May as well start here. I’m curious: what’s
your elevator pitch for your book?
What do Elvis, Jesus,
and Edward Hopper have in common? How do you light the soul on fire without,
too, igniting the flesh? A World Less Perfect for Dying In answers these questions and more! The works
here exam the liminal through the immutable, give lyric to form, give spirit
permission to aspire to will. These poems, in exploration of themes of loss,
faith—both lost and regained—death, isolation, and love, examine the ways in
which our lives are but the brief imaginings of others, and the hope we still
dare to breathe into those imaginings that they might one day come true.
How did you come upon the subject of your book?
As is the case with
many other first books of poetry, the themes and subjects emerged organically,
for the most part. By that I mean that I didn’t sit down consciously one day to
“write this book” per say (though, in a way, by composing these poems, it was a
conscious decision). The place I started working from was a suite of “urban
pastorals” I had written a few years back. I wanted initially to expand on this
notion, but the more time I spent working directly with this conceit in mind
the less the works held together. Other ideas and themes emerged prominently
and had to be moved from the periphery to the center. This meant adding and
subtracting from the collection in order to get the right feel for the work as
a whole. Once the poems began speaking to each other in ways that elevated the
individual works collectively it became evident to me through that conversation
what book I was really working on. This is all, of course, a much different
process than I am executing now with the next manuscript . . . so far.
And the title? Sometimes, it seems to me,
titles can strike like lightning or can be extraordinarily elusive. How did you
go about finding your title?
The title of the
manuscript came as both a strike of lightning and something extraordinarily
elusive, actually. It was elusive in the sense that I had tried out several
titles before it, which didn’t seem to work. But, maybe that’s not quite right.
They worked with the way I had the poems arranged, but I felt like the wrong
themes and tone were being exposed within those arrangements. It wasn’t until I
made a few good decisions about how to create a greater sense of tension in the
way the poems were speaking to each other that the title emerged. Actually, two
possible options emerged. When the two titles emerged, it
was as a lightning strike. I
abandoned the first one that came to me, as I figured it might lead the reader
in the wrong direction, toward assuming the “I” in these works is meant to be
confessional and not lyrical, as I work consciously to expose what is
emotionally true through what seems experientially true as seamlessly as possible. The
title I abandoned became, instead, the title of the first section of the book.
Coincidentally, this is usually not how titles reveal themselves to me. I often
know the title of an individual piece before I begin to write or within the
first few composed lines of a new poem. So, this was a slightly different type
of engagement than what I have been accustomed to when working on individual
pieces.
Tell us something about the most difficult
thing you encountered in this book’s journey.
Letting certain poems
go regardless of my affinity for them for the sake of the success of the
manuscript. It was difficult at times to be completely honest with myself about
the fact that some pieces just weren’t speaking well enough to the other poems
to stay. We have to be able to kill our darlings, right? At least, that’s what
I keep telling my students. But, it’s true. We aren’t very often our own best
audience, often too close to the material to make the right choices concerning
content.
And the most pleasurable?
When I came back to
the book after my publisher sent me the first round of proofs. It had been a
while since I had looked at the manuscript at all, exhausted by the process of
getting the book accepted for publication in the first place. I had spent so
much of the last two years arranging, rearranging, revising and composing new
pieces that I couldn’t really see the book anymore. Or the individual pieces,
for the most part. That first time through the proofs felt really good. I had
gained enough distance from the work again to see it with fresh eyes. It was a
huge relief.
What’s the best and / or worst piece of advice
(writing or publishing or similar) you’ve gotten?
I’ll go with worst. Oddly
enough, however, often the worst of the worst advice evolved into the best. But
that has more to do with me as a person than the advice itself. One of my
undergraduate professors had this uncanny knack for exacting the truth in a
particularly poignant and damaging manner (she was eventually let go by the
school, unsurprisingly). On more than one occasion, in an attempt to do harm,
she actually made it clear to me what decisions I needed to make to move
forward as a poet. One moment during a meeting with her in her office—where she
was clearly reading my poem for the first time though this was a weekly
arrangement she had with all members for the class and this was a task she
should have accomplished before I was sitting in a chair at her desk with
her—she made an attempt to belittle me by showing me how I was failing as a
poet in general as a way to talk about the poem she had just read for the first
time. And, admittedly, the poem may not have been that good. I don’t remember
the poem. However, (though I was initially crushed to the point of considering
becoming a math major), I realized that in her attempt to stamp the life out of
me, she inadvertently led me to see where I was succeeding, and I, therefore,
knew exactly where to focus the majority of my energy in becoming a more
successful poet. So, in the long run, I am thankful for the interaction, but
she was wrong and dead wrong to treat me, and everyone in the program, as
recklessly as she did.
Tell us one of your favorite books you’ve
discovered recently and say a little about why.
Pinion, by Claudia Emerson. Someone in my writing
group recommended it and let me borrow her copy. She thought that it might help
me make some critical choices regarding voice and organization with the new
manuscript that I am currently working on. And she was right. The pieces come
from different voices. The voices are true and emotionally authentic. And
Emerson’s voice is so powerful in a quiet, purposeful way that is
simultaneously public and private. I am glad to be spending time with the book
in general and would recommend it to anyone, but I am also grateful to have the
chance to study, for my own artistic purposes, the kinds of choices (and tough
choices, I am sure) that Emerson made regarding the types of risks she knew this
book had to take.
Can you share an excerpt from your book? Give
us a taste.
from “Planning Our Departure”
You
roll away from me, hand dropping
against
the box spring,
as
if to usher this bed into motion, into
one
last feat of greatness though nothing on it stirs.
While
we lie here, storm clouds
settle
in above us,
rain
gathers in their sagging bellies, felled cotton seed
invades
every grassless patch of ground below.
I
half expect to find this bed covered too,
mistake
loose down against my pillow
for
some ambitious seed that made it through
the
screen beside this bed, seeking some higher,
safer
place to land, who knows what falling is,
how
it ends where no light reaches and never has.
Not
even in the highest noonday sun when
the
shadows are but charcoal blemishes no bigger than a sigh.
What’s a question you wish I asked? (And how
would you answer it?)
I guess influences?
The voices where I always seem to find inspiration most often (though I’m
always looking for books and authors to add to the list—Natasha Trethewey, for
instance, is a relatively new addition, in fact) are Adrienne Rich, Lucille
Clifton, Larry Levis, Sharon Olds, Anne Carson, Brenda Hillman, Carolyn Forche,
and Lisel Mueller. And, on a different day, if you asked, depending on the kind
of work I’m doing, I may also throw Yusef Komunyakaa and Mark Doty onto the
list.
OK, we’re smitten.
Where do we go to buy your book?
You can buy the book
directly from the publisher (which is, of course, best for the publisher and
author) at http://www.thelostbookshelf.com/index.html .
The book is also
available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/World-Less-Perfect-Dying-In/dp/0986111171 or on SPD http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780986111174/a-world-less-perfect-for-dying-in.aspx. The book can also be found on the shelves at
Porter Square Books, in Cambridge, MA.
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