At what point did you begin to recognize yourself as a poet?
I’m not sure I truly recognize myself as one now. I consider myself a storyteller and poetry is the shortest version of a story one can write. I tell folks I write poetry, but even saying that I’m scared of turning people off.
By saying you’re a poet?
Yeah.
Why?
I don’t think poetry is respected on a large scale way. Its a cultural light switch; people are either totally with it or totally against it. I guess for some, if they run into a little bad poetry its all bad poetry.
The age old question: Is writing a gift or can anybody do it?
I think everybody has stories to tell, everybody has things that strike them as beautiful. Its just a matter of figuring out the language and how to explain your love, arranging the words properly. I do think anybody can do it, its just a matter of wanting to. Its hard work. If you don’t want to be out there searching for stories, staring at people or animals or paper blowing in the street… If you don’t want to sit in silence and wonder which word is the right word, then, well, there’s no hope for you.
It sounds like you’re saying anyone can be taught to be a poet.
Yes. But they have to want the teaching which is the catch. Considering everybody has different voices, approaches, techniques or whatever– there’s room for everybody. But you gotta want it to achieve it.
Why did you want it?
(LONG PAUSE) I wasn’t being heard. In life. Maybe I’m admitting to loneliness; I certainly felt that in the years I was developing my voice. But I didn’t have anybody I could talk to or go to about what was going on with me and I realized I could put it on the page. Whatever I was stressing about, whatever I was thinking about. There’s room on the page for it. I found it was possible to heal and release by writing (something) out of your system.
Is poetry writing a form of therapy?
I think so, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I wasn’t implying that it was a bad thing.
That’s cool. I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t want to categorize this too much because by me saying what poetry is… I’m negating all the other valid definitions of poetry. I don’t know what poetry is– its a lot of things. Poetry is therapy. Poetry is storytelling. Poetry is comedy. Poetry is art. Therapy isn’t the end all be all. But i did find much value in writing as a form of creative release.
When did that occur to you? It doesn’t sound like you always believed in writing as therapy.
I didn’t. Maybe I should say how I came to writing poems. This was when I was taking care of my mom who was dying of cancer. I was an only child, didn’t have much of a social life, no love life or anything. It was me, her and her illness. My best friends mother was a poet and she found I could write, she asked if I wrote poetry and wanted to introduce me to her world, the cafe poetry scene. For me it was the introduction of a world I didn’t know anything about. It was also the beginning of a sort of social identity for myself. I liked it. After going to a few readings I began to stretch what I initially thought poetry could do. For example I didn’t know you could use poetry to talk about yourself or your own issues. When I was introduced to poetry in high school I thought it was all rhyme about trees and raccoons. I didn’t know you could be poetic about breaking up with your girlfriend or getting a ticket from the police. About real stuff.
What sort of things were you writing before you had that realization?
I just played around. I wrote a soap opera in screenplay format. Wrote B-level short fiction. Just making things up. Nothing from my life or anything, just– whatever was curious to me.
You used poetry and writing for therapy. What’s the difference between writing poetry and journalling?
I believe journalling is exercise and is just for you. Poetry is when you figure out something that speaks to something larger, something everybody could benefit from or something you want everyone to see.
What was the first poem you wrote where you ‘figured something out’?
‘The Fire In Her Eyes Redefines An Apple.’ My mom would make jam and jelly every spring and she was making a pot after I’d been writing for a while, and I just remember looking into the pot and seeing the fruit boil and bubble and just flashed on a bunch of memories. Things she’d tell me, the trees my cousin and I climbed, the shelves in the garage where she’d keep preserves and stuff. I guess what I’m saying is I finally understood how to tell that story. I don’t know why. Just that moment and that poem was quite powerful for me.
What is your process for writing poems?
Its like being a bad psychic. I get an idea or vision and put everything down that occurs to me around that theme. If its an idea that really locks for me I’ll sit and kinda pour out a lot of notes and lines onto the page then get a second notebook and comb over those original notes, gently figuring out which line/vision comes first. Then its rewrite, rewrite and read it aloud to judge how it reads and will be heard.
What does it mean for a poem to be successful? Do you know when its working or when it isn’t?
I already feel like i should apologize for this cryptic, non-helpful answer, but I kinda feel it. There’s a musicality to the flow of words and images that works for my mouth and imagination. There’s a flow of the story from one point to another then another. A successful poem is one that tells a solid story and has a beginning and a definate ending. Its visual, it moves.
What makes a poem ‘not’ work for you?
It doesn’t show enough. Language doesn’t work, doesn’t flow smoothly– looking at some early poems, one’s I’d never read they’re all very prosey and overwritten. Or they doesn’t have much to say.
What happens to poems that don’t work? Do you go back?
I went back and tried to rewrite one and was startled that I cut out damn near 90% of what I’d originally written and was left with, like, one stanza when the original was seven. I looked back and thought: well, its clear and has no fat on it, but I don’t like it as much.
What poem was it?
The Hairdresser As Healer. Never published. I wrote it years ago. I put it in the manuscript I was doing about family and eventually took it out because it was weak. It was just a description that didn’t do much and didn’t end anywhere relevatory. Seemed very quaint in a way that felt, to me and my voice, false. One night I decided to edit it down using stuff I’d learned in the years between and, like I said, was kinda shocked. Neither version of the poem excites me now. I’m talking about it but haven’t looked at either in a while. Maybe I’ll try again.
Did you ever perform it? What kind of response did you get?
Yeah. Folks liked it fine, but I guess I no longer do. My feelings about it changed over time. I’d grown as an artist and went back and thought ’sloppy’. Who was it said: Poems are never finished, they’re just walked away from? (*Paul Valery 1871-1945: “Poems are never finished only abandoned.” -ed)
Are you nervous on stage?
Not really. If I’m prepared and excited and confident about the work and the audience feels alive to me, then I’m on hype. Big rooms kinda make me nervous before I get on stage, but usually the tension leaves me while I’m reading. I don’t mind being on stage.
You know, I always felt poems were not finished until you’ve read them before an audience. I’ve gotten on stage before stiff rooms. You can feel the energy of the room when you’re on the mic and I can feel when they’re with me or not. Poems I think are funny, when no one laughs at the punchline, I do think ‘uh-oh’, but then sometimes people would come up afterwards and say: I didn’t know if I was supposed to laugh or not.
Ever been booed?
I have but not for reading poems, just for being from Oakland. I was in San Francisco in a room full of teenagers and was the last to be introduced as being ‘from Oakland’ and they booed me– they were all repping for San Francisco, showing off for the SF native host, I suppose. That threw me because I actually hadn’t even said anything yet.
They booed and then you read poetry and they loved you.
Not hardly. I was startled and went ahead and read quietly into my chest. That was the beginning of a long afternoon. I was with three other brothers and we divided the kids in writing groups. The kids I got seemed to be the ones who felt the most sorry for me.
What do you do when it occurs to you a poem isn’t working?
Stop. I really haven’t gone back over poems I’ve forgotten to attempt to repair them. Maybe I should, instead of just losing them.
Do you feel rewriting an older poem is redundant? Why bother when you can write something new?
Full disclosure– Im lazy. If I get blocked and am not writing new material, I should reach back and attempt to fix something I stopped liking. That’s writing instruction for me and everybody else.
