FEATURE: RYAN ECKES, PHILADELPHIA ANTHEMS

                                              Ryan Eckes is a keen observer of the whole world.
                                              (photo credit Seth Klinger)

art as experience
by Ryan Eckes

in passing john calls john dewey j-dew, which makes everything infinitely

more watchable. go phillies like a bus, half hours, half flowers, to valu-

plus for flip-flops and a new notebook—marble, like my stoop. i stand

on the book, its title, valu-plus, arrived home on a sticker, yellow, with

a price: a buck, a holler. after that we’re free to have our hazards. love

ages me, but not that two people were murdered a half block from me

this week. the barista lays down a napkin and spoon even when you’re

just getting it to go. front-to-back three years ago a night this november

i tore thru splay anthem while this place was called something else, and

i thought i felt the whole world sail thru a map in my chest, knocked on

wood a lesson: bare hands, bare hands, no lie: you’ll never understand

yourself in isolation. a hair on your selfish city’s chest, you will mistake

selfishness for independence again. again, you will catch yourself being

a republican to yourself. if i’m beaten, who can tell.  not me, anymore.

not me, anymore.

It is difficult to think about Philadelphia poetry without Ryan Eckes’ name coming to the forefront of the mind.  Ryan’s poems are very Philadelphia – I cannot think of many other poets whose poems breathe the charge of the city & its many dimensions the way Ryan’s do.  When I read Ryan’s poems, or am lucky enough to hear him read them, I am mentally transported to places in the city – walking around Philadelphia – being part of its people, its vibrancy, its songs, but also its underbelly.  Ryan’s poems are celebratory, but also not full of the celebrational delusion that so many others have filled into their poetries of place.  His poems have a realistic quality that ignites a reader’s senses, that make one aware of the city’s currents & how they filter through a narrow window, or a tiny moment.  For this reason, I am always blown away when I read one of Ryan’s poems.  They say so much in small increments, and can be read in many directions.

Ryan also contributes much to the community of Philadelphia poetry.  He co-curates (with poet Stan Mir) The Chapter & Verse Reading Series at Chapter House Café in South Philadelphia, which is one of the best poetry series that I have witnessed since I started attending poetry series over a decade ago.  He brings poets from all over the country to Philadelphia, so we are lucky enough to hear so many amazing poets read thanks to Ryan.

I feel that if you haven’t read the poetry of Ryan Eckes, that you are missing out.  His poems are nothing less than brilliant, heart wrenching, suffocating, & real.  I hope you enjoy this interview with the amazing Ryan Eckes.

Debrah:  Ryan, I am very excited by the twists & turns of "art as experience."  When reading this poem, & when reading your work in general, I definitely feel "the whole world sail thru a map in my chest."  Is this poem part of a larger series?  

Also, in this poem, you reference Nathaniel Mackey's splay anthem.  Were you inspired by Mackey in writing this poem?

Ryan:   Hey Debrah, thanks for inviting me to do this. 

The poem isn't part of a specific series, but it'll be part of my next manuscript, which I'll probably call Valu-Plus, after the store that recently went out of business. "art as experience" was one of the first poems I wrote last fall after I finished writing my last manuscript, and I was trying to sort of regenerate. I wanted to see what would happen if I attempted to write a poem the way I did four, five years earlier, when I wrote mostly prose poems. I would think of them as little motion machines that were also stories, and the process of writing them was both meditation and storytelling, a give and take of making something up as you go. As I wrote I'd try to let one sentence lead me to the next by repeating the sentence in my head and listening for the truest thing about it and pulling something out of it, which would be the next sentence, and I'd keep going like that until I felt that I'd arrived and had some kind of motion machine you could ride when you read it. Hence the twists and turns. The poem turned out different from my older prose poems, of course, because I'm a different person now, but the experience and reward of it was similar.

It's funny you point out that particular phrase, "the whole world sail thru a map in my chest," since that's the phrase I'm least comfortable with, least sure about. It's just that on a purely aesthetic level, I don't know if I like it. But I guess it does its job where it is. I was trying to describe as concretely as possible what I experienced while reading Splay Anthem for the first time, and what I had was some big feeling of endless sadness mixed with possibility, an overwhelming sense of reality, which I called "everything", or "the world", which is a better word, and saw it as a boat, in part because of Mackey's imagery, moving swiftly through the map of water inside me that I imagine's always there, that I won't explain. I felt kind of splayed. I wasn't thinking of Mackey when I started writing the poem--he just came up when I was thinking about a corner I was sitting on, where I'd first read Splay Anthem--but in general, yeah, that book has been inspiring. It's one I've gone back to again and again--there's no end to it. Ever read his preface to that book? It's wonderful. And what a great thing to say, "splay anthem."

Debrah:  I just looked all around my home for my copy of splay anthem.  I really thought I had a copy, but maybe it's just registered in my mind as a book I own because I know I should.  I will have to remedy that!  What is it about the preface to Mackey's splay anthem that you admire the most?

I really enjoy your description of prose poems as "little motion machines."  There is a lot of motion in "art as experience":  "in passing," "go phillies like a bus," "arrived home," "just getting it to go,"  "sail thru a map" ...  So, I definitely get this feeling of moving while reading this piece...  moving in many directions, & in many ways.  The title alone, describing art as an experience, connotes motion to me as experience is a kind of moving through...  Do you feel that prose poetry is an easier poetic vessel through which to deliver the feeling of motion?  How do you designate whether you will write a prose poem versus another form?  Or is it something that just happens?

Ryan: Oh, sorry--I don't mean to make you go rummaging for a reference. I was just rambling a little toward the end of that response. What sticks with me from Mackey's preface is a definition of poetry he borrows from the Kaluli, an indigenous group of people in Papua New Guinea. He describes a funeral song, a ritual and myth about broken kinship, from which poetry and music originate. He suggests that poetry is simultaneously elegiac and restorative, "not only lamenting violated connection but aiming to reestablish connection, as if the entropy that gives rise to [poetry and music] is never to be given the last word." You get that cyclical motion in Mackey's poetry, in the sound as much as the story, the cosmogony.

Since I was a kid I've often felt slowed, or stuck, or static--it's hard to explain—a heaviness on me, as if there were too much gravity, too much of some force pinning me to the floor, which makes me tired. And I think that we live a very static-producing, final-word culture that inhibits exploration and curiosity and human connection in general, so motion has been an important word for me in resisting those forces, and writing and reading has been a way to do that, to feel alive. Prose isn't the only way that works for me. Line-based writing also does the job. The main difference is the unit--when I work in prose the sentence is the unit, and I tend to focus a little more on narrative and a little less on music--but just a little--while the line-based poems are usually made of short lines with quicker turns. What determines if it'll be a prose poem or not is whatever I start with. If it's a pair of lines in my head, I'll just keep writing lines (Ted Greenwald's been a big influence there). I try to get the feeling of motion from anything I'm writing.

Recently, thanks to Conrad, I got interested in the 19th century architect Frank Furness, who built many buildings in Philadelphia. Furness wanted his buildings to convey motion, to exhibit natural elements, to be as alive as possible. I found a fascinating biography called Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind, by Michael J. Lewis, that makes connections between Furness' personal experiences and the designs of his buildings. Here's a snippet of a quote from it from my notebook: "His walls were not so much static murals as living conduits whose underlying physical drama was infinitely more exciting than any color that might be applied to the surface." The book was enough to inspire me to try to break out of my own conventions by writing a poem based primarily on the violence I felt moving through me, and I wound up with an ugly thing that's both prose and verse--the first section is shaped like a tornado, by accident. I had a good time.

Debrah:  Wow, what you reference from Mackey's introduction to splay anthem sounds amazing & important, this notion that poetry is simultaneously elegiac & restorative.  That the "entropy which gives rise to poetry & music is never to be given the last word."  I agree that we do live in this culture that really privileges "the last word."  The last word, is, perhaps, meaningless when dealing with art forms that require, or give off, the feeling of motion -- of release & restoration -- this double function of poetry & song.  Do you think it's important for poems to resist having "last word" resolution?  

I am thus moved to look at the final moments of "art as experience":  "you will mistake selfishness for independence again.  again, you will catch yourself being a republican to yourself.  if i'm beaten, who can tell.  not me, anymore.  not me, anymore."  This repetition that is enacted here -- the repetition of the word "again," as well as the repetition of the poem's final sentiment, "not me, anymore,"  allows for the poem to cycle at its denouement.  What were your intentions with this repetition?  And the political humor in this last bit is also amazing.  Do you think poetry ought to be political at times, or no?

Ryan: Well, I think a writer should always be pushing his own consciousness, and that there's really no end to learning, so I see one poem as just part of a larger motion and when one thing's done I keep digging deeper into the world. I'm not necessarily against a single poem having "closure" or anything like that. When I say "last word" culture, I think of American moneyworship and bossworship, the anti-intellectual murder machine that our corporate media and government happily foster, telling us that the way things are is just the way things are, period, questions and protest are a waste of time, pleasure is more important than thinking and you deserve it, now go ahead and buy your happiness somewhere. I think everyone should be resisting that culture. In general, there is a serious lack of political consciousness in the U.S., so I'm all for any efforts to call attention to injustice. Poetry, music and art are not outside of politics, not immune from it, and because art is emotional, it can be useful for making people think more about "the way things are," and about their connection to everyone with lungs.

I'm someone who tends to build up a lot of political anger and class resentment, so I need to vent sometimes, and poetry helps with that. The idea of "therapeutic" art gets a bad rap (b/c we are strong independent americans!), so what if instead I stick with the word "restorative" like Mackey the academic? I use poetry to restore myself, and to communicate with others, hopefully, in doing so, and even make them laugh! Repetition, lately, works, and I've used that move at the end of a few poems over the last year or so. There was no specific intention there--I felt like I had to say that twice, and it sounded right--not me, anymore, not me, anymore. It's kind of my way of singing, and disappearing into something greater than what I know. 

Debrah:  Ryan, thanks very much for your thoughts on these topics.  For the final question, since this interview is for Starlight, Philadelphia, could you please speak to how the city of Philadelphia has informed your poetry?  Do you think there is anything unique to Philadelphia poetry?   

Ryan: Having lived here my whole life, I imagine I've got nothing but Philadelphia coming out of me most of the time. I doubt I could count all the ways it's informed how I do what I do. To understand it, I've tried to write about the city in many ways, repeating and responding to overheard talk, channeling friends' voices, neighbors' voices, telling their stories, my family's stories, trying to pick up the overlooked, walking songs through the city every day, sitting on a corner or sitting at a window, describing what I see right in front of me, writing letters to dead people, dwelling, dwelling on race and racism, and on violence, on winning and losing, and losing and losing, and love and love. I think I've looked and listened and let it all back out and whatever's in the writing is the city that's done what it's done to me, and you can see that even in the way I'm answering your questions probably. Some day I'd like to write my own paean to place--I'd like to make a poem as great and true to this place as Lorine Niedecker did to Black Hawk Island.

Philadelphia sort of demands that you be part of it, that you contribute to it--it's not the kind of big metropolitan city made for the individual person to live as if the individual were the actual place and the city there simply to do the individual's bidding (that sick capitalist thing). I think anyone who's spent any significant time here knows that. It's a city of resistance and confluence, and that shows up in a lot of the poetry that's written here. If you're a poet, Philly's a real nice place to be--because of its histories, which are often visible, which you can get lost and found in--but also because there are so many writers here--real good ones, too, that you can have real conversations with--I'm very grateful for that. There's a confluence of different poetic traditions among our community that I see as revolving around a shared social consciousness and commitment to a better world.

Debrah:  I think you are doing a very good job of bringing the spirit of Philadelphia into your poetic work, giving a piece of the city to all who read your poems.  Thanks for chatting Ryan!!

Ryan Eckes lives in South Philadelphia. His book Old News will be published this summer by Furniture Press. More of his poetry can be found on his blog, ryaneckes.blogspot.com, and in various journals. Along with Stan Mir, he organizes the Chapter & Verse Reading Series.  He works as an adjunct English professor at Temple University and other places. 

FEATURE: JAMIE TOWNSEND: STRAP / HALO

                                                       Jamie Townsend is a beautiful, gentle soul.

MANSIONS

by Jamie Townsend

we simply a performance block letter’d

congenital heart defect evangelical mix

tape public shame for grand space budget

                                §

lavish rental carmelite cell reading

beating it out excel in maintenance orders

mine division   non-denom no provisionary

                                 §

danger / danger replicated razor blade or

treaters hells-night watch harvest festival neu-

tered a kind of collective action – removed

                                 §

blacklight poster lite novelty store variety

tee display pun verse for pop commercial

pressed hands bent milk or beer sloganeering

                                §

hanged man as actual event fear the ritual

position of leg cinematic deviance came

rock words   well   a problematic overlap

                                §

couldn’t fall for barcode dark-roasted market

worship on hands &   knees keening

the carpet growing stains   not discernable faces 

I met Jamie Townsend three years ago, in the Summer of 2008. Poet Adam Meora, then attending the Naropa Summer Writing Program, called me & said he had just met a poet who was moving to Philadelphia at the end of the summer who was very “brilliant.” Thus, I was excited to meet Jamie, & happy to hear that another young poet was moving to Philadelphia.

Quickly after his move to Philadelphia, Jamie joined The New Philadelphia Poets, & his depth of knowledge regarding poetics & poetries ignited within me a new kind of awareness for minimalism, lyric, juxtaposition & gentleness. While The New Philadelphia Poets “workshop” meetings were still in session, I always looked forward to reading a new poem by Jamie Townsend, for his keen sense of putting surprising words together always pleasantly jarred me as a reader, & inspired my own work. Jamie’s poems are very musical, very fastidious, always hold true to giving something to the reader – his poems are generous.

Beyond the generosity of his poetic craft, Jamie has also contributed greatly to the Philadelphia Poetry Community at large. Recently, he & Nicholas DeBoer have begun the con/crescent reading series, which continually features some of the best poets writing today. Jamie Townsend has extremely good taste, & this is evidenced not only by his own poetry, but in his selection of the poets who read for the con/crescent series.

Every time I am fortunate enough to have a conversation with Jamie Townsend, I always learn something new – about the ways I think of poetry, about politics, about the cosmos. I am fortunate to know him, & I hope you enjoy this interview with Jamie, one of the best poets writing today.

Debrah: Jamie, there are so many lavish juxtapositions of words & phrases in this poem that create quite surprising nuances of meaning. For instance, "heart defect evangelical mix tape," "lavish rental carmelite cell," "danger / danger replicated razor blade." How do these words come together for you in composition? Did you enter the writing of this poem, "Mansions," with an objective, regarding meaning, sound, the layering of tercets? How did you select the three-line stanza as efficacious for this poem's delivery?

Jamie: Hey Debrah. First off, thank you for inviting me to participate in your wonderful new project! I'm honored at the time you've taken to look at my poem in depth, and really inspired by all the work you do in regards to celebrating Philly poetry and supporting fellow writers.

MANSIONS came together as a series of little discrete events that seemed to have correspondence with each other. I think the thematic elements and the prosody are tied together because I was approaching this poem as a way to explore the space of, in part, my own history growing up in an evangelical community and the limitations those formative years imposed on my experience of the world. That being said, I didn't want to write a strictly confessional piece, but instead to use elements of confessional writing in combination with a particular scaffolding of form and rhythm to facilitate these sonic and visual elements in the poem. I think my goal was to offer a dynamic experience for the reader, a place to engage in levels of "meaning-making" or resonance. I wanted to write something that was a feeling-out of certain sensations, of being blocked or stunted, pressed into a strict lineation for living (I think feelings that most everyone has had at some point) -- and simultaneously present a sort-of release from these feelings within the structure of the poem itself. MANSIONS has marks of traditional meter but plays with torque, connection and disconnection, both across lines and within them to resist a straightforward, closed reading. I want people to be able to pick up on places where groupings of words seem to be saying something specific to them, and then feel the shift as the poem expands or moves on to another grouping; what comes before and after linking up but vacillating sense. It's like looking at something closely and then backing away to see all the other elements connected to, and in play with, that limited, detailed view.

Since this piece developed around my own thinking about issues of religion, branding, and personal development the form just seems to occur organically. The tercets just came out as I was writing, but looking back on it now I think that it was kind of an example of Robert Creeley's "form as never more than an extension of content", yet I feel like here the form deepens and extends the content, at least in retrospect. It allows the reader to parse a line for "meaning" or an "experience" or whatever and then to go back and read the line again, and hopefully have a new feeling, a new sense of words clicking, swinging together, or extending an impression. The tercets create a tension; three is not a round number so we are not dealing with pairs or lines that create an immediate dialectic response to each other. There is something extra, something that extends out. Three is also a very important number in Christianity, as a representation of the nature of God - "God in three persons" - the Trinity. I've always thought it was very interesting, and telling, that in the evangelical community, at least as I experienced it, there is a lot of self-possessed surety, compartmentalizing, completion in belief, yet the being of God as expressed in three parts is an open form, it cannot be reduced to an easy equation for living. No equal division means endless possibilities.

Debrah: Jamie, I am notably interested in your delineation that three is not a round number; thus, it presents no dialectic. Instead, you say, it gives us "something extra, something that extends out." This you also link to the notion of the Christian Trinity, a concept which also reasonably presents no stagnant dialectic. Would you say, then, that this conceptualization of "3" gives us a sort of synthesis? Could we look at the third lines of each stanza as presenting that "release" that you speak of? I am moved to look at the last words in each stanza: budget, provisionary, removed, sloganeering, overlap, faces. Out of these six, three of them provide us with a kind of negation -- "non-demon no provisionary," "a kind of collective action -- removed," "not discernable faces." Is this negation a release from something?

Jamie: I would definitely say that while "3" works itself into the prosody of MANSIONS and has connections to its themes and subjects, it is not necessarily a qualitative element of the poem, at least not by any premeditated design on my part. I guess that I felt, quite naturally, the third lines in the poem, as the end lines of each stanza, would have to function uniquely in that space of "closure" (at least visual closure) -- as the ending of each stanza/section. I'm interested in this space of ending or "closure", mostly because it's presented difficulty for me technically (as often my approach to writing leads me down paths of thought I don't necessarily want to or know how to end), while at the same time providing a field for thinking about what a poem can do in this places where the form or thought gets "wrapped-up". What are the politics of the prosodic closure? How do you end a poem or a section of a poem in a way that doesn't impose upon the reader a tidy resolution? I think about this a lot -- and maybe it’s my way of facilitating overlapping questions of form, content, intent, perspective, readership, etc. I am interested in the potentiality within a poem, the openness it may have to many readings that could possibly be wildly different, and how any of those readings can be equally "correct" (or equally "incorrect" for that matter). I think I try to structure my poems in a way that encourages this sort of open-endedness, and involved readership, and in that way the tercets seem to work well (maybe it’s the three voices at play in the poem as well -- me, the reader, and the poem itself -- in dialogue). In English-language versions of haiku poetry the three line structure is predominantly used, and one of the goals of haiku is a nice balance between clarity and opacity -- I strive for that as well.

As far as negation in the poem, that may just be subconsciously coming from my own desire to avoid the whole mess of definition at the end of stanzas and the end of the poem as a whole; I hope the negation isn't just an "easy out" like that, but more so how the cards fell as the sections were put together (It probably says something more about what I think in regards to half-glasses of water). It's funny though, you typed "non-demon" when it’s actually "non-denom" (evangelical-speak for "non-denominational" -- sort of moderate-conservative yet officially unaffiliated Protestant churches") in the poem. I like this transposition quite a bit, as it has a sense of the both the original term and my own play with the lingo. Denominations as hierarchical, as powers to be negated by a ridiculous vague label that is, in essence, a denomination itself, with its own set of religious interpolations, customs and obsessions. Kind of a proxy, at least in terms of semantics, to "post-modern." I guess I would usually rather have these things be "demonic" or "denomic" than in that strange space of definition by proxy. "Let your yes be yes and your no be no" as it were. But great that the terms themselves can be open to interpretation, mutation, play (and any various wonderful typos that can happen).

I think that this also has something to do with power. I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of power in language, how we've moved away from a larger cultural discourse that takes up questions of opacity and clarity in terms of the language of mass media, government, religious leaders, etc. It’s an interesting tension that I am trying to think about in these pieces as well, mostly as I attempt to create open spaces for reading, open-ended structures, while still keeping an ear to the ground. I think most individuals in positions of any type of authority today consistently use methods of linguistic obfuscation to confuse, to render placid, citizens who would otherwise have a very real problem with the bare facts about illegal wars, hate speech, avoidable natural disasters, sexual abuse. On the Daily Show the other day Jon Stewart, in conversation with Bill Moyers, was discussing an interview he had conducted with Donald Rumsfeld. Stewart asked Rumsfeld about "selling the Iraq War" to the American public, and Rumsfeld immediately corrected him saying "not sold, presented". I don't know if I found a steady balance between keeping language open but still maintaining a clear difference between "sold" and "presented", but it’s something at play here in this piece, and something I keep returning to.

Debrah: The politics of sworn words & illegal testimonies seem like legerdemain. I like how your poems never seem to swear testimonies or provide the reader with, as you say, "tidy resolution."

In my reading of "Mansions," I notice the swelling of popular culture words -- "mix tape," "blacklight poster," "novelty store variety tee display," "pun verse for pop commercial," "milk or beer sloganeering," "barcode," "dark-roasted market." Does this poem make any statements about consumer culture? Also, the title "Mansions" bespeaks of residences for the wealthy. Should one pay attention to any notions of social class when reading this poem?

Jamie: Popular culture words occupy this really interesting space in relation to religious terms or ideas, and this is something I was definitely exploiting in this piece. So much of popular culture is about "branding"; scoring an idea into the mind with a strong, suggestive force. It's no wonder that religious subcultures often employ modes of branding, whether it be in the repetitive use of loaded and often ill-defined terms ("discipleship", "evangelizing", "ministry") or the "Christianizing" of pop culture commodities and youth cultures (Christian rock music, bible-verse quoting graphic tees, WWJB bracelets). This is all about exercising power through rhetorical gesture, as well as opacity and its place within these cultures of control. In many ways I am fascinated by and drawn to the idea of having a purely emotional resonance with a term wardrobed in a sense of mystery - the thrall of bare language, experiencing an immediacy of sound. However, this hypnotic, alien element of communication has become one of the main tools of advertising, and thus is connected to some of the most troubling aspects of our capital driven society. So it's all a balance (and often an uneven one). I think MANSIONS (the title I cribbed from a verse in the Bible I often heard referenced growing up: "In my Father's house there are many mansions" (John 14:2 KJB) - which gives this idea of heaven as a sort of gated community where a chosen few will live in luxury) explores the connection between these two ways of perceiving language, as well as with the inherent political implications of any opaque, "open" text.

Religion and pop culture are intimately connected, though they often propose to be at odds with each other. I'm interested in how they both make use of language similarly. What do we wish for, and how are those wishes veiled (often thinly) or made manifest through semantics? What do we need, and what are we told that we need? (and how do these things often bleed into each other?) Poetry serves an important function here, to bring words back into an experiential space that can be personally and socially generative instead of depletive. When looking at issues around social and economic class distinctions, which I think are always in the poem based on the conditions through which it is created (though not always addressed thematically), it’s really important to understand the ways in which these delineations get created and enforced. Much of the inequality in our culture comes directly from, and is continually fostered by, language: racial slurs, socio-economic derogatory terms like "welfare queen", religiously charged hate speech; these are linguistic and ideological frameworks that we construct, with materials that are often unconsidered and largely the product of our particular cultural legacy. When something is a "term" it has a predetermined span of time, a shelf-life; it is fixed in place by its perceived limitations. This is how language has been stunted and weaponized, by being enforced as "terminology". Returning focus to language's sense of playfulness, to its ongoing associative morphology and restless energy, can help, I think (I hope), break apart some of the barriers that concretizing rhetoric has set in place.

Debrah: Thank you, Jamie, for these insights. I am indebted to your thoughts on these things for it does seem that even notions of afterlife have ghettos for the unholy, like purgatory, hell, limbo. Heaven is for the upper-crust, if it is composed of mansions.

Since this interview is for Starlight, Philadelphia, I would like to close by asking you about how you find the city of Philadelphia to be an inspiration for your poems. Do you find it as such? Does the city & its pulse enter your composition of "Mansions?" Do you feel like your poetry has changed as a result of being in Philadelphia?

I think the eclecticism of Philadelphia has definitely opened up new perspectives in my writing. The city is this interesting hodgepodge of old and new, which coincides with the mixture of archaic/religious and popular culture language used throughout the poem (sort of like Old City abutting South St.). Living in Philly, as a writer, has afforded me a lot of opportunities to work with people who are passionate about where they live -- which, in turn, has helped me realize the importance of specificity in writing, of being connected to a place and the unique conditions that locale generates. Philly has helped ground my poetry in real things, and has helped me focus on the importance of writing as a social act, not just an aesthetic one. I want to give all credit due to the amazing, diverse, welcoming writing community in Philadelphia for adopting me 3 years ago. You were one of the first writers I met in Philly, and it’s amazing to look back at the time I've spent here, in part, through this discussion. Thanks again Debrah, it's always a pleasure to chat!

Debrah: & thanks for this interview, Jamie. It’s a blessing for all of us here that you decided to move to Philadelphia three years ago.

Jamie Townsend lives in East Kensington, Philadelphia, where he is organizer of the c / c reading series, & co-founder of con / crescent, a chapbook publisher & magazine focused on discursive essay / creative non-fiction. He is author of the chapbooks STRAP/HALO (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs; 2011) & Matryoshka (LRL Textile Editions; 2011). His poetry & critical work has appeared in various publications, including The Cultural Society, Gam, Wheelhouse, Volt, Elective Affinities, Jacket2, The Poetry Project Newsletter, & Try.

FEATURE: SARAH HEADY: POETIC GLUE TRAVELING WOMAN

                                                         Sarah Heady has a wonderful collection
                                                         of vintage postcards.

Correspondence

by Sarah Heady

The roland at the center of the world

is self-feasting in a centrifuge dress.

Physics at the middle of a controversy:

American Barn rotting in its own brown mist,

a fragrance with the caginess of a gambling addict

basted with sutures in the blueberry patch.

You sent me a postcard of a risk assessor

perched at the edge of town, waiting

for mishandled rations, or singing to himself

while steaming out chiggers from the perennial bed—

I couldn’t tell which. My eyes were dry. When I reply

I will emphasize my miserable beach experience:

red grapes dredged in sand, wet sleeves.

November walked the plank too soon.

The ocean just there, in that dunk spot,

turned instantly ice.

Sarah Heady is a wonder of rare coincidences.  She is, in fact, one of the founding members of The New Philadelphia Poets, and I believe she was the super glue of that organization.  Because of her involvement & gusto, The New Philadelphia Poets transcended the typical role of most literary outfits, & became a group indebted to fight for the cause of the suffering independent bookstore.  Sarah planned readings & events to support Molly’s Books & Wooden Shoe Bookstore, & both of these events met with great success.

Sarah is the rare person grounded in the microcosm but aware of the macrocosm.  While she was in Philadelphia, she seemed to blend these two necessities in being involved in a community while benefiting from the awareness of the coincidences that breed poetic inspiration. 

Her presence is greatly missed here.  Not terribly long ago, Patrick Lucy, Carlos Soto Roman & I met up with Sarah at the Philadelphia International Airport, where she had a layover.  It was important to meet up with Sarah in this spot of travel & transition, as she bestowed gracious presents (like bags of granola) to us & updated us about her life.  I realized at this moment that Sarah’s energy & poetry share commonalities with airports.  Her work begs us to leave behind one moment to clear way for the next.  I hope you enjoy this interview with Sarah Heady.

Debrah:  Sarah, as one of my favorite collaborators, I am honored to begin with you on this project, Starlight, Philadelphia.  Your presence is still felt in Philadelphia. 

I am also moved that the title of this poem is "Correspondence," as this is part of what Starlight, Philadelphia aims to accomplish. What does Correspondence mean to you, and can you emphasize for me your miserable beach experience?

Sarah:  Thanks, Debrah! I'm excited to be corresponding with you. I miss the non-existent starlight in Philly. 

With this poem I was thinking about the seemingly straightforward act of corresponding with someone through the mail. I recently inherited a box of close to a thousand vintage postcards, most of which were postmarked in the 1940s and 1950s. I noticed that the handwritten messages reflected the type of social disposition we associate with that time--overly cheerful and optimistic, painting everything like it's peaches and cream. But there were also moments in which the writers were very candid about the disappointments of their vacations. Most commonly bad weather and bad food, but also things like: "I went to look up my friend at his downtown office and he was out of town for the week," or "We arrived right after the museum had closed for the day." The reverse serendipity of the just-missed attraction.

I'm interested in the space between our actual experiences and the kind of leisure time we think we deserve: the sun will be shining, the food will be delicious, the conversation will flow, etc. Often the real deal is less like an advertisement and more like a watershed, or maybe just one more normal day on earth. An earth that has rain and wind and seagulls eating your snacks, whether or not that was in the brochure. And the way we then relate these adventures back to others, the details we leave out because they're not pretty and can't elicit the typical automatic response to somebody's vacation story, i.e., "That sounds amazing...[I'm jealous]." But jealousy might never enter the equation if we had the ability to convey the ambiguities of our experiences. 

In terms of my own miserable beach experience, now corresponding with you from nine hundred miles away, living in a situation that often feels like an extended bizarro vacation, there is the sense that anything I explain to you or anybody in Philadelphia about what it's like to live in a rural southern town would be futile. Being here is both wonderful and horrible, but how to convey that succinctly? In poems, I guess. 

Debrah:  I am intrigued that you have created with this poem a replica, perhaps, of postcard interaction.  And you state this in the second stanza so eloquently:  "You sent me a postcard of a risk assessor / perched at the edge of town, waiting..."  This kind of slower-time interaction has begun to fade from human experience in this digital age.  Do you think poetry moves in slow-time or fast-time?  Do you think the effects of a more quickly-paced world has affected poetry, which is an ancient art form?  If so, for better, or for worse, or a bit in between?  Has the increased pace of life affected your poetry for instance?  Is the pace of Bell Buckle Tennessee fast or slow?  Has your poetry changed as a result of your relocation?

Sarah: It does seem that poetry moves increasingly in fast-time, and there are facets of poetry that are extremely well-suited to the digital pace. Poets’ desire to connect with an audience and with one another is much more easily fulfilled now. But I think poetry as an art form does suffer a bit from the medium of the internet, since living with poems requires one’s full bodily attention—something that is, by definition, absent when you’re online. I, for one, can’t stand reading poems (or really any writing of substance) on a screen, so the idea of keeping up with poetry blogs is exhausting to me. But I’m also happy that they exist: I know that they allow incredible poetic collaborations to occur both in the ether and in real life.

On a personal level, though, my attention span has been drastically shortened over the past five or six years, and I directly blame the internet. I’m constantly trying to wrestle my brain into stillness. I’m sure I’m not alone in this feeling of fragmentation, but I might have been poetically alone in Philly much longer without it. The fact of the matter is that you and I met through a craigslist posting you created in search of local poets. Everything is a trade-off.

I moved to Bell Buckle because I needed a boring, slow place in which to explore my own brain. In Philly I was attending and organizing lots of poetry events, but barely making time to actually write. There are only so many hours in the day. Here, where there are no distractions, I’ve been able to keep up a daily writing practice, the results of which have surprised and challenged me greatly. I think my consciousness as a writer has grown just as much in the past seven months as it did over three years in Philly, simply because I’ve spent more time with my writing self. I’ve got the luxury of nothing else to do, so I can go off on tangents that may or may not be fruitful. It sounds corny and reactionary, but being in a quiet, peaceful place where you can hear the birds singing and watch children ride bikes past your porch is intensely relaxing. I’m more tuned into the cycles of light, storms, fertilization, rotting, intoxication and hunger, which helps me cultivate attention and a sharper sense of time(lessness) in my brain and in my work.

Debrah:  Sarah, I am interested in your idea that poetry requires one's "full bodily attention."  Can you describe the process you feel the body goes through either in reading a poem or in writing one?  What kind of process did your body go through in the composition of "Correspondence?"  In the poem you say, "My eyes were dry."  Did you feel this sensation of dry eyes when you wrote that line?  Or did it exist in memory?  Or does that line serve as metaphor?


Sarah:  I think I need to qualify that statement and perhaps negate it.  My richest writing and reading experiences come at times when I can both concentrate on the text and allow my environment to influence it.  In your last interview with Greg Bem, he mentions the "external and internal factors derived from above" that shape his writing at the moment.  We're talking about the same thing.  To be able to feel my body in space, to be cognizant of sounds, to allow surfacing memories, vehicles, and people to pass through my consciousness are all very important.  In other words, a holistic way of accepting all possible influences on the poem as it's being written or read.  So really, the "full bodily attention" I talked about is not full, but fragmented.  This superficially resembles the internet brain (i.e. open to following infinite pathways at whim), but is actually so different in quality from the receptive and relaxed state I'm describing.  I think most practicing writers would agree that an empty white room with nothing but a laptop is actually a dead space for creativity, not an ideal haven.  The shut-out world is not the best one.  But all of this is very particular to the way my brain works.  I would love to crack open my poet friends' skulls and see what's up in there.


Lately my process has consisted of stream-of-consciousness writing on paper, to which I only return several months after the fact and clean up.  So I can't specifically recall the composition of "Correspondence," but I'm pretty sure it's the distillation of about five pages of crap.  It's also the middle poem in a series of three short pieces.  I do think I added the line "My eyes were dry" (which is to be taken literally) much after the fact, only in the final draft.  Although I avoid tweaking my semi-automatic (haha) writing too much, so that it stays fresh, I will stitch new lines in order to bring everything together.  It's very possible that my real eyes were really dry when I wrote the piece.  I wear contacts and I'm bad about changing them.




Debrah:  Haha.  I am also horrible about changing my contacts.


Thank you so much, Sarah, for all this wonderful insight into your poetry & thoughts about the world & process.  Now, for the final question.  Since this interview is for Starlight, Philadelphia, could you please highlight your favorite experiences about Philadelphia Poetry, as well as perhaps your not so favorite?




Sarah:  Wow, it's difficult to think of the negatives when I'm wearing the rosy goggles of distance.  But since you asked, I think what I would criticize about the Philadelphia poetry scene is something that could be said for any tight-knit group of artists anywhere in the world:  we all just need to continually remind ourselves that we are stronger when we work together than when we compete and quarrel over little things.  The scene is incredibly diverse, and sometimes that leads to antipathy and judgment, but that's also what I would say is beautiful about a small place like Philly -- you're bound to encounter poets that you wouldn't necessarily align yourself with, and you learn from them.


So as to avoid more generalizations, here's a list of elements that stand out in my memory as quintessentially my-three-years-in-Philadelphia-poetry, which is all I can speak to:


Poets huddles together in the shadow of poverty, City Hall cock, little shelters of Fishtown parks, late nite bodega ice cream, Dirty Frank's, bus up 3rd St. to now-defunct bar.


Poets slipping on wet tile mosaic floor at Magic Gardens, linty already-peeled hardboiled eggs, arguments re: alchemy, the empty frame of Ben Franklin's house, kissing his privy, too drunk on margaritas to network.


Poets on group sojourn to the Pine Barrens, Atlantic City, Port Richmond, Bucks County, Bainbridge at Fifth as smelly alley, empty 1.5 L wine bottles, Fergie's grilled cheese, Jamie loves pizza.


Poets doing one a.m. yoga on the kitchen floor of a 100K house, on the border of safety, faking tourist status for free continental breakfast at the downtown Marriott, someone fucking stole the seat off a bike.  But writing.




Debrah:  Such wonderful memories, Sarah.  Thanks for conjuring them for us all to share.

 A graduate of Oberlin College, Sarah Heady is a founding member of the New Philadelphia Poets. Since 2007, she has performed with NPP in such venues as the Philly Fringe Festival (Invisible Keepsakes) and the Bowery Poetry Club (Redemptive Strike). Her first chapbook, Eight-track Underwater, was published in 2010 by Splitleaves Press. Sarah recently relocated to Bell Buckle, Tennessee (pop. 451), where she lives in a drafty 'Joni Mitchell house' and attempts to grow things you can eat.

FEATURE: GREG BEM, POETIC FRONTIERSMAN

Greg Bem is adventurous.  :)

Pneumaticklish, 21st Office of zee Foulest Happy Regiment

by Greg Bem

And it wasn’t that we were hurrying: sky blazing through shields of glass in day of song.

 Cloud kiosk. Systems. A-scurrying, a rat-tail flickering in the wind-up trail of windy portages.

      Door hinges. We were beaming. Eyes glittered over trashy pick-me-ups, breaks of ice.

  Silence is the best mother to be left in the closet you never like to go to it holding nothing special.

Ice breaker but what? What’s in a hurry? Dear son, hold me back; keep me from bursting. Says she.

       That’s all the damned’s whisper could say AC’d. There was an icy breath amidst April cruelisms.

        Then I, focus now, to pick up circular saws, to throw them. To cut wood, flesh of the saw, dust.

I remember Maine. Launch and launch and it’s lunch time. Are you scared? I sense rumble in my belly.

      I sense ant parades, brackets. Mobiles dangling in childhood. Above. And Austin sweat lodge heat.

It’s been a year. A stone pot overturned. A feeling swelling from my toes to the jam on my fingers.

         Back in Rip City the camo’d fella in rainbow toupee delivered a wave today. A bus stop. Black.

On newsprint a pause rooted in quake and the matter still shies away and we are stone.

There be rebels we’ve staggered in Africa and the tooth of a giant snail lodged into each orifice.

                  And everyone is wont to wear crimson on their eyelids, paint their nails, plush up.

    I wait for visions of giant creatures who only come to the surface when it rains then dry up, dead.

       Cause for Cause for Concern: Discerned. Up the stairwell. Use the Emergency. It is cold.

   It is bright in the analysis. The benchmark of the mark. The new technologically tepid. Testy.

           A tap of water for the computer, fronds in second corner picking up another occasional glance.

 The best way to give is to take. Depraved. The best way to leave is to run away. This message for speed.

 To give it all, to give it all back, Emergency Entryway. Damsel to have given it, I gave it all: give-able.

      I think about how many floors it would take before I had the courage to jump beyond and out, away.

     Aren’t you away? A rabbit. You are. Route to arson? You are in vogue? En-robeing the grove?

   An egg smashed on the carpet. Rubbed in embryo. Emblematic patent office. Stamps: Stamps.

     To leave the hand shaking; burning; spurning; turning; churning: my neck choking yours

We make out like feasts before kings, like strands of hair beyond a lighter, look’d to burn point.

                It is a case of the cold. The toilet’s edge. The backwoods brawler. Stale beer below shoes.

 Are you: Title Case: Able to Hurry. The Standard Flagged. Case Opening. Account Closed.

           Down spout. Spigot rusted. And yet what have we to do to lose position? Miss a smidgeon?

              What have we to read up. Cannot leave it in a figure. “Do I Ask So Much?” “Do I want?”

                     Where have you gone today? What is real? Where is my family? Am I hiding?

        Again beckoned in fortress. Mode of permanence. Future bird for paradise. Paradise for birds.

           If you save, you are able. I watch stains develop on my desk and save them. Rag, keep away.

     Blotched ink stains rubbed into the palm. I am able, and I willing, to blast past: cyclists come out.

    The blues in your eyes, I stare at them with belief. Endomorphic corneas: words are crispy.

                The story is a nod, a pamphlet, of the wet bucket: chronic concrete syndrome fatigue.

      Not that we haven’t thought of that. Yet. Not that we have grown tired by, collapsed into.

      Traditions come in all colors. Radiation is forgivable. My decay is greater than yours. Clip nails.

      Also all shades of grey, super standard, mentionables: bringing back life through attack of heart.

     Mandibles of the mannequin, creatures of lagoons a darkness. Risk, risk, risk. Back to the forms.

Oil and vice. Stupor and flower petal: peddler. Cannot oust it. Out of it. These times filled and managed.

The first installment of Starlight, Philadelphia, is a feature on poet Greg Bem, who no longer lives in Philadelphia.  This might seem odd for a project focusing on Philadelphia-based poets, but I have my reasons for starting with Greg.  Namely, I believe him to be a frontiersman who stands on the precipice looking out on the new world of what is possible for poetry of this new epoch.  Greg continually explores ways to create poetic convergence not only with new media & technology, but with community-building.  This impressed me so much when I first met Greg for coffee at a place in Philadelphia called Café Ole.  Our meeting that day was portentous, as it signaled for me that I would know this young man forever, & that as long as I knew him, I would feel continually inspired to stretch beyond my artistic comfort zones & to engage with the world in new ways. 

While in Philadelphia, Greg worked really hard in the poetry community here – so much output on his part, so many poems written, so many videos made, so many chapbooks published, so many audio recordings.  It is hard to list all that he accomplished while here.  But one thing remains true – if you mention his name to many of the poets here, they will smile & tell you lots of good Greg stories.  Greg is a man like a legend.

I have many fond memories of Greg, but I wanted to note the important endeavor that we took upon ourselves in terms of ACTION.  One day, Greg & I noted the importance for poetry to enter in the realms of the terroristic -- & we devised plans of citywide poetic terrorism in the streets of Philadelphia.  We tried this a time or two – it didn’t work as maybe we wanted it to, but you never know – some day we may improve it.  The possibilities are endless.  I hope you enjoy this interview with Greg Bem.

Debrah:  Gregory Bem, as one of my favorite all-time collaborators, I am honored to start this project, Starlight, Philadelphia, with you.   

There are so many things I love about this poem of your's, "Pneumaticklish...."  it is difficult to begin.  Perhaps let us first speak of the form of the poem.  What lended itself to you, about this poem, a necessity to create such elongated lineations of text & words?

Greg:  Thanks for this opportunity. Here’s the deal with form and me as poet, as writer: I can’t sit still. I can’t stay true to one form. I’m not the kind of poet who’s going to go seek a foot or measured sequence, pattern, breath. The human body has its limitations and has its natural ways about it, and it’s great to try and emulate that textually, but it’s also extremely challenging (not only intellectually) because we’re constantly changing shapes, changing spaces, changing muses and moods. But also we crave excitement, change, diversification!

When I sit down to write a poem, it’s reflected by the external and internal factors derived from above. Like rubber balls hitting blank brick. With Pneum, as I’ll refer to it short-handedly, here’s the setup: I’m working a 9-5 job now, doing the Lew Welch thing, working for an advertisement company, writing ad copy all day in front of two big computers, like two giant portals into nothing and everything all day long, and they keep most of the lights in this office off all the time so really the light of the screen, of the work, is really what’s keeping you in, up, excited, lively, energized. And yet everything here is restrictive in its openness. I’m in a giant office building in downtown Seattle, feeling the height of the world, feeling like I’m “important” and aggrandized by elevation, and sitting amidst gods, strangely enough, and yet I have to be discrete in the creativity of the job. SO the form of the poem was easy to come to. I’m not going to hold back in the love poem for my job. The form is going to counteract what is pinning me down, or up, or against a wall like a bulletin board.

So think of the poem’s lines as a kind of ejaculatory spurt of cultural cannon fire. Bullets seeking to escape out of these walls. Not necessarily physically violent, but culturally violent. The terms, the long lines. They are like John Olson, or Joanne Kyger, or Whitman, or Ginsberg, or even your own work, which has been known to carry breadth of content within each line.

As a final note on form, I think it’s easier for me to write in length and size and, as Baudelaire called it, in the “VAST”, when I’m disassociated. When I’m a drone I really am a drone. I get transformed by the job, by the role, by the duty. This isn’t just when I’m working for a corporation. It’s when I’m actively playing community leader, or volunteer, or citizen. If I’m going to wear my mask I’m going to wear it all the way. And thus I can take on an objective view for a bit, for a shift, for the duration of my duties. But as soon as I have the opportunity, like on a lunch break with a goal or mission, like writing a love poem for my job, I take that chance and explode with it. What’s curious is Frank O’Hara. We all know his story and his job—I guess this can be applied to WCW too, by the way—but anyway with O’Hara, he worked and then went out for a walk on his lunch break and wrote fabulous poems, but they were strong symbiotically personal-external reels. Maybe it’s because Pneuma wasn’t some kind of sensory overload but rather a meta-sensory overload. An overload and expunging process from sitting in front of digital content all day, where screens move but nothing’s really moving, where the NOISE is in nothing more than the silence, which we fill with the orderliness of the typing, of the clicking, of the breaths (a huge cultural essay could be written on cubicle breathing, by the way, if you’re interested). What matters is that when I’m sitting at home in my fortress, my den, my nest, I am ready to explore matters far riskier and far more personal, more traumatic, than those I am ready to explore at work, and I think the super-personal thematic content really tighten up my lines. I tread lightly, so to speak, like tip-toeing through a minefield, making sure I know what I’m getting into. There wasn’t the need for that sort of protection of personal defense here. After four hours writing 70 character advertisements, a poet needs to be boisterous.

Debrah:  I am especially interested in your notion that the lines of this poem serve as "a kind of ejaculatory cultural cannon fire."  That there is a sense of cultural violence permeating this piece.  In creating a poem that consists of culturally violent ejaculatory cannon fire, do you attempt to engage any attempts to arrive at a point of political deliverance?  Does this poem engage a dystopian framework?  For instance, your line "There be rebels we've staggered in Africa and the tooth of a giant snail lodged into each orifice."  Or again, when you pose the questions in the poem, "Route to arson?  You are in vogue?"  There seems to be a lot of contemporaneous present indicative in posing such important questions & ideas in poetry these days.  Many people challenge the notion that poetry can still be important as a political weapon.  You speak of this poem containing "bullets seeking to escape from these walls."  Is that literal?

Greg:  I don't think of the same violence associated with poetry that I may have associated four or five years ago, when I was in the middle of my undergraduate education, when I thought about poetry in ways equitable to superheroes (or villains). I think there are definite limitations to poetry as a form of communication. But! I think that poetry as a political weapon is doable, and should be encouraged. It is a very portable medium to work with, which means it can be adapted to any environment.

Some of the largest walls we have to bulldoze are those within ourselves. So when I talk about any explosive material, it should first and foremost be checked that it can leave the cannon! If you have a plugged up armament, and you try to fire, boom! You're done. Humans build up personal defenses all the time, and that's good to an extent, but at times we realize we're ready to burst. We take in just-less-than-infinite quantities of information and store it. But it's not meant to be stored! We are not fortresses! It's inevitable that everyone feels this. Some turn to poetry. They'll write lines with everything they want to clear their systems of. They need to get the negatory (and often that which is positive, or even ideal, as it too shouldn't be kept for oneself, shouldn't be weighing one own alone) out, and so what do they do? Turn their voices on! The poet who has experience will create motives and be able to tune in, direct their information to the source they desire: but this "crafting" if you will is not the most important element. The most important element is first raising awareness that individual voice is possible for everyone. Anyone can spurt out a line or two but most just don't know it. Larger political structures can form (as weapons--or other tools!) out of this increase in consciousness. But the poems themselves--writing them is an initiation, and an agreement a person is making with themselves and subconsciously with the environment they are about to share with.

The dystopian framework is utterly present and fascinating, simultaneously, and we must consider the environment I spoke of above, must really think about it, but not only about it, but what it will become. I grew up reading Kafka and Dostoyevsky and Emily Dickenson and Poe--you know, great literature, and despite how great it was, it was so depressing. So, so depressing. Look at Kafka's castle. Look at the morality and nihilism in the Russians. Look at the isolation and sardonic inhibitions of Emily. And Poe . . . he's one of the first real Lit guys they teach in middle school. It's no surprise that the generations who recently grew up with this morose shit, this beautiful no doubt but still morose shit, consider the incredibly violent video games they are creating justified. I'm going all over the place. Let me recircle out of that tangent and try to redeem myself: I think a lot of contemporary American poets grew up recently through some dark literature as foundations. I think that the dark literature they grew up with, and were influenced by, had a lot to do with Industrial America, an environment of the past. I think a lot grew up attempting to infiltrate and tear down bureaucracy and the nihilistic automatism connected at the hip. In the 80s it wasn't the poets but the sci-fi writers who were doing the same thing for literature with cyberpunk. Look at William Gibson.  Look at Neil Stevenson. The relationship to the computer bureaucracy and the Infinite Knowledge is being tackled still. We don't have a grasp on it. I think that we poets look for reversions against it. We want the primacy of pre-digital technology. We want to go back to a language that felt less robotic, less zeros and ones. Aside from some folks experimenting with computer poetry (an image to me that's similar playing around in Rhode Island puddles after a rain storm, with the ocean just over the ridge), most poets stick to the page. They are quite literally behind the times. And for good reason. The Internet is the new Castle. The Internet is the new nihilism. Every time you check Facebook, Schopenhauer's cycle spins once again. It's a large death clock (to reference the tool that came out on the Internet when the Internet was still coming out on the Internet, when it was still being birthed through the celestially cybernetic womb).

Going back to my poem. When I write something that's big, it's because there is so much output I can't readily or comfortably sift through everything to pull out a nice spine, a nice dainty spine, where all the INFO of the poetry is located. Doing this requires a very specific place (as I mentioned earlier in the interview). So I throw out as much as possible. When I make mentions of Africa, it's not to be ornamental but to entwine myself with every instance of knowledge that I have collected, magnetized, along the way. Humans catch on to political unrest like it's butter and sugar. There is an identity we like to share, a knowledge that is privileged, an elitism about knowing everything that is going on at all times. My poem is the antithetical brother. It's statement is in the structure of the words. The political deliverance is there even if the message is not full formed. But doesn't that fit perfectly, represent wholly, with how most of humanity really communicates with one another, on a regular basis?

Debrah:  You say that you believe poetry has limitations as to what it can accomplish.  What would you say those limitations are?  I am intrigued by the notion that the dark literature of America has its roots in our Industrial Past.  Do you think it is important to maintain a dark quality in literature, or to try to break through that darkness to offer some light?  Do you consider "Pneumaticklish..." to be a dark poem, or do you think it offers some light?  Are darkness & light so distinct anyhow?  In the poem, you state:  "I am able, and I willing, to blast past..."  Does this indicate that there is something at the end of the darkness that permeates other moments of this poem?  What do you see to be the limitations of this poem in particular?

Greg:  Poetry has as many limitations as an art form as any other art form. One of the major limitations of poetry (and this can applied to other forms as well) is the idea of poetry. It obviously is a form that has been mastered in many ways by many different people, but it has an identity, it has rules and expectations. These restrictions can be morphed and manipulated, but not necessarily in the most radical of ways. At the end of it all you're still going to work with what is Poetry. And we and those who are going to hear/read what we have to create--they are going to think, I know where this is going. Even if they have no idea. Even if we have no idea. We're still dictated by historical identity. If you want to relate this back to the industrial, that post-Renaissance belief in mass-production, you can look at literature that follows forms that A) will sell; B) will be appreciated by many; and C) will be a representation of beauty. Beauty to who? To me? To you? I think if you want to be radical, you could write a poem that says: this is not a poem. But how long will that "gimmick" work? Not long after the first poem. At the same time it can be argued that what "radicals" (or realistically "revolutionaries") in the Middle East, in Africa, in the Midwest of this country are creating poetry every day with their Twitter accounts. Twitter's form may be the contemporary poetry, the real poetry, the poetry of the people that will be documented as such in one hundred years, or at least Twittered about. And of course classic, page-based poets are going to get a little offended by a statement like that, but we've all (consciously or subconsciously) attempted to make our status message or away message or cell phone text message or Twitter post poetic. At least once. I think this could be exploited, for sure. I made a couple text message chapbooks that kind of delve into it, but they are very rudimentary. I wasn't focused. I still am not focused enough to take the avenue seriously.

Rather than get bogged down by it, I like to look at limitations of form in kind of hindsight, which is why my general sadness didn't slowly infect my work and force me to stop writing. I think that in the end it comes down to what you can achieve without going the whole nine yards. How can we be practical as poets? It might involve being poetic and applying what we know about poetry to other media and presentation: the performer behind the mega speaker in St. Paul. The self-published poet creating politically-agitating poetry broadsides and handing them around to various audiences, both public and private. How can we be realistic without romanticizing (and failing) with the old American Hero ideology. Remember when Budweiser did that Real American Hero campaign on the radio? It might have been on TV too. Anyway, it focused on the regular, average joes that do all the service and industrial work in this country. They were completely sarcastic, completely well-written, and something I remember cheered me up every day when I went to school in high school (and beyond). That's all gone now. A shockingly ridiculous 93% of the American people (who are accounted for) have cell phones. Something utterly unfathomable right now. Hero ideology has changed. We still worship that our heroes have super abilities, but there's more technology, a more realistic grab. Look at who the protagonists of all those blow-em-up action movies are. They are kind of the same but they are really playing on themselves. They are memories, not reality. We can all specialize in whatever we want now, with access to these banks of mega-knowledge. I just learned where all 200 rap artists whose music I have on my hard drive are from. Last night. In like 20 minutes. Wow.

So does all of these drastic changes make this a dark world? What is darkness? What is light? These are questions I haven't struggled with in a while, so I'm glad you ask them. I think you confront the undersides of culture in your own right so you know what I mean by exploratory. I think poets, in order to be considered interesting, whatever that means, by way of appealing to people, they need to be sarcastic and critical and tap into both what is A) strange and B) what is familiar. A good mix of the two is required. I think that shock value is important too, coming from a performance-based background, but I think we can be subtler, more challenging, and yet still be invitational. Pneuma is a poem that deals with that. There is all this slush I have to slush through, images of things, of stuff, hanging out around my LIFE, and eventually the grace is through that line you mentioned, when I see the thought of the cyclists outside. That there is still freedom and air and current and exploration and speed out there, in the world that I am not experiencing. I just have to escape the solitude of the inner and external fortress, of work, of the working life. Being a part of industry now means sitting in front of those giant screens, communicating with people three feet away by email. It's the pit and the pendulum. It's me strapped down watching the blade move back and forth. It's me wanting to go to my Massachusetts home and hide upstairs and write poetry all day. Cthulhu is coming, my poetry says, but the terror is going to be in the feed, the streamed content, not a physical, non-digital presence. In the end of Pneuma I say; "Cannot oust it. Out of it. These times filled and managed." Well obviously they aren't managed, only in the poem, which is the tool I use to manage them! The politics of the self! The ideological war of personal sanity! It's sarcastic and a little tragic but it's all we can do to hang on and survive.

Debrah:  Greg, this has been super informative, & has given me much to think about.  Thank you very much for all your luminous thoughts.  For the last question, since this interview is for Starlight, Philadelphia, can you speak a bit about what you thought of poetry in Philadelphia -- & is there anything about Philadelphia Poetics that you brought with you to Seattle?  Are the poetries/poetry communities that exist in the two cities more alike or different?  How so?

Greg:  Debrah, thanks for putting this whole project together. I think that it's time more people, more poets, more artists, leave the truly horrid mediums for dialogue (magazines, television, literary journals) and start talking with each other, and sharing it! No more social politics! No more private discourse! But I lose myself. In the end, I hope that the kind of thing you are doing, like the kind of thing Carlos Soto Roman did with Elective Affinities, becomes the model for poets everywhere. But anyway...

I'll briefly talk about my relationship with Philadelphia, which I think exists to this day (beyond our friendship, of course!)--first of all, I moved to Seattle from Philly only last September. I'm still new to Seattle, so making grandiose statements on it versus Philadelphia is kind of hard. I lived in Philly for a couple years and was pretty involved. I started with the Poetic Arts Performance Project and kind of became "assimilated" into the New Philadelphia Poets after meeting you. I helped curate and perform at various events and tried to support a couple other groups, too, including CAConrad/Frank Sherlock, the Philly Sound crew, et cetera. The best part about Philly was the incredible overlap; you saw the same faces everywhere. People really cared. Sarah Heady, Jacob Russell, Ish Klein, Jena Osman. Hell, even Ron Silliman shouts out the underdogs and folks who aren't tied to the hip with academia. And yet I think that Philly's university background makes it easy for intellectuals, even those who are used to being kind-of undercover, to be employed and pursue just what they love. They can stick to the smokes in the alleys and teach a few courses and it kind of binds so many circles together. In this way, I really appreciated Philly. I didn't feel the same gap that I felt in Rhode Island. I didn't feel the gap that's here. Philadelphia had so many heads popping up from below and everyone was (and presumably still is) able to reach out and connect with others. One night I got wasted and made a Philadelphia Poetry Map (that the girls with Apiary actually want to revive) and yet really thinking about it, it wasn't even necessary. It was a kind of symbol, a kind of flag, personally of course, and hopefully externally, that could be waved merely in appreciation of the diverse and active members of the poetics community.

The skills that people learn in communities as tight as that carry with them to wherever they go. Yesterday poet and media experimenter Joe Milutis (who teaches as U. Washington Bothel) called me a diplomat uniting many different poetic styles together. Well I really dipped my hand in that directly for the first time with Adam Meora and St. Skribbly LaCroix and the PAPP crew, blending it in (pun intended) with everyone else I knew. Why not share different groups and people with one another? It's a fun and exciting activity! When I got to Seattle I realized that a community was existing but not in a healthy, thriving sort of way. No "golden age" like Philly saw. And yet there are so many trailblazers out here, keeping things alive in some cases, pushing things forward in other cases. Nico Vassilakis and Robert Mittenthal and Will Owen and Graham Isaac and Summer Robinson and Paul Nelson, and of course my confidantes Alex Bleecker and Jeremy Springsteed . . . we're all doing things. But I'm still trying to raise a genuine interest, create that conversation, amongst everyone. And that's the hard part--hitting the ignition, and hoping it will catch. Because, like I learned in Philly, organizing and being active in the community can certainly be draining. To the point where you need to learn that eventually there's got to be a split between creator of community and creator of poetry. But where the boundaries are--that's personal, and thus the fun part. I think I was able to survive in Philadelphia amidst the debris of poverty for so long, amidst the violence for so long, and not really get sad, because I was enjoying being part of the machine that was countering all that, emotionally. And everyone involved with that machine--we were all smiling.

Debrah:  Thanks, Greg -- & we’re still smiling -- & surely your words here will help us all continue to smile.  Have a wonderful day.

 Greg Bem is a writer and marketer living in Columbia City, Seattle. He grew up in Southern Maine and got an undergraduate degree from Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. From 2008-2010 he lived in Philadelphia, where he was a member of the Poetic Arts Performance Project, and New Philadelphia Poets, and a full-time volunteer of the AmeriCorps program City Year. In late 2010, he drove across the country with two close friends in a moving truck and settled in Southeast Seattle.  He volunteers for the Columbia City Library, the Rainier Valley Food Bank, and the Northwest Spoken Word Lab. He tutors youth regularly, is employed by the SEM company Marchex, and works weekends at the Borders Books in the Sea-Tac airport (tic-toc). His poetry, creative prose, and book reviews have been published in numerous online and offline journals. He co-curates an acclaimed performance series called the Breadline with Alex Bleecker and Jeremy Springsteed, and he runs a transparent press called Lone Byte that can be found, along with information on just about everything else mentioned above,
at gregbem.com/wordpress.