How important is music to your poetry?
Music in poetry is the reason that I write poetry, but how a person thinks about music is just as important. How music fits into the why of how I write is not necessarily rhyming or metrical, but perhaps in a certain folkway of clarity in effort, timber, tuning, and audience.
When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
Rae Armantrout, John Ashbery, René Char and Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī all give me a good brain rub when I need it.
I find myself returning to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, in unfruitful times to hear the sound of “With what I most enjoy contented least” ring in my head or Char’s great poem “‘Restore to Them…’” to hear the resounding lines: “And for the one who can see the earth’s fruitful end, / Failure is of no moment, even if all is lost.”
What other poetry books have you been reading lately?
I am looking forward to reading Path of Totality by Niina Pollari. This past month, I’ve been reading:
Artforum by César Aira (trans. Katherine Silver)
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Triptych by Iris McCloughan
The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
Paris Notebook by Tereza Riedlbauchová (trans. Stephan Delbos)
Selected Poems by Michael Gottlieb
What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
The most difficult thing about being a poet and writing poetry is explaining to people what poems are about – not because poetry is difficult but an explanation of a poem usually requires another poem.
What are you working on?
Beautiful, Safe & Free is a manuscript that I began working on almost a decade ago. It’s been called many things – I think I am ready to leave it behind and take on a new paramour. And, I’ve fought with it in some ways to mean correctly or remain free of the influence of more profitable editing. At this point, I believe that it may have found its rightful home – more on that soon. Omnidawn published my first full-length book Blood Oboe in 2015 and lately, I’ve been thinking of rewriting that. A long, serial poem about loss called A Western Sky is forthcoming with Carl Annarummo’s Greying Ghost. Carl makes beautiful books and I’m lucky to be working with him.
