Installment #36
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The Habitual Poet is an ongoing series of contributor interviews. If you are a Poemeleon contributor and would like to participate copy & paste the Q's from below and e-mail your answers to: editor@poemeleon.org.
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Reading
Q: Where do you prefer to get your books?
A: I’m still buying books in bookstores, but I’m not uncomfortable with the idea of reading on devices. I have no idea which reader might be best for me once I decide to buy one.
Q: How many poetry books do you think you own, and what percentage of these have you actually read?
A: I’m 76 and have built and given away several poetry libraries. At the moment I probably have more than a hundred books and have read them all. I write about other poets’ work when I think I have something to say. I don’t write about work I don’t like.
Q: When, where and how do you usually read? (i.e. at bedtime under the covers, cover to cover, etc.)
A: Seated. Sometimes in cafes, sometimes at home. Sometimes from the back to the front.
Q: What books of poetry have you read this month?
A: The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova, translated from the Russian hy Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler; Cold Spring In Winter by Valerie Rouzeau, translated from the French by Susans Wicks; North Africa: Literary Crossroads, published by Fairleigh Dickinson University; Hyacinth of the Soul by Joan I. Siegel, published by Deerbrook Editions.
Q: What other books/magazines/backs of cereal boxes have you read recently?
A: Times Literary Supplement, American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Celaan, Field, Book Forum, Toward A New American Cubism by Bruce Weber, published by Berry-Hill Galleries.
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Writing
Q: When, where, how do you write, and why?(i.e. at dusk on a dock, longhand in a notebook, because...)
A: I usually write first in notebooks that fit in my jacket pockets. At some point I transcribe from these notebooks to my laptop and refine or amend. I rarely write original work on my laptop. I use larger notebooks when at home, but most of my poetry is written while walking, sitting in cafes or museums. I go to bed with a large notebook and I locate notebooks strategically around the house so that I don’t have to hunt one down when something occurs to me. The act of writing in longhand is completely different from composing on a screen. It leaves a record, a kind of EKG. I can see from my handwriting how I felt about the language, what mood I was in. I can see whether I felt certain about something or whether I wavered. Longhand leaves invaluable clues.
Q: How many first drafts do you think you complete in a week? A month?
A: I have written 135 poems since early March 2010. That reflects my usual output, although there are more fallow and more fruitful moments. I don’t regard any of these poems as finished. I’m savage when it comes to revision, and I frequently abandon work, although I usually keep it around in case facets interest me later.
Q: How long do you wait before revising a poem?
A: My practice here is unlike my practice of fiction. I let fiction rest for months on end, sometimes years. I may revise a poem a day after first writing it. Or a poem may remain unfinished for months, as I visit and revisit it, often deciding I have nothing to add or change. Just as often I am stumped about some infelicity, some illogic, something that simply doesn’t work. I revise continuously, fiction and poetry. Some poems that were once two pages end up being four-line stanzas, others that were a stanza or two end up being two pages. I was trained as reporter, rewrite person and editor, and I have to resist the compulsion as a poet to hurtle towards a deadline. But my newspaper experience, only in some ways inimical to my work as a poet, has imbued me with a respect for taciturnity, even silence. After all, in the absence of silence language dies.
Q: When do you know a poem is “done”?
A: It’s like the moment you snip a rose and bring it into the house. You know there is a danger of it being overblown, subject to insects. You see and hear the perfect moment. But I never promise myself to not to revise. Sometimes I think I have a near-perfect poem and months later I might abandon it. It’s not indecision, it’s reflection.
Q: Have you ever given up an invitation so you could stay home and write?
A: Often. Usually so that I can take a walk and write. I sometimes find my house more distracting than crowds.
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Publishing
Q: What is your system for sending out work?
A: My wife, Marilyn, does this, for the most part, although I occasionally have an inspiration. I find the process daunting and fraught with despair. It is the single biggest deterrent to me as a writer. My wife has insulated me from much of it. It is a great blessing, like collaborating with an angel.
Q: What have you more recently received: a rejection notice or an acceptance? Was it what you expected?
A: Rejection in the last week, curt and a bit snotty. And a lovely, elegant acceptance two weeks earlier.
Q: Where do you generally publish: online, in print, or a mix, and do you have a preference?
A: I write a literary and cultural blog, and my posts are often republished. I have written a great deal for online journals. Two of my poetry books have been published in print. I published an e-book novel in 1999, Alice Miller’s Room, which is still available from OnlineOriginals. Another novel will be published next year by Prakash Books of India. I am open to both media.
Q: What is the worst (or weirdest, or best) experience you’ve had with a journal/magazine/press & its editor(s)? (No names, please!)
A: My best experience was winning the Stan and Tom Wick Prize in Poetry in 2007 from Kent State University. Lovely people, happy occasion, memorable contacts. My funniest was winning a prize for a poem and being invited to a dinner in my honor only to have it canceled when it was discovered I wasn’t a native son of the particular state. We all had a laugh, and it was a great honor anyway. I don’t know about my worst experiences. There have been some pretty snide and mean rejections disguised as professional behavior.
Q: Have you ever received any fan (or hate) mail? If so, what was that like?
A: Both. Fans are welcome and wonderful and kind. Haters trip on their shoelaces.
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Practical considerations
Q: What is your day job, and how does it affect your writing?
A: I’m retired, which is to say I’m busier than I’ve ever been.
Q: How does your significant other’s occupation affect your writing life?
A: She, too, is retired. She was a publisher for many years for the Justice Department, and she is an avid reader. Hardly a day passes that some new book doesn’t arrive in the mail. So literature is a magnificent bond between us.
Q: Have there been periods in your life when you couldn't write?
A: Yes. I wrote poetry and studied poetry almost every day from my fourteenth year into my thirties, but then my life crashed and I didn’t write poetry again until the events of 9/11 when something about the horror of that time ignited me. I did begin writing fiction in the late 1980s, but not poetry, although poetry was my first and is my abiding love—and I know much more about it than I know about fiction.
Q: Do you have a “poetry budget”?
A: No.
Q: Have you ever suffered (or made someone else suffer) in the name of your art? (i.e. picked up your kids late from school so you could finish a poem, forgone lunch to buy a book, left a relationship because the other person just didn't understand, etc.)
A: Yes. And I, too, have suffered when others have failed to appreciate how important writing is to me. But I think your question is tied up with so many other issues in one’s life that it can’t be answered to anyone’s complete satisfaction. For example, I married too young. I was immature. I drank too much. I suffered from post-traumatic stress owing to childhood traumas and needed therapy—all these factors combined to make any sacrifice I made in behalf of my writing that much more difficult for my loved ones. I started writing long before I had much to say.
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Random nonsense
Q: Do you have any superhuman abilities? (i.e. can you tie a cherry stem in a knot with your tongue, or write a double sestina with both hands tied behind your back?)
A: If I did, I wouldn’t brag about them for fear of losing them.
Q: You write a scathing poem about your mother and she learns about it. You:
a.) Move to South America and leave no forwarding address
b.) Delete the poem and insist it never existed
c.) Show it to her (she’s already written you out of the will anyway)
d.) Do none of the above; instead you: _____
A. d.) Do none of the above; instead you: Did none of the above but would have liked to.
Q: If the best medical specialists in the world told you that if you didn’t give up your poetry habit today you would die in six months, would you get your affairs in order or would you leave that up to your family?
A: I’d buy another book of poems.
Q: If you could be a vowel, which one would you be and why?
A: O. But better yet—zero, that perfect number.
Q: Finally, what piece of advice would you most like to share with our readers? (This can be on writing, the writing life, or anything else...)
A: I think of writing in much the same way the Sufi Ibn al Arabi wrote about the creative imagination. There is some kind of cosmic principle, call it divine if you like, with which I collaborate when I write. I re-imagine the world in collaboration with this principle. That is my real work. Everything else—the acceptances, the rejections, getting published, being reviewed—is incidental. The process is everything, the creative act: A sacred rite. When I have this firmly in mind my writing goes well. But when I look to the future I waver and fret. This, this act, is what creates the future. Time is not what we generally think it, in my view. It moves backward and forward; our clock is merely a convenient tool, but primitive. I don’t really know what success is, but I suspect it’s not the accolades of any given establishment at any given time. I try to keep in mind that the purpose of the dervish is to disappear.
Djelloul Marbrook’s book of poems, Far from Algiers (Kent State University Press, 2008) won the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and the 2010 International Book Award in poetry. It has been reviewed in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Literal Latté, The Linchpin, Boxcar Poetry, and others. A second book of poems, Brushstrokes and Glances, will be published by Deerbrook Editions in December 2010. These poems are about painters, paintings and museums. His story “Artists' Hill,” from an unpublished novel, won the Literal Latté fiction prize in 2008. A novel, Artemisia’s Wolf, is forthcoming from Prakash Books (India) in 2011. Recent poems have been published by American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Oberon, Orbis, Reed, The Same, The Ledge, Poemeleon, Poets Against the War, Hot Metal Bridge, Istanbul Literary Review, Arabesques, Damazine, and Attic. He worked for many years as a reporter and editor for newspapers including the Providence Journal, Elmira Star-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Winston-Salem Journal, Washington Star, and others. He lives in New York’s mid-Hudson Valley with his wife Marilyn.