His poem, "What Will I Do with My X-Ray Vision," appeared in Issue Seventy-Seven of The Collagist.
Here, he speaks with interviewer Christina Oddo about the cinematic nature of 5-stanza poems, the absurdity we find in life that makes us laugh, and super powers.
What prompted a five-stanza piece?
This poem is part of a project in which I wanted to give myself some constraint—my two books are both pretty “free” in terms of form, so for the collection of which this poem is part I bound myself: each line has ten syllables, each poem is five quatrains. So every single poem in this collection is exactly 200 syllables, and I liked this length—longer than a sonnet, so I could be a little more “talky” in approach, and see through some more complex issues, yet short enough to keep things reined in. Plus, I think there’s just something cinematic about five stanzas—jump right in, escalate the tension, offer some climax, and even give yourself a little time for epiphany and denouement.
What role did humor play for you as the writer? What role would you like humor to play for the reader?
I used to be hesitant to include much humor, thinking that it belittled the seriousness of the art. But now I realize that’s bullshit. Life is hilarious, and therefore poetry has plenty of room for the comic. I think there’s something illuminating in the way we can jab at the absurdity of our existence, such as having too much shampoo at the airport, and through that laughter come to grips with the tragedies of the world, such as mortality. For readers, I just want them to enjoy themselves: there’s no reason to be sad…you’re reading poetry!
What similarities do you share with the narrator of this piece? If you are the narrator, what experiences influenced your decision to write about this subject matter?
I think this is a hilarious question to consider, given that the narrator’s first admission is that he’d use his x-ray vision to do “all the nasty things,” which I can only imagine involves nudity. In truth, I don’t identify myself too directly with the narrator of this poem, as he’s definitely a character, some caricature-esque parody of a person, but I think his (or even her) inclinations regarding how to use these “superpowers” are pretty human, and honest. I especially am drawn to the movement in the fourth stanza, in which the narrator seeks greater understanding of the universe and existence—this, more than anything, is where this character speaks to me.
What are you currently reading?
I’ve been reading Blood Eagle, by Adam Crittenden, and Local Extinctions, by Mary Quade. Both of these books just came out on Gold Wake Press, and they kick ass, but in totally different ways. Blood Eagle is dark and funny and strange, and takes some fascinating stylistic risks. Local Extinctions is deep in the ways only a book that focuses on the miniscule can be deep—it has beautiful moments from beginning to end. I also have been working a lot with an excellent and crazy book called Winter Park, by Graham Guest, which I just published through Atmosphere Press, which I run. Everyone should check it out—its main characters are a drug-abusing paraplegic philosopher and an epileptic savant who has memorized a dictionary, and much of it takes place on a dude ranch. Haha, it sounds even better when I type it out like that.
What are you now writing?
This poem here is a part of the primary project that’s engaging me right now, which is a book called Catastrophe. It deals with both the comic and tragic elements of what happens when “shit gets fucked up,” through apocalypses both large-scale and solely personal. It’s my third book (after Punchline and Let There Be Light), and I think it’s definitely my funniest, and, even though all of the poems are in the exact same form, I think it’s also my most diverse in terms of content. It hasn’t been published yet, but I’ll let you know when it is!