W. Todd Kaneko lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His work has appeared in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, Lantern Review, Southeast Review, NANO Fiction, Blackbird and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop. He teaches at Grand Valley State University. Visit him online at www.toddkaneko.com.
His poems "Macho Man's Last Elbow Drop" and "Miss Elizabeth Said 'Oh Yeah'" appear in Issue Thirty-Six of The Collagist.
Here, W. Todd Kaneko discusses the myths, opposites, relationships, and WWF with interviewer Amber L. Cook.
1. What (or should I say who?) inspired these two poems?
Immediately, the poems are elegies for two characters from the World Wrestling Federation back in the 80s and 90s. Miss Elizabeth and the Macho Man Randy Savage were two of the most popular performers of all time. Their relationship was at the heart of most storylines and feuds they were involved in. Elizabeth died after mixing drugs and alcohol back in 1993 and Savage had a heart attack while driving in 2011.
But the poems are also inspired by the mythology of wrestling. To a lot of men and women I know, watching wrestling is something to be ashamed of—something that you have to apologize for knowing anything about because it’s lowbrow or “fake.” We may have watched different wrestlers, depending on when and where we grew up, but if we can have that conversation, it often ends up being about times spent with our fathers or grandfathers back in the old days when the business tried to maintain the illusion that the matches were real contests.
So, I guess these two poems are inspired by wrestling, as well as those times that we’ve had with those people we can’t ever have back.
2. There seem to be defined roles for the man and the woman that lead "Miss Elizabeth Said 'Oh Yeah'". These two characters seem to be polar opposites, but it also seems like the man and woman feed off of each other out of necessity. Is this the way you intended for them to be read? If not, how did you want this binary to come across?
While I’m sure that Savage would have been a popular wrestler on his own, the degree of his success is due in great part to his partnership with Miss Elizabeth. When Savage proposed to Miss Elizabeth in the middle of the ring, it was after a long on-screen relationship that saw Elizabeth always bringing out the best of a wrestler that fans wanted to root for, even when he was playing the bad guy. As characters, they were polar opposites. Elizabeth was beautiful, glamorous and quiet; Savage was near-psychotic and violent—he needed Elizabeth’s calming presence to help keep him from going over the edge. Defining the binary was easy because it already existed on television. I tried to apply it to the mother and the father as well to give the Savage/Elizabeth moment more value for the speaker.
3. This poem feels very Plathian in its ability to confess something intimate, which I truly admire. Do you often write “confessions,” whether factual or not, through characters on the page?
Thank you for that compliment. When professional wrestling is at its best, it mimics the things we desire or fear in real life, drawing on those things to make us know who to root for and who to root against; at some point, the performers make us forget that we don’t believe the violence is real. I think that a poem can work in much the same way, drawing us in and delivering something personal in ways that involve sleight of hand more than outright confession. For me, a poem nearly always confesses something intimate, even when the material of the poem is not factual—I don’t see the two as being mutually exclusive.
4. Did you (intentionally or unintentionally) create parallels with the mother to Miss Elizabeth and the father to Macho Man?
The parallels between the mother to Miss Elizabeth and the father to Savage was intentional, and I think there also exists a parallel between the speaker and his wife even though there is less space in the poem devoted to that relationship. In my head, there was this one moment in time when Savage was proposing and a happily-ever-after ending seemed inevitable. Of course, as we all know, a happy ending is really just the moment before the next story begins. The father and mother divorced. The speaker is married and uncertain about his relationship. Elizabeth and Savage divorced (but not before Jake the Snake Roberts busted up the reception wielding a live cobra). The parallels were intentional, but I always have to write my way into intentionality. I knew I was looking for a parallel, but I didn’t necessarily know what that parallel was going to be until I got there.
5. What made you choose an epigraph from Randy Savage to start "Macho Man's Last Elbow Drop"? Why this quote? How does it inform the poem?
When I was visiting my family in Seattle one summer, there were a pair of bald eagles that were hanging out on the Evergreen Point Bridge that spans Lake Washington. One morning, we read in the newspaper that one of the eagles was struck by a truck and killed. The next day, as we crossed the bridge, there was that lone eagle sitting on top of the bridge. It perched majestic and sad, and we couldn’t imagine how it must feel, if it felt anything. It certainly wasn’t crying.
I like to use quotes from wrestlers who are good on the microphone, as there is often an image or a rhythm to their speeches that I can use in the poem. That epigraph is from an interview Savage did on the Arsenio Hall Show back in 1992 when he was WWF Champion, about to defend against the Ultimate Warrior (he lost the match but retained the title). Savage was always great on the microphone, and in that moment, he was answering the question, “Has the Macho Man ever cried?”
It turned out to be an important decision, as the quote gave me the snake and eagle images that were important to my figuring out how the poem would work. The poem is an elegy for the Macho Man, but also a poem for the father. Neither the speaker nor the father are crying men. They have to find other ways of expressing emotion.
6. I’m reading a loose connection between the family, Randy Savage, and the eagle throughout this poem. How do you make bridges between the seemingly unrelated?
If we are to believe Richard Hugo when he advises the poet to get off-topic as soon as possible (and I think we should), then it makes sense to start off-topic and see how the poem might find its way to topic. Unfortunately, there is no magic to the way I make bridges between seemingly unrelated things. For me, writing is a lot of trial and error, forcing things together to see if they fit, and then breaking them apart again if they refuse to work together. It’s cruel and sweaty and often unpleasant. That’s how metaphors work for me.
7. The two poems seem to be in conversation with one another. Do you often write poems that are able to talk to each other? How do you feel about sequence?
I am the kind of writer who thinks in projects. I look to sequence to help me figure out where the next poem comes from. I sometimes understand my own work better because I understand how it fits within a certain sequence. Once I have a poem, I will often start casting about for the poem’s siblings or cousins or evil twins. I often use one poem to figure out how to approach the other, looking at how one poem might work to answer questions that another poem has left unanswered. Sometimes, it’s challenging to write poems that are part of a sequence but not reliant on one another to function.
8. What’s something you’re reading right now that you think everyone should pick up and peruse?
When Jake Adam York passed away near the end of 2012, I started going back through his work, reading and re-reading his three books: Murder Ballads, Murmuration of Starlings and Persons Unknown. Those books should be read over and over by everyone to remind us about the serious, beautiful work a poem can do.
9. Are these poems part of a larger project?
These two poems are a part of a sequence of poems I’m calling The Dead Wrestler Elegies. I have a sequence of about thirty of them, with several still planned. The poems form a larger narrative about the speaker and his father’s death, about learning to be a man, and about the mythology of professional wrestling.