Howdidyoufirststartreadingpoetry?Wasitadiscoveryoranacquiredtaste?

Youknow,itsfunnytothinkaboutitnow,butitwasbasicallybecauseofmysixthgrade
English teacher. It was my first year of middle school I grew up in Brooklyn, in
Benshonhurst. Id never been interested in poetry, and I wasnt big on reading in
general Iwas an averagestudent,good butnotgreatnerdyenoughtofeelawkward
at schoolbutnot so nerdy thatI was, youknow,terrorized forit.Iwasaverageatmath
andaverage atsoccer andaverage atbeing nice tomylittlesisterandsoon.ButIhad
this sixthgrade teacher, Ms. Hurley. She insisted that we read poetry, which nobody
wanted to do, and she insisted that we read it out loud, in class, so that we would
actually do it. She had us read poets that Imcompletely uninterested innow Edgar
AllenPoe, you know, gatewaypoets.Butshehadthiswayofguidingusthroughpoems
out loud wewouldtaketurns,reading a stanza each or even alineeach,onebyone
aroundthe classroom thisreallyelegantwayofallowingustobesillyand theatrical,to
be twelveyearolds, you know, and then get us toshutupand pay attentionwhenwe
hitsomethingbeautifulorimportanttounderstand.

I remember reading The Raven and Annabel Lee by Poe again, poems that
basically bore me now and feeling captivated by the repetition, honestly I felt that
private thrill a poem can give you as it builds up and goes where its going. I wasso
surprised that I
liked
this, anticipating the nextNevermore!, getting tosayitoutloud,
sometimes in a hushed voice and sometimes in a sharp one, getting to be partof the
drama as it grew. Ididnt evenlike
talking
in class andI liked thisanyway.Itsstrange,
because reading and writing and poetry can be such intensely solitary tasks, andIve
been an intenselysolitary poet or expoet, really, Idsay. But Ido remember myfirst
important experience with poetry as, you know,acollectiveone,asbeingable to take
partinsomethingexciting.

That said, its not like I just automatically started readingpoetry all the timebecause I
got a kickout of The Ravenfor twentyminutes. Really
reading
poetrycamelater.But
it was stillaboutMs. Hurley, in a way. At theend ofsixthgrade,amazingly,shegavea
book to every single twerpy kid in the class, and mine was
The Faber Book of
Contemporary American Poetry,
I think. I was stunned. I flipped through it a bunch of
times over the next couple years and mostly felt intimidated by it. And then at some
pointat the start ofhighschoolIpickeditupagain,andIfranklydontrememberwhatit
wasthatgotmethistime,butitgotme.AndthenIwantedtoreadeverything.

Howdidyoufirststartwriting?

I started writing poetry when I started reading poetry, in high school. You know,
depressive little scribbly poems. I didnt show them to anyone, and I mean
anyone.
I
didnt even
tell
anyone. Iwas very withdrawn as a teenagerandwentthroughaperiod,
youknow,theway teenagers do,of feeling thatschoolwasafarceanddoingwhatever
I could to avoid it. My parents were very rigid about all that school, grades
especially my father, andI,I dontknow, no matterwhat Idid toresistit, Ineverreally
shookoff theguilt IfeltwhenItried.Sowhat Ididinsteadofskippingschoolorsmoking
onthe rooforwhateverwas really rebellious, right? I wouldreadandwritemylittle
poems during class or inmyroominsteadofdoing myhomework.Itwasverysatisfying
to find refuge in somethingthat made me
look
asifIwasdoingwhatIwassupposedto
do! Andwhichfelt, you know, important,
redemptive,
even,inthewayteenagerscrave.
ButIneversaidawordaboutit.

This reminds me of how, I mean, Idontagree with the theorythat lotsof poets talk
about this someone whoclaims hedoesnt write for anaudienceis lying,that youre
only really writing if you show your work to other people. Ive never believedthat.But
IvealsoneverbelievedthatIm,youknow,arealpoet,sowhoknows.

Anyway, so, I started writing more and more in college I went to Hunter Collegein
New York, and I still lived at home for the first two years, but it was different, freer. I
studied marketing, which was because of my father, and English lit, which I hid for
awhile. I took creative writing workshops, which I actually mostly didnt like, but they
made me write more. And in my sophomore year I sent some poems to the Hunter
literary magazine,the
Olivetree Review,
andone waspublished,andthatreallydidfeel
good. It did.Imean,publicationisnteverything.Agoodthing,too,consideringhowlittle
Ive published! Itisnt everything. But it feltgoodithelpedusherin a newtimeforme,
kindof.Temporarybutinteresting.

Whowereyourinfluencesgrowingup?

Do you mean literary influences? I dont know. I mean, I was a pretty chaoticreader,
growing up I tried to soak up what I could, but I kind of flittedaround a lot.I hada
seriousEliotphase inlatehighschool, earlycollege.Youknowhowthatgoes.Itriedto
memorize Prufrock and all that. Iloved WilliamCarlosWilliamsandIstilldo.Stevens,
WallaceStevens. Although that was later, I guesshewastoomuchformewhenIwas
growing up, wayovermyhead.But,hey,Ithinkhes overallofourheads!Whoelse?...I
loved e.e. cummings as a teenager. He blew my mind hes another poet I think we
come to think of, or at least I do, as aphasepoet,someoneyou have to read when
youregrowingand learning and full ofhormonesandconstantlydiscoveringhowmuch

youcanlove language. Whichismaybeadiscredittohiminthelongrun,butIstillthink

hes important in that way. Later I discovered George Oppen and John Ashbery. Ive
always loved Ashbery without ever wanting to emulate him. I think everyone needs a
fewpoetslikethat,too.

But maybe youmeant just regular influences, right?Well, my father.My father wasnot
exactly a
positive
influence as in, you know, he was chilly and serious and overly
hierarchicalin histhinking. Depressive,abit, whichIcouldntgraspuntilmuchlater.He
was a tax lawyer. He was very, very intelligent, a voracious reader. Of biographies,
history,political analysis. When Isayhewasanimportantinfluence,andhewas,Ithink
it was just inthe sensethat Isaw,overtime,that hehadacomplicatedinnerlifethat
he was loving, in his way, butnotvery warmthat he was committed tohis job butnot
passionate about itthathismindbelongedentirelytohim,youknow?Isawthathewas
reflective and rigorous in a way that didnt involve being, you know,
fulfilled,
or even
happy. Maybe thats a strangethingtoadmire.Butinthatsense,IguessIveturnedout
quiteabit like him,evenifonlyinthatway.Iveneededtobelikehiminthatway,better
put.

How did you get published? Do you have any ties to the institutional world of
poetry?

No.No,no, no, no tiestotheinstitutionalthing,poetryintheacademy,noneofthat,not

at all.I write slow, and what I write has never beenexactlyfashionable,andIhate,you
know,
conferences. I dislike too many things that are automatically part of theliterary
world tohaveeverreallybeenamemberofit.MFAs.Teachingingeneral.PRaweird
quality inamarketingguy,Iknow.(Imsurethatswhymyprofessionalcareerhasbeen
suchasmashsuccess, too.) Imean,look,Iveonlyeverpublishedonebook,
ever.
And
Im forty. No,Ivealwayskeptto myself inthatsense writing my littlepoems in dribs
anddrabs, putting theminadrawer,lookingoveratthemfromtimetotime,usuallywith
thedrawerstillshut.

You asked about how I got published sorry. I worked very slowly on this book of
poems,
Common Life
although I didnteventhink ofitaswritinga
book
atthe time,
you know, it was just these poems that started stringing themselves together the
wholetime I livedinMontreal.Yeah,IlivedinMontrealforanumberofyears,fromafter
college till 2001 I had ajob there. So, Iwas writing this book, and Amy my exwife,
Amy Benoit she wrote, too, and shes generally a much more positive and
encouraging person than I am [chuckles], and she would always tell me to send it
places,presses, contests, whatever.I almost never did just a couple times,rejected,

bam!, the end. ButthenwemovedbacktotheStatesin2001and IrememberhowAmy

said, listen, youre back on your turf, this country has more goddamn poetry contests
than it knows what to do with,
send your book.
And I did I sent it out to a bunch of
places,and it wonafirst book contestrunbyalittleindependentpressinPennsylvania
called Schuylkill Books. Which doesnt exist anymore, shockingly enough! Anyway,
yeah.
Common Lifecame outinasmallprintrunin2001,andthatwasthebeginningof
itsveryshortlifespanonbookshelvesin,uh,thetristatearea[chucklesagain].

How is it being married to another poet? And by the way, I can definitely see
commonthreadbetweenyourpoemsandAmys.

Oh,man.Christ,Imean, well, Im
not
marriedtoanotherpoetanymore,socanthisgo
off the record? [Laughs.] Just kidding, just kidding. I mean, its wonderful and hard it
was wonderfulandhard, both,butmostly becausethatswhatrelationships are that,
more than the fact that wewere bothpoetsor whatever. We were good, forawhile, at
helpingeach other
learn
howto bepoetswhichinourcasemeantleavingeachother
the hell alone a lot of thetime, you know? Ive heard ofother writercoupleswhere its
basically like an inhouse MFA every goddamn day, and they share everything they
writeand
have
to shareeverythingtheywrite,anditwasneverlikethatwithus.Wehad
different ways of being private with our writing, andI think we alsofounditreassuring
thatthe other personbothrespectedthatprivatenessand
understood
it.Wehadadeep
literary companionship in just empathizing with the importance writing heldfor both of
us, period and thewritingitselfbecomesanotherkindofcompanion,youknow?Even
withinamarriage. A lot of that hadto dowith me and Amy as meandAmy,butIreally
dont know if it couldve been the same if Id married, whatever, an accountant or a
trapezeartistorsomething.

At the same time Iwouldnt say that Amy wasmore

ambitious,
justbecausethatcan
be such an icy word, but she certainly had more gumption than I did, more
forwardmoving energy with her writing and with the writingworld. Iusuallyfoundthat
inspiringand helpful,but sometimes Idont know Im a pretty passive,gloomydude,
ultimately, and so sometimes I envied her, I envied her initiative and enthusiasm . . .
maybe theres a common thread between my writing and hers, but I think these
differences, which are fundamentally differences in personality and worldview and so
on, are also there. Anyway, I envied
that,
her energy
it wasnt about recognition,
about prizes or publications or whatever. I never felt like we were competing in that
sense.
Anyway,allof thissaysmore,again, about myself as a person and the stateof
our relationship at any given timethanaboutthedaytodayrealityofbeingtwopoets.I
dontknowhowAmywouldansweryourquestionatthispoint[chuckles].Iwonder.


I meanttosay,both yourpoemsandAmysaretypicallybuiltaroundanimageor
asituation,oftentimesnotparticularlypoeticandsometimeseventakenfrompop
culture, that is made to stand for something else, even belonging to a
metaphysicalorder

Right, yeah. Which isnt an original thing, obviously. I mean, thats a pretty common
mechanism in contemporary American poetry, to an extent extended metaphor,
extended so far it becomes almost a kind of allegory, in a way taking up something
small, material, some little image of the physical world, and finding ways to zoom out
from it, toconnect ormaybeinfuse,actually itslittlephysicalnesswithsomelarger,
more abstract idea. YouknowwhatI mean? I like thatapproach,butIguesswhatIlike
more is applying it to, like you said, something we dont think of as poetic at all,
necessarily. Something banal, unsexy, even, you know, sordid, even pathetic in the
sensethat a lot ofoureverydaylivesandsurroundingsarecomposedofthingsthatcan
be sordid and pathetic.Onething I wantto say about thistendencyof minebuilding
poems around an image like this thats meantto stand for somethingelse is that its
not a tendency toward
transcendence.
Its not about,you know, taking some littleugly
everyday thing and allegorizing it so that its ugliness or unsettlingness gets
transcended.
The goal oftranscendenceinevitably comes from a moral instinct,evenif
that moral instinct is expressedin aesthetic terms.In my poems, I do mean to
expand
that little ugly everyday thing,tomake it accommodate more ideas,more associations,
more connotations .. .butI try to dothatthroughakindofdistortion,notbybeautifying
it. Inmy poem Sponges, which isoneoftheonesyoupickedfortheanthologyitsa
newish poem,
the
newestpoem,sincethedroughtafter
CommonLife
waspublished..
. but maybe thats not accurate, because you couldsee
Common Life
as basically the
only rainfall in a lifelong drought [chuckles] butyeah, in that poem,at nopoint does
theimageofthespongeeverbecomenotdisturbingornotsad,alittle,initsassociation
with the elderly mothers body, right? The image doesnt
evolve
in such a way that it
gets glorified or that it glorifies that body. Itsan association the sea spongeand the
bizarre way it reproduces, the frail mother in the bath that is supposed
to be
uncomfortable, supposed to
stay uncomfortable. Theyre supposed to jar thereader.I
want
that.Ourlivesare
made
ofthatstuff.

So are youwriting again?

What haveyou beenreadingrecently?Howdoyou
feelaboutthecurrentstateofAmericanpoetry?

Im writing again, I guess. At my usualglacial pace. At best after

Common Life,
I stopped
writing poetry altogether.Istilldontknowexactlywhy.Itwasntlikeitdrieduporsomething

it just stopped I just stopped. I tried writing a

novel,
if youll believe that . . . always a bad
move! And then recently Ivefeltthe impulseagain,thepoemimpulse.Spongesisfromthis
new I was going tosay book,but Icantthinkinbooks.Icantunderstandpeoplewhostart
writing poems with the absolute certainty that theyll cohere into something marginally
integrated.Butyeah,soitsfromthenewwriting
impulse.

What am I reading . . . Ive been trying to read more poetry in translation. Im a stupid
monolingual American, youknowandIknowthereareallkindsofpeoplewhohatereading
translations unless they can read the original language, etc. but even so, I feel a strange
hunger for writing that springs from other languages. And I like
receiving
literature in
translation I like the weird trust you have to put not just in the writer but in the translator...
as a reader, its a relationship you cant even be fullyconsciousof,youjusthavetoacceptit.
Andacceptthatit
is
arelationship.IvebeenreadingMiloszlately.AndtheItalianpoetCesare
Pavese. God.
There wasa guywhoknewwhattodo witheverydaylife,witheverythingbanal
andpraiseworthyaboutit.

And what wastheotherhowdoIfeelaboutthestate ofAmericanpoetrytoday?[Sighs.]Im

the wrong person to answer that question for about eighteen different reasons. I think its
repressively academic not the poetryas such, not the language, exactly, butthe idea that
poets have to be affiliated with the academy in order to survive and takenseriously,whichis
more or less the same thing. I find the MFA industry worrisome and annoying. Not that
workshops arent worthwhile just, again, the
industry
of it, the whole apparatus. Which is
reflected, I think, in a vast,
vast
output of, you know industrial, industrialized, poetry. And
the
expense
of these programs! I mean, Jesus. I should stop myselfright now. Okay,yeah,
thats mostly what I think: that its good for university students to have access to creative
writing as a concept and as a practice, and its goodthatAmericanpoetryisntsoferociously
centralized in
one
universityor
one
school ofthoughtor
one
cityasitisinsomeotherplaces.
But I also think its become a market as overwhelming and untenable and diluted as any
others, and the literary hierarchy tends to reward people who have jumped unwaveringly
throughitshoops.

Man, Im sounding like kind of a resentful jerk, arent I? Ill try to end with something more
positive! Here, this is actuallytrueIreallythinkthis:thattherearealsoatremendousnumber
of trulyremarkablepoetswritingwithintherangeofAmericanpoetrytoday,
defining
therange
of American poetry today, and thats no small matter. I catch myself reading Mark Strandor
Louise Glck or Marilyn Hackeror,whoelse,JackGilbertbeforehedied,RobertCreeleytoo,
and I think, whoa,
look
at these guys. I may be a bitter old bastardfortysoldenoughtobe
respectably bitter, right? but its a privilege to read them doing whatever theyredoing. It
reallyis.