AS/IS 2

1) What inspires you to write poetry in both the short- and long-term? In other words: what gets you started, and what keeps you going?

What got me started was a gale of emotion I had no idea what to do with combined with an innate love of language.

What keeps me going is habit. What also keeps me going is that I find no greater pleasure than interlocking a series of words together to create something.

2) Is poetry the primary genre that you work within? If so, why? If not, why?

Yes. It wasn't always. I used to write a lot of short fiction, a novel, plays... I also used to be a musician and a painter. All of the above simply require more time than I have to give them. And none of them give me what poetry gives me. What Michael said about poetry's laucunae, its silences. That's something I am drawn to. I am drawn to the quiet of a well thought out, or accidental phrase. The effort of making poetry is natural for me. Music for instance was always forcing myself a little further than my abilites. Whereas with poetry I feel that I'm forcing myself to expand my abilites, and they grow. It's much less of a fight. Much less painful and ten times as rewarding.

3) Do you believe that a poet has any special sort of social responsibility?

No. And then yes. I think that the responsibilites hover over the Poet. But then I don't think that poets have any more responsibilites than that rest of us. Ideally. I think that every artist, every person has a responsibility to memory. It's just that poets use words, the most common thing in at least my life. I think that poets have a much greater responsibility to love poetry and to share that love to spread it around if possible.

4) What does writing poetry do for you? Why does poetry matter?

Writing poetry clears out my head. It is like creating a set of flashcards, so that at a later date I can flick through them and remember things. Remember lies and exaggerations, moments of clarity. Poetry matters to me because it is my inner soundtrack. When I walk, talk, listen, I'm creating it inside my head even if none of it gets recorded it's the ceiling to which I look up at when lying in bed. It stimulates and strengthens me. It makes me calm.

Poetry matters because it's a time stamp. It carries our social context and dialects. It carries so much more than I read into it. It carries little pieces of me to other people. And it carries little pieces of other people to me.

Questions via Vanishing Points of Resemblance.

I want to answer Tom's questions here in AS-IS, partly because of his note that AS/IS-2 has seriously stalled. I agree also with his comment of too much "flip dismissiveness," but I also feel guilty of "too few attempts to connect" and all the rest, etc. Also I think these questions are a healthy way of maybe trying to reconnect, to take this project (AS/IS-2) seriously.

1) What inspires you to write poetry in both the short- and long-term? In other words: what gets you started, and what keeps you going?

I think that what gets me started is curiosity. Sometimes surprising things happen when I write poetry, and I hate being bored. Also, I have to admit to being a "romantic," in that I love the mysterious aspects of writing -- not knowing what will come next, looking forward to whatever emerges. Reading other people's poetry also gets me going. And sometimes, yes, there is that "subvocalic" muttering. I want to find out what it's saying.

2) Is poetry the primary genre that you work within? If so, why? If not, why?

I discovered that poetry is the primary genre for me when I stopped doing it for years (while in grad school), and realized that not doing it was making me crazy, unhappy, selfish. Which is probably why I'm now over-doing it by keeping several blogs going all devoted more or less to poetry.

3) Do you believe that a poet has any special sort of social responsibility?

Yes. Inasmuch as the world enters into poetry. And poetry always emerges in historical/political, geographic, ethical, spiritual, sexual what-have-you context. That's the framework I carry around with me. But I don't believe in setting out to make "socially-conscious" poetry. Sometimes my focus will reflect more strongly a political situation. But one doesn't really have to try, because the historical/political context is just there, in the language. Sometimes I wander around and around inside my little interior world. This doesn't mean, however, that the material contexts are not there; they recede, they come forward. Whatever's necessary.

4) What does writing poetry do for you? Why does poetry matter?

It helps me to make sense of things, I suppose. Although that sounds simplistic. Sometimes I think that it took the place of religion for me. I think it was at the point when I stopped counting on a Catholic Jesus (one day, when I was a sulky kid, I challenged Jesus to appear in front of me, right NOW. He failed that one) and started to get interested in the aesthetic beauty and ritual of catholic altars, and I started to look for meaning and life (and mystery) in the things of this world and the relationships therein.

jean

1) What inspires you to write poetry in both the short- and long-term? In other words: what gets you started, and what keeps you going?

there is a continually reviving subvocalic nattering. in its lacunae, poems are glimpsed.

2) Is poetry the primary genre that you work within? If so, why? If not, why?

in a very real way, whether i make music or paint or draw or write, in prose or poetry, it is the same process--one that i have given no single durable name to, except "grace".

3) Do you believe that a poet has any special sort of social responsibility?

absolutely. the poet is a custodian of memory. this entails, unfortunately, paying attention.

4) What does writing poetry do for you? Why does poetry matter?

actually, writing poetry interferes with my life a great deal. not only in the moments when i am trying to do something else, but also in the obligations of perception & post-production it imposes on me. it is something, i think, like being a parent (which i am not). poetry matters because everything matters--& that only. if poets were more willing to take a vacation from their self-importance, they might gradually come to understand that the main thing is not writing but the cultivation of relationships. writing is one way of doing this.

Questions via Vanishing Points of Resemblance.