How does a poem begin?
The poem may begin in many ways. A mood, a single image, or sometimes a word is enough. Whatever it is, it beckons. A window, for instance, stands in the mind. It bubbles with semantic unraveling. It is an opening, both suture and wound. An adjective such as ‘abject’ appears in front of a name. A letter like ‘O’ or the desire to write about a place starts poems. So, a poem starts when it appears before the mind – as an outside spilling into us.
How important is music to your poetry?
Writing poetry is like scoring the page, at least that is how I understand the writing process. Poetry’s affinity with musical composition has been on my mind since my first chapbook. It became more dominant thereafter as I tend to write book-length poems. Spaces between words, line breaks, inflections, and word-shapes carefully match a particular flow and rhythm that drives the writing. Words appear as a product of this rhythm. Sonic relations are as important as the semantic connections between words. The page is a chorus of utterings that needs to be silenced to create the pauses and sounds that make a poem. The white page is abuzz with sound—which is both organic and the music of abstraction, the lineation of concepts.
What other poetry books have you been reading lately?
Here are some excellent poetry books that I have recently read:
Cody-Rose Clevidence – Aux/Arc Tryptich (Nightboat)
Ian Dreiblatt - Forget Thee (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Aja Couchois Duncan, Vestigial (Litmus Press)
Jeremy Hoevenaar – Our Insolvency (Golias Books)
MC Hyland - The End (Sidebrow Books)
John Paetsch, --of shapes off-shore (H’d’ng Press)
This December I also revisited Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day and The Collected Songs of Han Shan (published by Copper Canyon Press).
What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
Ed Roberson teaches us about the wonders of semantic deferral. This deferral results in a surprising reconstruction of meaning – you think the line is heading in a particular direction but soon discover it both is and is not going where you expected. He’s a master of the line break and of the long line, but also of rhythmic variation. Many of his poems are oblique lyrics – flawless mixtures of the tangible and abstract.
What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
I find myself often waiting for a mental place, which resembles the feeling of being carried by water. It’s a state where self-consciousness recedes in the mind, allowing for other mental processes to come forth. My best writing occurs when I inhabit this half-meditative space and stay there without realizing it. Our minds are made of this water from which poems emerge. It takes effort getting there, even though being there is an effortless experience, and you only realize it retroactively.
