Bill Neumire : part five

Why is poetry important?

Maybe it’s not? I know so many fulfilled, incredible people who don’t know poetry. I only know that it’s a part of me, important for me, (and often it’s an essential part of the poets I know), and it expands the valence of my life in subtle but meaningful ways--allows me to connect with people I can’t imagine ever otherwise connecting with including anyone who might be reading this right now. None of my close IRL friends read poetry, none of my family, but it is a part of me that exists in a separate room, a room that needs company, that, in this new pandemic metaphor, sings out the window to others’ windows, others’ rooms and tries to find the poetry part of them that begs finding. It’s important, I suppose, because the difficulty of knowing each other in any real way is our greatest and most important difficulty--I always loved Steinbeck’s advice that we try to understand each other, that “if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love”--and poetry is one of the deepest ways I’ve ever known to understand someone else.

Bill Neumire : part four

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Nothing? Everything? It’s a form that finds those who need it, I think. I’ve always bristled at efforts to push poetry on the public, to lament how few people read poetry, etc. I think its eclectic nature is its power in many ways, and it’s immensely available for free everywhere, so it holds this both democratic/idiosyncratic position that makes it alluring. For me, it accomplishes what those little plastic capsule creatures that expand in water are meant to accomplish--it’s a big bang universe that doesn’t bang until you read it, and then it keeps expanding, if it’s a good poem, each time you go back to it.

Bill Neumire : part three

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

That process has changed over the years. I distinctly remember early internet poetry chat groups on Prodigy as one of my first experiences with the internet! Then eventually I joined online poetry workshops like the Alsop Review’s Gazebo. I definitely used those voices to help me cut my teeth. But eventually I became more comfortable with my own process, and the voices I let in winnowed, so now it’s often that a poem feels right and done and I send it away when I encounter a publication that has a platform I love (that might mean a place that offers audio, or some sort of mini-interview or launch or social engagement--some way to be in less abstract contact with a world of readers). That said, I have had the deep pleasure of working with a few writers (like Hannah Craig, Steve Mueske [who many years ago published my first out-in-the world poem!], Jiordan Castle) who have always been immensely generous and open to telling me what they hear when I’m not yet comfortable with a piece or collection. Because even the best reader inevitably sees through their own lens, I’m always looking for new readers, new groups, and as I get older, new generations to put eyes on my poems and find new problems, new revelations.

Bill Neumire : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

When I was a kid I think poetry was a purely musical gesture (via Dr. Seuss, song lyrics, nonsensical rhymes), but then at some point it also became emotional, adding a level of moving what was inside of me out, and then again later it added a dimension that was social, writing poems in conversation with other poems, other artists; and then, too, there was a time when it added a dimension of the spiritual, in the sense that I came to sense the habits of writing had become habits of living and appreciating and considering greater questions of mortality.

Bill Neumire : part one

Bill Neumire’s second book of poems, #TheNewCrusades, will be published with Unsolicited Press in 2022 and was recently a finalist for the Barrow Street Prize and the 42 Miles Press Award. He reviews books of contemporary poetry for Vallum, and for Verdad where he also serves as poetry editor.

How did you first engage with poetry?

That’s a tough question, especially for someone with as sketchy a memory as me! But I can tell you that my grandparents used to watch me while my mom and dad worked, and they were wonderful people with a mysterious and wild backyard wherein I had pretty free range (terrifyingly so by today’s standards!) and I remember writing poems about things like wild strawberries and a secret well. I am also proud to say that I won my third grade Halloween poem contest. I think this came from having poetry around me in the form of books and music. My grandmother used to play piano and I remember loving the music and words to “Over the River” (all those prepositional phrases!).