james stotts : part one

james stotts is a poet and russian translator, living in boston with his son.  his first two books, since and elgin pelicans, were published by pen and anvil press.

what are you working on?

it never occurs to me until after the fact.  the work goes on, and if the small pieces have any affinity in retrospect, then that just becomes a matter of flower arrangement.  i’ve hardly ever been capable of a project.  in fact, the poems have been getting shorter, tighter, more opaque, nearer to a certain end.  my marriage, which was a wonderful but overextended realization of mutual exclusion—fourteen years—gave me a lot of material.  three books.  the next one is looking like a break-up album, with the upshot of a housewarming.