Samuel Ace has published widely in periodicals and journals. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Normal Sex (Firebrand Books) and Home in three days. Don't wash. (Hard Press). He is a two-time finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, winner of the Astraea Lesbian Writer's Fund Prize in Poetry, The Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry. He lives in Tucson, AZ and Truth or Consequences, NM.
Maureen Seaton is the author of over a dozen books, most recently, of two collaborative poetry collections: Stealth, with Samuel Ace (Chax Press, 2011), and Sinéad O'Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds, winner of the Sentence Book Award (Firewheel, 2011), with Neil de la Flor. Her awards include the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, an NEA fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in New Letters, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, New Republic, Ploughshares, and many other journals. She lives in Hollywood, FL and Albuquerque, NM.
Samuel Ace and Maureen Seaton's collaborative poem, "The Age of the Moon," appears in Issue Thirty-Six of The Collagist.
Here, Ace and Seaton speak with interviewer Amber L. Cook on ongoingness, on identities, and on crises.
1. “The Age of the Moon” is a collaborative poem. I’m wondering: what inspired you both to participate in this poem together? Who initiated the collaboration?
MS: “The Age of the Moon” occurred about halfway through our second collaboration (2010-2012), a project we’re calling Portals. Our first book, Stealth (Chax Press), was due out and we hadn’t written anything together in a while, so, basically, we just missed the process and the intimacy. Before Stealth, I think I was in Tucson one day visiting Sam after a lot of years and one of us said, “Let’s write a poem,” and the other jumped at the idea.
SA: Our collaboration is a meld a spring a trampoline a play a challenge a suture a prompt and so much more. It’s ongoing and generative. I’ve known Maureen for so many years now I can’t count but our beginning collaboration is ongoing. Continuous (with breaks) and then new. And again.
2. How do you each respectively see repetition working in this poem? Every time a word or phrase is repeated, does it become new again? Does it become a way to layer different meanings? Are your interpretations of repetition different?
SA: Repeat and repeat again or not. It’s like a digging - you never know what might surface... perhaps the 5000-year-old iceman Ötzi who might be related to you, or even Laika. An arm and an arm and a leg bone. Heading out. A slow death alone. So we repeat. To remember and connect.
MS: Repetition comforts me. I offer it like down.
3. I question the way the parentheses are used [at the end of the poem] in all the best ways possible. How do you anticipate the parentheses being read? As asides? Addendums? Something unmentioned?
SA: Parentheses are not an afterthought. But they are at times a whisper. But then hardly. Like thought. It’s never enough. Or finished.
MS: Ray’s Pizza flown piping hot to Albuquerque.
SA: Tuna melt vs. Puttanesca.
4. Were there any constraints or exercises that you used while generating this poem?
MS: No constraints. We both did a fair amount of research while composing “The Age of the Moon,” though. I’ve got a thing for numbers, zero in particular, so for this piece the title came directly from the epigraph. I sent Sam the quote, and he riffed from there. (I was also reading Chomsky.) Sam’s research picked up on the moon and led him to the dogs in space.
SA: Like myrrh.
MS: Or murder.
5. There seems to be an awareness—almost self-consciousness about the I/Me character. Did you intend for this stripped down/rawness from the speaker?
SA: Like identity itself the wallpaper peeled back
MS:
6. Where do each of your own styles peek through throughout the poem?
SA: Would prefer not to say.
MS: The further away I get from the piece, the less sure I am of authorship. I like that.
7. What relationship exists between the “I” and “You” of this poem. To me it feels symbiotic, but how did you both wish for their relationship to be perceived?
SA: Intimate. In language and identity. A slippery thing.
MS: (Prince singing Joni.)
8. At moments, I feel this work is language-poetry-like, resembling someone like Lyn Hejinian or Jorie Graham. Was this form a consideration of yours?
SA: Is Jorie a language poet? Is Lyn?
MS: Language is pretty, am I right?
9. The scope of the poem seems to zoom in and out. How does this zooming help pace or progress the poem?
SA: If we can dig then we can climb and if we can fly we can leave the earth. All that is possible. Like swimming.
MS: And zooming!
10. What was something each of you was reading while composing this poem?
SA: I really don’t remember. Sometime in the age of crisis it was always a crisis. And a secret.
MS: Chomsky.
11. Is “The Age of the Moon” part of a larger project?
SA: See Maureen’s note to #1.
MS: It had images too. Here’s one from Sam:
