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Charles Harper Webb Interview

1. You have said that when you first write a poem, it's a mess. When you go back to rework it, do you take time before, or do you dive right in? What techniques do you use to make sense of your "first writes?"

I have an elaborate system of putting things in notebooks and pulling them out at random. Sometimes I cheat and work on a draft right away; other times it may take years to surface.

I look for what’s good in the draft, try to save that, get rid of the rest, and go from there. My goal, with every draft, is not to make it perfect—only to make it better than it was.

2. What role does pop culture play in your work and how does this comment on the role of pop culture in the poetry world?

Pop culture gets into my poetry the same way weather, flowers, news stories, my family, baseball, cheese graters, and nuclear physics does. If it interests me or obtrudes on me in any way, it may wind up in a poem.

The role of pop culture in the poetry world varies from poet to poet. I find that pop culture enters into my own poems quite a lot. What does that say about me?

3. You recently joined the world of Facebook. How do you see this and other technology based forums, like blogs, playing a role in the poetry community?

I like the fact that my poems can be read by many more people than could/would ever read them if they were only in printed books. I like that, if people are so inclined, they can find my upcoming readings on the web, or see me reading my work on Youtube. I want my work to give readers some of the pleasure and insight that other writers have given to me. The more, the merrier.

4. You recently gave a panel on the role of humor in poetry. For those of us not lucky enough to attend the AWP, can you share a few of your thoughts on the subject?

Here, lifted straight from my notes:

Hazards of using humor in poems

1) Not being funny.

2) Trying too hard. The best humor, like Shakespeare’s “quality of mercy,” is not strained. It rises naturally from the humorist’s view of the world. Better no humor than the forced kind.

3) Temptation to look for the joke in everything, becoming predictable, and false.

4)Temptation to go for the cheap laugh versus the valuable one. (Note, though, that the fart joke is always serious, in that it undercuts human pretentiousness.)

5) Facing an audience with no sense of humor.

6) Being devalued as a “serious” artist because I use humor. Humor, as that jokster T.S. Eliot said, is a way of saying something serious.

Benefits of using humor.

1) The ability to see the humor in things is one of the great forces of redemption in human life. Monty Python’s song in Life of Brian, “Always look on the bright side of life,” as sung by convicts on the cross.

2) A clear, accurate, and appropriate way to deal with post-modern concerns, and not drive the audience catatonic.

3) Comedy is ideally suited to capture the absurdities enormities and pathos of modern life.

4) The ultimate subversion is to laugh.

5) Not to use humor would be to deny my own perceptions of the world, and to impoverish my understanding, and my voice.

5. You did not start out as a writer, you have a PhD in Psychology and you were a rock musician for years. Can you recall your "a-ha" moment when you knew you were a poet? Did your previous passions influence your turn to poetry? Was there a moment when you completely doubted yourself as poet?

Actually, I started writing (outside of school) about the time I started playing guitar in a band—something about the need to express strong adolescent emotions and to do whatever I could to impress girls.

I never had an “Aha, I’m a poet” moment. I never thought I’d be a poet, and would still be unconvinced except for the evidence of all those poems. I see myself as a writer whose favorite form, to his astonishment, turned out to be poetry.

This happened, I think, because I delight in language, and poetry attempts to use language to its maximum capacity—to get the most possible communication-per-word out of it.

6. What's the most important thing for you when you chose the title piece for a manuscript or book? Is it your best poem? Most intriguing title? What do you look for?

I look for a title that will interest readers, but that also has some sort of relevance to the poems in the book. I could call a book Sick Sexual Practices of All Your Friends, and get everyone interested. But, not knowing all those friends, I wouldn’t be able to deliver. Good writing makes a promise, and keeps it.

7. You have often said to your classes that you are a writer, not a scholar. How does this difference influence your writing and teaching style?

I’m interested in writing as Art, not as an opportunity for me to expound my ideas on social justice, politics, etc., profound and compelling as those may be. I’m interested in how writers do what they do, and how it works emotionally on me. Being stuck with only one (severely time-limited) life, I want to have as many interesting vicarious lives as I can. Literature lets me do that.

I’m at least as interested in making things up as in researching them. I have a poetic license, and I’m not afraid to use it. If facts don’t fit, I can change facts. If I can’t find a quote that says something I want to say, I can either say it myself, or say it myself and invent a fictional expert who “said” it.

I’d much rather read a poem and make sense of it myself than to rely on “secondary sources.”

If my students borrow from others, they have to cite their sources, but I don’t worry much about the form of their footnotes. I have to look up the right form myself.

8. After you have worked on a poem, toiled over it's syntax and diction, the line breaks and overall composition, how do you know when you are done? How do you know that you've got a great poem?

I agree with the saying, “A poem is never finished; it’s abandoned.” Any poem could always be better; I just don’t (for the moment) see how.

I’ll declare a poem—provisionally—finished (ready for abandonment) when I read it several times, over a period of a year or so, and I always like what I read, and never want to change anything. I’m completely willing to change a poem after it’s published, if I’m convinced that I can improve it.

No one can know if he or she has written a great poem. History determines that. And History keeps changing its mind.

9. Your latest book, Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems, is a fabulous collection from all of your books and most recent work. There is a wide range of styles and subjects. What is your favorite thing to write about and why?

I do admire your choice of words. “Fabulous,” in this context, has a very satisfying feel.

I don’t think I have a favorite thing to write about. Turtles come up a lot in my poems, but so do a lot of other things. I write about whatever interests me at the time, and try to let my poems go where they want to go. I also try to constantly expand my interests, so that I don’t become known as “that crazy turtle guy,”

10. Many of Formaldehyde's followers are just starting out in the world of poetry. In order to help inspire some of their work, can you share a few exercises that you use in order to get the poetic juices flowing?

I’ve got several exercises—and so have many other poets—in The Working Poet (edited by Scott Minar) from Autumn House Press.

A great thing to do is to act like a visual artist with a sketchpad. Just take a notebook and walk around, writing verbal sketches of anything that interests you. Good writers develop an inner Geiger counter that starts clicking in the presence of interesting things. The writer can then start digging, and see what turns up, being always aware that the best material is often buried, and requires a lot of skillful digging to bring it up.

Post Questions for Charles Harper Webb Interview!!!!

The Charles Harper Webb interview will be coming soon! Now is the time to ask questions! Comment to this post with your questions and look for the answers in his forthcoming interview!!!

Charles Harper Webb is the author of numerous collections including Reading the Water, Liver, Tulip Farms and Leaper Colonies, Hot Popsicles, Amplified Dog, and his latest, Shadow Ball, New and Selected Poems. He is also the editor for Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, a truly wonderful collection of voices from across the poetic world. His work has appeared in anthologies and journals, too many to name, but to name a few: Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize, and Poets of the New Century. He has received the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Kate Tufts Discovery Prize Award, Felix Pollack Prize just to name a few. He grew up in Houston, received a BA in Honors English from Rice University, has an MA in English from Washington University, and his MFA in Professional Writing and his PhD in Psychology from USC. He is a former rock musician and now teaches at California State University, Long Beach where he directs the MFA Creative Writing Program.

Links to his poetry:

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/19742

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/19743

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/19744

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/19745

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/19747

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/19748

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/4355

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Charles-Webb/4356

http://jacketmagazine.com/10/webb-c-h.html

http://judithpordon.tripod.com/poetry/charles_harper_webb_feeling_sorry_for_myself.html

Statement of Poetics

As a poet, I try to follow the Golden Rule—writing for others as I would have them write for me. With that in mind:

I like poems that generate momentum, and hit hard.

I like poems that crackle with energy, even if it’s the energy of despair. I don’t like poems that droop with world-weariness.

I like to hear voices I’ve never heard before.

I like to see from fresh perspectives.

I like to encounter fascinating minds.

I like poems that renew not just the language but the world, and therefore, my life.

Imagination is an end in itself.

I like strangeness, unless it’s gratuitous, or not gratuitous enough. (Monty Python’s "Fish Dance" is gratuitous enough.)

I don’t like poems that won’t risk meaning.

I don’t like monotonous poems, even when the single note is a good one.

I don’t like poems that use their lines like well-made bricks tossed at random on a lawn; these poems never get off the ground.

I like to be swept up, carried away.

I like to laugh.

I don’t exactly like to cry, but I like poems that make me want to (unless it’s from frustration).

I like to be entertained.

I read for fun; struggling isn’t fun for me.

I’m willing to work hard reading a poem, but what I get out of it must be worth more than the effort I put in. I want a fair return on my investment.

I don’t like obscurity for its own sake—or, to tell the truth, for any other’s.

I like language masterfully used: "the best words in the best order." Great language is necessary but not sufficient for great poetry.

I like words that are fun to say.

I love good metaphors.

I don’t really believe that "progress" in poetry is possible, but I try to write as if it were. I care more about progress in understanding the human psyche than in the development of technique.

I shy away from writing called "experimental"; the term usually sticks to failed experiments.

I think all good writing is experimental.

A poem is like a shark (or like sharks are supposed to be): if it stops moving forward, it dies. Also, a strong one can eat you alive.

The cardinal sin of poetry, as of all art, is to bore.

*taken from poetrynet.org

Amazing Ed Hirsch Quotes from his Reading at CSULB, 3.16

First off, you need to check out his new book, New and Selected Poems called The Living Fire. It is completely amazing and please share your thoughts on it. Have a favorite in the book, let us know!

"Judaism takes me historically backward while America takes me historically forward and I am somewhere in those crossroads."

"The reader's body is the medium of the art."

"Poems exist in the contact with the reader."

"Poems exist between the poet, the poem, and the reader."

"Poets write because they have been so deeply affected by a poem that they want to respond."

"A poet is a maker."

"I experienced something in literature before I experienced it in life."

"Poets dwell in a world of uncertainty."

Let's Get the Creative Juices Flowing

So here's the plan... We are going to use a "Patty Exercise" to get an open forum of poetry going. Here are the directions... post what you want by commenting to this post, even if it's just a few little lines, but use at least one of the things from the following assignment Patty talked about, Jim Simmerman's, "Twenty Little Poetry Projects." I encourage you to read the previous posts and use that to springboard your own work. By doing this, each of us will be contributing to the poetry community we have created here on Formaldehyde and one another's work. Good Luck and happy writing!

TWENTY LITTLE POETRY PROJECTS

Jim Simmerman

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.

2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.

3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.

4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).

5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.

6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.

7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.

8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.

9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.

10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).

11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: "The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . ."

12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.

13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in "real life."

14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.

15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.

16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.

17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.

18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.

19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).

20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that "echoes" an image from earlier in the poem.

as published at http://mypage.siu.edu/puglove/twenty.htm

Patty Seyburn Interview and Exercises/"Practices" To Get Your Poetry On

1: Of all the possible varieties of writing, how did you wind up in poetry?

~Charles Harper Webb

I started out as a journalist, but not a very good one. I earned my BS and MS in Journalism from Northwestern University. I knew, in high school, that I wanted to be a writer, but I really had no idea that one could be a poet. My parents didn’t go to college and I was raised to be able to take care of myself. So when I was accepted as a journalism major, I assumed that was my path. As it turns out, I was a good writer but a mediocre reporter. I didn’t have the killer instinct, the nose for news. I was always more interested in the details that lingered at the fringes of stories, the stuff that is NOT news. So I started taking poetry workshops in New York while I was working at Newsweek, and it became pretty clear that poetry should be at the center of my life. So I went back to grad school at UCI, and prayed to like teaching. Which I did, so I went on to University of Houston, got my doctorate, wrote the poems that would become my first book. So here I am. Writing poems and teaching. Go figure.

2: Many of us are just starting out in the world of poetry. Would you mind sharing a story about a time when you doubted yourself as a writer?

All through graduate school; before that, I was working full-time and writing “on the side,” so it was one big doubt. During my MFA, I knew that I could write a certain kind of poem that was ubiquitous at that time, a sort of anecdotal narrative. It’s a good poem, and I still like reading it, but I knew there were more strategies out there, and that my poems had to become more ambitious. But I really had no idea how to get there, so that made me insecure. When in Houston, doing my doctorate, I was surrounded by strong writers. There were moments when it intimidated me, especially when in a room with Ed Hirsch or Richard Howard discussing my poems, but for the most part, I’ve let self-doubt motivate me. I think insecurity and guilt are great motivators. I will never have read enough. I feel lousy about that, and it will always drive me. Have you ever seen the movie, “Broadcast News”? Albert Brook’s character has this great line: Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive?” To me, insecurity and desperation in a poet aren’t bad things. They drive us. But don’t get me wrong: it feels good to get a few books out, too.

3: Hi Patty,

My question has to do with form. I was reading a Stephen Dobyns interview recently where he said, "Through revision, through argument, you make everything within the poem seem necessary, even the shape. The shape of the poem bears metaphoric relation to the content. They're completely intertwined."

While reading the poems that Jessica cited in your introduction I immediately noticed the different shapes that your poems take; "Davenport" is a prose poem, "Location, Location" is in couplets, "On Cooking a Symbol at 400 Degrees" is a sonnet, and "What I Disliked About the Pleistocene Era" is in quatrains.

I'd like to know how your poems take shape, and how much importance you believe lies in the form? Do you believe as Dobyns says that the shape of a poem has a metaphoric relation to the content? I think that we all understand that they are "intertwined" because shape and content are not arbitrary elements of a poem, but does the shape affect the metaphor?

Also, if your answer doesn't somehow lead you there, could you talk a bit about revision? How do you view revision? What kind of revision techniques do you employ on a regular basis?

~Danielle Mitchell

A series of good questions. You’re right, of course: I do write in a fairly wide variety of forms, from what might be called “strict” (a sonnet) to what might be called “loose” (a prose poem) – and everything in between, though, of course, they are all forms. As a child studying piano, I remember being slightly annoyed that my piano teacher was always harping on (sorry, Mrs. Petrakovitz) dynamics, expression marks. I wanted to ask her: “why can’t I just play a piece REGULAR?” Something held me back from asking this (idiotic) question. Although sometimes, I think my students, smart-to-a-fault, would like to ask me: can’t I just write the poem, regular, without thinking about form? The answer, of course is: no. Correction: in the generative stages, the earliest stages of a poem, yes, of course, you can just write out the poem and see where the lines break, see where or even if the stanzas break, etc. But once the fog clears and you really enter into the poem, and you really begin to engage with and interrogate the poem (which is how I see the revision process), form takes center stage. I think what that question really speaks to, in 2010, is the prevalence of free verse: students new to poetry can’t really imagine writing anything else, with the exception of performance-oriented poets, who generally approach poems writing in rhyming couplets, or more extensive rhyming than that. They need to learn how not to crutch on rhyme.

When I’m working on a poem, after I have the first draft, the basic language/idea/information down on the paper, then form becomes the next question. I look to the poem for cues. Most of my work is a musically dense free verse. Sometimes stanzas, sometimes a stichic (block of text without stanzas). Sometimes the stanzas contain the same number of lives, sometimes they don’t. I am always trying to break away from my own patterns and habits, so if I feel like I’ve been writing poems that are more “shapely,” as one of my mentors, Richard Howard, used to say, then I have a yen to write a looser stanza, a more erratic line length. If I feel that I haven’t been controlling the line quite as well, then I zero in on the line breaks and line lengths, perhaps moving them toward greater symmetry. I love mathematics, though I’m not terribly good at it anymore – I was, as a child – so there’s part of me that loves symmetry. I use that and play against it, depending. Also, being trained in classical piano for 10 years, I have a very strong sense of rhythm, which I think has served me well – for the most part – as a poet. Sometimes I have to push away from it, however. In any case, I’m always aware of it, and my students benefit and suffer (depending on who you ask) from my having them learn and practice metrics. It keeps the language from getting slack, prosy.

On the other hand, I’ve been listening to jazz since I was a teenager, so part of my idea, as a poet, is that the left hand maintains a strong rhythm while the right hand wanders, improvises. Many great jazz pieces are based on the premise of a backbone that allows the rest of the instruments freedom – though never as much freedom as it might sound like. There’s always control. This must be true for a poem, as well.

In terms of strict form, such as sonnets – I tend to be pretty strict with myself. For me, a 14-line poem is not a sonnet. Well, the fact is, it’s not a sonnet, and wishing can’t make it so. But it has leanings toward the sonnet, it’s a gesture in that direction, and so when I see one of my poems containing heightened compression of rhythm and some sort of argument, I might try to push it toward a sonnet. What I love about doing that is that trying to find strong rhymes – which should not be mistaken for any rhymes – invariably pushes the poem somewhere else, somewhere I probably would not have taken the poem. That’s a huge part of my revision process: getting the poem to the point where it’s telling me what to do, rather than be strong-armed by me. The best way to do that is by paying close attention to language: scrutinizing each word to make sure it measures up, deserves its place in the line. This should be true of each syllable: poems are about economy, not waste. I might decide, in a revision, to examine the verbs. Or to take the poem line by line, reading aloud, and seeing where the language gets lazy. Sometimes I start at the end of a poem and examine each line, because we’re often sort of tired, even as poets, by the end of our poems. The beginnings are these gorgeous, honed artifacts and the ends are slop. In my poems, the hardest part is the middle. I tend to be good at beginnings and ends – I used to be a journalist, and I think the notion of a “lead” and a “kicker” (the last couple lines of a story that leave you with something to think about) translates into my poetry. It’s those middles that I always have to work on. In general, I’d say, in the revision process, I think you have to make sure all of the language measures up to the best language in the poem. Find the two best lines, the lines you love reading aloud. Make everything else answer to them.

On the other hand, I’m also enjoying writing prose poems (am currently writing a crown of sonnets and a series of prose poems, going back and forth between the two). They are very difficult to revise, and I think that shows in a lot of prose poetry, much of which I find pretty damn tedious. On the other hand, what I love, I love: mostly French prose poets – Francis Ponge, Jean Follain. For me, revising prose poems means staring at each sentence, because the sentence – or fragment of the sentence – is your dominant unit. You’re not getting any mileage from a line-break, so those sentences need to be beautiful and intense. And varied.

Okay, I’ve blathered on for long enough.

4: You are a huge advocate of “breaking the page,” however also find a real significance in 14 lines given poetry’s long-time loyalty to the sonnet. Can you discuss the importance of both of these lengths to poetry?

I love economy in poetry: best words in best order, as Coleridge wrote. As for the page, however – it’s length is arbitrary, after all – if the psalmists wrote on lined-paper, how long with the great poems of the bible be? How long would “Paradise Lost” be? (Actually, I don’t know what Milton wrote on, but you get my point.) So I’m wary of not being able to write a longer poem, simply because I don’t think a piece of white paper should dictate the shape or magnitude of our thoughts. I think young poets should learn to stretch out, to juggle more balls in the air, to risk greater failure at taking on a bigger subject, or intertwining subjects that create a productive and unpredictable dialogue with one another, like a chemical reaction. I like Marvin Bell’s idea of writing past your first ending: why stop there? Stretch out. Try to be more ambitious. Take a good moment or image in the poem and “riff” on it. Perhaps it will take the poem in a different direction, and that’s okay – maybe even better than okay. The poem is not a fragile little flower: it can handle a lot. You may be holding your breath while writing a poem, but the poem isn’t. Be expansive. Let the poem generate more poem. Don’t be so damn nervous when writing the poem. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Put the poem down for a day, and pick it up the next day, determined to “begin” the poem where you left off. What you thought was the ending might be the ending of a section. You might be writing “Paradise Lost.”

And yet, there’s something so satisfying about those 14 lines that seem to encompass show much, that, when well-done, produce surprise for the writer and reader, to paraphrase Frost. I love the compression of sounds in a sonnet, the attention to detail (meter,rhyme) as well as the argument’s flow. It’s hard to argue with a good sonnet. They often provide great unpredictability than far more unwieldy and expansive free verse poems.

5: You have strong opinions on line breaks. Can you share some of that?

I’m in love with the line break, and am fond of reminding my students that it’s our big advantage over prose writers. I’m not a fan of lines broken syntactically, which is to say, where the reader would naturally pause, or breathe. I love enjambment. I love the hard-working line break that does double duty, that leaves the reader in one place (with white space) and acquires another meaning once you read past the line break. Of course, not every line in a poem is going to have some fabulous enjambment – you need relief from those, as well. And there are some poems that require a (deceptive) simplicity and lots of white space, that need to be slowed down, that need to allow the reader more time to breathe. I’ve known poets who I thought wrote remarkable images but didn’t know how to break a line, and so the image got buried, or fractured; narratives that speed or slow down too much so that the reader spends all her/his time with pacing rather than the story. Line breaks MATTER, and they are a huge opportunity for a poet to get more meaning, more of what matters, more subtly into a poem. I would talk about line breaks at cocktail parties, if sometime would invite me and let me.

6:What do you enjoy most about teaching students poetry? If you could give your creative writing students only one piece of advice, what would this advice be? ~Anonymous

There is nothing like witnessing a student who has just experienced the satisfying “click” of writing a poem that only he or she can write, one devoid of cliché, one that conveys intellectual and emotional development in the course of the poem, and the student isn’t even completely sure how he or she did, but it happened, and you were a part, even a small part, of that sense of discovery. Nothing like it. That’s what I enjoy most. But the truth is: I really like my students. They make me think, they make me laugh, they make my hair fall out. It’s all good.

I’ll try to make this sound like one piece of advice: get out of your own way, put in the time, get over yourself, do the work. And try your damnedest to listen to other people. Know that you are part of a community and as a poet, on a continuum with other poets. Don’t be a jerk. Be generous. Love the sound of language. Okay, I’m done. (I know that’s more than one piece of advice.) Sorry, I have one more: don’t always read poets you love. Challenge yourself to read outside of your aesthetic, to widen your aesthetic. Strong poets you DON’T love often have more to teach you.

7: Your most recent book is titled Hilarity. Does this put pressure on the collection to be funny? ~Alicia Adams

The truth is, Hilarity is not that funny. It was not intended to be all that funny, though I suppose it contains its share of my kind of humor, which tends toward a quiet irony (and an occasional yuk). The book started out being called “The Emergence of Hilarity,” a phrase that came from a baby-raising manual I was reading when my daughter was an infant. At the end of the chapter where it talks about your child’s first smile and laughter, the writer referred this phenomenon as “the emergence of hilarity.” I love the word, “hilarity.” It cracks me up, and in terms of content, makes me think less of stand-up and more of sheer joy, which is what children are capable of feeling, expressing and providing, uncensored. No one cracks me up like my kids. Of course, they have my sense of humor. Ah, well. But do I feel the pressure to be funny? No, not particularly. Of all things I’m insecure about, that’s not one. But I am wary of being too clever, and I warn my students against that, as well. Being a smart-ass in poetry generally doesn’t pay off. Rarely are we as clever as we might think. I was recently asked by a journal of humorous poetry for some poems, and as I went through my work, I found most of it to be somewhat dour. Fabulous, but dour. And occasionally, celebratory, because I do consider myself a celebratory poet: someone who is capable of recognizing the great gifts we have.

8: You received your BS and MS in Journalism from Northwestern, your MFA in Poetry from UCI, and your PhD in Literature and Poetry from the University of Houston. Do you see a regional difference in aesthetic?

Not really. The graduate programs at UCI and Houston gather poets from all over the country, so no particular region is being favored. Certain schools seem to have a dominant aesthetic – University of Iowa, for example. And California seems to maintain some of its “beat” roots, as well as a passion for performance poetry, and an avant garde tradition – I don’t remember who said, (paraphrasing), the only thing that never changes is the avant garde. Poets tend to move around a great deal; my mentors and friends have taught all over the country, and though I live in California now, I’m hard-pressed to call myself a “California poet.”

9: You are Co-Editor with Judith Taylor of Pool. This started out as a print journal but has recently converted to a zine. What brought about this decision and what role do you see technology playing in the poetry world? How will technology change the poetry world?

We decided to go on-line because the logistics of production and distribution were getting onerous, and Judith and I are a two-person operation. There are fewer and fewer independent bookstores to distribute journals, and it’s very difficult to get into the big-box bookstores. As well, it will be less expensive to produce an on-line journal, and as we read and researched, we felt that the poetry world was turning increasingly toward the web. We wrestled with our decision, but it became more clear as the on-line poetry world became more vibrant and diverse. We wanted to feel that the quality of on-line journals was high, and often, now, it is. We hope to part of that “high.”

10: I have heard a rumor about Patty exercises. Can you share a few to inspire our writers out there?

I’d like to coin a different term for the word “exercise,” because it carries with it connotations of pedantry and practice – as though there’s anything wrong with the term, “practice.” Each poem is a practice-run for the next. But I do love exercises: I assign them to my students and myself. Here’s a few:

1. Read the Anthony Hecht poem “A Hill” and the Donald Justice poem, “20 questions.” You can find both on-line. “A Hill” contains one of those “poetic crossings” where the poet has a revelation, mid-poem. One space leads him into another space, literally and metaphorically. “20 Questions” is a poem of, well, 20 questions. Write a poem entirely of questions that contains a poetic crossing, from some sort of mystery or confusion to some sort of understanding, or revelation.
2. I’m fond of that Jim Simmerman exercise, “20 Little Poetry Projects.” Even if all of the assignments don’t work for you, invariably, some of them will. You can find it on the web. He gets you to make leaps that you wouldn’t make, to use language you wouldn’t use, to be, ironically, programmatically idiosyncratic. But I don’t get how you get there, so long as you do.
3. I love this OULIPO exercise (that I did not make up). Write a one-vowel poem. That is, 10 lines, 10 syllables per line (I added that so it wouldn’t be TOO hard) where you only use one vowel. Of course, each vowel has a lot of different sounds, but only use one vowel. And “y.” That’s the freebie. It sounds crazy, but I have students write amazing poems with these parameters. It really teaches you about the many sounds our language makes. We tend to be on English’s case because it’s not as pretty as Italian and doesn’t have the graphic beauty of Eastern languages. But it has sounds from all over the world and all over history, changes constantly, and is incredibly versatile.
4. This is based on reading Robert Creeley, who I do not love (gasp): much of his work, according to Charles Altieri, is about “the problem of finding or creating an adequate language.” Write a poem in which language stutters, stops and starts, corrects itself and, in general, does not seem satisfied with its own attempt that communication.
5. Read Wallace Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” (All over the web, and very anthology.) That’s it. No, I’m kidding: now write your own “13 ways” poem. Look at whatever “it” is from every possible angle, physically, historically, philosophically, emotionally. You don’t have to end at 13, but challenge yourself to exhaust whatever it is you are examining.

POEM

Stick & Stones (ii)

Back in the day, matter spread out in a nearly uniform sea

with subtle undulations.

Over time, gravity pulled matter into vast filaments

filament, filament, filament

and emptied the intervening voids.

Cosmic acceleration has changed all that: no clumping.

We go too fast!

I’ve had trouble with my cake mixes clumping.

For centuries, the process changed little.

pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake

The 16^th century Spice Cake, the 18^th century Nun’s Cake,

even the rich Pound Cake of our colonial days required

long hours of labor, which Puritans enjoyed – each suffering

just another correction on the sinuous path to the afterlife.

spare the rod

Balaam’s ass refused to continue along his path because

he saw an angel blocking his way, holding a sword.

He swerved three times – the last was really a crouch –

and nothing could tempt him to budge.

Ass and snake are the only talking animals in scripture.

The Garden abundant with what we now call “produce.”

blackberry, blackberry, blackberry

It does not say when God created stones.

nine days old

Jacob slept on one for a desert-pillow.

David readied five smooth for Goliath

who fell and the Theory of Improbability was born.

Was enough to make a man stare

This spawned the phrase, “What are the odds?”

This begat the track and the trifecta

which demands you pick three horses in order.

Praising his mistress’s disheveled appearance,

Robert Herrick wrote the poem, “Delight in Disorder.”

and a merry old soul was he

Disordered states outnumber ordered ones.

Order is a first-class luxury like certain fowl.

duck, duck

Bobby Fischer spends time in Japan playing random chess.

Back-row pieces are rearranged to eliminate what he calls

the “yawning predictability” of the game.

Fischer is a jerk.

Really, a jerk.

had a wife and couldn’t keep her

Newton thought gravity always attractive but now

we’ve found that some is repulsive, though I don’t like to judge.

I do like to listen to my son sing, as infants have perfect pitch.

spoil the child

Soon, I tell him, you will get your own stick and you can poke

the devil in the eye.

three blind mice, three blind mice

The earliest printed books are called incunabula, from the Latin

for “swaddling clothes.”

This is where the colophon comes from.

I have an affection for symbols because they take up so much

less room than the phenomenal world.

little lamb, little lamb, little lamb

Still, I would rather not fall from a great height.

let down your hair

It can be hard to put me together.

Previously Published in Slope, Summer, 2008.