Houbolt and Kelly met on the old bird app and keep up their acquaintance on bluesky. Sometimes they send each other poems. And sometimes they send each other their opinions. Kelly in italics.
Hi, Kyla! Thanks for being willing to do this email interview with me. I want to start with one of my favorite poems of yours.
Lead Pipe Cinch
inch by inch
the calendar absorbs
that ectoplasmic gloss
of old photos
but also that old timey
time when everyone
was a flower
There's a lot going on in this short poem, but I want to focus for a second on the vocabulary. Cinch, calendar, ectoplasmic, old timey — This is not the sort of text prediction that AI does. How do you think about where your mind goes next? Word to word. How do you think about where your eyes go next?
I don't recall how I did this, but I must have started with the title phrase (which is a weird one in itself, what the heck IS a lead pipe cinch? Probably a plumbing tool, not a foregone conclusion but never mind that). Then went to the easy rhyme of "inch" and then from spatial measure to time measure... and then the thought of the calendar absorbing time as it passes; ectoplasmic is a lovely old fashioned idea about what exists of living things just "outside" the physical apparent. Gloss goes first, in the erosion of time, like the top layer of emulsion on something as ephemeral as a photograph. Ectoplasm already invoked for me "old timey" and when I asked Poet Self "old timey what?" the notion of each human being having a delicate tender part, a flower, that we used to acknowledge (in my romantic imagination anyway). What flower are you? Time passing absorbs memory, consumes it.
Poet Self, hmm... I know a bit of your biography but not much: in and around college where you got some suspect advice about not using big words out of solidarity with the working class; some time in Kentucky where you posted poems on the trunks of trees; more recently in the Pacific Northwest, moving frequently, tending goats and flowers; and in the last few years publishing poems in journals and a string of chapbooks. How did old Poet Self get her start? And what does she think of where the path has led to?
First off, it was North Carolina, not Kentucky, where I put poems on trees. But I understand; my wanderings are hard to track, even for me. Before there was old Poet Self, there was young Poet Self, who put in a decades long apprenticeship of a kind. I don't know where I got the idea, initially, to write poems, but in my early 20s I made a concerted effort to learn how, by reading a lot (great gulps of Emily Dickinson) and doing many revisions of what I wrote. The single workshop I took in those years (though there was one later, in San Francisco, run by Bob Gluck...) was a weekend offered by Judson Jerome, then poetry editor of Writer's Digest, on his land, in Maryland I think it was? -- a communal living situation called Downhill Farm. The Mason Dixon line ran through it unless I am remembering some other place. Anyway, that was fun. I did get one poem published in those early days, in a newsprint tabloid called Cedar Rock. You'd think that would have been exciting for me but in fact it put me off sending out work for many years, because when I received my four contributor's copies I realized no one I knew would ever read this poem in this publication and I had a deep "so what's the point?" feeling. Instead I managed to find a series of really low key situations where I could read and share poems. I dipped a toe in the slam movement when it first started but then veered off that pathway in order to do some environmental activism, which consumed most of my creative juice for a while. During that time I made collages and after for a while wrote a few fabulist short stories, which I did try to publish but was daunted by the whole process and set those aside. I did keep trickling out poems ("can't stop won't stop") and found my way much later onto an online writers forum where I put in some serious work but didn't write anything worth much. There was one poet there whose work I admired a lot. He left and went to Twitter, and I went there after a while also, because I wanted to read more of his work. He wasn't posting much at all by then, but you, J-T, surely remember what a rich field it was for a while, for poets. I found it liberating, and consumed poetry there, and my work became orders of magnitude better, just by means of my seeing what was possible. Still, given the really sort of unregulated process this poetry journey has been, it's rather amazing to me that I actually have five chapbooks in print. I continue to feel the movement of learning from what I read and seeing how I might grow what I write into -- here I lack the word -- improvement of a kind.
This is that first poem I published, an ekphrastic inspired by a photograph, though I didn't learn that term for years:
Apart
Sheets and shirts
are hung on the line with pins.
The one shirt on the hanger
walks into the house.
It's up there alone
in the dark under the porch roof.
The back is bent, elbows swing
invisible hands perfectly.
It's easy to see the legs follow
in the black space underneath.
Apart,
it has put back on its body.
Oh god for a face
before the back door opens
Originally published in Cedar Rock, sometime in the mid 1970’s, probably 1974. This is the first poem I ever published. Cedar Rock was a small newsprint tabloid edited by David Yates.
That poem's a real gift. Thank you.
What poems have changed you along the way? You mentioned Emily Dickinson. Are there others? From back then, from today? A poet or a poem that got under your skin and affected how you approach writing? Also, what places have similarly gotten to you and changed you? A city? A house? A highway?
Everything. Everything has gotten and gets under my skin and changes me. I can't think of anything that has not! This to me is the appeal of writing poetry (in part, always in part): to document, to express that relationship with the world and existence, which is a process of awakening.
However, I'll choose some specifics. First, Gary Snyder has been a major nourishment for my writing. It's like I got permission to write in ordinary speech from his poems, which all feel in a way intimately human, like someone sitting in the room with you talking about things -- the most mundane and the most sublime. Well, before that though, in high school I felt joy to discover the Beat poets for that permission to free up language. e. e. cummings experimental ways were similarly a source of permission. Then much more recently, the existence of the New York School of poets, especially Frank O'Hara, who for some reason claimed two birthdays and the fake one is also mine! Ha! I began my writing journey with the intention of aiming for poems that are easily accessible to anyone who can read English, which also upon closer reading contain depths that sort of go on forever. A goal I shall never reach of course, and lately that "accessibility" wish has become less important as I enjoy taking more risks and pushing the language. (For instance, at this time I consider John Ashbery to be the single greatest American poet.) Sometimes writing a poem feels like pushing the language away from its enclosing structure, pushing it out of shape so that there is more room inside. And here's something else: This question of yours came in just as I was unpacking my books, which had been stored for me by a kind poet friend, and I was reminded about Spencer Holst! whose book The Zebra Storyteller came into my hands in a magical way. It was in a wonderful bookstore in Santa Cruz CA, Logos, which had a huge selection of everything, used and new books both. I was browsing the section of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and The Zebra Storyteller had been mis-shelved there. It didn't literally fall on my head but it might as well have. I read a little in it and immediately thought "I can do that too!" which was a delightful boost to my writing.
"A city? A house? A highway?" What a delicious prompt that is! But at this moment I have to leave my answer as it stands: everything has changed me. 9/11 which finally spurred me to get on the internet was most definitely a watershed event. Via the internet I learned about Dean Young when he died! I immediately bought a copy of Shock by Shock, and it fed me. And how can I not mention Han Shan, otherwise known as Cold Mountain? The old Chinese poets....
I am always aware that my list of poets I love is heavily male. Re: the New York School, I intentionally sought out Bernadette Meyer and Alice Notely -- Meyer I have not warmed to so much; Notely I have been really inspired by, mostly by seeing her online reading her work, which I believe she still does. And this is a terribly almost painfully incomplete answer! I have to end here though; day has come.
[I woke to the news that Trump had taken Pennsylvania overnight and then Wisconsin at 5:34 AM, giving him the electoral votes to become the next president. I closed my news app and opened my email thread with Kyla.]
Well. Let's talk about poetry.
I wonder how you approach revision, Kyla. And has your approach changed over time? I know that you've been in the habit of writing short pieces and sharing them online. Do you go back to those poems? Are the poems in your chapbooks from a different process? How do you think about a poem being finished?
My approach has changed and I hope will keep changing. In the early days I really had no idea how to revise or polish or make it better, but I just chipped away. I picked up clues here and there. I read an article (forget by whom) about "getting off the subject", meaning that what you start addressing needs to go somewhere else, or else you don't really have a poem. Much later I learned that this is called a turn, or volta. (I do not believe this is an absolute; in fact the one absolute I believe in about poems is that there are no absolutes.) If I have a good metaphor I can't just let it be, oh, that's a good description of x. I have to take it somewhere, and I try to take it somewhere unexpected, something that's not signaled to the reader until, boom!, it happens. Another clue I picked up -- I think it was a YouTube video of a talk by, maybe, Jane Hirshfield? who said "don't embarrass yourself." What I have to guard against there is a kind of emotional over-sentimentality. Sometimes, years later, just reading my own poems can bring me to tears but I labor not to have that be obvious at all.
When I started out trying to be intentional about poetry, in my early 20s, I studied metrics and I knew all the feet and rhythmic patterns. I could not even identify them now, but some of that took root I guess, because a big thing for me is that the poem has to sound right when I read it out loud to myself and a lot of that has to do with rhythm. As for the short poems I post online, those posts sort of became my "trees" when I stopped posting poems on trees. I do go back to them but rarely change them. Sometimes. Many of the poems in my chapbooks first appeared as posts online. Longer poems usually take longer to write and more steps to the process. A few shorter poems sit around for a long time before they get finished. Ha! I am thinking of one poem I wrote many years ago that I still have not found an ending for. I keep hoping I'll come up with something! This has been known to happen in a few instances, after years go by.
Finished is a combination of 1, it sounds good to my ear; 2, I can't come up with any way to improve it; and 3, I'm no longer interested in working with it. It's really, in the end, a matter of intention. I have to feel that every element of the poem is there intentionally. If I discover I have repeated a word, I usually have to find a substitute for one instance of the word, but sometimes the repetition is useful. Line breaks are important. Often I will fiddle with where I place them until it feels right.
Boxes, huh? Maybe you're right. Come to think of it, I have a poem about living in a box. That's for another time. But, Kyla, I want to thank you for your candor and for sharing your poems and your mind with me. Would you wrap up this interview by telling us what you are reading now? I have the idea you read many books at once, and I'd love to have a peek at what you're in the middle of. Thanks!
Thank you, Hyphen, for inviting me to this conversation, it's been stimulating. As for multiple books at once, I used to do that much more than I do now. As you know, I just returned to NC after two years wandering and looking for a better place to be, which I did not find. And my books were being hosted by a kind poet friend and I have most of them unpacked now, so I'm greeting old friends. I am reading Kenneth Koch's Collected Poems for the book club currently underway, celebrating the 100th year since his birth. I am also dipping in to my old friend Cold Mountain (Han Shan) and a little book of poems called Understander by N.W. Lea, given to me by rob mclennan (thanks, rob!) Visiting again with The Water Engine by my friend Ankh Spice, and in the middle of a collection called The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, by Denis Johnson. I am awaiting delivery of I Remember by Joe Brainard, too, and will no doubt be reading that soon as it arrives. It's a joy to have my books around me again.
Kyla Houbolt writes poems and occasional reviews, and makes gardens. Find her on her website at https://kylahoubolt.us/, on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/luaz.bsky.social, and on her Linktree, https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet
J-T Kelly is the author of the chapbook Like Now (CCCP/Subpress, 2023). His poetry appears in The Denver Quarterly (upcoming), Bad Lilies, and elsewhere. He is an innkeeper in Indianapolis.