The Habitual Poet: Paul Hostovsky

Installment #44

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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: Lately, the library.

Q: How many poetry books do you think you own, and what percentage of these have you actually read?

A: Own hundreds. Have read some of all and all of none but a few.

Q: When, where and how do you usually read? (i.e. at bedtime under the covers, cover to cover, etc.)

A: In the evenings, in bed, slowly.

Q: What books of poetry have you read this month?

A: One by Stephen Dobyns, one by Gray Jacobic, one by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, one by Fred Marchand.

Q: What other books/magazines/backs of cereal boxes have you read recently?

A: Richard Russo’s “The Risk Pool”, T.C. Boyle’s “Talk Talk”, an article about Meryl Streep.

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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: Early mornings, at my desk, on the computer. Then throughout the day I pick at it longhand. Because it itches.

Q: How many first drafts do you think you complete in a week? A month?

A: One or two a week.

Q: How long do you wait before revising a poem?

A: I revise constantly. I begin before the ink dries.

Q: When do you know a poem is “done”?

A: When it tells me.

Q: Have you ever given up an invitation so you could stay home and write?

A:  Indirectly, yes. I’ve given up invitations because I was feeling surly and misanthropic, then stayed home and wrote surly, misanthropic poems.

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Publishing

Q: What is your system for sending out work?

A: Submit compulsively. Kill my darlings. Take no hostages. Keep no records.

Q: What have you more recently received: a rejection notice or an acceptance? Was it what you expected?

A: An acceptance AND a rejection in the same day. Both were unexpected.

Q: Where do you generally publish: online, in print, or a mix, and do you have a preference?

A: Online, in print, on the fridge, everywhere. No preferences. No allegiances. I’m a po ho. Whisper your acceptance in my ear and I’ll give you the best North American Serial Rights you ever had, baby.

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: An editor recently told me that my poems always make him happy and in the next life he wants to be me.

Q: Have you ever received any fan (or hate) mail? If so, what was that like?

A: Both. The hate mail was hateful; the fan mail fantastic.

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Practical considerations

Q: What is your day job, and how does it affect your writing?

A: Interpreter for the deaf. I write a lot about deaf people.

Q: How does your significant other’s occupation affect your writing life?

A: It doesn’t.

Q: Have there been periods in your life when you couldn't write?

A: No, never. Knock wood.

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. I think I could kill. I think I have killed for the shape, the sheer body of the poem.

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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: I read Braille while driving to work, my left hand on the steering wheel, and my right hand deep in Dear Abby.

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:  Tell her to parry with a poem of her own about me.

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 would stop writing. I’ve been trying to stop writing since I began. I’d rather live than write, any day.

Q: If you could be a vowel, which one would you be and why?

A: O, come on, isn’t it obvious?

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: Hell is having nothing to read but your own poems. 

Paul Hostovsky’s poems appear and disappear simultaneously (Voila!) and have most recently been sighted in places where they pay you for your trouble with your own trouble doubled, and other people’s troubles thrown in, which never seem to him as great as his troubles, though he tries not to compare.