Small Press Intravues:
Occasional Interviews with writers working and
publishing in the small press ecosystem
How did you get started in writing?
I learned to construct a sentence. As a little kid, I recall an odd dual feeling of unreal control and undue pressure–-a funny freedom and a serious task: to follow one sentence with another, pausing to consider the next. The next could change so many impressions,
it could embellish previous thoughts, it could remark to itself, it could do anything really.
Nobody was hassling me to write either. I think the lack of anybody asking me to do it
was the largest factor in my enjoyment and ownership in that activity. The unneccesary nerviness and rush hasn’t stopped, and I know the primary impulse is the possibility I’ll discover a combination of lines that fire new synapses.
However, however, however, there’s also Robert Duncan’s take I’ve been overhearing a ghost speaking since I was five years old and I’ve quietly been taking dictation for decades.
Why poetry instead of some other form?
Poetry picked up my scent and bear hugged me. It kind of clawed me.
I appreciated its perpetual stream of small attempts to see. To see without comprehension or explanation is the ultimate humility. It all just felt honorable without wanting esteem at all. I love it dearly for that aspect, a striving for saying, looking, moving in soupy atmosphere for often times no end goals.
I think poets are refugees in relentless shock, more than war veterans for sure. Vets can tell you reasons why, poets cannot.
What other form do you see your work influenced by or continuous with? Music? Magic? Science? Journalism? Gardening?
My obsession appears to be social interactive failure, why on earth two persons or fifteen try (hard or not) to communicate, convince themselves they pull it off. They haven’t pulled off jack. Its level of success is in fact dismal.
I consider poetry a direct decendant of the best alternate way to transmit info (besides sign language) -- because the commonplace method is not working to capacity. That’s also the reason poems continue to flourish.
What infinitives best sum up your writing practice? To explore, to investigate, to express, to interrogate, to perform, to reveal, to layer, to obfuscate, to connect? Please choose as many as you wish and explain.
I like all these infinitives—tough to select. Let’s talk about investigation and interrogation.
Comparing detectives to poets is not a stretch, the only difference is we retire before the arrest. Conflict as an idea fascinates me especially because it’s not as biological as we’re led to believe—I claim even if it exists in nature it doesn’t persist in nature, despite National Geographic reels of hunger, territorialty, continuation of the species, etc.
In that sense, conflict is a decision humans make, a real costly choice, and I believe it goes deeper than an adopted mindset, it feels like an ailment many contract. Worse, some thrive on disagreement because they’ve used it as a special backchannel, a fortress, a dam, an escape pod, a spear for egos. My poetry invests in finding the root of why consciousnesses clash so much, even if the cost of that unbalance is laughter.
The work teeters the edge of the absurd and the rational.
Let’s talk about layering and connection. There’s another side to this. Here comes Robert Duncan again. Man, is he always here? There’s a possibility I (the me I) place the concept of conflict outside of myself -- not only may it not persist in nature -- it may not persist except inside myself. That’s scary. That could mean when I witness people arguing or refusing to get along, I’m misinterpreting. My fault. So in this twisted sense, I’d say my poems try to convey a self-deprecation despite any external force.
The car crash beside me (not involving my car) -- perhaps my insurance company should hold me accountable simply for seeing it.
I once heard a fellow Eastern Virginian poet Dave Smith remark whenever he’s in a room, he feels like the problem in the room, that without him in the room, the room is likely wonderful. That was so refreshing to hear, despite it being all sorts of grim.
What ecosystems do you see your work fitting into? That is, who are the other artists and makers and writers that your work is in relationship with?
I’m sandwiched somewhere between Surrealist thinly sliced meats, Beat Generation rye bread, perhaps topped with Classical Roman hearts, I mean romaine hearts.
Difficult to categorize work these days, isn’t it? We’re all kind of blended ingredients and some days we pour in different juices.
What are your current projects? What are you working on? If you’re not writing, are you busy with something else?
I read Ovid’s Fasti a several years ago (because I knew if was half complete) then a few years ago I finished writing the second half. Lately, I stare at those pages. What can I do to warm up to it again? I might have to begin talking to sheep.
I sent it out many places for publication but it made people feel like they were being forced to wear a coat in the summer. The sheer banishment of Ovid will draw me in, especially in quarantine, and I’ll send it out again.
What stuff do you have out in the world, and how can people get their hands on it? Books, chapbooks, individual poems, essays, other interviews, songs, anything else?
I teach teen and adult workshops at The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, VA. One recent workshop centered around Eastern Asian Poetry, and in preparation I read tons of haiku masters Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki. This led me to write my most recent chapbook Ark Aft, available this year through The Magnificent Field, a beautiful press run by transcendent poet Jen Tynes.
I gave myself the challenge of constructing a series of five line poems that are discourses between two animals not generally found associating in the world.
Conflicts
abound.
The book was a way to temper my stubborn tendency to want to expand (overwrite) and what was especially mean about writing the poems is the moment I began to enjoy them,
they ended. They felt more like a life cycle that way, and I owe a huge debt to Japanese ancients.
What would you tell people who are just starting to get involved with writing and publishing?
Get a life. Just kidding.
Writing is the whole house.
Publishing is the crawl space.
Robert Duncan standing in the back yard.
What media are you enjoying lately? Music, tv, movies, art?
During the 2020 Corona epidemic, my wife and best friend Robin and I are re-watching TBS’s Search Party (Alia Shawkat is genius), Funny or Die’s Billy on the Street, and Pop’s Schitt’s Creek episodes while lapping RD Wilhelm Distillery bourbon.
