KARAN

I love the tender voice of these poems, Dick. These poems touch me and move me everytime I read them. I also love the constant philosophical inquiry. “Sestina for Darkness and First Light,” for instance, does this most apparently, as you delve into existential questions about the universe, design, and human nature. Is writing poetry for you a way to philosophically investigate life? I’ve been bringing this up in our interviews more and more: the four categories that poetry can be divided into: poetry of the body, mind, heart, and soul. Where do you think you belong?

DICK

First, I so love being part of the ONLY POEMS community where questions like this challenge us all to think of our work in different ways. And I am absolutely dazzled by your appreciation for the small and large in these and other poems you curate.

To your question, I am not sure I buy the premise — that “body, mind, heart, and soul” are separate/discrete parts of us. They are handy labels for how we/I experience the world but the practice of poetry (again, for me) serves to both dissolve the borders among these and to erode the whole cogno-centric approach to understanding ourselves. My practice of poetry begins to get at what quantum physicist David Bohm called “the undivided wholeness of flowing motion,” or, to channel Rumi, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.” 

For me, poetry has been a way to subvert my naming instinct and my predisposition for a kind of utilitarian, mechanistic relationship with the world. Without the intervention of art, I am a spreadsheet, formula, how-can-I-use-this kind of guy.  

And yes, this is an investigation, of sorts. For example, I have no imprint of a supernatural god in my mind. But my poems seem uncomfortable with my certainty on that front. “Sestina for Darkness and First Light,” for example, keeps trying to break out of the strictures of my non-belief.

KARAN

Deep self-reflection seems to be your jam. I have the image of the poet who is surrounded by nature, gardens in the morning, spends a lot of reflective time with themselves and their spouse. How off the mark am I? This is a process question, Dick. Do you have a writing routine? How do you write? And most importantly, why do you write?

DICK

You ask such simple but thought provoking questions! First, I am blessed or cursed with what is now called ADHD (without the “H”). Since I was a little boy, I have been as distractible as a dog in a world of squirrels. I performed very poorly in school, am an utter mess, and, of course, I’m susceptible to this scourge of screens which reward/exploit short attention spans like mine. 

Yet there are activities I can bury myself in: The garden and working with my hands and solving complicated problems, and, of course, being a lover.  Poetry is a relatively new obsession and has become—to paraphrase Frost—“a temporary stay against ADD.”  In the end, I think that may be “why I write.” There’s a real joy in temporarily not being that dog among squirrels.

I am also utterly enchanted with creating something I cannot control. A poem may start as me trying to solve a problem (much like a math equation), but ends up running off into the woods or stars or the nucleus of an atom or under the soil of my garden. It turns figs into mortality plays, stones into flowers, the darkness of deep space into what may be G-d.

KARAN

Since I mentioned the sestina, I’d like to speak to you about form. I know that you love trying out all the different forms available to us in poetry. We at ONLY POEMS highly value that because when done well, formal poems have a spell-casting quality to them. I welcome you to share your thoughts on formal poetry — what do you think of them in general, and why do you like to practice them? What is it about the constraint of the form that is so appealing, or even liberating?

DICK

I am so new to poetry that I seem to explore like a baby does, in effect, to put everything into my mouth!  I see a form and want to try it to see what it teaches me.  If an opening line of a poem feels like it wants to me in iambs, what happens if I follow that “feel?” Re: the sestina — a form I’ve never really desired to write in—I heard poet Erica Reid recite a sestina that felt more like a ghazal and I wanted to try that sort of rule breaking.  Likewise, when I heard your ghazal and then Shannan’s in Rattle, I wanted to make music and sense (and cast a spell) like that! I think as I grow more experienced, I’ll have a better sense of how the constraint of poem can be suited to difficult material. But for now, I am just that baby discovering the world by tasting everything!

KARAN

Your poems are rich with elements of nature: blackberries, stones, fireflies, thorns, dark matter, dust mites, musk, fig . . . I’d like to know more about your relationship with nature. And how do you see the relationship between nature and human experience in your work? What does nature mean to you as a poet? Would you go so far as to think of yourself as a nature poet, in the Wordsworthian sense? 

DICK

I harken back to my first answer: I don’t know what is “nature” and what is not. Is my old-man’s-skin nature or me? Are humans nature? Is a bullet spilling a child’s blood any more or less nature than a mudslide? I just don’t know. I do understand the useful distinction between, as Wendell Berry referred to it— “the made and the given worlds.” But I don’t know where that line is—or if there is a line.

That said, I grew up in a world of the mind. The Jewish tradition is so tied to exploring text through a process of continuous inquiry. This has redounded to even radically assimilationist, non-practicing Jews like my parents. Our house was rich in debate and study — but was not grounded in dirt or physical labor. I think much of my adult life has been trying to adjust for that. In some ways I make the garden (for example) so it will remake me. 

KARAN

I love your poetry for its exploration of faith. In the sestina, you say: “I am not governed / by the gods of rabbis and priests, but believe in the small / ones of dust mites and quarks and shadows,” and in other poems, there are candles being lit, fireflies defeating darkness, etc. I don’t really have a question here but this was an observation that I made when I was deciding why these poems speak to me so. In a way, all poetry is arguing for faith, for some kind of hope, and a kind of kindness. Your poetry does that magnificently and in a way that is visible. Would you like to say anything about that? In my head, I sound as if I’m convicting you for beauty, but in my heart I’m just bowing down.

DICK

I love how your questions are unfolding. In some respects I’ve addressed this in an earlier question. My poems have more “faith” than I do, for sure.  I have a poem titled “Perhaps Prayer is Thinly Scattered Matter” which does its best to make a believer of me. I am not going to tell the poem, “No! You can’t say that!” My writing practice is successful when I let the music of the poem lead me to explore parts of me I was previously unaware of.  In that respect, it is like prayer, I guess, in that I have faith in the practice of poetry to help me recognize my gratitude and wonder and innumerable foibles for what they are.

KARAN

I’ve been thinking about this more and more that sometimes I feel so disenchanted with poetry because of its elitism. I like how your poems are so accessible yet rich. Is this a concern for you, when you read, when you write? Do you think I’m making this up? I’m beguiled by this simplicity: 

Every // time I laughed, you thought it was

joy, but this is the way the marauders

taught us to cry” I love that!

DICK

When I began writing poetry, I committed to writing poems my sisters (who are NOT readers of poetry) would understand. While that is no longer my litmus test, I am attracted to accessible, unapologetically musical poetry.  My first poetry mentors all had Appalachian roots so their work sung with the rhythms and sounds of their speech patterns. It was and is, in so many ways, “roots” poetry, written by working folks, first generation out-migrants, children of storytellers and fiddlers and coal miners and steelworkers.  Their work is plain-spoken even as it sings with sound and metaphor.

KARAN

I keep saying I love this I love that but it’s only because I do. And I do love this self-description, a kind of very brief autobiography:

When you tell your children
about me, tell them I was never scared,
that I said the blessings

every day, lit the candles like my mother
did, even when what was around me was
evil as Eden. 

Takes me back to the adjective I used initially for your voice: tender. There’s so much tenderness in these lines. Heartbreak, even. How important is it for you to preserve (via writing) joy and beauty and tenderness, especially in a world that thrives on cruelty and greed and suffering (especially of the other)? In a world where the A-bomb exists as you write in your poignant poem. As expected, I’m a fan of the juxtaposition of intimacy and destruction in “Fission is a Bomb is a Fist is a Kiss,” especially the trajectory of the poem, the transformation. 

DICK

I originally wrote this at the end of my last answer but it seems more relevant here: 

“After writing a series of poems about Hannele, I just feel so much empathy for her.” I do. In the passage you cite, it’s not clear if she was scared, or just wanted to pass down something other than trauma. 

Also, my family’s roots story has been told exclusively through the lens of “the fathers.” It’s a good story – of resilience, of good works, of escape, of prosperity. But, predictably, the mothers’ stories are untold—as if they were mere beneficiaries of the men’s accomplishments. When I “found” Hannele at the end of the deepest, fine-hair root of our family tree (from the mid 17th century), I wanted to learn more about her — which I could only do by letting poems excavate her story from small shards of history and the ethers.

As for “Fission is a Bomb is a Fist is a Kiss,” I don’t know how the transformation appeared in the poem (or any poem?)—except that it was inevitable. In reading about the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, I looked at a photo of its fissile core— a beautiful, silver coated sphere not much bigger than a fist. I knew there was a metaphor somewhere in that core and trusted the poem-writing process and committed to not shy from what the poem said about me. I was a man with a temper — one that I am not proud of. The poem demanded I let that truth escape from behind closed doors.

KARAN

I love — fucking hell, I need to find other words — your voice: reflective, tender, sweet, exploratory, captivating! You start one poem with the line: “Everything I’ve told you is a lie” and I’m immediately leaning in. What are your thoughts on the capital-V Voice — do you think about the voice? Is poetic voice something one “finds”? If so, how did you find/construct yours? Do you place virtue in finding a poetic voice? 

DICK

Maybe I misunderstand the question but I don’t think I have a single distinct “voice.” My wife, Debbie, disagrees and suggests I often don’t need to sign my name to poems — that a reader will likely know they are reading a “Dick Westheimer” poem. As I reflect on your question I do think what characterizes my work (is this Voice?) — and much of my life — is a ceaseless curiosity. Whether I am talking with a molecular biologist or an insurance actuary or an Amazon delivery person, I want to know about their work. In my poem “Fission is a Bomb is a Fist is a Kiss” I wanted to know the size of the material that became the destruction of Nagasaki. In “What to Do If You’re Surrounded by Coyotes . . .” I wanted to see a coyote for something other than the fear they stir in me.

It’s interesting to me that you use the words “tender” and “sweet” to tease at what might be my voice. I do find those words flattering, but it’s not how I think of myself. I am constantly pushing against my own cynicism and insecurities. Writing poems might be my version of saying to myself, “Fuck your insecurities!” My wife, who is a tireless and generous critic of my work, calls me on this every time — especially if I qualify something or lean on old habits of thought or perception. That said, I will accept (grudgingly!) you're calling my voice tender and sweet, though, because each is in such short supply in the world.

KARAN

I ask this next question because I know how involved you are in a life of poetry — how faithful a reader you are of our magazine and others. What do you think is the role of the poet in contemporary society? How do you see your work contributing to broader conversations about the self, history, and the human condition? What responsibilities do you believe poets have in addressing social and cultural issues? 

DICK

Oh, for me this is such a fraught — almost painful — question. I was raised in a family where service was the highest “good.” My parents worked tirelessly supporting causes and organizations that promoted women’s rights, and racial and economic justice. During their lives and in their absence, I strove to contribute as they had.  But in the last few years, I’ve let that slip — and perhaps substituted the effort with immersing myself in poetry. 

Acknowledging that, I was asked a pointed — perhaps barbed — question at the launch of my chapbook of poems responding to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The questioner, a disaffected former Marine, posed this to me: “Great poetry.  So what. What can these or other poems do to stop the war and alleviate the suffering?” In essence, what the hell good is poetry?! I stumbled around a bit talking about how art has always survived collective trauma, how for some it is as important as cigarettes and shelter when resources are scarce, how even in closed boxcars headed to Auschwitz people wrote poetry. “So, I don’t know,” I said. “But tyrants clearly do — as often the first people they come for are poets.”

As for the role we have in addressing social and cultural issues, I think our primary responsibility is to respond as if we have more questions than answers — trusting the poem more than we do our own ideologies. Poetry, for me, is the opposite of rhetoric. BUT, I think we poets, having honed the craft for detail, are in a unique position to make our collective crises visceral and real. Carolyn Forché’s sack of ears in the “The Colonel” does more to make real the cruelty of El Salvador’s military regime than a year’s worth of news stories.

KARAN

I’ve long loved that Carolyn Forche poem! We usually ask our seasoned poets for advice for young writers. You say you’re new to poetry but you’re doing really well. Do you wish you’d started earlier? What would you do differently? What is something you’d like to say to young writers, as way of advice or caveats?

DICK

I wish I’d started reading poetry earlier, but I clearly was not ready to write poetry until I did. I was too much of a rhetorician, too committed to being persuasive. I had too many answers.

It is unlikely a coincidence that I began my poetry writing journey after the assent of Trump and Trumpism. His assault on language and his absolute, glib certainty must have set off some unknown urge in me to be part of some community of artistic opposition to that. This was utterly unconscious but, in retrospect, seems obvious. That this phenomenon ran headlong into my aging body and the freeing up of time made possible by economic security and the pandemic, was all an accident of fate.

As for advice to “young writers,” I can only say what worked/works for me: Be kind and curious with other poets. Talk about poetics with people you admire. (My formative workshop experience was a three-year weekly Zoom with poets who exceed me talking poetics, diving into the work and thoughts of poets we liked, and reading/discussing our favorite poems to/with each other. I was the least experienced, least published, lowest poetry-status person in the group. But the folks I asked to be part of the group joined up immediately — as excited to talk about these topics as I was to listen and ask questions of them.)

As for journal publishing, I am learning.  Early on I sought whoever might curate a poem of mine. Now I mostly submit to journals I like reading — or I like the poets I know whose work appears there.  

KARAN

I was sorry to hear that you recently had to pull your manuscript from your publisher. I mention this in part to give you space to talk about it (the experience if you like, but mostly the manuscript) in case a publisher is reading this. I also invite you to speak about your chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, the proceeds of which goes out to Ukraine Trust Chain.

DICK

Thanks for asking, Karan. Yes, pulling the manuscript was tough. The publisher and I had irreconcilable editorial differences. But when one of my poetry mentors/friends asked: “Would you read [the poems] at a reading as the editor has changed them?” The answer was “no” and my decision to pull the manuscript was made easy.  The process of getting to that answer gave me increasing confidence in the strength (and importance?) of the collection. The many folks who read the collection during that period pushed me to find a better outlet for the work.  Easier said than done but the encouragement from folks whose work I admire changed my view of the enterprise of getting this out into the world.

The collection tracks the relationship between two lovers—my wife and me—from first touch through 45 years of love and confusion, anger and lust, and aging using the metaphors of science and cosmology and the basic elements of rural life. Two of the poems you’ve curated, “Fission is a Bomb is a Fist is a Kiss,” and “The Fig, the Firefly, and What We Carry,” are examples of the range of poems. 

The poems in my chapbook, “A Sword in Both Hands,” were written in response to Russia's war on Ukraine. They range from poems that look at the details of the lives of victims of the war to America’s response to that barbarity being perpetrated on white Europeans (as opposed to our response to similar wars on folks who do not “look like America,”) through peering at the details of the war’s victims and perpetrators. I think Julia Kolchinsky, a poet I greatly admire, captured the essence of the collection when she wrote that I recognize my “distance from the very role of witness, and am aware of [my] privileged position, far from the violence, that permits a painful forgetting.” 

KARAN

Recently, we decided to ask our poets for a poetry prompt at the end. Would you provide a prompt for our readers, to help kickstart a poem?

DICK

Oh, no!  A prompt!  I am a fan of responding to randomness. My Rattle Poetry Prize finalist poem was written by choosing 14 words (just shorter nouns and verbs) from Random Word Generator and writing an American sonnet with a generated word in each line.

KARAN

Finally, please also tell us your favorite musician/song.

DICK

Ha! So many favorites. I love good bluegrass so Union Station (Alison Kraus’s band) comes to mind. John Prine never misses nor does Paul Simon. Oh, and Nanci Griffith. Lately I’ve had Natalie Merchant’s songs “Carnival,” and “Wonder” on repeat. I love the feel of her band’s music layered with her voice though I rarely understand the lyrics!