Sean Kilpatrick's Anorexic Chlorine Sex Toy Museum

C. Allen Rearick Interview

2008-05-11T21:47:00.002-04:00

C. Allen Rearick is published in Opium, Shampoo, Free Verse, Identity Theory, Mad Hatter’s Review and more. He has a new book out from Zygote in my Coffee’s Tainted Coffee Press

SK: Do you find that, upon the third syllable of an anapestic foot, how are you?

C. Allen Rearick: yes i do. by the fith foot, i find the sound of ants, under my skin, crawling away with my bootleg copy of "cool runnings" it starts to become too much. and when it's over, i'm passed out in a gondola after havin' shot up aids in my arm for the 4th time that night.

SK: Have you ever been closing the blinds and mistaken the final wane of drawn light as a forthcoming atomic blast and reopened the shades with hurried gratitude only to be disappointed because some fucking kid is just playing with his bike reflectors?

C. Allen Rearick: only on tuesdays when chickens walk the streets with protractors, lookin' to create papaer mache dolls. this angers me to no end. i want to take off my fake leg, wave it in an obtuse wayward manner and recite gallway. which always turns out to sound like benny lava snorting taco sause with a large muskrat on the snowy banks of a long day in vermont.

SK: Do sexy little binary codes within the horrible poetry at the poetry marketing scam site poetry.com, in which by processing these codes one can see the pederast-era clean beginnings of whatever youth is typing it, haunt you?

C. Allen Rearick: once, when i was five, i had a dream where i was a general in the war of 1245. horrible poetry was everywhere. it made my stomach feel like evolution was a fantastic coup in which god break-danced all night to the rhythmic sounds of euclid's geometric penis. this is hard to talk aboot. but if you read between the lines, you will find an elephant in the room. he will be placenta. he will call your mom by her christian name. we will all die under the guise of binary codes clicking a psuedo morse code under our townails as we spell check our own breath.

SK: How many animals not intended for leashing have you walked up and down the city?

C. Allen Rearick: 3. one was a man made out of chalk dust. he once spoke of unicycles as if he understood time was a e-zwider rollin' paper. such non-sence i thought. i gave him my only stapler. told 'im to celebrate kwanza when the sky becomes popcorn. eat up he told me. for tomorrow is a bible quiz which we will all fail miserabley if we don't repent and recylce our tin cans.

SK: If I am driving toward Ohio at 80mph at 7AM and it's 35 degrees outside, and a box train is sauntering West near I-75 at 15mph, starting from Dayton, will you help me burn the hair off my arms?

C. Allen Rearick: after timmy set himself on fire, we all laughed at candles. we felt like green tea leaves compressed in cow manuer. that faint smell of whey protein melting in our jaws. and this is not a love story. but a story aboot love's inability to check out library books. if ohio were real, i'd call you a liar. if dayton were a moon, i'd inject porcelin between my toes. i'd tell you to drive faster so as to catch the dung-beetles shivering like copy machines, lonely for another page out of greater cleveland's user friendly phone book. but i digress, your arms are like the sun to me. fresh daisies shaven of all leather boot straps. come to my house. we'll have a sleep over. we'll make fresh papya and masturbate eachothers' colons. 15 mph is a long time to wait for a clean shower.

SK: When was the sky replaced by sex we never had?

C. Allen Rearick: our sex was a unicorn strugglin' to walk on jello. you slapped my thigh, said you missed the way i barked out cat calls at the floor when we played twister with the radio playin' only tom jones' "invitation to a beheading". one day we will fly an airplane into the cleveland ghetto, we will crash it for the money and the fame. the grass will be freshly cut, like our eyes when we saw tiny flints recorded on ice sculptures. i want to love you more than suicide. i want to hold you till you contract pancreatic cancer. i'll put on some coffee. pour it over my goiter. i'll take a picture of it and eat the negative just to show you what it's like to be pnuematic.

SK: Do you agree that statutory rape is the only true art form?

C. Allen Rearick: statuory rape is an invention of christianity. I've heard the walls bein' tickled by the dahli lama. he is a psuedo han-solo lookin' to count sheep who only understand unscripted bible verses. the word rape is pure beauty. say it 5 times and it begins to sound like love. we are all victims eating jello-puddin' pops. giant eagle sells diapers for the elderly. how pretentious don't you think. jakdfja would make a fine lullaby. cover the dead in thick wall paper, for they will kiss ashtray lips covered in chocolate butcher knives. tell me we will be in love forever and i'll show you a man who loves nmailed postcards.

SK: Which poets advocate procreation on international cable?

C. Allen Rearick: bob duvany. jack guglem. christa mcwelling. fred batchula. dirk xertaka. beef steak. fried beans in chewbacca's beard. avail: 4am friday. cut the lawn naked. feel the way men's health makes you beautiful. charles newharder. my address book is lonely. my friends are all cowboys. put up a fence and call little girls whores. i love you t.v.

SK: Please describe your facial hair in both its current and past states since adolescence and beyond.

C. Allen Rearick: barbed wire. hand carved maple wood caccti. little trinkets that say howdy. wind up toys in an old shoe box. color me bad. empty garage sales. scooners. tick-tac-toe. nickle plated 45s. red engines that once were mauve. listen, this is the essence of everything...blow, blow, blow. pop, pop, pop. smile. my coffee is cold.

Crawdad Nelson Interview

2007-12-27T01:51:00.000-05:00

Crawdad Nelson is a journalist and writer based in Sacramento, CA. Recent publications include: New Hampshire Review, Susurrus, Poetry Now, Rattlesnake Review, and Kerf. He has received two Pushcart nominations, and is a frequent speaker at college creative writing classes.

SK: Do you hunt or fish? Any hunting stories for us?

Crawdad Nelson: I've been hunting and fishing since I was small. Actually now that I live in Sacramento it doesn't happen that often, but I've done quite a bit of both and I'm sure the pursuit of those objects has had quite a bit of influence on the way i perceive/record impressions and which details I pick out as important.

Good hunting story, although I'm not involved: My older brother and a younger one were hunting deer in the Nevada mountains about a year ago, when the younger one, who didn't have tags or a gun, went down the road to scout for the older one, who was actually hunting. The younger one saw some deer, but knew he couldn't do anything except scare them away, and they were strolling in his direction so he had to do something. So he lay down in the dirt and let them walk up to and past him. Once they were out of sight, he got up and made it back to the older brother to let him know. Together they worked it out so the one with the bow and arrows was able to sneak up on the bucks and get his shot. You need to be pretty close to take a shot with a bow, so all the sneaking around and hiding paid off. Most places in those mountains don't have much cover.

SK: Could you tell me about writing the history of the moment?

Crawdad Nelson: writing the history of the moment is about first of all being able to distinguish the moment from all other time. How one event differs from others, as well as how it was caused and possibly the effects it will bring about. Fundamentally it's about understanding all the details. The smell, the sight, the sound, the sticky feel of the moment. Paying attention, being mindful, being aware and at the same time being open to suggestion. Above all it's about not closing down your senses because you think you've seen the real show. It's never over.

It can be exhausting to be paying 100% attention all the time but I don't see how else you can hope to see the one detail that marks the present moment as different from all others.

SK: How have literary magazines changed since you first began submitting poetry?

Crawdad Nelson: Obviously the advent of internet magazines has influenced all of small press publishing. Whereas twenty years ago I always assumed that editors had some sort of background that made their opinion worth listening to and/or respecting, anyone can see that that is not the case now.

Any jackal can start a paper zine or an internet rag and call it publication. I suppose it is, but I think people still read the old-fashioned literary magazines expecting to find better work than they can get from any old self-published or half-assed vanity web zine. Hopefully they can but the same old complaint that they are (or tend to be) stuffy and irrelevant often holds true.

Once in a while one runs into the publisher who's really picking out gems and not just publishing whatever comes along, who has criteria and is able to use them to produce a magazine that feels vital and relevant. In some ways nothing has really changed but I think there are probably quite a few more writers who think literature offers them an entree into some world of ideas. Hopefully it does but o the whole there's a lack of discipline and polish to things that doesn't improve readability. After all it should be a pleasant experience. That's what a writer is trying to accomplish, whatever their style or subject matter. Give the reader a gift, even if it hurts a little.

SK: How has freelance journalism influenced your art?

Crawdad Nelson: Freelance journalism has been an interesting way to make a few dollars as a writer. I haven't really felt comfortable being a reporter. I don't believe my temperament is suited to it. On the whole I don't think it's influenced my art much except it has forced me to sharpen both my observational skills and my ability to distill experience into the fewest possible words. There is a parallel there--the skills are absolutely complementary.

SK: Do you live off of your journalistic work? Is it possible to live off writing?

Crawdad Nelson: I don't make a living off my journalism. At times it has been a needed supplement, at other times it has been slightly more important, but it's never been steady enough work, though at times I've tried harder to make it that.

It's definitely possible to make a living as a writer, but a lot of things have to fall into order for it to happen and you have to have a certain amount of luck. Whether you create that luck or wait for it is I suppose the main thing. But at the same time I've found it important, as a poet, to be able to forget completely about whether any money is involved. that never helps me produce art.

Sometimes hunger helps produce something I can sell, but it's not really art.

SK: Should I ‘feel sentimental about the Wobblies’ like Ginsberg says? Will this make me a commie and get my ass kicked?

Crawdad Nelson: Yes, you should feel sentimental about the Wobblies. they were our last great hope, and, though they survive in some sense, what they represented in the 20s and 30s was the hope for true representative (proportional) democracy in the U.S.. Although they did have larger goals, in this country what they wanted to do was give the working man and woman, as well as those without jobs, a voice in the way things are run. Their utter defeat and ruin during the depression era was really the last gasp of the working class; since then we have been so solidly right-wing that, for instance, Spanish civil war volunteers from the U.S. were officially branded as "premature anti-fascists." You could look it up. Ginsberg was what they caled a "Red-Diaper baby" meaning his parents were part of a vital communist movement in the U.S. which of course long ago ceased to mean anything. But you should be sentimental. We had a chance, though it was gone before we were born. If that's enough to get your ass kicked, well, we live in a sad, corrupted, world and you're probably better off finding that out sooner rather than later.

SK: Could you tell me about your poem ‘Seven’ in the New Hampshire Review? To record it, did you phone them and read it over a recording device?

Crawdad Nelson: The New Hampshire Review offered everyone in that first issue a chance to call them and record their poem on some sort of website. Apparently it was permanent. i don't know, I haven't visited them in some time, but it struck me as a modern innovation making good use of existing technology to give readers a chance to hear a poet read a poem the way he intended it to be heard.

SK: Would you consider landscape and nature a recurring theme and your work? Who are some of your early literary influences?

Crawdad Nelson: Landscape and nature are two vital influences on my work. I doubt I'd have any work without them. My earliest literary influences, that is, those writers I found on my own, were people like Steinbeck and Twain. Also Vonnegut. Poetically I owe a debt to Kenneth Patchen for many reasons, but I'd say I've incorporated influences from a great variety of poets, from some I can't name but know of only through anthologies read years ago, to more common names like William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and Laura Riding. A big part of my poetics comes out of being in a community of poets who acted like a community, in a quaint time and place about 20 years ago. No big names, but people dedicated to the craft who appreciated what I was doing at the time and offered to help. But landscape, yes. Important. Nature also, but not without thinking about how people fit into and alter it. From a rocketship they all blend into the same picture. So I've always been trying to get a meaningful perspective on how nature and people fit together.

SK: Who are you reading lately?

Crawdad Nelson: Lately I've been reading mostly science--anthropology, paleoanthropology and genetics--and history. Herodotus and Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Joesphus, the history of the Huns, the Mongols, etc. And Civil War stuff.

SK: As a facial hair enthusiast, I must ask about the current state of your beard, and how are you maintaining it?

Crawdad Nelson: When I met my wife she straightaway started making grooming suggestions. I had always been the sort who just let things grow wild on the face, but she thought I'd be better off clearing the cheeks at least. So therefore I shave a little circle under each eye and keep the rest trimmed. Working with the public, as I do now, this is probably a good idea. But I may go feral again at any time.

Kevin Doran Interview

2007-10-23T09:25:00.002-04:00

Kevin Doran is published at Dusie, elimae, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Sein und Werden, zafusy, etc. He is the founder of Triptych Haiku and his blog is Siberian Kiss.

SK: Could you educate me on the Triptych Haiku as a format? This is a form of haiku that you invented as well as the name of the journal you edit, am I right?

Kevin Doran: Yes. Perhaps it’s just semantics, but I wouldn’t say I invented it; created, maybe -- but even then it’s difficult to say I pioneered something that could very well have been done before. As far as I’m aware, it hasn’t been; though if it has, then I merely gave it a name. Basically, triptych haiku is a form that applies a fixed cut-up technique to haiku. Three haiku, one line from each, forming a new three-line triptych. You may ask why make it methodical when cut-ups are by definition endless, but it was fitting with haiku itself being a fixed form; and the fixed method worked well to that end. That’s part of what I enjoy about writing haiku: how the concise, structured, disciplined form complements the free verse I mostly write. It’s like enjoying lots of cake, but being sure to eat some vegetables also.

I find it endlessly fun to mismatch pieces and end up with unforeseen juxtapositions. I was pleased with the number of people who submitted triptych haiku to the journal, though I published few of them. There was an urge to publish loads and use the fact to illustrate its success in catching on, but that wasn’t my intention, or the point. John M. Bennett was the first person to adopt the form, and Mark Young’s Otoliths became the first venue, outside of my personal control, to publish it. It didn’t take off anywhere near as much as Eileen Tabios’s hay(na)ku, for example, but she’s more well-known than I am, and that’s simply how scenes and popularity work.

There's this print zine, Raw NerVZ Haiku, (I’ve been meaning to submit to them for years, but they don't accept e-mail submissions) which takes a similar approach to short forms as Triptych Haiku. I remember reading a survey on haiku publications which ascertained what the most popular/highly regarded zines were out there. One commenter said of NerVZ something along the lines of, 'Not a place I’d go to for good haiku'. Now, I’m sure what he meant was 'traditional', because there are lots of good haiku published in that journal; so there's no doubt a conservative, staid, arse-tight doctrine among many haijin that what strays from tradition isn't 'good'.

I genuinely thought I was going to be excommunicated from the haiku world, rejected at every turn, for starting the zine; that's partly why it was anonymous at the beginning. When you drop a pebble into a strict traditionalist's pond, they get real upset about the ripples (before the first issue even hit, Christopher Heron of The Heron’s Nest said to me, ‘May you create a stir!’ -- perhaps he was thinking the same thing). But the feedback was virtually unanimously positive -- which surprised me, and not only because it was the first time I’d edited anything -- and even veterans of the form, who I thought wouldn't even submit, or approve of the editorial direction, were pleased and supportive. Though I’m sure there are still some people out there who would jam knives into my spine in a dark alley. . . .

SK: What are some of your favorite types of haiku? Does anything particular about their history appeal to you? Which writers have influenced your work and how did you get into writing haikus?

Kevin Doran: It’s difficult to remember how it happened. I guess I was reading/researching lots of poetry, and many forms, and decided I’d write one. Then, I don’t think I stopped. So it was love at first sight, really. It had nothing to do with it being a popular form; I guess a lot of people just find it easy to love. Now that I think of it, aside from the odd dabble, I remember the first time I properly wrote haiku/senryu: I was reading the submission guidelines of Simply Haiku, and they were taking senryu on a theme. I wrote ten or so and sent them in, and that was also the first time I had haiku/senryu accepted; that was mid-2005.

It didn’t take me long to get the idea, and get good at writing them. I laugh, now, at what I have in earlier folders; but the embarrassment ends after a few months (I file everything I write by month, year). I remember Ferris Gilli, an editor at The Heron’s Nest and quite a skilled and well-known haiku poet (‘haijin’), asking me for my details for their files and telling me I had a ‘fine understanding of haiku’, even though my work was rejected. It’s encouraging to get praise or well-wishes from such people.

My favourite types or subgenres of haiku would be haiku noir, senryu, scifaiku and fantasy ku; generally anything that’s different and/or innovative. There are other short forms I enjoy reading and writing, such as gembun, ghazal, tanka, and so on.

As for the history of haiku, again I think it’s easy to be drawn to its origins and place in ancient Japanese culture, and still, to a degree, modern-day culture. Few forms have such rich and interesting histories. That may be another reason for its popularity: it’s not just an idea or a concept; it’s cultured, it has history; it’s been places and done things. Aside from coming across it, liking it, and becoming interested in its history, I was also drawn to it through a general interest in Japanese/Chinese culture that stemmed from having studied/trained in martial arts; and it’s rooting in philosophy no doubt created a certain magnetism.

As for literary influences, to choose writers who have influenced me would be unfair in terms of adequately portraying my scope of influence, as a writer wouldn’t influence me any more than what happened on a morning walk or what I read on the back of a chocolate bar. I make no distinction between the two, and therefore certainly no distinction between individual writers. So I’m unable to answer the question in any overly defined terms. Words are words, and words are channeled from experiences – would you say that one type of words were more important than others; that a collection of words were more important than an experience? For me, the canon mustn’t be solely literary or even word-based; for example, travelling to another country offers experience outside of any book, experience that would better inform and develop a person, and thus their canon and thus their poetics.

SK: I have trouble writing haikus and, considering your accomplishments with this poetic format, (and in general) was hoping you could perhaps break down the process for me. How is a good contemporary haiku composed?

Kevin Doran: There are endless essays written about haiku, and what makes a ‘good’ haiku, and it’s all completely interpretative. However, there are characteristics of what makes a haiku ‘good’ or better than another. For me, no matter what style/subgenre you’re writing in, a haiku/senryu has to say something, and it has to say it concisely. They also work well with disparate juxtapositions and no adjectives. For me, that’s what worked so well with Triptych Haiku: I generally stuck to the rules of what makes a haiku or senryu good, and ignored the other rules and ‘rules’ (the unspoken, social rules, like, ‘Don’t write about dildos, because people will frown at you because your work won’t be “serious”’). I could easily write five-hundred words explaining haiku, how to write it, and how to write it well, but I won’t; just read it, study it, then read it some more. Most people get taught that -- and most, if not all, dictionary definitions/popular definitions (Wikipedia, etc) merely outline that -- haiku is a short form that is a fixed tercet of five-seven-five syllables. People who don’t know any better say that Westernised haiku is a bastardised form, in not adhering to this syllable structure, though Japanese is a wildly different language, and translations of haiku into English naturally transpose into different syllable structures. The originators of the form didn’t always adhere to the five-seven-five syllable structure themselves anyway. For a lot of haijin, haiku is a lot more about content and diction than structure, and a lot of people miss that point.

SK: How is Triptych Haiku the magazine going these days? How difficult is it to edit a magazine?

Kevin Doran: Too difficult, don’t ever do it. Editing is like a slow and painful death of the soul; like stabbing it over time with a thousand toothpicks. Ninety per cent of the problem is that no-one reads or heeds the submission guidelines. The others are mostly things like amateurs who don’t know any better e-mailing three times in a week, after they’ve just had work accepted, aggressively asking about the status of their work when the issue isn’t due out for months; and being undecided about borderline work. However, the feeling of publishing work -- especially when you’ve given people a platform that virtually didn’t exist -- and giving editing suggestions that make a piece better, is great. With the latter, you feel like you’ve done that little bit extra for the zine, and bettered the writer by showing them something new.

These days, the zine is asleep. It will stay asleep until I find a second suitable editor to co-manage it.

SK: I enjoyed the article you proposed to Bookslut that was posted on your blog Siberian Kiss. What would or will your further works of critique and journalism be like and what is your take on critical analysis?

Kevin Doran: Thanks. The great thing about being a writer -- namely one that doesn’t adhere to any one school, movement, group, genre, style -- is that not even I know what I’m going to do. Triptych Haiku was in my subconscious for a while, and there was about a two-minute-long gap between finally deciding to do it, and doing it, and that was mostly down to the loading time of my laptop. Most other things I do are like that: they boil, ferment, build up, then come out unyieldingly at the right time. . . . I guess my critiques and journalism will follow the same lines of interest that appear on my blog -- politics, poetry, music, etc -- and take any shape at all. I’ve been mentally collating opinions and critiques of poetry blogs and poet-blogs for a few months -- perhaps I’ll start doing something in that vain? Taking my interviews to a higher platform than my blog (I’m currently interviewing bands as a journalist for my university’s student newspaper)? I’d definitely like to incorporate poetry, and possibly even poetics (as in theory), into my journalism more.

I eat critical analysis for breakfast.

…Actually, I’m going to answer that properly. Critical thinking and critical analysis are interminably important. It should be encouraged more in school, though the social agendas of schools don’t allow for it. There’s a time and place for intellectual approaches/intelligent thought processes when constructing or critiquing a poem, and writers with an exclusively anti-intellectual approach (under the guise of ‘anti-establishmentism’ or ‘-elitism’) to writing don’t sit well with me, and I usually find such a stance is merely a precedent for people who wouldn’t be able to write or critique a poem from such a standpoint if they tried, anyway, and is therefore merely technique (or in many cases lack of) as defence mechanism. Not that there’s anything essentially wrong with that approach to writing, as long as there’s acknowledgement of said on the writer’s part.

SK: Are you into John Cage’s writing or music or both or neither?

Kevin Doran: I respect his work, yes.

SK: Could you enlighten me about your music, the process of creation, the instruments used, its style and your desired goals?

Kevin Doran: My music assumes two main strands: the DAW-based (digital audio workstation) stuff I upload to MySpace and my blog, and guitar-based stuff few people have heard before. Music’s been a huge influence on me since I was a kid. Presently, I’ve been playing guitar for over seven years and keyboard for a few months.

The process isn’t too serious, as I just make (electronic) music for fun: I just use solely DAW programmes. If I wanted to get serious, I could hook-up my guitar to my laptop, use samplers (like Matina Stamatakis does) or MP3 recorders, etc, but I’m having fun with what I’ve been doing. I haven’t spent any more than, say, ten hours over a span of a few days on any one song, so I don’t sweat blood over it like I would my writing.

Explaining the style is difficult; it’s eclectic, within the scope of the purely electronic: glitch, trip hop, drum and bass, breakbeat, electronica, ambient; anything that’s interesting.

The desired goal is to have fun and further express myself and be creative.

SK: Where did you obtain this frightening mask through which you read your work here?

Kevin Doran: A friend gave it to me. It was all so haphazard, actually. I’d wanted to do something a little different, and initially thought of utilising my big hood, so to speak, and perhaps using a mask. I’d been half-thinking for a while that if I was going to put it online, I’d need to continue the partial anonymity thing I have going on (by which I mean you can find photographs of me online, you just have to look for them). The night before the reading, I was too busy but went over to a friend’s place anyway, and he had several of the same mask hanging from his bookshelf. It came together nicely. I cut bigger nose holes to breathe better, and cut out the bottom to allow jaw room to speak.

I was so busy/disorganised that I didn’t pick what I was going to read until a few hours before the reading (I mistakenly read some drafts). I didn’t have time to practise with the mask on, and I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it would be to breathe in. And being a little drunk on real absinthe, and wine, didn’t help. In the video, you can see, just thirty seconds after I start reading, there’s a lengthened pause and I shift off one leg to the other. That’s me thinking, ‘Shit, I can’t breathe in this thing.’

SK: Living in the United Kingdom (I believe you’ve lived in England and Ireland at different times?), are postage fees concerning email-excluded submissions to American magazines a problem of expense or otherwise too much of a hassle?

Kevin Doran: I moved to Australia from England in 1986, back to England in 1995, then to Ireland in 1999, then back to England in 2005, where I co-lived there and in Ireland for the first year, and where I’ve lived to the present day.

Postal submissions to any country or place is too much hassle. Here’s a quote from my blog, May 2006:

I'm not going to track down a printer (means booking a computer in the library, driving into town and back, paying €1, in Ireland; means walking to uni and back, in England), print my work, walk to a shop to buy a pack of envelopes, lick that stuff that tastes like a decade's worth of sweat collected from old peoples' socks, walk to the post office, queue for ten minutes with a screaming baby/whining kid in my ear, buy a stamp and have to interact with someone, walk to the post box, pull out the wedgy all the walking has given me, then make it back home -- WHEN I can paste them into an e-mail and press 'send'.

The expense isn’t the issue: I see any postal fee as being more than rebated with the number of free contributor’s copies that get mailed to me from here and abroad.

SK: As long as I’ve been a fan of your work, I’ve also been a fan of your distinctive facial hair. Would you please describe for me your shaving methods, the history of your facial hair, and if there is a technical or personally invented name for the style in which you grow it?

Kevin Doran: Shaving usually occurs for me anywhere between two days and two months after I think, ‘I should probably shave now’. These Muslim guys thought I was Muslim once. A Muslim guy in a kebab shop asked me if I was Muslim. (Customs love me -- I got belligerently questioned about what religion I was, once, and I usually get searched even when I don’t set-off the metal detector.) Someone once asked me if I was Jewish. When I was thirteen, someone thought I was a girl. Now, most people think I’m Canadian. Some think American, very few think Irish, even fewer think Australian. I don’t even know what I am anymore. But back to my facial hair. I think I’ve fully shaven once, possibly twice, since I was a teenager. My facial hair’s gone through many incarnations, some I’ve unfortunately grown out of.

I’m not sure about names – I’ve never looked into it! I know I’ve never had handlebars or a plain moustache. I’ll look into it… Okay, it seems I’ve had a balcarrotas, jawline beard/chinstrap beard, chin beard, circle beard, goatee, petit goatee, sideburns, balbo, short boxed beard, and a couple other slight variations that I couldn’t find names for. No, I’ve never named any of the styles -- but it’s something to think about, now.

When I think about it, my shaving methods are a further expression of being creative, and perhaps subconsciously I’m trying to give such an outward impression. Maybe not. It’s interesting: Facial hair styles signify many things under different (social) contexts, especially historically. Essentially, it’s viewed as a sign of maturity and thus wisdom (not that these go hand-in-hand; depends on one’s definition of ‘maturity’). I think I just like being able to further control my appearance and portray character.

I grew my goatee quite long once, wanting someone to rope plait it for me, but the woman who agreed disappeared, and so did I, and I couldn’t find anyone else who could do it. One style I’ve yet to do, and which I’ve only seen on Brian ‘Yap’ Barry of One Minute Silence and Pink Punk fame, is several horizontal or vertical lines shaved into the beard.

SK: Is absinthe legal in England? I’ve never had real absinthe before, can’t find it. That silly American ban because some cunt murdered his family in 1910 is messing me up. Could you tell me about absinthe, in general and perhaps a story?

Kevin Doran: Just to clarify, by ‘real absinthe’ I mean seventy to eighty per cent volume. Absinthe is legal in England, but you can generally only find the weaker absinthe. There’s a bar near here that has some -- Le Fay -- but it’s a bit vile. My brother brought the bottle I had -- Green Devil -- back from Eastern Europe, or possibly Spain. A friend who drinks it a lot more than I do says that Harrods in London is the only place nearby to here that sells real absinthe; though it can also be ordered online.

Absinthe is a unique drink that induces a unique feeling. You don’t necessarily feel drunk, more so relaxed; and instead of spiralling into paralytic incoherency, it sharpens the senses, makes you feel clear-headed. This is purportedly due to the mix of both stimulants and sedatives in the drink.

I went to Amsterdam a couple years ago and drank lots of absinthe and wrote some poetry. That’s it; that’s my story...

Allyssa Wolf Interview

2007-08-29T20:55:00.000-04:00

Allyssa Wolf is published in fascicle, Fence, Soft Targets, GutCult, LIT, Ribot, Green Integer Review, and more.

She co-edits The Black Economy.

Her first book is Vaudeville.

SK: Jon Leon wrote a fantastic poem published in Jacket Magazine about your first book Vaudeville. If his poem is really a book review, please tell me. Was it your intention, with the poems in Vaudeville, to rid the world of literary analysis? Perhaps viral poems that would grow to maim conventional literary analysis? If so, thank you. And thank you Jean-Luc Godard and thank you.

Allyssa Wolf: I'm glad the book provoked such responses as Jon's beautiful poem-review. Everything Jon writes is a poem, some people are like that.

SK: Which, if any, films have influenced you as a writer?

Allyssa Wolf: When I was very young I used to stay up and watch horror films on this late night show called Night Owl Theater, hosted by Franz the Night Owl. Films like The Organ Grinders and Let's Scare Jessica to Death. I was in love with Vincent Price. During the same time I was obsessed with Busby Berkely type Hollywood musicals, which would play frequently on PBS. During my teenage years Godard and Lynch definitely left deep fingerprints on my brain. Hail Mary, Contempt, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet. Recently I've been influenced by Bresson's A Gentle Woman and Ma Mere, a French film based on a Bataille story. I've been watching everything by Fassbinder and Von Trier. There are many ways in which Dogville is Vaudeville, the vision of humanity and exposed staging for instance, but Vaudeville was written several years before I saw Dogville. I've just begun collaborating with Standard Schaefer on a book using the film Hiroshima, Mon Amour as an undersketch.

SK: Please tell me about writing and editing this poem?

Allyssa Wolf: I started writing parts of M, The Dancer in 2000 or 2001, during an affair I was having with an art collector in Los Angeles. He collected a lot of what I guess you could call high kitsch--paintings rendered in the way of the old masters, with themes of childhood and carnival life. Terrifying versions of innocence and fun. Very American.

Also, during this time I had a dream about riding in the back of a city bus an angel next to me with huge luminous wings. He told me I was supposed 'to hold pain' for the people in the small houses we were passing.

I did this thing with periods. I wanted to slow down time, create what seem like obstacles but could actually just be joints that bend backwards and forward, hinges. I wanted to keep time and movement mechanistic and awkward in the way that Egytian art and early film is, so I placed the periods where there would be a little jump in time, or where the body would stop into a pose--sort of like when a breakdancer freezes or when a burlesque dancer contorts her body into an unexpectedly abstract and inhuman form, either athletically or languidly, and stops for a moment for the crowd's contemplation. So, the dancer is not dancing like abandon--the foxtrot or Isabella Duncan or Grateful Dead dancers or whatall. I think versions of this idea of dancing (kinds of breakdancing or kinds of burlesque, because some burlesque is very fast shaking flesh with no grace) lends itself to a need to continually stop time during the performance and peer into the audience in suspension then begin again. These performers I'm thinking of show what it's like for them to be alive with their bodies. They have constant little deaths, constant apocalypses.

So, I had these parts and several months later I sat in on some poetry classes with Leslie Scalapino. She asked the class to write a poem using some experimental process, with John Cage as our guide. I started writing something about the backsides of my eyeballs, which she liked very much, but a couple of weeks later, when she asked us to present our process poems in class, I brought in M, The Dancer, which I had been working on instead, finished under the influence of her presence. After I read it, a lot of the class seemed impressed or touched. Leslie calmly looked over at me after everyone else had spoken and said only "You cheated." It was great. She's the troof. I always cheat when I try to do those kind of experiments, I'm more a magician-type. I tend to misdirect to get at the truth, I tend toward the future and the past, I tend to go on missions like Houdini exposing spiritualists, I tend to put my whole body into it so that my "experiment" is my experience, but that body is often remebered, or another body coming through, I don't go into my work with a scientistic attitude, that a poem will happen organically by notation of the right now, or, on the other end of the spectrum, with rigid expectations, oulipo-style, I don't think that particularly works for me, although I greatly respect some of the writing that works that way. You see, I need to confuse myself. But a few practiced motions will often set the wheel turning.

SK: You co-edit The Black Economy (And edited an issue of Effing Magazine.) Have you written many rejection letters? Would you mind composing one just for me right now?

Allyssa Wolf: Effing Magazine was largely a family affair, and the rest of the authors were gathered without submission. None of the authors sent me anything that I had to reject. Jon sent all The Black Economy rejection letters on Christmas day. It wasn't planned, but that's how it turned out. I think he signed them 'Merry Blackmas from The Black Economy'.

SK: What will the second and further issues of The Black Economy be like?

Allyssa Wolf: On the remix co-produced with Lil Jon, the false minimalism of the original beat remains, but the playground touches are replaced with cyber swooshes, making it pointless to put Daytons on the Cadillac's wheels since they're just going to fold up before the car blasts off into hyperspace. In response to the beat, the newly revitalized Alexandra 3000 takes off in such a lyrical sprint that it takes a minute for the present to catch up to the future.

SK: (This question asked in a lisp.) Which writers were early influences and who are you reading lately?

Allyssa Wolf: Early influences include Lewis Carroll, Beckett, Plath, James Wright, Pirandello, Rimbaud, Acker, Spicer--then Barthes, Scalapino, Moxley, The Frankfurt School, Vangelisti, Sorrentino, Shakespeare, Notley, Houellebecq. Lately I've been reading and re-reading all Bret Easton Ellis and Lydia Davis works. Jocelyn Saidenberg's Negativity and Philip Jenks' My first painting will be 'The Accuser' are the greatest books of poetry I've read so far this year. They're great for any year.

SK: Could you describe any plans for future poetry videos like your feature at The Continental Review?

Allyssa Wolf: Oh, I want to visually capture the real monstrousness of the poet's ego-transitions in composition. I think I did a fair job of that in the first one, where I sort of fashion modeled The Power Museum--became the visual intersection between Paris Hilton and Adorno, flickering between total seduction and total negation. I amuse myself, but am doubtful it was caught. Anyhow, I'm thinking of doing a video project where I act out different shells of the poet, a la Cindy Sherman. I mean, it's truly obscene, but not as obscene as the accidental narcissism of the hundreds of poets photographing themselves obsessively on Flickr and whatnot. But I need equiptment for the project, like a real video camera!! (I used a webcam that only films a minute at a time for the first video. And no sound.) If anyone reading this wants to help fund this project, get in touch. I've got some things in mind that will flip your wig.

SK: Are you still working on Prisoner's Cinema (or Film of Dust) and Pure Waste?

Allyssa Wolf: Yes. And also Owl's Bible and The Abstract Empire.

SK: Are Sex and The Power Museum separate manuscripts or included within the above manuscripts? Could you tell me about them, what you’re working toward, phenomenology and being on and off stage in your writing?

Allyssa Wolf: Sex and The Power Museum are part of the project Pure Waste. These books may take a long time, even though I've been working on them for some time now, I'm just beginning. Things will change. I can say that Pure Waste is heavily influenced by the ideas of The Frankfurt School. I want to ressurrect the ideas that most people think just cannot fly. I try to make fly. See if I can, because I have to do what I can to show the things I see in the world. If I don't it's dishonest, and will lead only to further feeding the machine. It's a bit antagonistic, it has to be, because these ideas are not fun and seductive in and of themselves. I try to make the antagonism and seriousness like I said said fly tho, so we can take off, a bit like Suicide (Alan Vega's Suicide), I think. Owl's Bible is like an illuminated manuscript--I listen over and over to Joan Baez' Silver Dagger in preparation--cold passionate ascending stair. The Abstract Empire is prose, fiction. Prisoner's Cinema, I don't know, what I began with seems like a real disaster to me right now. All that up there, well, I would like to do something that is experimental in the real sense, in real time, but I'm not sure if I can make it work for me, because I have such an aversion to the philosophy that guides it. I'm not sure why I'm always thinking about a way that would be true to my 'spiritual style' to proceed with it all the time. Must be a reason.

SK: What opportunities did being in Fence Magazine bring? Much solicitation? You seem to choose publications wisely as opposed to Gatling gunning around.

Allyssa Wolf: None. I was in Fence almost eight years ago. It was important to me because it was the first time I was published, and only the second magazine I had ever sent work to. It seemed magical to be published in a literary magazine then, to be chosen, to be read. I think you're refering to my interview with Kate Greenstreet, right? I probably sound like a lunatic to say I wept because I was published in a fucking magazine. It wasn't because I was so happy that now I had a 'poetry career'! Oh boy. I just realized that it may sound like that since I was shy about explaining, and all the questions are so career-oriented. No. Two people I loved had died and one went mad in the recent preceding years. There. So it was more of a feeling that I had survived for something. That I could honor these people, that I had a reason to survive... The first magazine I sent work to was Conduit, and they rejected. I waited almost a year before I sent work out again, so gun-shy I was, and then poems were accepted to Fence, and, shortly thereafter, Ribot. I was twenty-six and had absolutely no ties to academia (I had just started college for the first time a few months before) or even any living, breathing people who were serious about literature (most of my friends were musicians or visual artists.) I had been hanging out mostly with dead authors. I felt like I was going to the pantheon in a panther party dress. I still feel the same about Ribot, not so much Fence, which I didn't know at the time would become more and more a place to excite people about their careers rather than a portal to eternity to live among the super-gods. Ha!

I only like to publish a few times a year. To be honest, there aren't many magazine that I trust. I haven't sent work to people who didn't ask for it in over two years (but for once--I recently sent something to a non-poetry magazine.) So, they are kind of choosing me, rather than that I'm making such screwd decisions. But it is happening, with the powers of mind, that I am happily attracting the editors that I do respect. Most of the people I know in poetry are or have been my editors. I don't hang out much beyond that. They are the only reason I am both here and there, since no large audience yet exists for my work.

SK: I’m ignorant(.) of the magazine Ribot. Could you tell me about them?

Allyssa Wolf: Ribot was a magazine out of Los Angeles edited by Paul Vangelisti and Uncle Bob (Robert Crosson), a poet who lived in the shed behind him. They created an imaginary institution to host it, The College of Neglected Science (CONS) and it's probably one of the greatest literary magazines of the last 50-odd years. Eight issues were published in 8-10 years, during the nineties and into the early 2000's, until Uncle Bob passed away.

SK: What was elementary school?

Allyssa Wolf: It sounded like 10cc and Wings but when I process those sounds through my memory and strip down the false elements, sounds like Syd Barrett's Opel.

I was in a Christian cult (Jehovah's Witnesses) (drum roll. cymbal.) and I didn't pledge allegiance to the flag in the morning or celebrate any holidays so it could be difficult. I was always off to the side by myself doing my own 'crafts', or reading, while the others were making glitter Santa Klauses or whatnot. My mom was really into health food, she cooked amazing things, and I actually liked vegetables better than candy. In kindergarten, when the other kids brought in cookies for treat day, my mom sent me with some carob jobs called "Goody Balls". My mom and I sometimes made dandelion stew, the neighboring city had the Tomato Festival, we went to a little old man on the farm next door to buy corn and strawberries. I went to public elemetary school in rural-suburban Ohio and there were no Black, Latino, Asian or Jewish kids that I can remember. Everyone was White, so because I didn't worship the United States and had different cultural/religious beliefs I often felt like the resident non-white un-american. I always felt I was leading a double life. Even though I was ripe for punishment, I wasn't teased more than usual by the other kids at school. I think maybe this was because I was pretty self-possessed. Maybe it was because my mother dressed me well and told me that suburbia wasn't real life. At school I would take up people that other people shunned, like a girl in my class who had thalidymyne hands (wings) and I would become a sort of protector-friend. I would have standoffs with teachers who were upset because I wouldn't salute the flag or make holiday shit. (I also had some amazing teachers. Mrs. Klein. Fifth grade. Recognize.) Once, in first grade, a teacher forced me to make a black cat for Halloween and I had nightmares for months that the Nephilim were coming for me. I was pretty good at track and gymnastics. I won a literary award in second grade which sent me to a "Young Author's Conference". In my neighborhood, I had this gang of friends. I spent all summer one summer directing and choreographing about 10 kids, boys and girls, to do a song and dance number to "There's No Business like Show Business". I preached the good news door to door. I was looking forward to the apocalypse. I'd go hunting for arrowheads (that were everywhere & also burial mounds) and go catch crawdads at the "crick". I am German, Jewish, and American Indian by birth. What else, I wore corrective shoes until sixth grade. I called them frankenstein shoes. Then, in sixth grade, I practically dropped out of school. Then, I wore non-corrective frankenstein shoes.

SK: How tall are you?

Allyssa Wolf: 50 ft

SK: How tall is Leslie Scalapino?

Allyssa Wolf: About the size of a wolverine.

SK: What kind of arm would you take up if you took up an arm (human or gun)?

Allyssa Wolf: I was just reading this in the new issue of Soft Targets: "He who does not take sides and take up arms in the time of civil war will be deprived of his right to politics, and have no part in the city."--Tiqqun Collective. I think this is true, & this is what I had in mind when Kate Greenstreet (I assume this is why you are asking me this) asked me if poetry could change the world and I said that to change the world I would take up arms.

SK: If you were going to kill someone like how you begin a poem, how would they die?

Allyssa Wolf: Heart attack following orgasm. Immediate resurrection.

Reverse Interview

Allyssa Wolf: I read in your author's bio that you were studying to be a forensic psychologist, how does that study inform your poetry, if at all?

SK: I wanted to work with people I could identify with, so I went to council the dead with photography. If you’ve seen workers assembling food at McDonald’s, you’ve seen a cold room performance. You’ve observed the demeanor with which the workers approach their subject and you’ve seen that subject manipulated by assembly, the obstruction of ribs within the meat cracked and lifted, using bolt cutters, the torso sculpted into an inside-out orange, a pigmented and cunt-like gape, the autistic weighing of everything pulled out like some first-date-bouquet in backward regurgitation, big syringes, filled with piss, holstered in the thigh’s meat, a funny makeshift table, to be recorded and sunk into the lineup’s bladder – and to know that being alive is worse, I begin to write, and, not generally withdrawing from everything fast enough, fail.

Allyssa Wolf: You seem to publish a lot of work, in a lot of places. It's completely different from my publishing practices, but I've noticed that it is particularly men who seem to spread their poetry seed as far and wide as they can, and these are authors whom I respect, so don't get me wrong--what are your thoughts on publishing?

SK: I think it might be the little toss of ejaculation men mess out in some contradictory defiance of their own self-imposed submission (consciously or not) to most things. I’m supposing that there’s a reason magazines call it submission, and here come me and others toward it like a safe neon Vegas mutilation, only to be continually, mostly, electrocuted by our unreceptive jissom, and like how dogs can be trained, but are not smart, instinct propels the repetition of this act. Submission, having nothing to do with writing the same way anal sex has nothing to do with the act of writing, is more business to me, though I do pepper my art with anal sex, and plaintively include other forms of submission and am largely ignored, probably for the best.

Allyssa Wolf: Could you tell me about your first book, which is slated to be published soon?

SK: I wanted to name it Vaudeville, and this is how I discovered your book and obsessed over your work, and immediately changed my book’s name because you used the title much better. I’ll use something less stunning to steal from. I’m just calling my book a failure for now. It’ll be on Amazon.com before 2008. Six Gallery Press.

Allyssa Wolf: I like your work because it seems very authentic to me, I'm not sure why, and I know I'm getting into some hairy territory with the word "authentic", but I feel it comes from your life's mind rather than as a simulated specimen removed for study. There seems to be a line forming waiting to get the Artaud award, and I think your work is the most reminiscent in its spiritual style, an unnameable thing. What life experience has born your work?

SK: Regrettably, I’ll never approach Artaud’s level of insane – he went so far as to become religious. His insanity was his method, and did not often impede his output. He was in The Passion of Joan of Arc. He wrote plays wherein a woman pulls a block of cheese out her cunt. He was amazing this way.

I’m barely authentic enough to hate the idea of truth and find truth only in the idea of hate. I am overly sensitive to the unprovoked hostility of every experience I have upon leaving the house. This has provided a strong obsession with the idea of the 1980’s, Dadaism, a constantly fluctuating self-sickness, facial hair enthusiasm, and a violent impatience for pragmatism, common sense, political correctness, politics, etc., especially piety. I enjoy anachronism because it is perverse. I follow a sort of disjointed lollypop idiocy. I can somewhat discern as my one originality the innate eschewal of meaning from my art and the assertion that my impression of meaning in literature is something haughty, to be avoided and stylized away from. Even Ionesco, in his essays, becomes too cerebral for me. By cerebral, I mean he was born with a brain. It’s hard for me to identify with that, though I worship his plays. If you write an amazing enough piece or even sentence, you could castrate my house with an army of jaws and I would swim in your piddle. Being in love too much, beaten, jailed, and hospitalized, helps.

Allyssa Wolf: Do you know many poets in Detroit?

SK: Very few. I don’t know if I like that or not. Sometimes great poets visit. I took a girl to see Philip Levine read and begged him to sign her over-sized breasts, so that they might shrink somewhat out of fear. I’ve been taught by great poets like Christopher Parks, Chris Tysh, and Ron Allen. I know one or two other poets. I don’t know how much I’d socialize if more poets I admire lived here. I would probably try to and end up not changing any plans for suicide. Slam poetry is very prevalent. So is AIDS.

Allyssa Wolf: Do you tell people that you meet that you’re a poet? I know I often try not to, because responses can be hostile and condescending out of academic atmospheres (& in as well, sometimes). Do you think it’s impossible to be a poet, is it an impossible thing?

SK: If I’m forced to meet someone in person, I’d rather not. Calling yourself a poet is immediate self-deprecation. If one explains oneself as a poet, one is partially masochistic. If one goes home and spends time alone working on poetry, one is largely masochistic. And if one then excels in the industry, this version of self-foreplay sometimes leads to orgasm, mostly blue balls. There is no bathtub in my house.

Allyssa Wolf: What writers brought you to write poetry?

SK: The beats lead young people into poetry very well. Some stay there with the beats, rightly molested for their own betterment and read, but never grow talent. When the child moves on in search for the beats’ influence and the influence of what came before and after and in between, the disease is irreversible. The child is stuck in the most unwelcoming industry and a good escape is the traditional poet’s suicide. I think writing is the cleanest misanthropy.

J.D. Nelson Interview

2007-07-18T03:29:00.000-04:00

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words and sound in his subterranean laboratory. His bizarre poems and experimental poetic texts have appeared in many small press and underground publications, both print and online. J. D. lives in Colorado, USA. Visit www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work and audio recordings.

SK: Where'd you learn to mill such fine delicious?

J.D. Nelson: I studied at the Colonel Flagg School of Brain Massage, where I double-majored in Burns and Houlihan and minored in Mind Control.

SK: How hard monthly and by what methods do you satellite your beautiful Mad Verse?

J.D. Nelson: I love the Lord with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength. Like Philo Beddoe, I get down any which way I can.

SK: Some girl’s face convinces you to throw milk at a wall – is portraiture happening?

J.D. Nelson: Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

SK: A toilet accuses you of molestation – did you get your hysterectomy at Toys R Us?

J.D. Nelson: The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a tree.

SK: A dog bites its own tail until gangrene sets in – is this how you make love?

J.D. Nelson: As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

SK: Your lover has an affair with your favorite assault rifle – do you announce your candidacy for president?

J.D. Nelson: My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off.

SK: Oh, a barking dog wrecked your good intentions – why is it that you prefer insecticide to all your pretty friends?

J.D. Nelson: They return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city.

SK: Which physicists endure anemometric digestion for machines that imitate sleep?

J.D. Nelson: It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

SK: What kind of rapist doesn’t own a television set?

J.D. Nelson: But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.

SK: You are being chased by people with accordions – do you want to be caught?

J.D. Nelson: Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause.

SK: Why do you make a habit of corners and excuse your tardiness with lewd photography?

J.D. Nelson: Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.

SK: Do large women reciting geometry in absinthe-colored bathtubs give your cigar a hernia?

J.D. Nelson: And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.

SK: What recommends invalidating time with stochastic hotness?

J.D. Nelson: They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

SK: How has nanotechnology revolutionized the enema?

J.D. Nelson: Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

SK: Who bleeds first: the air or the vocalist in front of the air?

J.D. Nelson: Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.

SK: Had you lain with schools of thought, courting purposeful delusion? Did you then administer electricity to improve sub-atomic structure by testing weight?

J.D. Nelson: And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.

SK: Who pants good slither?

J.D. Nelson: Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment; and a babbler is no better.

SK: Is your behavior full of band aids?

J.D. Nelson: My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.

Gene Morgan Interview

2007-04-02T14:11:00.000-04:00

Gene Morgan is the founder and co-editor of
Bear Parade. His site is pompadoured. His work is published in elimae, McSweeney's, Opium Magazine, The Scientific Creative Quarterly, Wrapped Up Like a Douche, and terry.

SK: Did you own a Sega or a Super Nintendo and would you mind discussing the pros and cons of each?

Gene Morgan: I owned a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, and a Turbo Grafix 16. The pro of all of these consoles was that when I was young, they were a nice tool for making new friends.

My area of town was pretty mixed, racially and economically, but video games were an integral part of life for most boys, regardless of those things. So Sega or Nintendo was something to talk about with almost anyone, and it led to a lot of diverse friendships.

I still talk about games with people pretty often. It's something a lot of people do with their free time, including myself, and it's easy to talk about. I don't have a lot in common with the people I work with, so sports and video games and weather and alcohol are easy and comfortable things to talk about.

The con of most video games is that very few of them can be considered art. Most video games are just a variation of an antiquated formula, and in their repetitiveness, do not lead to any sort of personal revelation or movement. Sega and Nintendo set the standard for games that revise old formulas for profit, but even this is changing. Like books and movies, you see a lot of cliché and repetitive things, but if you look at less mainstream titles you find a lot of innovation and ideas.

SK: I'm unfamiliar with the Turbo Grafix 16. Was that one of the less popular but advanced (for the time) systems like Sega CD or Atari Jaguar?

Gene Morgan: Turbo Grafix 16 was comparable, graphically, to Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. It was much more Japanese and didn't have the name recognition that the other two did, so it failed. I liked it. They had games like Splatterhouse, which was the first real horror game I can remember. You'd go around in a hockey mask and beat shit with a two by four.

SK: What were some of your favorite games on those early systems, going back to the original Nintendo?

Gene Morgan: I've always liked games that are different. On the original Nintendo I played a lot of the regular stuff that everyone else played, but as I got older, my tastes turned towards Japanese fetishism and weird shit. I liked anything that translated awkwardly to American culture, stuff like Mappy Land on Nintendo, which was a stupid game that consists of you, a mouse, trying to avoid cat-death so you can get presents for your mouse girlfriend, and offbeat games like Clayfighter, which was a fighting game that was done entirely in stop animation. I played a lot of games, but only the stupid ones that no one cares about stuck with me.

SK: I had a Sega Genesis. Did you ever play Comix Zone? If I remember correctly, there might have been some unique aspects to that storyline. Are there any specific games with any literary value?

Gene Morgan: In Comix Zone you could, in a way, pick your own plot movement as you went through the frames of the game's comic book. It is interesting, and very well done. I played it for the first time a few months ago on the Playstation 2 after Sega reissued a bunch of old Genesis games in a collection. There is a good literary feel to it, I guess. Like you're in a comic book.

I see a lot of promise for literary ideas in video games, but the development costs need to dramatically lower before any real risks are taken. Game developers don't take many risks on unproven or radical ideas, and the people that play video games, in general, don't read contemporary fiction or poetry. They play video games. And it's not that gamers are stupid, because most of the people that read fiction and poetry, I could argue, don't give a shit about video games either.

I think it's a good example of a greater problem with contemporary art: artists have become isolated within their own cultures. Sure, people attempt to "bring the arts together," but writers usually only care about writers, and visual artists usually only care about visual artists (unless there is money involved). And when they look to other arts, they stick to the classics and dead people.

Most of my friends in the visual arts could list maybe one living poet that isn't on Bear Parade-- and these are smart, talented people. It would also be hard for me to believe most writers could come up with a list of ten living visual artists they admire.

I think esoteric influence leads to little innovation or progress, but maybe this is a meaningless statement. The internet probably makes this concern irrelevant and stupid-sounding. If you want to know about contemporary art, type "contemporary art" into Google, and start looking. Most of it is crap mixed with very few relevant and honest things. Like anything else. The same ideas, good and bad, happen in all of the arts.

SK: Do you enjoy many plays or films? Do you have a list of favorite movies?

Gene Morgan: I like going to plays and seeing movies, but there's so much I'm open to that I don't really want to restrict myself and think of favorites. When I had a MySpace profile, I hated that part. I don't like people objectifying my tastes.

SK: Do you like / have your read Harold Pinter's plays?

Gene Morgan: I just read about Pinter on Wikipedia. I've heard his name before. People who win the Nobel Prize in Literature are alright, usually.

SK: I have this theory about David Mamet's Three Uses of the Knife, his book about writing. I think he wrote it as a monologue for a character who is an asshole. That's why he uses baseball analogies for writing. But I think he's great, and in this book he distinguishes fantastically between what is meaningless and therefore a political use of melodrama, and what he says art really is. Do you think if writing sounds good, but isn't meaningful (however subjective that word can be) it is audience manipulation instead of art? Mamet also says "Western European romance gave us Hitler, the novels of Trollope, and the American musical."

Gene Morgan: Anything that is meaningless is a failure as art. All art has meaning. If it is not art, then there is no meaning. Even ornamental art, when well done, has a place in a person's life and takes on a form of meaning for the person experiencing it. I own several pieces of what people would consider as "abstract" and "meaningless" art, but having it in my home and experiencing it for a long period of time gives it a meaning that moves beyond other work I own that is more explicit in its intentions.

The word "meaning," as you pointed out, is very subjective, so even if a work of art appears meaningless to one person, somebody else may find something that honestly resonates in that same work of art. People like David Mamet are able to pinpoint what resonates with a large number of people, and not what is necessarily more meaningful. Which may be an even greater form of audience manipulation than melodramatic, nice-sounding art, if you consider subliminally presumptive art manipulative.

SK: In what ways can art take itself too seriously, or at what point does art fail its general audience, if there is an audience?

Gene Morgan: Art fails a general audience when it becomes academic. If you are writing for an academic audience, you are writing criticism. Only a certain amount of people will take interest in whatever it is you're making, and they will apply it to what they have read before (something similar to what you have made), and they will analyze the old thing based on the experience of your new thing that is similar to the old thing and responding to the old thing. Academic art is, as far as I can grasp, a form of criticism more relevant than contemporary criticism itself.

Academic art fails a general audience in that the general audience, in terms of poetry and novels, has no reference to the old thing. Academic artists have progressed much like scientists: The general audience understands the greater intent of the work, but lacks the understanding of nuance for something like a scientific paper on AIDS to make complete sense to them. I cannot read a scientific journal and pretend to catch every reference and understand the importance of every methodology used by the scientists. It is impossible-- I took biology at a community college. So while this science is essential to my own life, I cannot begin to comprehend it completely, and this alienates me from the understanding that this knowledge would otherwise provide.

Non-academic art, which is art that can be understood with little previous knowledge (not to say that it is without reference), is based in real life experience and has less of a dependence on past structure, and more on the current state of being. It may explore the same ideas of academic art, and often does, but it is without jargon and the technical isolation from regular people who don't have their MFA in poetry. This is art that is valuable to a general audience.

SK: Do you consider any of the shows on Adult Swim literary?

Gene Morgan: I've watched every episode of Frisky Dingo. It has to be literary, somehow.

SK: How did you begin Bear Parade?

Gene Morgan: Tao Lin dared me to create a website, and I did. I made a print book for one of my events here in Houston that included a story of his, and I really started to appreciate it after about the fifth time I read it. A few months later I was chatting with him on the internet, and he brought up the fact that he hated most places that publish work electronically, and I agreed. He told me to make something, and I asked him for some poems to start things. He sent me a group of poems, expecting maybe that I would pick one, and I decided I wanted to publish the entire group. That's when I had the idea to focus on small collections rather than single works. Tao asked for fifty dollars, and I agreed to pay him. I sat down that Saturday and Sunday and thought about names for like twenty hours. Then, when I had a name, I thought about colors and design for like ten hours, made something, and then started to think about the design of Tao's book.

SK: Is there any, I don't want to say mission statement, do you think there is a way to describe the writing featured on bear parade without objectifying it? For example, I've read it generalized as minimalism or (favorably) as autistic art. Are generalizations ever useful? I blame capitalism for my question. How does one pitch bear parade to a friend in a way that humors capitalistic media advertisement, but still promotes the site?

Gene Morgan: The people on bear parade are my friends, and they influence me a lot, so it's hard for me to really say what it is they are doing without thinking it's the "best."

I think rather than describing bear parade in terms of its writing style, which is what Tao handles much more than I do, it works better for me to describe it in terms of medium. I feel like that is my focus as an "editor," and I feel more competent and will probably use less generalization if I explain it this way.

Bear parade makes sense existing on the internet-- it cannot exist anywhere else, and that is why it is successful and relevant. The people making bear parade are aware of their medium and how the audience is experiencing the work, which is something in the online literary community has had problems with, which is also why they struggle to find relevance. Print journals pay money, and print the same thing that most web journals do.

People easily dismiss the internet for that reason, but what bear parade takes into account is that people read things on the internet by certain artists, and that leads people to look into writers, and eventually people will pay for those writer's books. Bear parade is something that doesn't force the presence of itself as a governing literary body or a guardian of taste, and instead focuses on certain writers and their talents and helps them increase their exposure in a place where exposure is all that exists.

The same concept exists in music. If everyone gets mp3s cheap and easily, they will instead spend their money on band-related clothes and concerts and special edition stuff and other things that benefit the artist directly. People like supporting art and owning products, and this will not change. The only thing that will change is how people go about supporting and owning things.

SK: Would you tell me about your poem "the dark ages"?

Gene Morgan: To me, it's a poem about the inevitability of consumption, like most of my work.

I always think about the same thing when I buy something. I think about how the product I am buying is going to shape some small ecosystem of money. People that earn money, people that spend money. When I buy a product, I think about how I cannot help but contribute to the separation between the actual earth and people who live on the earth, and how this does not bother me. I usually think about how whatever I am buying probably contributes to our own inevitable extinction, and how we as humans will eventually eat ourselves. And then I buy the product anyway.

SK: In your blog, you said you work mediumly. This reminded me of something you said to me in an email that I take as great advice for submissions. It was concerning the contest you won at McSweeney's (for your piece "Birds.") You said: "I used to send mcsweeney's work on a weekly basis a few years ago, and nothing ever worked for them, so I gave up. Must have been twenty well worked pieces. And then I randomly write something in an hour as a joke, and they accept it and send me a free book."

Does a slower pace provide the freedom to not care enough to succeed, whereas getting uptight and over sending would only produce writing that wants to be published?

Gene Morgan: I think so. I would also probably modify the term "slower pace" to somehow include work that gestates for a longer period of time but may not actually be on paper. "Birds" was a piece I wrote in an hour, but I used a writing style that I had been working on for a while, and ideas that I had thought about for a long time. The uptight over-sent writing I made was usually clouded by conventional and, often times, an untruthful type of writing that isn't close to me or my actual personality.

SK: Is there any advice for dying faster than most people? I consider it a race.

Gene Morgan: Dying fast is easy, but if you want to win properly and without "fault," consider beer and cigarettes and ground red meat. They are not the quickest, but instead are the most disciplined of the available methods. Society has failed at stopping any of these man-produced things from killing people, yet no one is to blame personally for their occurrence-- So, you have the potential here to win without guilt.

SK: Do you think clichés have ever been used well in art? Out of context or as surrealist melodrama? The film Possession with Sam Neil seems to me like melodrama to such a weird and ridiculous extent that it reverses itself and turns back into art.

Gene Morgan: I think clichés can be successful; it just depends on the context.

Gwyneth Paltrow is an actress that believes in that too, and probably repeats it to herself as she starts to fall asleep at night. I picture someone like Gwyneth making a sandwich in the kitchen at one in the morning, looking over her lines and thinking:

"This line about love will make a difference in ordinary people's lives. Grey Poupon is shit compared to this organic Whole Foods mustard."

SK: Is it okay to associate one's work with an "ism" if one is aware of how wrong it is to do this, either through irony or self-conscious stupidity?

Gene Morgan: People do buy into "isms" because they are lazy and want to group things together easily and economically. If you're comfortable with showing people how lazy you are (which I am, at times), then you are probably okay with "isms." They are a useful and ugly tool for people who academically discuss sweeping and over-generalized concepts in art, and I imagine a great deal of academics are aware of this. I don't lose or gain any respect for people when they buy into this kind of mentality. It just exists, so I'm okay with it, and probably do it at times without being aware.

SK: Do you have or recommend a pompadour?

Gene Morgan: My friends all want me to get one, but I'm holding off for a few years. It's too much work for my current sleep schedule, I'd have to wake-up like an hour earlier.

SK: What is your response to the word 'morality'?

Gene Morgan: Death. I like how fragile life is, but I am scared to die. 'Mortality' makes me laugh because life is ridiculous, and makes me sad because I think about my dog dying and my girlfriend dying and me dying.

SK: Please tell me this will be available soon.

Gene Morgan: I wish. If someone wants the rights to this title, they can have it for free. I really just want to see it exist.

SK: What is your response to the word 'colander'?

Gene Morgan: uh.

SK: Are you reading anything good lately?

Gene Morgan: I've been reading "Citizen Of" by Christian Hawkey. I really enjoy his poetry sometimes. Sometimes, it is not something I can relate to at all or even enjoy, but sometimes it makes as much sense to me as my own work. I don't know a better way to explain this feeling.

SK: What is your favorite food and beer?

Gene Morgan: Hot dogs and Bud Light.

Letitia Trent Interview

2007-01-20T06:34:00.000-05:00

Letitia Trent is the co-editor of 21 Stars Review. Her work has been published in The Denver Quarterly, NOÖ Journal, Juked, MiPoesias, Stirring, 42opus, Shampoo, No Tell Motel, Pinstripe Fedora, Pebble Lake Review. She is a winner of the IBPC Poets and Writers contest, and teaches lit, as an MFA candidate, at Ohio State University.

SK: Do you breakdance?

Letitia Trent: I don't, though I have seen both Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. I grew up in Vermont and Oklahoma, two of the only places in the United States where nobody ever breakdanced ever. Not even in 1983. It's a fact.

SK: Will you teach me to breakdance?

Letitia Trent: I will teach you how to do a plié instead, from my short-lived time as a little ballerina.

SK: If I were to say Let's Go to Bed by The Cure was the greatest song / music video ever made, would you argue with me?

Letitia Trent : I wouldn't argue. I would compliment your taste, but I would gently point out that Morrissey was making superior music during this time period and that a song called "This Charming Man" existed, with an accompanying video, and that such momentous things can't be ignored, even in the face of such obvious brilliance as "Let's Go to Bed."

SK: Are we post-modern?

Letitia Trent: I dislike that term because in a few thousand years it will cause literary critics language problems. I think we need to make things as easy as possible for future literary critics.

SK: Is your writing process arbitrary or on schedule?

Letitia Trent: Semi-arbitrary, though I do make myself write if I have gone too long without writing.

I'm not the kind of person that wakes up at four in the morning and writes for hours before breakfast. I would go insane if I tried to do that, and I would be so hungry that I might eat my pen. I feel too anxious about the day before me every morning to do something as leisurely as write. I'd be more likely to vacuum and pay bills. I like to write at night, after everything is done, and I can feel unhurried.

SK: As a poet, have you ever been categorized? For example, because your lines are concise and sharp. Would you categorize your style, your voice, in any way, or is that always a morbid idea?

Letitia Trent: I think I categorize myself as a poet. I like that poems can just look at something, or just get excited about something, or can just be fascinated by something beautiful or dirty or horrifying, and nobody has to learn anything or change anything or do anything. You don't even have to have characters in poems! It's amazing.

I think my style of writing has changed drastically in the last three years, and is still changing, so I don't feel comfortable categorizing it. I spent a summer reading Language poetry two years ago, and the last summer reading Objectivists and New York School poets, so I think all of that reading has influenced me recently, even if I don't directly try to align myself with any particular tradition. The poems I wrote before then were mostly sort of bad Plath and Wallace Stevens rip-offs. I still love both of those poets, but I've realized that there is room for most anything in a poem. That's not something that people are taught in school, that poems can include anything and do anything.

I love all those tight little seventeenth century poets too. I really want to write crazy tight little poems.

I like everything, which is also a problem, I think, because it doesn't give me a clear aesthetic or 'style'. I spend a lot of time trying to categorize my style, which probably isn't helpful.

SK: Could you tell me how, aside from writing a great poem, you went about winning best poem of the year for "Study of Absences" in the IBPC Poets and Writers contest judged by Peter Murphy?

Letitia Trent: You know, I have no idea how that happened (I won third place for the year, first place for October, just to clarify), and I didn't even learn about it until long after it was announced. I was at the Bucknell Seminar for younger poets when that came out, and nobody even notified me—I got no e-mails from anyone. I found out about it four months later while googling myself (doesn't that sound dirty?). Anyways, I'm grateful to have won third, and I still kind of like that poem. At the time I found out, I'd forgotten about the poem almost completely, and I haven't even looked at it in years. I should paste it from that IBPC site and try to re-write it, since I have no copy of it on my own anymore.

I have a lot of poems that I published pre-2004 that I have forgotten about or not looked at in years. For a while those poems made me nervous and I went on a campaign to obliterate them from existence by trying to cajole editors into deleting them. I didn't make a lot of editor friends that way, and I've realized that it's stupid to worry so much about things like that.

But I think that the best examples of my "voice" are the poems published in MiPoesias in September. The first two are the closest to what I'm doing now.

SK: What was it like to write a collaborative poem with your husband?

Letitia Trent: The Shampoo poem was written during a camping trip to Vermont . It was my idea, but surprisingly, Zach was very much up for it. We regularly write collaborative poems now, one of which is soon to be published by Mandy Laughtland's "the Teeny Tiny."

Zach is fun to write with because he isn't a poet and he doesn't read poetry or fiction—he adds this artlessness that I am completely unable to get anymore. I've been ruined by poems, so sometimes poemspeak gets into things, but Zach doesn't know poemspeak at all.

The particular Shampoo poem came about when we both decided to write about our most terrible childhood memory and then mix the lines up.

SK: My copy of your chapbook "Here, I Made This for You," has fourteen poems and is tied together with blue yarn, all of which makes me very happy. In what ways have you used your chapbook to publicize your work? Did you send it to any famous writers, for example?

Letitia Trent: I made thirty of those, many of them sprinkled with my finger blood (I didn't have a thimble), and it was incredibly fun, but they weren't much of a vehicle for greater exposure. I mean, I've met lots of cool people primarily by way of the chapbook—you, for example, and a few others—but I didn't really use it in a smart marketing way. I sent one to Ron Silliman, 'cause he has his address on his website. That's about as famous a person as my chapbook reached.

I made these books as a way to get myself away from feelings that I had to "save" good poems for publications, or that I had to be published in a "reputable" way—I wanted to make something solely for my own pleasure with the hopes that other people would like it. I think it's poisonous to get too wrapped up where things are being published or if the right people are reading your poems. Most people talk about this in terms of academia and careerism, but I think it goes in all ways—you can be worried about not being "avant" enough, that your poems aren't getting into the magazines where all the other cool kids are publishing, that your poems make too much sense…all of that is distracting and stupid.

By the way, people can still get a copy of these if they like. E-mail me at letitia.trent@gmail.com and you too can have a blood-soaked yarn-bound chapbook.

SK: You teach lit at Ohio State University. Could you tell me about your experiences there? Do pro-genocide frat boys say the word jigga? Did you meet Jon Stewart?

Letitia Trent: Ohio State is like another planet. Football=Jesus, which is still weird to me, since I'm used to Jesus being Jesus, as I am from Southern Oklahoma. My students gasped when I asked them if I should watch the Ohio State Michigan game this year. One actually said "Are you joking?" I was afraid that somebody would key my car for not loving football enough.

But I'm constantly surprised at how unlike movie frat boys real frat boys are. Of course, they are probably just keeping quiet around me because they know about my "liberal agenda."

I didn't meet Jon Stewart! I don't have cable, so I never watch The Daily Show anymore, and I ignore my school's website and e-mails, so I didn't hear about this until the week it happened. I also missed Kurt Vonnegut and Dave Eggers last year. I can't seem to get anything right.

SK: I like Sharon Olds. Do you like Sharon Olds?

Letitia Trent: I really like Satan Says and The Living and the Dead. After that, it all sort of runs together for me. But I'll never forget the bobbing penis arrow image from Satan Says. Plus, Sharon Olds proves that married people still have lots of sex, which helps me feel like a less square old married lady, and that you can write poems about babies and birth that aren't all sweetness and cooing and oh-my-god-i-made-a-person-and-now-I'll-never-be-the-same blather. I love how bloody and fluidy Sharon Olds is.

SK: Does being an editor give you nightmares?

Letitia Trent: Yes. I'm always afraid I don't know what's good and will end up making a mistake, rejecting a poem that I'll later realize (while in bed, trying to get to sleep—that's where I have all of my terrifying realizations) was brilliant, I don't trust my own judgment very well. But I'm lucky in that we have a clear aesthetic for our journal, and that helps me guide my editorial decisions.

Ultimately, I ask myself three things when I read a poem: 1. Do I want to read this poem again? Does it have something that compels me to come back to it? 2. Does this poem stay in my mind after I have read it, or does it drift off into the place where all those other mediocre but skillful poems go? 3. Does it fit our editorial preferences?

SK: Is it true that the bible is an incalculable misinterpretation, that it is really only a tepid prophecy for the coming greatness of our Lord Morrissey, former lead singer of The Smiths, and his beautiful pet Tommy gun?

Letitia Trent: Both Morrissey and Jesus saved me at different points in my life, so the answer to this is a certain yes. Jesus made me improve my grades in high school, which helped me go to college, which helped me to realize that I never actually believed in Jesus. But Morrissey is my true savior. I discovered Morrissey when I was 16 and was immediately transported to somewhere slightly south of heaven with the song "The Charming Man."

When I heard The Smiths for the first time, on a Memorex tape I found at a flea market, I thought to myself, yes, will nature make a man of me yet? And then, as the tape continued, I thought Yes, I too was bored before I even began! And then I realized that Morrissey and I were alike—we both sneered at other people for their pretensions and stupidity, but secretly wanted those very people to love us for our crooning, prescient social commentary, and beautiful cheekbones. This is the artistic temperament.

SK: If Morrissey is beyond the need for sex or gender, why does poetry exist?

Letitia Trent: You know, I've always been attracted to this idea of being beyond gender & sex. I like what Johnny Rotten says in Sid and Nancy, you know, sex is boooring Sydney , boooring. If you watch pornography in a certain state of mind, it just looks like really orange people slapping meat together. It's all very boring and repetitive and sickly depressing. And gender just scares me— girls wear nail polish and boys like guns, good girls like headbands and bad girls like fishnets, good boys like jobs and bad boys like motorcycles, etc. The idea that our behaviors are conscripted, that we can't get out of this programming, and that it might be natural, whatever that means, just terrifies me. I'd like to get beyond meat slapping and nailpolish. Morrissey's embodiment of genderless elegance and equal opportunity love sickness appeals to me. Though, of course, he wasn't beyond gender, was he? He was fascinated with gender—the male criminal type, the Oscar Wilde-esque fop, all the accoutrements of certain varieties of gender.

Maybe the desire to be beyond gender requires the constant monitoring of gendered behavior and norms. Because you never know if you're slipping back into gender unless you're vigilant about preventing it. I'll stop typing because I'm just babbling now.

Being beyond sex is another matter altogether. Sexless people, like fundamentalist Christians, for example, are the most obsessed with sex. They see it everywhere!

Poetry requires that we have a bee in our bonnets, so I guess the desire to be beyond sex and gender puts a permanent bee in one's bonnet, so poetry is bound to come out. I have no idea if I'm answering your question! ha.

SK: If you could send your hair to anyone besides, and assuming we both have already have, Morrissey, who would it be?

Letitia Trent: I need to hang on to my hair, because it is thin and yucky and barely covers my head as it is. Once I had an unfortunate pixie cut, which revealed my scalp. I'm trying to grow a long, sexy Lucie Brock-Broido or Eleni Sikelianos mane. When I die I'll donate my hair to the Poetry Foundation so it can be kept in storage with Dickinson's dress, Eliot's bowties, and Allen Ginsberg's chanting robes.

SK: Could you make five general and also preferably prejudiced statements about poetry?

Letitia Trent: 1. I like to see thinking in a poem. Poems that don't contain thinking bore me. This means I need to see evidence of a human mind humming somewhere. I don't mean that a poem needs to have an argument, or a linear structure, or even coherency in the traditional sense, but I want the sense that something is being worked out through a poem.

2. Poetry is more intimate than prose. You can own it more fully and integrate it into your life more completely. This is why I'll always be a poet first, even if I someday go on to write novels and other prosely whatnots.

3. I think you can judge a person's personality through their poetry much more accurately than you can through a person's prose. If I am annoyed by the voice, tone, or implicit attitudes in a poem, then I'm pretty sure I'll dislike the person behind the poem.

4. Discussions about the organic marriage of form and content annoy me. Here is a prejudiced comment—form should create the content. That's what formal strictures are for—to make your brain go somewhere that it can't reach on its own. This is why both OULIPO forms and traditional forms appeal to me—left to my own devices, all of my poems would be boring shit. Forms make unexpected things happen. More than anything, I want to get out of my own brain, which doesn't have anything new to tell me anymore.

5. If all of the poems in your book look and sound the same, you aren't trying hard enough.