Matt O’Donnell: An Interview with the From the Fishouse Creator

by 32poems on January 16, 2012

I (Deborah) had the pleasure of interviewing Matt O’Donnell via email about the From the Fishouse website. I’ve always admired people who started unique web projects related to poetry— No Tell Motel, Anti-, Verse Daily, CellPoems, etc.

1. What led you to start Fishousepoems.org?

Fishouse started entirely by accident. It started as a way for me to memorize poems on my commute to work. I asked my friend Camille Dungy if she’d record for me. Honestly, at this point, I forget exactly how we came to it, but we decided it’d be cool to get a couple of recorders and send them around to other poets to do the same thing. Then we thought, well, other people will want to hear these recordings, too, so let’s post them on a website. That was 2004, and it was still a little unusual to have online recordings of poets, especially poets early in their careers.

The idea went from a personal project to public one pretty quickly. In just a couple of months, I was filling out IRS applications to set up a non-profit so that we’d be eligible for donations and grants to fund the project, and we were putting together by-laws and a board of directors.

From the start, the purpose of the Fishouse has been two-fold: to give poets early in their careers—“emerging” poets-—a platform for their work; and to give poetry fans and teachers and students the opportunity to hear poets reading their own work.

We needed a way to limit the overwhelming number of poets to choose to record, and we figured that more established poets have more outlets for their work. We had to come up with a definition of “emerging,” and Camille and I settled on poets with fewer than two books at the time of submission to Fishouse. As time has passed, of course, poets we recorded as “emerging” have now “emerged,” and so Fishouse serves as an archive in this way. Also, there are special “bonus” poets on the site, poets well outside the “emerging” definition, who I record and post when a chance arises.

2. What past experience (work or otherwise) helped you in creating the website? What did you need to learn?

If it weren’t for my day job at Bowdoin College (in the Office of Communications), I’m not sure I would have been able to get Fishouse going or maintain it if I did. Not to mention that our original web designer was a Bowdoin colleague, and without him, I don’t know who’d have created the first version of the site into a decent website (although, we have that problem now, as that volunteer designer left and we’re trying to figure out how to fund a full site redesign). The basic HTML I learned from working on the Bowdoin magazine website helped enormously. Additionally, a Bowdoin alum, who was at the time an editor at the tech site CNET and had recently written a book about digital audio, recommended the original FH recording devices to me. And, lately, there’s a big crossover in the use of social media with my day job and Fishouse’s.


3. For those who might not be familiar with the Fishouse, could you include a selection of poets you feel are representative of your editorial taste? I know this is a hard question to answer.

Well, one of the greatest things about Fishouse—and a key to its success—is that it’s not simply my editorial taste. I’ll answer in a bit more detail below about how the selection process works. In short, I don’t make all the selections, so the site isn’t limited by my aesthetic. I definitely have personal favorites, but so many favorites I can’t name them. One poem we often hold up as an example is “To Whoever Set my Truck on Fire” by Steve Scafidi. And, if you take a look at the Fishouse printed anthology, the poems we collected there are all ones that we felt represented Fishouse in its mission to highlight the connection between the poem in the air and the poem on the page and in a wide range of styles (culled just from our first two years).

4. What are your recommendations for others who may want to start an online poetry project?

Don’t!

But, if you must, you should treat it as a business. Come up with a business plan, a workflow plan, and know your goals, short and long-term. Know what else is out there doing what you might want to do, the “competition,” and figure out a way to distinguish yourself.

With so much poetry available online, I think new online projects need to be niche, need to have a well-defined focus. Fishouse concentrates on audio from poets early in their careers—“emerging poets,” who we define as poets with fewer than two published collections at the time of submission. The focus on audio from emerging poets sets Fishouse apart enough to give our brand, if you will, meaning.

One of the things I wish I’d done better is plan for the long-term future of Fishouse. Nearly eight years down the road, we don’t have a firm plan for my successor. As far as I’m concerned, Fishouse won’t truly be successful until it lives beyond me, beyond my daily involvement, and I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately working on those plans.

5. Creating book trailers and audio is becoming more commonplace. Do you have technical tips for poets, or others, who would like to create a video or record themselves reading?

I’m sure the common computer user has as much technical skill, if not more, than I do—my nine-year-old daughter seems hardwired for it. The first time she picked up a touch screen at age five, she knew exactly how to navigate it.

I’d love to learn how really edit audio at a high level. I know the basics. Just enough to get a relatively clean track. But, in order to keep posting new material on the site, keep the admin going, I haven’t had the time to study more complex audio editing. Well, that’s to say, I haven’t made the time. Because it’s just spoken word, there’s not much more I need to do to the audio than clean up some background noise, so I figure it’s better to get more voices up on the site than to spend my limited time on audio methods that aren’t absolutely necessary. Given a do-over, though, I’d learn as much as I could right from the start, when I was spending time on setting up Fishouse.

The most basic element of getting a good recording at home is to find a quiet place with little background noise and to be wary of things that make noise while you’re reading—the computer, a squeaky chair, pages turning. Sometimes, background noise provides ambiance and context, and I like it in a recording—an urban poet with the street noise in the background; Steve Scafidi’s chickens because the quietest place he could find to record was his hen house—but I find that loud floor creaks, door slams, paper rustlings, and electronic clicks are distracting.

The only other thing I’d offer for advice is to practice with the recording device to determine what settings give you the best sound, and at what distance from the microphone.


6. What is the selection process for inclusion in the Fishouse?

This is a question I’m often asked, especially because Fishouse is closed to unsolicited submissions.

The selection process began organically and grew into a system with benefits that we’d never imagined, and that process is largely responsible for our success. We ask each poet we publish to recommend two additional (emerging) poets whose work they’d like to see on Fishouse. While this method seems ripe for nepotism, it’s worked in just the opposite fashion, giving Fishouse a much wider scope and range of work than it would otherwise enjoy. We’ve published more than 200 poets, so we effectively have around 100 editors, and growing.

Fishouse doesn’t simply feature my aesthetic as editor, it features work by poets across a broad spectrum and, in this way, really represents the contemporary landscape. Because of this, we draw a wide range of listeners. It is in large part what makes Fishouse work.

From a practical standpoint, I simply don’t have time to wade through unsolicited submissions. I can barely keep up with our current system. But, even if I did have time (or say, a staff), at this point, I’m not sure I’d change anything. It’s turned out to work so well this way.

I think that poets hold Fishouse to high standards and recommend other poets who’s work they feel deserves (for lack of a better word) space on the site. If Rigoberto González feels strongly enough about a poet’s work to recommend him or her to me, I trust his judgment. He’s the editor in that case.

When choosing a group of poets to send recorders, I go through the list of recommended poets chronologically and try to pick and choose a balanced lineup of male and female writers from a variety of recommending poets, so that we get a good mix of work with each round of postings.

7. What is your advice for balancing Fishouse, your day work, and your writing?

It’s almost never in balance. I really only have early mornings to work on Fishouse, with the odd weekend day. I’m either working on Fishouse almost exclusively every morning, or not working on it at all.

And, when working on Fishouse, I’m either doing editorial or administrative work. If I’m posting new poems, I’m not giving the Board direction, not working on fundraising, or site redesign, not answering emails or communicating with constituents. Because my time is so limited, when I’m doing one of those things, I’m not doing any of the others, and it takes all of them together to make Fishouse successful. That I can’t really keep up speaks greatly to the work that we feature on the site—it remains popular, and continues to grow, even though I can’t cultivate it as it truly needs, because the strength of the material continues to draw visitors.

I basically stopped writing—no, I did stop writing—my own poems as Fishouse grew. Immersed in so much good poetry, I’ve never been more inspired to write, but I’ve never had so little time. That’s it with writers, right? Those who succeed simply make time and those who don’t use it as an excuse. That’s certainly some of my problem. After being away from it for so long, I’m afraid to face a blank page again. And, on top of that, it’s intimidating to be so close to so much good work. I’ve concluded, at this point, that it’s more important for me to work on Fishouse than it is to write my own poems. There’s enough good poetry out there, and there’s enough bad poetry already, too. Maybe one day I’ll feel a burning desire again, but right now, I’d rather spend that time on Fishouse.

However, just doing that is becoming increasingly difficult. As my daily job at Bowdoin includes more and more social media work, it becomes less 9:00-5:00 and more around the clock, seven days a week. I lose many mornings now to day job duties that I didn’t have even just a year or so ago.

So Fishouse and the day job, on top of family life, and outside pursuits, definitely make it a juggling act. But, it’s not juggling chainsaws, and I try to keep that in perspective.

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Meet George David Clark, New Editor

by 32poems on October 3, 2011

Dear Readers,

My relationship with 32 Poems Magazine began some time ago when a poet friend slipped an issue into my hand and demanded I stop what I was doing to read the lyric he had just come across. The poems I found those pages stood out for their sonic complexity and the freshness of their idiom. Unlike the other journals I read, 32 Poems, in its unique focus on the short lyric, maintained a consistent and compelling identity. The poems one found there seemed strategically chosen, its poets part of a community, not linked by school or aesthetic but by special attention to the language. Eventually I sent work to the journal myself. My poems were promptly rejected, but through those rejections I met John Poch whose thoughtful comments made it clear that he not only read submissions sympathetically, but possessed a unique talent for identifying how they fell short of their own aspirations. A balance of eclecticism and rigorous standards of craft is one of the things that make 32 Poems so special. Working more closely with the journal these last two years, I have come to appreciate how John’s fundamental generosity of attention has supported the work of his poets, and, issue after issue, gathered some of the most exciting poetry being written today. The loyal readership and enviable reputation 32 Poems enjoys is, above all, a testament to the power of a passionate editor.

I do not take lightly the benchmarks that John Poch and Deborah Ager have set at 32 Poems, but I am also excited about the magazine’s future. 32 Poems will continue to host a wide variety of styles and schools with excellence and compression as common denominators. To the magazine’s many longtime readers, I pledge my commitment to finding and encouraging poets who reinvent the language rather than just giving us more of the same, poets previously unpublished and those whose work we have admired for many years. 32 Poems has always had that attitude, and that is precisely why readers like myself have long looked forward to its arrival each semester in our mailboxes.

George David Clark

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Bidding Goodbye to John Poch; Hello to George David Clark

by 32poems on October 2, 2011

Dear Poetry Readers,

After almost ten years of editing 32 Poems Magazine with Deborah Ager, I am stepping down. It is no small step for me, yet I do believe it is, as well, a step in the right direction. First, I want to thank all the poets who submitted work to the magazine during my tenure. I owe gratitude to not only the poets whose poems were accepted but also those poets who sent in work that just somehow wasn’t a fit. What a blessing to realize the great diversity of American poetry in our midst. I have been acting as some kind of magazine editor for more than 15 years now (Chattahoochee Review and American Literary Review, as well), and it is time for me to pay more attention to my own writing and, more importantly, to devote closer attention to Auden, Bishop, Larkin, Eliot, Shakespeare, Dante, and my other favorites.

I wish the best to George David Clark, who is taking over my duties. He is a discriminating reader who I believe will make the magazine better than I have made it. I will stay on in an advising/contributing editor capacity, but after this December, I won’t be choosing the poems any more. It has been an honor and a pleasure. Even if so many of our poets and poems hadn’t won Best New Poets and Best American Poets and NEAs and Guggenheims and MacArthurs and published books with 32 POEMS on the acknowledgments page, I would still believe that we were publishing the best poems in America.

And finally, I thank Deborah Ager who has made 32 Poems Magazine a constant pleasure for all of us.

I know it’s old fashioned and probably a small sacrifice, but please subscribe. And tell your friends they ought to. It’s poetry.

John Poch

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Confession Tuesday: The New Guy

by Joshua Gray on September 20, 2011

I just agreed to be blog editor for 32 Magazine, and so here starts a new venture for me.

I confess that I am quite nervous about this new position I am taking on with 32 Poems. I confess that I am afraid I’ll mess it up somehow, whatever “it” is.

I confess I don’t have an MFA, nor am I moving to get one. I may even be against getting an MFA, at least for me. But that might be a racket.

I confess the lack of an MFA makes me feel somehow unworthy of opportunities. But that is not what I am committed to. I am committed to opportunities and possibilities for everyone.

I confess I hated poetry once. I felt like I didn’t understand it, at all, and that poets were inferior somehow for writing it.

I confess I do not believe “William Shaksper” of Stratford-on-Avon was a poet. I believe the Earl of Oxford Edward Devere was. This is my own opinion.

I confess knew putting quotes in that previous confession was superfluous. I was having fun with another Tuesday confession Kelli Russell Agodon had.

I confess I do not know how to end this post. I will end it here.

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Bridge

by Joshua Gray on September 19, 2011

I’ve been thinking a lot about poetry a bit more so than usual, perhaps due to my gig as the DC Poetry Examiner for Examiner.com. Since starting at Examiner.com, I’ve noticed more and more where poetry sits in the world of art forms.

The thing about poetry is it isn’t just an art form. Poetry has a function. It serves a purpose. You might say all art forms serve a purpose, and you would be correct. I’m not saying poetry has some sort of arrogant egoism inherent to it that other art forms don’t have. I am saying I am more aware of the powers behind my own art form.

Poetry is a bridge.

I originally thought of poetry as glue, but glue suggests a substance that sticks two unrelated or arbitrary things together; bridges act as a catalyst for bringing two related or adjacent things together as a collective. I like “bridge.”

So what does poetry bridge together? Fiction expresses ideas through words, without the use of music. Song writing expresses ideas through words, with the use of music as a separate but vital entity. Written poetry expresses ideas through words, with music vitally as part of the expression. Another example: written poetry and song lyrics express themselves on the printed page. Hip Hop and Rap are very poetic forms of performance music. Spoken word poetry bridges these two worlds together.

I was at a monthly performance and reading in Washington DC (Cheryl’s Gone at The Big Bear Cafe) a few months ago, and there were two interesting artists who were on the program. One was a novelist and read two chapters of his book. Another was a songwriting duet, who performed with guitar, xylophone, and other instruments. These two performances would have seemed awfully weird together on the same evening, if it had not been for the poets who also performed. The evening went like this: fiction reading — poetry reading — spoken word poetry — song. And it worked — the event was seamless in its structure.

Now, I am sure poetry isn’t the only art form that bridges other art forms together. I would never suggest that. But I might assert, with some strong bias to go with it, that the poetry bridge is made of stone; whether the other art form bridges are as well I’ll leave up to the artists themselves.

Two other notes: 1) I had dinner with my dad a couple weeks ago, and he asserted that hip-hop/rap was the new poetry. 2) I saw Nikki Giovanni back in the days of snow, and she asserted that she welcomed Jay-Z as one of her own. Thus not only does poetry seem to be a bridge, but it may be shifting in its foundation.

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Three Summers of Poetry and Pathos: A Poet’s Ride With Cancer

by Joshua Gray on September 17, 2011

For the past three summers, cancer has shown up in my poetry. In 2009, my mother-in-law passed away after a short-lived battle with pancreatic cancer. Last year, I was diagnosed with stage IIIa Melanoma. And earlier this summer, my father-in-law’s wife has been told if she doesn’t do chemotherapy and radiation therapy, breast cancer will take her in 3-6 months.

The circumstances behind our respective diagnoses are all different. My mother-in-law was feeling nauseous and unable to eat for months before she was finally diagnosed several specialists later. I saw that a crumb-sized mole on my foot had mushroomed to the size and depth of a pea. But it’s my wife’s step-mother’s diagnosis that is truly incredible. Earlier this summer, she was in a head-on car crash in broad daylight that not only required surgery in her leg, but also cracked five of her ribs. If it hadn’t been for the other driver, uninsured and reckless, she wouldn’t have cracked those ribs, and there never would have been a reason for the MRI that found the mass.

When my mother-in-law passed away, the poem I wrote for her was an easy one, in terms of topic and structure. Before she passed, I had actually been thinking of the poem that would need to be written if her fight didn’t end well, so it had basically written itself by the time of the service.

When I was diagnosed, that was an entirely different story. They say in times like this a lot of bad poetry is written for every good one. That was certainly true for me. I wrote a lot. I do have a couple of instant keepers that came out of it, but I don’t believe in throwing the others away. Revising, I told my eldest son the other week, can take years. I didn’t listen to my golden rule of writing poetry: resist the urge to write. Instead, I wrote when it came to me, with no regard for patience or rationality. Very little good comes to my poetry when I write this way; I don’t know if the bad poems came from this refusal to follow my golden rule, or because it was the saying that a lot of bad poems come out of experiences like this, or if the two are somehow intertwined and really the same thing. But regardless of the reason, the poems need to be worked on, however long it takes, until they are ready.

It was poor timing in another way, as well. I had just clued myself in on the great powers of social media for writers that Spring of 2010, and while I had begun to come out of my introverted shell like a lone poet wallowing in the corner at a party, I had at least attended the party. Social media networking had also grown a sprout for me to actually network in the real world. My first real chance at doing this (outside of an on-line poetry class, which is suspect) was attending the Sotto Voce Poetry Festival that October in Sheperdstown, WV. I had signed up for a couple events there, but ultimately I was still too weak to go. It would have been an all-day event for me, and I just didn’t have the energy after having two major surgeries that summer. I distinctly remember “meeting” Deborah Ager of 32 Poems on Twitter, knowing she was already there, and thought there was someone I could actually meet and greet. It was this sort of social process for poets that had come to mean so much to me in the past six months, and I blamed cancer for stalling it.

This year, I don’t know what the creative process has in store for me. My father-in-law’s wife’s cancer diagnosis came a few weeks ago, but it looked like surgery could remove the mass and the survival chance was high. Now that we now how far it’s spread, we’re looking at a new prognosis altogether. The wonderful woman the cancer is attached to is full of energy, entertaining, a wonderful cook, and a good wife and mother. I care for her deeply, even though in the 15 years I’ve known her, I’ve spent relatively very little time with her. I am not as close to my step-mother-in-law the way I was my mother-in-law. So I don’t know what poem will come out of this experience. It’s not easy to think about the potential poem the way it was in 2009. And in some ways perhaps it will be harder to get it right than it was in 2010. All I know is that four years ago I knew no one who fought the cancer battle; now, I know too many. This is the kind of thing poets dream of, in a way, topics that are in your face and challenging to the soul, but ultimately I would rather have the people in my life than the poems for whom they are written.

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Jessica Piazza: An Interview With Serena M. Agusto-Cox

by Serena on September 16, 2011

Poet Jessica Piazza

1.  How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word?  Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

Usually I just tell people that I’m a word-nerd and that I’m generally ridiculous.  I like getting that out there early.  I also probably pipe in that I’m from Brooklyn, New York pretty early on, because I’m really proud of where I come from.  Brooklyn has definitely become the trendy place to be for artists and hipsters of all ilk, but growing up deep in South (read: uncool) Brooklyn is a completely different story, and a very particular story at that.  Other than that, I’m more likely to talk about my dog than myself.  His name is Special and he’s seriously….special.

2. Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

Those three genres are powerful in VERY different ways.  I never really understood the spoken word vs. written poetry debate.  They’re not at odds because, in my eyes, they are entirely different genres with just a few overlapping skills necessary to excel in them.  For example, to do written poetry you don’t have to be skilled at public speaking, performance art, communication through body language, etc.  (Though, as I’ve written in several places, I think it’s a shame when poets don’t make a concerted effort to be great, engaged and engaging readers, since people often give their hard-earned free time and money to come watch them at readings.)   And to be a really good written poet you have to have a way with the page, with white space, with the tricks of craft that allow a simple line break to become a pun or a double entendre.  Those craft tools are rather different from the ones a great spoken word artist has to possess.  I find spoken work to be very moving in a kinetic way; I like feeling like a part of the entire experience, in the sense that my energy (as a part of the crowd) helps to flavor and drive the performance.  I also am excited by how the particular spoken word artist becomes the conduit for the piece’s ideas, and how the words and the speaker are inseparable.  Written poetry is powerful for the opposite reason to me….the written poem at its best isn’t attached inextricably to the poet, but becomes–upon reading and rereading and contemplation–the reader’s own.

And yes, I think writing has always been, in certain forms and in certain climates, an equalizer.  However, I also think in other forms and climates, writing has alienated people of different classes, genders, cultures, etc.  Words belong, collectively, to all of us, and so they are not inherently useful toward specific good or specific bad ends.  Writing is so powerful it can lead people to amazing understanding and love (think Harriet Beecher Stowe) or to, well, total darkness (think of the mass suicides that took place after people read Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” or, in fact, the horrifying affects of any propagandist writing.)

3.  Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

Ha!  Obsessions are my obsession.  A quick Googling of me reveals that my entire writing life for the past few years focused almost primarily on ruminations about clinical phobias and clinical philias.  I wrote poem after poem inspired by these weird obsessive fears and obsessive loves, and my entire manuscript is anchored by them. For me, that was subject was a natural one, since I get addicted to ideas or projects themselves and have to play them out until I’ve killed them in some emotional way.  I mean, I *only* write poems in projects, and that’s beginning to bite me in the ass as I try to create a second manuscript.  For example, how do you fit together a dozen strange ekphrastic poems with erasure poems made from news articles and tiny, technical poems about bridges?  It ain’t easy, kids.  That’s all I’m saying.

4.  Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I’m not much a reader of books on writing, but one did move me, years ago.  It’s not specifically writing focused, even!  It’s called “Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking” by David Bayles and Ted Orland.  It contains this astonishing tidbit: “If ninety-eight percent of our medical students were no longer practicing medicine five year after graduation, there would be a Senate investigation, yet that proportion of art majors are routinely consigned to an early professional death. Not many people continue making art when – abruptly – their work is no longer seen, no longer exhibited, no longer commented upon, no longer encouraged. Could you?”

Reading that only articulated my already steadfast determination to provide artistic communities: spaces for the sharing and appreciation of poetry, in person and on the page.   A year interning with Robert Pinsky (and Maggie Dietz!) at “The Favorite Poem Project”  in Boston—an endeavor that set out to prove poetry touched ordinary Americans—was the perfect groundwork for me.  As hundreds and hundreds of love letters to poetry poured in that first year, I realized that the power of great literature is not esoteric—it’s visceral, vibrant and necessary.  It was right there…proof that poetry could have power as a pop-cultural force, not just an academic byproduct.  I wanted to find a way to work with this idea, both expanding poetry’s place (and scope) in education, and simultaneously ensuring its recognition as a viable source of popular entertainment and inspiration.

To that end, over the years I helped to found a popular reading series (Speakeasy Poetry Series in NYC), a successful national literary journal (Bat City Review) and a small university press (Gold Line Press). Funny, though…it’s ironic that, at first, I never thought of teaching as a way to advocate poetry in the community.  But when I started as a Teaching Assistant in 2003, I saw the impression that well-made literature could make on generally unimpressed students, and I’m proud to say that I’ve helped create many new poetry lovers over the last eight years of teaching at a college level.  No wonder teaching became a passion—it doesn’t get much more inspiring than that.

5.  Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers.  Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

See above.  I don’t think it’s an obligation, per se, but it sure as hell should be a priority.  The humanities are not experiencing a golden age in the mind of the average American right now, and I think that new technology and a little creative thinking could turn that around eventually.  Spoken word and slam events, which we talked about earlier, actually did traditional poetry a huge service by sparking a poetic interest in people who didn’t think much about it (if anything) beforehand.  However, I think we can do better, and I think we should.  For the most part, my colleagues and I want jobs teaching in our field, not only because we need to make a living (would we have chosen this career if money were the first priority?) but because we believe that it’s actually important to teach literature and writing.  You asked me if literature and writing can change the world, and it can, but that takes a rare piece of writing and a specific cultural or political situation indeed.  But what writing can absolutely change, and quickly, are the hearts and minds of individuals…for the better.  As poets, I believe most of us want to do this, but we don’t really have that opportunity unless we concentrate on advocating our genre in the mainstream world.  We don’t have to be part of an antiquated art form unless we choose to be, and I don’t believe we have to dumb down our writing to be popular.  I mean, look at music as a genre! There’s Ke$ha, there’s Radiohead, there’s Sigur Ros: definitely a sliding scale from translucent to opaque, but all popular in their own right.  Poetry can have its narratives, its lyrics, its formal verses, its language play, and there can be something for everyone, as long as the quality is there.

I think part of the problem is that we as poets accept, and even sometimes encourage, the insularity of our world.  We think confining poetry to this small, mostly academic (but either way certainly elitist) world will protect our jobs, or keep us at some higher artistic level, or simply make us these strange, interesting creatures in the eyes of the laypeople we meet at parties and such.  But all it does, honestly, is encourage fewer people to read poetry.  Poetry!  Remember it, poetry, that thing we love and that changes our lives and that everyone should have the opportunity to love?

6.  When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same?  What are the top 5 songs on that playlist?  If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

I write quite often in coffee chops or public places, so I’m accustomed to (and work well around) the white noise of public daily life.  When I do listen to music while writing it has to be either lyric-free (like classical) or I have to know the lyrics so well they don’t distract me from the words I’m seeking for the piece.  Some of those inspiring, tried and true favorites include Joni Mitchell’s album “Blue,” Everything But the Girl’s “Amplified Heart,” Josh Ritter’s “Hello Starling,” and this really emo indie mix I have with lots of Arcade Fire, Shins, Decemberists and same such bands.  It’s weird, though….I’m pretty much all over the map as far as musical inspiration. Sometimes I’ll write to Feist and sometimes I’ll write to old-school Wu-Tang albums.  It’s a toss up.

7.  In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

I’ve done a masters degree at UT Austin and just finished my exams for a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing at USC, so I certainly have benefitted from the communities created by workshops; students and mentors alike.  I’ve kept my own writing circles strong and rely on my closest, amazingly talented writer friends (most especially Jill Alexander Essbaum, Heather Aimee O’Neill, Rebecca Lindenberg, Joshua Rivkin and a fantastic slew of school colleagues I keep in touch with) to keep me in check. I wouldn’t say my circles of friendship have changes since I started writing (especially since I always wrote, and it was always a factor in many of my friendships) but I will say that years of working with my closest writer friends really adds a strength and intimacy to those friendships.  Seeing draft after draft means you see people at their most vulnerable, art-wise, and it takes a strong bond to navigate that well.

8.  How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

Sometimes I don’t.  But I don’t think that’s about writing.  It’s really the same for any desk-based profession, no?  Just get up out of your chair and do something physical.  But that hasn’t always been my strongest point.  I go through phases.  Then again, I go through phases of prolific writing and artistic dry spells, too, so maybe that’s just my personality.  And it doesn’t help that I love to cook decadent food!

9.  Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired?  What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?

I’m obsessed with food.  I love to cook.  I stress cook, in fact, and tend to procrastinate by cooking new dishes and posting about them on Facebook.  It’s a pleasure and a curse.  As far as pumping myself up….truthfully, I don’t know.  Talking to my writer friends helps, reading an amazing book or poem helps.  Sometimes I can’t pump myself up at all, and when those dry spells hit I just have to weather them.  Luckily, with all this academic work to do, the time I can carve out for my creative writing becomes a pleasure instead of a chore.

10.  Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

I don’t have a writing space, really.  I have an office I barely use; when I’m home my computer and I are usually parked at the dining room table.  I do like to write in coffee shops and other public places, though.  Noise doesn’t bother me, but life going on around me inspires my work.  My ideal writing space, then?  At home, it would be somewhere airy, with a lot of light and nice breezes and maybe a view of people on the street.  (Meaning, I guess, that it wouldn’t be in LA, where there mostly are no people on the street.)

11.  What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

Oh man.  As I mentioned above, projects are sort of my bread and butter.

For poetry, I’m shopping around my manuscript, Interrobang, which predominantly consists of formal poems about clinical phobias and clinical philias.  I’m also working on several poem series: one of strange ekphrastic poems, one that’s obsessing over military alphabet code words, one of small poems whose titles pair together two unrelated words, one with my terribly talented friend Heather Aimee O’Neill where we take New York Times articles and do erasures.  It’s a hodgepodge!

Fiction-wise, I’m working on a short story collection where each piece is inspired by an old time superstition.  (There’s an amazing exhibit on this at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is my favorite place in Los Angeles.  After I saw it I knew I had to do something with it.)  The kicker about that collection is that every story in it is written entirely in iambs.  It’s crazy-time; I’m not going to lie.

As for nonfiction, I’m working on some semi-serious and semi-humorous memoir pieces about my young/younger life, which was—no exaggeration—completely insane.

And, as always, the all-consuming dissertation looms.  Thankfully I’m really excited about it.  The gist is that I’m trying to analyze the visual and audial aspects of literature to gauge how those elements interplay with the more classic semantic and narrative analyses.  It’s all grounded in fairly recent neuroscience discoveries that delve into how the human brain processes text.  Did you know that reading isn’t actually an innate human function at all?  Meaning, we have no mechanism for reading, per se, but we combine functions and processes from several areas of the brain—all originally used for other purposes—to create “the reading brain.”  It’s intense and fascinating, especially since I’m no scientist.

Please check out a sample of her poetry:

Eisoptrophilia
           Love of mirrors
                               Impression pressed upon the glass perfects
                               even the grossest forgeries.  Reject
                               the sea.  Reject the turning tide.
                               Just below clear water, I reside
                               as duplication of the lake.  Take me
                               away, another underneath again.
                               What mirrors cannot ditto isn’t sin.

Eisoptrophobia
        Fear of mirrors
                                What mirrors cannot ditto isn’t sin
                                simply performed behind the glass.  Within
                                the frame of windowpane, negated dark.
                                Those fleeting squares reveal our darkness back.
                                Aloof, the rain plays taps.  Above, the trees
                                are inimitable.  Distinct, thus blessed.
                                Reflected, I am never at my best.

--Originally published in Mid-American Review, Volume XXX, Numbers 1 & 2 Fall 2009/Spring 2010

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David Mason: An Interview With Serena M. Agusto-Cox

by Serena on August 9, 2011

Poet David Mason

1. How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

I would recite a poem by someone else. Mother Goose, for example. Then I would recite another poem by someone else. Auden or MacNeice or Dickinson, perhaps. I might ask the audience to repeat a poem after me, to join in the recitation. I wouldn’t say much of anything about myself unless I was asked in a question and answer session.

2. Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

One of the great curses in life is a lack of eloquence, an inability to express some portion of what one feels or experiences. I think eloquence can be found in a lot of places, and so can its opposite. I’ll take eloquence wherever I can find it. As for the second half of this question, you seem to be asking whether poetry “makes nothing happen.” I think Auden responded well to his own controversial statement when he called it “a way of happening, a mouth.” As for its effect upon others, I do not think one can generalize in that direction.

3. Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

I have obsessions, yes. Death and love. I’m always wondering what a person is, what a human being is, which might be why I like to write about other people. Weather. Landscape. Seascape. I react to weather the way werewolves react to the moon.

4. Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I’ve co-edited a poetry textbook, so I can say with authority that none of these books is sufficient. Never took a creative writing class in poetry, but had an undergraduate one in fiction. Did belong to an informal writing group when I was a gardener in Upstate New York, and met several people more talented than myself, yet somehow persisted in this craft and sullen art and began to get the hang of it.

5. Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Poets don’t have any obligation to do anything. Nor do readers. It’s a free country. I like a certain level of access in a poem, but I also love a whiff of mystery, a sense that the inexpressible has been cracked open or exposed to me in some way. I wouldn’t want to dispel any myths. Myths are there to cast a spell, not to be dispelled.

6. When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

I prefer listening to music when I can really listen to it, not as background or wallpaper or white noise. Since I am hard of hearing, I have to strain quite a lot to make out words in songs, so I can’t really write when Dylan‘s on the stereo. I’d rather sing along, even if I have to use my own version of scat half the time.

7. In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

Some of the best and longest friendships of my life have been with fellow writers. I’m only now getting around to admitting that I have a “kind,” I belong to a certain subspecies of the human that I needn’t be ashamed of. I always thought non-writers were superior beings, but I’ve changed my mind about that. I don’t think writers are superior. But I do think they are my “kind.” We understand each other.

8. How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

Who says I’m healthy? I try to stay fit as a person, exercise as often as I can and eat reasonably well and try not to drink too much. But you asked how I stay healthy as a writer. I guess I would say by reading my betters. If I’m not reading something that really moves or impresses me, I feel unhealthy.

9. Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?

I don’t believe in writer’s block. If you’re not writing you’re living, so what’s not to like about that? I have never been blocked in my life. Don’t have the foggiest idea what the term means. As for food, I am omnivorous. I’m just trying to eat less, to carry less weight around in the world.

10. Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

I’ve never had any trouble writing anywhere I’ve been in the world. I did until recently have a lovely office that used to be an artist’s studio, with north light and brick floors–a beautiful room. Now I live in a tiny cabin, 380 square feet in the shadow of Pike’s Peak, and it serves just as well. People who need the perfect space in which to write are sissies. Your brain is where you write. It’s portable.

11. What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

The most exciting work involves my collaboration with composer Lori Laitman. Our first opera, The Scarlet Letter, will have its professional premiere at Opera Colorado in Denver in 2013. My libretto will be published as a book in 2012. Our oratorio, Vedem, premiered in Seattle last year and is now out on CD from Naxos. And we’re at work on an opera based on my verse novel, Ludlow. Also, I seem to be writing a lot of love poetry lately. The dam has burst.

Check out a sample of his poetry:

SEA SALT

Light dazzles from the grass
over the carnal dune.
This too shall come to pass,
but will it happen soon?
A kite nods to its string.
A cloud is happening

above the tripping waves,
joined by another cloud.
They are a crowd that moves.
The sky becomes a shroud
cut by a blade of sun.
There’s nothing to be done.

The soul, if there’s a soul
moves out to what it loves,
whatever makes it whole.
The sea stands still and moves,
denoting nothing new,
deliberating now.

The days are made of hours,
hours of instances,
and none of them are ours.
The sand blows through the fences.
Light darkens on the grass.
This too shall come to pass.

–first published in The Times Literary Supplement

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Rachel Zucker: An Interview With Serena M. Agusto-Cox

by Serena on July 26, 2011

Poet Rachel Zucker

1. How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet, what else should people know about you?

Is anyone “just a poet”? I don’t know anyone like that. I’m also a professor and teach at NYU. I’m also a doula (labor support assistant). I’m studying to become a Childbirth Educator (so I can teach birthing classes to pregnant couples). I’m a mother of three sons. I’m a devoted wife to my husband, Josh Goren. I’m always starting new projects and hobbies. For example, I just started a blog, where I post one sentence descriptions every day. I also write prose. Is there a room where a crowd hangs on my every word? I guess, maybe a room full of students who are there for extra credit…

2. Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

I think spoken word and written poetry are both profoundly powerful in their own way. I love storytelling. I love good slam poetry. I love David Antin, Spalding Gray, Tracie Morris. In the fall, I’m going to spend one week of the semester talking about spoken word including Steve Benson whose work I’m eager to get to know.

I absolutely believe writing (and reading) can help people become more tolerant. Learning about others and identifying with them is the basis for empathy. Naomi Shihab Nye writes eloquently about the social and political power of poetry. If you don’t know her poetry and her prose, you should. When I read her I feel hopeful and also chastened. I know I have not done nearly enough as a poet to make the world a more tolerant place.

3. Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

I have many obsessions. I wish I had more time to watch television. I really love television but don’t watch at all now. I want to watch the new Game of Thrones mini series. My husband has read me all the books — thousands of pages — we have 200 pages left in the last book.

4. Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I recently posted a list of books that was most useful to me on 32 poems blog. None of these are writing manuals but all of them functioned as how-tos. I started a writing group many years ago — a peer group — and the group stayed together (with members coming and going) for almost 10 years. It was tremendously helpful to have that group, post MFA. I met Arielle Greenberg that way! And worked with these great writers. I stopped wanting the group because I was mostly writing prose. Now I miss it. But I have my correspondence with my dear poet friends: Arielle, DA Powell, Laurel Snyder, Sarah Manguso, Sarah Vap, Wayne Koestenbaum, David Trinidad, Matthew Zapruder–just to name a few who have given me invaluable feedback on my work and supported me in my writing.

I think I read a lot of books that are really thinly veiled “how to” live books and these help me write. I read memoirs and parenting books and cook books.

5. Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Poets should dispel that myth if they’re trying to “sell” inaccessible poetry. Some poetry is very difficult and some readers like difficult work. I think the greater issue is that some poets eschew and deride poetry that is accessible. And, there is poetry that is accessible and wonderful. Kids usually like poetry. Then elementary and high school teachers (some of them) mess it up. Thank goodness my son thinks the teacher who is trying to ram her very specific interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe down the throats of all the 6th graders is dumb. He likes the poems and seems to mostly feel sorry for the teacher. So do I.

6. When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

The music of Luna (Dean Warham and Britta Phillips) was the sound track to Museum of Accidents but otherwise I really don’t like listening to music when I write. I find it completely distracting. I love to listen to talk radio when I do almost anything, but for writing, I need quiet. I have a bad habit of eating while I write. I’m trying to stop doing that.

7. How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

I go through phases of more or less healthy and fit. Recently I realized I’d gained more weight that I liked. I’ve been running regularly and lifting free weights and watching what I eat. It’s boring and time consuming and important. Last year I ran a half-marathon, which was a huge accomplishment for me. I’d love to do that again one day but don’t have time for the training.

8. Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?

I really love coffee but have had to stop drinking it all together. I have really debilitating insomnia and the caffeine makes it worse. I feel really sorry for myself about giving up coffee. I’m sitting here mentally smelling it and just feeling sad.

9. Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

My study is a total mess. Right now, on my desk I’ve got piles and piles of stuff: broken action figures, books, this stupid “make a plate kit” I’ve been meaning to send away for months, old magazines, student poems, drafts of my own poems, empty teacups, sticker sheets, overdue bills and contracts–oh look! Superman and Batman are locked in a tawdry embrace! Anyway, you get the picture. It’s chaos. I like the idea of a clean, peaceful desk but it only ever lasts a day or two.

10. What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

I’m working on a new collection of poems called The Pedestrians. I’m writing one sentence a day on my blog. I’m blogging for the poetry foundation am about to start an essay about the birth of my son for an anthology on birth stories. I have a half-finished picture book and two finished but unpublished picture book manuscripts. I have the first three pages of a YA book, story, something that I’d like to work on. And I have another idea for a long series of poems that is too new to talk about.

Check out some of her poetry or prose.

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Stephen Cushman: An Interview With Serena M. Agusto-Cox

by Serena on July 6, 2011

Poet Stephen Cushman

Poet Stephen Cushman

1. How would you introduce yourself to a crowded room eager to hang on your every word? Are you just a poet? What else should people know about you?

People should know I play a mean game of Frisbee golf, am fluent in Maineglish (ayuh), am told I can make anything naughty with the lift of one eyebrow, and am the go-to person for old school drinking songs.

2. Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

If I am elected Miss America, I vow to work for world peace, mostly on the written page, although I’m happy to perform or do spoken word, if I can wear my overalls. Poetry is 4300 years old; if it could help humanity become more tolerant and collaborative, it would have done so by now. And perhaps it has. Who knows? If it weren’t for poetry, we might be even worse than we are.

3. Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?

mountains, Bible, ocean, foreign languages, other cultures, ocean, meditation, sky, high vantage points, ocean, America, good champagne, the calendar, history, ocean, Time, garlic, beauty, ocean, travel, guitar solos, did I mention ocean?

4. Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

My inspirational/how-to manuals: Hendrix (any album; also Hendricks, the gin), Thoreau, Cranmer, Whitman, the mountain, world travel, the ocean.

5. Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

Emerson says, “let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not.” Speak true.

6. When writing poetry, prose, essays, and other works do you listen to music, do you have a particular playlist for each genre you work in or does the playlist stay the same? What are the top 5 songs on that playlist? If you don’t listen to music while writing, do you have any other routines or habits?

From the room where I write, the music is silence. Or the hawk, the phoebe, a cow lowing in the pasture across the way, maybe the neighbor’s tractor. The dog panting to go out.

7. In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

As a writer I fly least turbulently below the radar. Luckily, therefore, my friendships are not related to or dependent on my writing life.

8. How do you stay fit and healthy as a writer?

I’m currently co-editing the new edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, so hoisting the page proofs of that around keep me pretty buff.

9. Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?

If love be the food of music, play on. And on.

10. Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

A laundry-room-size patch containing card table, laptop, photos and posters of family and teachers, full floor-to-ceiling books, two big crank-out windows, and dictionary is ideal.

11. What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, essay on the meeting of Lincoln and Emerson in February 1862, always new poems. Did I mention world peace?

Thanks to Stephen for answering my questions. Please do check out a sample of his work below, which was published by 32 Poems:

Supposing Him to Be the Gardener

Supposing this to be the sun
And this to be the rain,
Supposing clouds to be caviar
And wind to be champagne,
How can one tell divinity
From a tree turned red
Or Do not hold me from what else
Its leaves might well have said?

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