KARAN

When I first read these poems, Philip, I immediately knew I wanted them all. I love them. You so vividly capture the complex emotions surrounding the anticipation of a new life — joy, hope, fear, and uncertainty. The speaker's reflections are filled with so much awe and fear, and are expressed in a way that is full of surprise: “We’re going to kill each other in the kitchen, the hospital, / & it will be your fault. Know this now: I consider you / a threat.” This series of poem-letters to an unborn or imagined child reflects the deeply personal journey of contemplating parenthood, capturing the oscillation between exhilaration and apprehension that many feel. Sylvia Plath’s “Morning Song” comes to mind: “I’m no more your mother / than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / effacement at the wind’s hand.” We don’t often ask this, but I’m so curious: tell me, from where did these poems arise?

PHILIP

First, if you don’t mind, let me just gush a little bit over how elated I am to not only have these poems picked up, but to have them absorbed by a small group of human beings for whom they click. Isn’t that the entire point of poetry, even a single poem? To affect, even if for just the length of a sparkler in July, one person’s life? I digress with much gratitude, all to say. 

Last summer (or was it 2 summers ago?) I was mowing our lawn in Missoula, MT, listening to an episode of Rachel Zucker’s podcast Commonplace in which she interviews a poet for an hour (ish),  and some strange urge threw an acorn into the domestic corner of my mind. She was chatting with Matthew Lippman, asking him about all the little league baseball references in his poems, the kids, the quotidian, etc., and I immediately turned off the mower, chugged a glass of water, and hit the computer. I wrote the first poem in this series in ten minutes. I basically became an exorcized doll and the keys punched themselves, then me.

A little more context . . . my wife and I have been “trying” for about two years now, and my brain has been jackknifed by possibility vs. lack of possibility. The juxtaposition between who we are now and who we are then-now, haunts me. But Lippman got me to process the whole process under a perfect blade of sun. I knew immediately the idea of having a child, not having a child, whatever result may lie, was my new muse. Either I will get to write out of the pleasure and pain of what may come for naught, or who knows, maybe these little poems will become a relic for a child on her first stroll through campus someday. We like to call her Dotty. 

KARAN

What kept me glued to these poems and revisiting them countlessly was the ambiguity regarding the existence of the unborn. In “Letter to the Continental Divide,” the speaker holds the baby delicately, like “a water balloon, / a pinned grenade,” and in “Letter to Tabula Rasa,” “I could have thrown you down / the football field,” and in “Letter to Infant Baptism”: “I want to pick up a hot tub & dump it on the animal / of your face.” The ambiguity is working on multiple levels. There’s ambiguity (or perhaps I should call it multiplicity) of emotion, there’s tenderness and there’s “fatherly rage.” Then there’s the speaker who says, “Some days I wish you were never / born,” to a possibly unborn child. Would you please unveil some of these ambiguities for us?

PHILIP

Great question, great insights. I think the conceit of this series allowed me the metaphysical elasticity to go full ham. Not all of it was necessarily intended, per se, but the beauty of writing these all so quickly is that you don’t have the time to edit your own energy. You trust it, then go back when the time is right. Also, I have loads of nieces and nephews. They’re beautiful shitheads, but who isn’t? The whole scope of this project is imagining without judgment on how much judgment you might just have. It’s like spinning a hypothetical satellite of myself around myself (ahem, the speaker). Will I be a good father? Would I be a good father? There’s a difference. One has promise, one has the promise of a promise. That good old bag of ice.

KARAN

I’m interested in the use of speculative and conditional language here. It emphasizes the uncertainty and possibility inherent in life, especially concerning parenthood. “When we tied the knot it was 2 becoming 1 or something Jesus / approved, & now we’re 3 or 2 ½ or just a family of clouds in the eyes of a duck at sunset.” There’s a hint toward fiction, or a kind of unreality, that none of this is true. But it’s hard to believe that also, owing perhaps to the depth of this fiction. I feel like I’m asking the same question over and over, but what are your thoughts on fact vs. fiction in poetry? Leonard Cohen would often say: “We cannot let facts stand in the way of the truth.” What kind of truth are you trying to reach with these surreal leaps of imagination?

PHILIP

If all of my frustratingly abstract answers thus far haven’t clued you in to how this one will go, buckle up. (Also, these questions just keep getting better.) None of this is true yet all of this is true. I believe poems owe nothing to reality but the reality of themselves. Probably my greatest mentor, Richard Hugo (known as Dick out here), who I obviously never met because he died before I was born, once wrote, “Isn’t this your life?” I’ve got that inked on my arm. The Triggering Town is my cigarette-stained bedside motel room Gideons. Steal one every time. 

I want to reach a truth that skips the more logical responses of our minds. Cohen was on the nose. And in poetry we have a rare luxury: we are probably the most underappreciated and least comprehended art genre out there, so middle birds up. Talk to some blue god’s dachshund while huffing battery glue. Sneak into a resting hot air balloon. Tell your unborn daughter you want to throw a mattress on her. Mean it (but also don’t).

KARAN

I find these poems deeply personal despite speaking to such large themes — family, parenthood, love. Internal struggles and relational tensions are central to these poems. These conflicts often lead to moments of insight or resolutions that hint toward some sort of spiritual or emotional transformation. Are you majorly concerned with the personal? How do you think these poems reach outward? Do you feel writing poetry is a way for you to untangle complex knots of your feelings/thoughts?

PHILIP

We could likely talk for hours about this, so I’ll pine for brevity. I am transfixed with the personal. What else do we have? I am transfixed with the ethereal as metaphor, because what else do we think about? Find the distance between a knife and the sunlight that’s hitting it. That’s the poet’s wet dream. I don’t know what will happen in real life or in future imaginary real life, but writing through that lens — not about it, above it, or anything else — is the only way to digest for me. The specific always leads to the universal. That’s how the dialogue between writer and reader remains timeless. 

Since finishing my MFA a decade ago now, I keep thinking about the hot topic (which I don’t think has gone away) of poetry as therapy. For some reason this reminds me of Bordain’s disdain for artists vs. craftspeople in the restaurant industry (of which I am very much immersed in said work field). Bear with me as I spit this out. Art can be amazing and therapy can be amazing, but they’re not all the same. I don’t consider myself a formalist or an academic, but I like structure. I like concrete language and something that can change a friend’s disposition for just that sparkler’s little lifetime, even if they don’t know how or why, while possibly simultaneously affecting a much more well-read, educated person like yourself to the point that we get to have this engagement. Isn’t this our life? I guess I’m saying the bridge between craft and access is the cross I want to whatever on.

KARAN

The interplay between play and tragedy in these poems appeals to me a great deal. I’m almost scared to smile at the play (of thought, language), though, because I fear the speaker or his tragic fear in some way. “Letter to the Day Before the Day Before” is full of such play surrounded by fear. As in life, joy and sorrow (or anticipation of sorrow) coexist in these poems. This strange mixture captures the unpredictability and richness of human experience. Two of my favorite poets — Bob Hicok and Leigh Chadwick — are always playful and at once tragic. Do you think about this combination while you write? What are your thoughts on playfulness in writing, especially poetry? 

PHILIP

The older I get, the more playfulness plays a central role in my writing. I’d hate to dub it cynicism or irony, though one could argue that easily. My friend and terrific poet BJ Soloy is a master at this. He’s taught me as much as Hugo here. Hicok hits hard as well. And despite the controversy and their sad end to a friendship (and now, lives), Dean Young and Tony Hoagland taught me a bit of that too. But maybe it’s all just one giant coping mechanism, this playfulness. That wouldn’t surprise me a bit. All to say, there’s too much serious poetry out there. Not that we don’t need it, we really do, but that’s not my strength. I prefer to locate what I know, then make it as absurd as possible to the point that it terrifies me. You must risk something. You must laugh at everything.

KARAN 

I’m also compelled by the fluid treatment of time in these poems — the blur of past, present, and future. The anticipation or arrival of a child is a large enough event to put a dent in one’s conception of time. I often revisit T.S. Eliot’s "Four Quartets" and love it for its deep meditation on time and memory — how they can be a source of anguish and enlightenment. You’re exploring similar themes without being so overtly philosophical about it. I’m very interested in the writing of time, on a craft level. How do we write time, and can we complicate our relationship with time by writing it in ways that aren’t merely chronological? Is time a preoccupation for you? What role do you think temporal fluidity plays in shaping the narrative structure and thematic depth of these poems?

PHILIP

Ok so this is probably my favorite question of the night so far (it’s night where I’m writing). Every time I lead a workshop I use basic metaphors from songs I used to love (still do) in my early 20s: “A shot in the Arm” by Wilco and “Oh My Sweet Carolina” by Ryan Adams. In the former the lyric goes: “the ashtray said / you were up all night” and in the latter: “the sunset’s just my lightbulb burning out.” These images are simple, easy to connect, yet perfectly crisp. It’s probably cliché by now, but “time is a flat circle” from season 1 of True Detective sums a lot of it up for me. 

Mary Ruefle, another favorite poet of mine, once wrote: “Time is a knife in search / of a sack of grain.” (Please fact check all of this as so many of these quotes are lost in the treasure chest of memory.) I guess I don’t know how to explain it outside of these examples. Time is lateral, poetry is lateral. We use chronology as a tool, a part of the craft. We get to puppeteer the gravity of our own existence. What’s more fun than that, even when it’s the most painful?

KARAN

Simile and metaphor seem to be an active part of your craft. These poems convey deep emotional states and complex situations in accessible and relatable terms, and yet your metaphors/simile are fresh and active — “a promise thrown on the floor like a bag of ice,” or “I feel responsibility like a mattress on my face.” I love these! One of my favorites is in “Letter to Hindsight in 2020”: “your strawberry pigtails, the microcosmic laugh that can grab / a human heart & rip it like a phonebook in half.” They’re doing such heavy-lifting. I don’t really have a question here, but these poems seem like they’ve been chiseled very carefully. What are your thoughts on revision? Do you revise a lot? Do you work on the level of a line? I welcome you to treat this as a process question.

PHILIP

From what I know of talking to other poets over the years, I’m a blitzkrieg. I do not write every day, sometimes go weeks/months without a lick, then it’s full-frontal Frankenstein. Other times it’s more consistent, once or twice a week, that kind of thing. Life is a booger. I think the craft comes fairly naturally to me in the sense that meter, form, what have you, are rarely on my mind. I like to find a tempo, trust it, and really just go with a language that feels foreign but not fake.

KARAN

Alongside the titles and this being a series of letter-poems, one thing that unites these poems is the voice. I love the visceral and kinetic imagery throughout — "maraca of bees," "magic 8 ball of my gut", "learn to laugh like the trees at midnight." Beauty and disgust are often in close proximity: "You took a shit on the floor & made a mural on the wall with your forearms." Sometimes even violence, such as the desire to "carve the small watermelon of you out of your mother’s belly," or an "opera with a machine gun in its mouth." There’s a constant unpredictability and an ambiguous quality about the voice as I noted earlier. I’d love to know your thoughts on the capital-V Voice? Do you think about it when you write? How did you find this particular voice?

PHILIP

I think the voice found me. I know, another disappointing answer, but I am sort of spiritual in that sense (but not in many others). I remember this being a big part of workshop convo back in grad school. Most of us could write, but no one knew their voice, especially me. 

One weekend, not too long after moving to Missoula from Chicago with my new wife who I’d married in a bar back yonder not even two months prior, she went back to the Midwest to visit family. In a hungover, Magnetic Fields-induced fit of bachelorhood, I wrote a series of poems (which later turned into a chapbook pubbed by the late great BOAAT) in which I imagined she left forever. I(t) was melodramatic as hell. Honestly, all of these kiddo poems stem from that energy though. A place beyond recognition. The freakishness of the unknown. An imagination so wild and personal it carves your spine sideways into piano wire. That kind of mental loss  is a drug. Writing these poems was straight metaphorical meth for me, as were the ones back then. 

For me, voice is earned by owing more to others than to yourself, both personally and publicly.  It’s observation, accumulation, interrogation. Voice also must be lived to a certain degree. More gray area in that crotch, though. I think the role of the poet is to let the voice, once they find it / it finds them, take over. Develop the skills and tools, learn the craft, then dig up the coffin you’ll later bury yourself in.

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master’s masters, we would also love to know poets who have influenced you most (preferably 3-5 but totally okay if there’s more). 

PHILIP

I’ve mentioned a few of them already up above, but my unholy trinity is Dick Hugo, Mary Ruefle, and Jack Gilbert. Denis Johnson is my favorite sentence. Anyone with the last name Wright. All my closest friends are my favorite poets. They know everything I don’t, which is everything I don’t. God bless the labor of love.