The Habitual Poet: Mason Broadwell
Installment #49
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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: Since I work part-time at a large bookstore chain (my apologies to the world), I buy them there with my discount, but usually through our website as the store has a pathetically uneclectic selection. I mean, how many different bindings of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam do we need?
Q: How many poetry books do you think you own, and what percentage of these have you actually read?
A: There are ten on the table I’m sitting at, and at least another 30-40 in boxes, on shelves, and under graded papers my students haven’t claimed. I have read them all; having a book and not reading it is like having cheese and not making a grilled cheese sandwich.
Q: When, where and how do you usually read? (i.e. at bedtime under the covers, cover to cover, etc.)
A: When I’m supposed to be grading. When I’m in the john. When I’m eating. When I’m supposed to be seducing customers or pimping our company’s new ebook device. With poetry, I read cover-to-cover in one sitting if I can, and then do spot-checks over the next few weeks.
Q: What books of poetry have you read this month?
A: Fault Lines by Tim Hunt
Venus and Other Losses by Lucia Galloway
Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina
Pain Fantasy by Jason Bredle
The Temple Gate Called Beautiful by David Kirby
and Shakespeare’s sonnets
Q: What other books/magazines/backs of cereal boxes have you read recently?
A: I’m currently reading The Gold-Bug Variations by Richard Powers. It hurts and it is beautiful. And my Freshman Composition students’ essays on The Ultimate Film Villain. Those hurt too. And I’ve been reading a lot of 419 letters—those hilariously awful emails you get from people in Africa who promise you millions if you sell your house and send them the money. I think there’s a poem there somewhere. 419eater.com makes my face hurt.
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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 write when I should be doing something else. I write a lot of poems near the end of each semester. I write on whatever is around: computer, notepad, the backs of page-a-day calendars, text messages. Mostly I write to give the ideas bouncing around my head a place to hang out while I tend to more immediate matters. Once I composed a five-stanza hymn entirely in my head on a road trip.
Q: How many first drafts do you think you complete in a week? A month?
A: Anywhere from 1-3 in a month, depending on how busy I am. But many of my poems tend to be long and structurally intricate, so it usually takes me a week to develop a rough draft. And editing long poems takes forever too.
Q: How long do you wait before revising a poem?
A: I wait until I can’t remember what I wrote. Then I start revising. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes, sometimes it takes three weeks.
Q: When do you know a poem is “done”?
A: When I have a quantifiable reason for every word, every comma, every line break. Then I put it aside for three months or so and see if those reasons still leap off the page when I reread it, or if they only existed in my head.
Q: Have you ever given up an invitation so you could stay home and write?
A: No. I get my best ideas when I’m with people, so going out almost is writing. And I don’t have enough friends to turn invitations down.
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Publishing
Q: What is your system for sending out work?
A: When I get up the nerve, I send out a few submissions. Then I have to go whimper in the corner.
Q: What have you more recently received: a rejection notice or an acceptance? Was it what you expected?
A: An acceptance. I don’t know how to answer the second question; maybe I was hoping the acceptance letter would enclose some buffalo chicken wings.
Q: Where do you generally publish: online, in print, or a mix, and do you have a preference?
A: A mix. I have no preference. The word is the word.
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: A poem I wrote about having a cold was solicited for a local e-zine’s issue about the body because I used some sexual imagery. That didn’t really make sense to me.
Q: Have you ever received any fan (or hate) mail? If so, what was that like?
A: Not since I started opening my poetry readings by reciting the first few paragraphs of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.
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Practical considerations
Q: What is your day job, and how does it affect your writing?
A: Graduate Teaching Assistant and Part-Time Bookseller. The jobs give me something to ignore while I’m writing.
Q: How does your significant other’s occupation affect your writing life?
A: While I’m not currently in a relationship, a relationship usually takes up time when I could be reading and writing. I need to learn balance.
Q: Have there been periods in your life when you couldn't write?
A: Only when I stopped reading.
Q: Do you have a “poetry budget”?
A: Any award or publication money is instantly so consumed. Unless it’s enough to also pay for a bowtie.
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: Does giving a really dull reading count? Because I’ve made some people suffer that way. I also wrote several poems about an ex and showed them to the guy she was then dating. Hard to say which of the three of us suffered more.
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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 can become invisible, but only at parties.
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. I camp in the outdoor furniture section at Wal-Mart until the police take me to jail where I’ll be safe.
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 leave them to my family, go to Prague, and write the Uber-Poem. Which I just invented.
Q: If you could be a vowel, which one would you be and why?
A: The æ (ash), because it would be fun to watch people stumble over me. Or I could go lay down in the hallway, I suppose.
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’m too young for my advice to matter. Look for the faith that is rational. Look for the folly in philosophy. Look for the joy of sitting quietly with your thoughts. Look for a restaurant with delicious complimentary breads and large tubs of butter.
Mason Broadwell is pursuing an MA in Rhetoric and Composition at Western Kentucky University, and teaching composition. He won the 2010 Browning Literary Club Award.
Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 10:49PM
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