homero Aridjis’ new Self Portrait in a Zone of Silence.  Wakefield Press has just come out with an incredible crop of Max Jacob in translation that I recently reviewed for Harvard Review.  Great film?!  My son and I had a blast yesterday watching The Instigators.  Was great to know every neighborhood it was shot in!

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am almost finished with another archaeology of morning, perhaps in some way it is a prequel to the book LOOM I discussed earlier in our conversation.  This book deals with the Tempest of the settlement of Massachusetts, the translation of its land and people to the West, and to the final battle that confirmed colonization.  A truth that lies in the names of so many roads, rivers, and streams here, but is never discussed.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Robert Vaughan

Robert Vaughan teaches workshops in hybrid writing, poetry, fiction at locations like Red Oak Writing, Synergia Ranch, and Mabel Dodge Luhan House. He leads roundtables in Milwaukee, WI. He was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction (2013, 2014). He was the head judge for the Bath International Flash Fiction Awards, 2016. His flash fiction, A Box was selected for Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press).  He is the Editor-in-Chief at Bending Genres.

Vaughan is the author of five books: Microtones (Cervena Barva Press); Diptychs+ Triptychs + Lipsticks +Dipshits (Deadly Chaps); Addicts & Basements (CCM), RIFT, co-authored with Kathy Fish (Unknown Press) and FUNHOUSE (Unknown Press). His blog: www.robert-vaughan.com.

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, Microtones (Cervena Barva Press, 2012) is a chapbook of 26 pieces. I was part of an online project called 52/250 in 2009 and 2010, and then also Fictionaut. These supplied most of the work that comprised my first collection. I’d say there is an arc from book to book, although my writing is still mostly a hybrid between prose and poetry, short or long.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I’ve always written both poetry and fiction. My writing originated in journal writing, throughout high school. I was also an avid letter writer before the onset of computers and online livelihood. I was lead singer in two bands, first in high school and then college. I’ve always paid close attention to lyrics. And so, I think more than coming onto a “form,” per se, I like whatever method (vehicle?) an author chooses to make the connection to a reader.

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?

My projects that have turned into books (I’ve published 5) have come easily to me. And once I have designated the impetus, the writing is typically daily, and first drafts are organic. I also edit more now than I ever have. And more than one edit to a final draft. I don’t use notes, but I do keep a daily journal in which I write down or “record” various flotsam and jetsam: overheard snippets of conversation, business cards, sensory sounds or smells.

4 - Where does a work of fiction 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?

I am a writer who enjoys writing toward the “dark” or the unknown. I am not a mapper, or post-its or postcards on the wall sort of writer. Thus, my collections have built rather organically, or homespun. And this is why I relish the eventual collaboration with editorial eyes, or suggestions. The idea of “book” typically forms somewhere along the way, as the writing comes together. Often inspired by a person, or events, a collaboration, or a blended/ collaged fusion of aspects.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love to do readings. I mentioned earlier the two bands through high school and college. I also performed in numerous plays and musicals. I think readings have a theatrical part of them, and even thinking of order is quite like a set list. I also feel that at least two of my five books happened as a result of someone hearing me read (at an AWP literary conference, for example).

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 the writing is more organic for me, probably less theoretical? Although the themes that continually haunt me are homelessness, or people living in the margins, without a “voice.” Also, sexual abuse, and boundaries. Violence. Dysfunctional families, and secrets. And deeper philosophical questions like forgiveness, or shame, regret or avoidance. One simple question I ask frequently is “Why am I here?” And not speaking to specific locale, but more indicating for ways to verify my existence.

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 like to think of myself as a supporter of artists and writers. I am the EIC of an online magazine, and we offer online writing workshops as well as retreats. I think writing has a vital aspect in our current culture. I’m an active member of PEN America from which I get the daily updated news about the current challenge or threats to our democracy and also world-wide, writers who are imprisoned in certain cultures for simply speaking out. Now, more than ever, the role of the writer intensifies. This doesn’t mean everyone need necessarily be a “political” writer, but even just a pen (notepad) can hold so much power.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

If your writing matters to you (and there is a fine line with too much here!) working with an editor ought to be both awkward and ultimately important. Often, especially with new work, we are simply too close to our own material to have neutrality with “feedback.” I have learned to trust this process. And good editors are not easy to come by. I’ve also edited books for more than a few writers and love doing this.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I like what Sugar says: Write Like A MotherFucker. I keep the mug (from Rumpus) on my desk. I contains the vigilance, and motivation I seek.

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’m early to bed and early to rise. Typically I write in the mornings… sometime with coffee, or immediately following. A good day is when I write all morning. Afternoons for editorial or magazine work. Evenings to feed the urge.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Nature, exercise, cooking. Most of my friends are writers, so we chat about our stalling, or what we can do to spark our work. Travel can ignite me, too; especially visiting new places. Writing workshops. And writing prompts.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Spring rain/ earthworms.

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?

I think all forms of art influence me- lyrics and music: I like to write from Soundtrack music. For instance, when I wrote Addicts & Basements (CCM), I listened to Donnie Darko and Trent Reznor’s The Social Network soundtrack. I do like visual art, and that can also influence, especially walks through museums and note-taking. Nature is a daily boon, whenever possible. Walking or running outdoors always refreshes and triggers some new ideas. Water, also for me can be inspiring. Showers are my think-tank.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Most of my closest friends are writers, so that is incredibly inspiring. I also like to hang out with other artists. My partner of 15 years is a physician (as was my father) and so, I find our fields (writing and science) a fascinating sort of link. I like writers who challenge the norm, or think outside of the box (genre) or are writing something other than realistic fiction (which is still the best selling category, or everyday memoir, and feels akin to reality TV to me).

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Get an agent, finish some projects that have taken a back burner. Maybe live abroad if our current politics continue.

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?

I’ve done so many other things already- worked in restaurants, hair and make-up for photoshoots, retail, merchandising, non-profit fundraising. If I wasn’t a writer, I’d work in the healing arts. Study world approaches to touch, massage, such as Thai or Lomi- Lomi.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

It’s the thing I love to do more than any other job. I’m living my literal dream.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The last great book I read was Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh. Last great film was a documentary called Strange Powers: Stephin Merrit (of The Magnetic Fields).

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am in the midst of an epistolary project. And a memoir. And finishing a full- length play, of which two acts are complete. I’m also writing a poetry collaboration with a fellow poet.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Susan Lewis

SUSAN LEWIS lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). She is the author of This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], forthcoming 2014), How to be Another (Červená Barva Press, 2014), State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2013), The Following Message (White Knuckle Press, 2013), At Times Your Lines (Argotist Ebooks, 2012), Some Assembly Required (Dancing Girl Press, 2011), Commodity Fetishism, winner of the 2009 Červená Barva Press Chapbook Award, and Animal Husbandry (Finishing Line Press, 2008). Her Pushcart Prize-nominated work has been performed on stage and in concert halls such as Carnegie’s Weill Hall and the Kennedy Center, and published in a great number of journals and anthologies, such as Berkeley Poetry Review, BlazeVOX, The Brooklyn Rail, Cimarron Review, Fact-Simile, The Journal, The New Orleans Review, Otoliths, Phoebe, Raritan, Seneca Review, Truck, Verse (online), and Verse Daily. Susan received her BA and JD from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

The validation/legitimacy of getting the first chapbook published meant a lot to me – the acceptance was a big deal. The release of the actual chapbook was a bit of an anticlimax. Such a slim pamphlet after all those years of struggle?!

Since then, my poetry has evolved towards greater abstraction/fragmentation. I seem to be able to tolerate fewer words, and greater leaps.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Actually, I came to fiction first – I got my MFA in fiction. I feared & avoided trying my hand at poetry, because I considered it, by definition, somehow exalted. I actually broke the ice by writing text for a composer with whom I’ve repeatedly collaborated, Jonathan Golove at SUNY,Buffalo. Later, after dipping my toe into lyric, I concentrated on prose poetry, including highly narrative parable-like entities – utilizing, if substantially re-figuring, certain elements of fiction writing. Nor have I officially turned my back on the short story, a form I truly love to read & write, although I haven’t written one for quite some time.

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?

I start most poems with a faux-breezy attitude – to fake out my own inner skeptic. I tell myself I’m not necessarily writing a new poem, just playing around, trying something out. I don’t really need the trick so much anymore, but I like to bring lightness into the generative, blank screen stage. It helps me come up with material I don’t expect. Often my poems start with opening lines, which I “hear” in my head. Only by writing them will they lead me forward to another & the next.

I tend to produce in creative bursts, which might last minutes, hours, or days. I’ll generate a lot of new material, which I resist refining until the burst has petered out. Then I’ll re-work & re-imagine the new pieces for weeks or months. I have no idea why some pieces emerge so much more like their final versions than others – nor do I know which are “better.”

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?

Often I think of structural or definitional principles which lend themselves to series – then I work on those, trying to mine their potential. Rarely is a series book-length, though. So then I look at multiple series I’ve generated, for unifying principles or aesthetics which make them cohere into a book. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Although I’ve never had any craving for the limelight, I turn out to love giving readings, much to my own surprise. There’s a certain vitality to the stretching of my self-image required by such public expression. My temperament has always been half-sociable, half-reclusive, so giving readings taps into the people-person side of my personality. 

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’m doubtful about received ideas – let alone answers – with regard to the human condition, poetry, language… So I think & write towards questions, & reconfigurations. The toolbox this mindset inevitably sends me to includes irony, fragmentation, distanciation, disequilibrium, ellipsis – poetic praxis that eschews pronouncement for inquiry & other reader-inclusive challenges. At the same time, I place a huge value on intuition, empathy, & emotion. My work, I think, is not really dispassionate or cool. That these two tendencies are in tension creates, I hope, another source of energy & interest. 

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?

Our world is increasingly, mind-bogglingly specialized. Practitioners in every field of human endeavor swim, more or less, in their own specialized ponds — poets no less than anyone else. This is painful, but I don’t think it’s unique to our endeavor. What might, perhaps, make it a tad more awkward for us is the expectation that poetry is part of humankind’s cultural patriarchy – of general, even universal interest – like the work of Whitman, Frost, or Dickenson. I think we need to get over ourselves & our romanticized view of poetry’s past & get on with making our best work, for whoever might or might not end up reading it.

As for our role as writers: I think it’s to be as honest & probing & brave & creative as we can. It’s to make work no one can possibly know has value until we imagine it into being.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I haven’t had many editors engage with the shaping of my work itself (as opposed to the business of making the books). But when I have, I’ve loved it! As an editor, I’m always trying to intuit when a talented author might be interested in my aesthetic feedback -- & I’ve had some wonderful experiences with a few who have taken me up on that. I guess it’s like being the kind of parent you wanted for yourself!  

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Throw away the first 30% of most pieces, which you may have needed in order to write the rest, but which the reader does not. I don’t really know who to thank for this one, but it’s useful for forcing the proper detachment from my own creations.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

It is actually, unfortunately, quite difficult for me to switch genres. In this respect, I feel a bit like those Method actors who can’t break character for the duration of a particular part. If I’m writing poetry, I tend to be more comfortable sticking to that mode of thought, which is so unlike the kind of thinking I need to do in order to write fiction, or essays.

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?

I don’t really have routines or rituals. I suppose I start most days with physical chores! Then I take a walk with my dog, & hopefully start thinking a bit. After I do a respectable amount of what I consider my “duties”—which might involve my editorial responsibilities, or anything else I feel I should be doing — I’ll give myself permission to “indulge” in my own writing.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

When I’m stalled, I’ll either turn outward, to the world – & take a long walk, or gaze (in either an urban or a natural landscape) – or turn to literature — to exemplary versions of whatever form I’m struggling with.  

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Night-blooming jasmine, which grew outside the exterior door to my bedroom in Los Angeles, when I was growing up. My teenage friends & boyfriends often came & went by that door. That particular fragrance, wafting in when the door was opened, bookended my love & social life. 

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?

As I mentioned before, nature feeds my creativity. The natural world makes it easiest for me to hear my own verbal formulations, & follow their sounds & rhythms. I’m lucky enough to have a house in the Catskill Mountains, on a very rugged mountain-top – & I do a lot of writing when I’m there.

Visual art is quite generative for my writing as well. And science. I shamelessly read cosmology & quantum theory that is miles above my head. Not music, though – I can’t hear my own words when I’m listening to something else. Although I used to write fiction to music. I don’t know if I still could. 

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

To inspire & inform my own poetry, I go back again & again to Celan, Borges, Cortazar, Kafka, Ashbery, Michael Palmer, Rae Armantrout, Bin Ramke, Joshua Clover… To feed my inner life I return to Jose Saramago, James Joyce, J.M. Coetzee, Jim Crace, C.S. Nooteboom, Dostoyesky, Chekhov, Kawabata, Woolf, Gordimer, Lydia Davis, Duras, Dickenson, Graham, Carson…

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I’ve done collaborative work with a visual artist and a composer, but I’ve never collaborated with another poet. I find the idea a bit intimidating --so I’d like to try it!

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?

Although I started my adult life as a public interest lawyer, it was not a good fit. As a young person – & a feminist -- I was under the impression that law would be an excellent tool for concrete engagement in social justice. It turned out that no matter how sympatico my clients might be, I would still have to practice law on their behalf – a type of thinking (& interacting) of which I’m neither enamored nor particularly well-suited.

What I might better have done, & suspect I would have very much enjoyed, was pursue academia. As an undergraduate I studied under a brilliant literary theorist, Anne Middleton, and a brilliant rhetorician and film theorist, Seymour Chapman, both of whom were ready, willing & able to take me under their wings. Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready to consider such a path – I told myself it would have been a retreat from “real” issues, to the “ivory tower.” I don’t see it that way at all, now.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I started writing poetry when I was a very small child, six years old or so. I read a book of haiku & that was that. I then spent most of my childhood reading voraciously – real literature, not kids’ stuff. As a very thoughtful & observant child, I was not only educated by great literature, but fed in my natural tendencies. This was enhanced by two factors. In addition to being rather sickly, I spent a large chunk of every year, regardless of school schedules, traveling the world with my film-producer parents (relegating much of my “formal” education to independent study). So I’ve always read & I’ve always written – except for the seven or eight years of college, law school, & my early legal career.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

For such a small word, “great” packs such a big punch! I just re-re-read Crime and Punishment. It’s as rich as life itself: every time I read it, I see it from a different perspective. I also just re-re-experienced Fellini’s 8 ½.  It may be about a bygone era, but it is not dated -- it’s his Portrait of the Artist as an Aging Man. Less iconic but no less extraordinary books & films I’ve been thrilled by, recently, include Bin Ramke’s Tendril, Rae Armantrout’s Versed, Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories; Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place, & Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m just starting a new collection. I don’t know yet what will unify it. As always, I’m a bit torn between an interest in veering towards experimental fiction, & a desire to take my poetry further from narrative. It wouldn’t surprise me if what I’m working on ends up in two books. But for now, they’re in the embryonic stage!

12or 20 (second series) questions;