Please tell us about the making of these poems and the “Paradise” series overall.
I wrote “Paradise” in an afternoon — my friend Zach Savich sent me a manuscript that he’d written the day prior, and just as I received it, I suddenly found myself with five hours of unexpected time to myself (hard to come by with children), and figured I’d try it out. It went much better than I expected, and that evening, I went to bed having written 47 poems called “Paradise,” and sent them to Zach as a manuscript. I later wrote two more groups of the poems, and there are 140 of them today, but that first batch remains organized in the order written, practically unedited. I had recently read an awesome book on syntax (Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte) and had the non-revelatory revelation that poetry is just sentences. So I wrote a bunch of sentences. It really freed me up, for some reason, to think that.
Name some influences on your writing that are not literary.
As I’d imagine is the case with many poets, my writing has been consistently influenced by music — it seems like a natural companion to most occupations, not only to writing. While I’m often influenced tonally by the music that’s playing at the moment in which I’m writing, I’ve also borrowed attitudes from various bands at various times, including Pavement and Charles Mingus’ group, to name a couple. I also consider my children to be primary influences on my writing — both in the temporal pressures they apply to my life, and in the way they use language and exercise imagination. Actually, come to think of it, conversation in general is a strong influence on my writing. Its rhythms, its humanity, its content — it all makes its way into my poems, particularly those in “Paradise.”
Do you find writing prompts to be helpful?
Not for writing poems. I do find them useful for teaching, though, and also for spurs to freewriting. I freewrite several times most days, for ten minutes at a time (pictured: some freewrites).
Do you workshop drafts with other poets?
I don’t exactly workshop drafts, no. There are four or five people to whom I always send my completed work, but not with the expectation, or even the hope, for a workshop-style response. I used to feel a great need for feedback on my poetry, but increasingly over the years, what I really wanted, more and more, was just to have someone read the poem(s). And eventually, it came to feel like enough just to send the poems, and not ask or wonder whether anyone read them.
When feeling particularly uninspired, what poet might you read to restore your faith in poetry?
The first poet I really cared deeply about was Larry Levis, particularly his later work, and while I don’t write much like him, or even really care much for the type of poet or poetry that he was and represents, he’s still my origin in a way, and if I was really up against it with poetry, I’d read from his books Elegy and The Widening Spell of the Leaves.
I wrote “Paradise” in an afternoon — my friend Zach Savich sent me a manuscript that he’d written the day prior, and just as I received it, I suddenly found myself with five hours of unexpected time to myself (hard to come by with children), and figured I’d try it out. It went much better than I expected, and that evening, I went to bed having written 47 poems called “Paradise,” and sent them to Zach as a manuscript. I later wrote two more groups of the poems, and there are 140 of them today, but that first batch remains organized in the order written, practically unedited. I had recently read an awesome book on syntax (Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte) and had the non-revelatory revelation that poetry is just sentences. So I wrote a bunch of sentences. It really freed me up, for some reason, to think that.
Name some influences on your writing that are not literary.
As I’d imagine is the case with many poets, my writing has been consistently influenced by music — it seems like a natural companion to most occupations, not only to writing. While I’m often influenced tonally by the music that’s playing at the moment in which I’m writing, I’ve also borrowed attitudes from various bands at various times, including Pavement and Charles Mingus’ group, to name a couple. I also consider my children to be primary influences on my writing — both in the temporal pressures they apply to my life, and in the way they use language and exercise imagination. Actually, come to think of it, conversation in general is a strong influence on my writing. Its rhythms, its humanity, its content — it all makes its way into my poems, particularly those in “Paradise.”
Do you find writing prompts to be helpful?
Not for writing poems. I do find them useful for teaching, though, and also for spurs to freewriting. I freewrite several times most days, for ten minutes at a time (pictured: some freewrites).
Do you workshop drafts with other poets?
I don’t exactly workshop drafts, no. There are four or five people to whom I always send my completed work, but not with the expectation, or even the hope, for a workshop-style response. I used to feel a great need for feedback on my poetry, but increasingly over the years, what I really wanted, more and more, was just to have someone read the poem(s). And eventually, it came to feel like enough just to send the poems, and not ask or wonder whether anyone read them.
When feeling particularly uninspired, what poet might you read to restore your faith in poetry?
The first poet I really cared deeply about was Larry Levis, particularly his later work, and while I don’t write much like him, or even really care much for the type of poet or poetry that he was and represents, he’s still my origin in a way, and if I was really up against it with poetry, I’d read from his books Elegy and The Widening Spell of the Leaves.