SHANNAN

With an opening like “Sex is weird”, you’re pretty much guaranteed that a reader will lean in. Maybe they’re offended (because, as I’m coming to realize, people do actually get offended at “sex” in poetry), but for the most part – as it was with me – there is a lot of joyful curiosity as to where you’ll take the poem from here. And god, do you deliver! Your whole poem is like sex, I suppose, by your logic anyway. Because it is weird. It is weird in the way the best poems are. You’ve got the mundane, the material “rub(bing) up against” the sublime. You’re instructing the reader in the poem, or so it appears to be. And then, it also feels like you’re guiding us. You or the voice you’ve embodied here. Humor abounds. By the end, one feels refreshed in knowing that good poetry doesn’t need to accomplish anything revolutionary, and that in itself is a kind of pure revolution. I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything I’ve touched on here. I’m specifically interested in knowing how you blend and bring together the different polarities of so-called “high” and “low” culture in poetry. Ought such a distinction even exist in poetry?

PAUL

Well, as for the people who might be offended by sex in a poem, I would like to quote Kim Addonizio, who sums it up beautifully and hilariously in her poem “Fuck,” which is, granted, perhaps more about the word than the deed (though it’s also about the deed) and which puts it out there so nakedly as to make my little sex poem blush: “There are people who will tell you / that using the word fuck in a poem / indicates a serious lapse / of taste, or imagination / or both. … And if you wouldn’t / say anything but Mercy or Oh my / or Land sakes, well then / I don’t want to know you anyway / and I don’t give a fuck what you think / of my poem...”

AAAABut yes, I wanted to grab the reader with my opening line, and also my opening line break. Because sex is weird. And we don’t / think. At least not when we’re doing it. Because thinking about it when you’re doing it can sort of ruin it. Don’t you think? But seriously, I’m just having fun in that poem. I like to have fun in my poems. Writing is how I get my playtime in. Some people play pickleball, some play golf, some play cards or board games. Me, I make poems. Frost said a poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom, but I say delight me all the way through to the end. If you happen to stumble onto some wisdom in the process, okay great. If not, no biggie. I will love you anyway.

KARAN

That is a really interesting way to look at poetry, Paul. I have a question here — does having fun equate with humor for you? Are there other ways one can have fun while writing? Can you have fun as you write a deeply sad poem? Though I agree with you and Frost insofar as all poems should begin in delight, can poems that are, say, purely melancholic, or even depressing, be delightful? Delightful in the way they deal with language, if nothing else? I’m just trying to understand your definition of delight and fun. Do you ever write sad poems? What is your process like with those?

PAUL

That’s a great question. (I hate when people say “that’s a great question,” and then they go ahead and answer it without missing a beat, as if they had all the great answers to all the great questions at the ready. I mean, if it was such a great question, maybe they should stop talking and take some time to think about it; maybe they should admit that they don't quite know the answer to that question, because that’s how great a question it was.) Okay, I’m not sure I know the answer to that question (heh heh). But yes, I do sometimes write sad poems. Not depressing poems, hopefully. But sad poems. Poems about sadness. Poems about pain and suffering. And yes, there is still delight, for me, in the language, in the discoveries that the language can sometimes lead me to. Perhaps the fun is in extracting something beautiful out of something that’s anything but. Like a magic trick. Like voila! In some poems, for instance, it almost feels like I’m exploring what begins to feel like a fond memory of the pain. Like I’m able to smile warmly at the suffering now, all this time later, writing about it. For example, it’s a strange alchemy that turned my first broken heart at sixteen into this cherished thing I caress (in the poems) like a polished stone in a pocket, worrying it, taking it out often, looking it over fondly, turning and turning it in the light of today. There’s delight in that, for me, as the writer. Or maybe it’s just masochism, I don’t know.  

SHANNAN

I keep returning to the last lines of “Flirting with the Deaf”. The gentleness in that hesitation “could I, could we, fit?” and then the almost shy question mark there – there is so much to be lived in within the scene you have painted. One feels like they’re watching a short film of something externally ordinary, routine, but at a deeper level, full of meaning. I’m thinking of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. There is a way in which catharsis, or the very beginnings of it, show up unannounced in your poetry. Take for example, “The Face of Listening”, with the sudden capitalization, the thrill and also fear it conjures, but beneath the visual spectacle, there is only vulnerability (if with a bit of humor). I wonder, do other art forms inform your decisions of how to shape the narrative in your poetry? If so, how do you feel inspired by them? And if not, how do you see your poetry responding to life – not capital L life, but the life that goes on all around us, all eight or so billion of us.

PAUL

No, I don’t think other art forms inform my decisions much when it comes to shaping narrative in my poetry. But as for those two poems you mentioned about Deaf people, I think it’s fair to say that the narratives of Deaf people inform the poems. And the capital D refers to that community of people for whom sign language—and its attendant Deaf culture—represents their primary experience and allegiance. Signing is the most beautiful singing I have ever seen in my life. I began studying it when I was in my early twenties, and continued studying it for the next forty years. My wife is Deaf, my daughter is Deaf, my handyman, landscaper, optician, financial planner— are all Deaf. Many of my friends and colleagues and in-laws are Deaf. I spend more time signing in ASL than speaking in English. Which is why I often write about it.

AAAA“Flirting with the Deaf” is playing with the notion of lag time, and playing with the line breaks (I don’t normally like to break the line after “the,” but in this poem it seemed to wonderfully illustrate that notion of the pause). It’s also playing with the idea that the Deaf world is a different world altogether, with its own orbit, its own time and space, and of course its own language. “The Face of Listening” is, again, playing (we poets talk about “our work” but maybe we should call it “our play”) with the notion of what listening really is, and what music is. Sign language is—there’s no other word for it—symphonic. It’s not linear the way spoken languages are linear, one discrete word following on the heels of the next. Rather, it’s simultaneous; all the sections of the body’s orchestra creating meaning at the same time. And most of the grammar of the language appears on the face. I love watching Deaf people watching each other, listening to each other, the music on their faces reflecting the music of the language as they listen to it with their eyes.

KARAN

I love this way of looking at the world. For some reason, it’s truly wonderful to hear about the influence of Deaf culture and sign language on your poetry. I was just wondering about how one would translate your poems into ASL and went down a rabbit hole and watched some people perform ASL poetry and found it full of affect, even though I don’t understand sign language. Given your deep connection to the Deaf community, how do you navigate the challenge of conveying the richness of sign language and its cultural nuances through the written word?

PAUL

Well, the richness of sign language cannot be conveyed through the written word. No, it can’t be done. Which is where the magic of poetry comes in. And magic is fun, right? Sign language is fun too. It’s fun to sign; fun to use your body to paint the whole world on the air. Think charades. Think mime. But in my writing about sign language and Deaf people, both in my poems and in my essays, it mostly boils down to praise. I just want to praise the language and the people. Pure unadulterated praise. I say “unadulterated” because I’m thinking of some feedback I got once at a CNF workshop I took with a famous writer (who shall remain nameless) who told me he felt that all the belletristic praise I heaped upon Deaf people and the beauty of ASL amounted to a kind of fetishism (his word). Pepper it with a little ugliness, a little friction, he suggested. Friction makes for good fiction, as well as good creative nonfiction, he seemed to be saying. And he’s probably right. But I’m more interested in the praise, and in the defense of Deaf people. Because they need defending. Because they and their language and culture are under attack. Because 90+ percent of Deaf infants and toddlers are being implanted by the medical establishment in an attempt to “cure” them of being Deaf. For their own good. Eradicating Deaf people for their own good! It’s all about eugenics and audism and… don’t get me started. Instead, I will step down from my soapbox now, and offer you this “translation” I did of an ASL poem by the Deaf poet Ian Sanborn called “Caterpillar”. I put “translation” in quotes because John Lee Clark, the DeafBlind poet who asked me to translate Ian’s poem in the first place, felt that I took too many liberties with my translation. He said it was more of an ekphrastic poem about the ASL poem than a translation of it. And Ian agreed. So we’re not calling it a translation. Even though that’s what it is. You can read it here, and there’s a link at the end of my poem to a video of Ian signing his poem “Caterpillar” in ASL. A must-see!

SHANNAN

Back when I started writing poetry again after a long break, I remember using a whole lot of big and complicated words and just stuffing those poems with ornate images. Karan would repeatedly tell me – please write something that a 10 year old can read and decipher. I would often think of such editorial feedback as beneath me. But, after a lot of tough love, I began to cave. My metaphors unraveled and became more straightforward. I focused on a few strong images and culled the rest. And I made sure I didn’t use any word whose spelling I’d have to look up in the dictionary. And (voila), the poetry got better (and started finally getting published). With your poems, I sense that simplicity shines through. It must be stressed that simplicity and simple-ness are not the same thing. The emotions you are playing with are complex and multi-layered. The images are defined yet elusive, like “a whole sandbox of sand / that once upon a time I poured / into that hollow base” from “Old Basketball Hoop”. I’m curious to know, how did you arrive at your particular style of writing, how was your poetic voice shaped?

PAUL

I have always liked clarity, accessibility, and story. I like a poem that invites me in, not a poem that keeps me out because I can’t follow it. And I don’t like to work too hard (I like to play, remember?) There is much difficult poetry out there that’s well worth the work of reading it—I should know, I read a ton of it when I was in school. But now I only read what I want to read, and I only read for pleasure. And I write the kinds of poems I would like to read. Poems that invite me in, poems that make me laugh and make me cry in the same poem, poems whose voice makes me feel like I know that voice, I recognize that voice, I would like to keep listening to that voice for the rest of the poem, no, for the rest of my life! So I guess I arrived at my particular style of writing poems by reading a lot of poems that I didn’t really love—and I’ve read a lot of poems in my lifetime. Yeah, I, too, dislike it. I could probably do without ninety percent of the poems out there. But the ten percent that I love, ah, how I love those poems! And those are the poems that have helped shape my so-called poetic voice.

AAAAAlso, for a long time I was a closet formalist; I counted my feet on my fingers. And I rhymed slyly. Half rhymes, slant rhymes, visual rhymes. I love those sonnets by e.e. cummings that you don’t even notice are sonnets until you get to the end of them and realize they’re 14 lines and they rhyme and scan, slyly. So I tried to emulate that kind of writing for a long time. But after a while, and after a lot more reading (and growing the ten percent), I started to trust my own voice more, with the net down, without the rhyme or meter or fixed forms. Mark Doty told us in a workshop to write the word TRUST in big letters and affix it to the wall above our writing desks. For me, trusting my own voice means going with what pleases me. No pleasure for the writer, no pleasure for the reader, to misquote Frost again. To quote Hostovsky: I am my best listener: no one hears me out like I do. So I listen closely—for the natural rhythms and pauses and inflections of my own voice—and I write down what I hear.

AAAAAs for that poem, “Old Basketball Hoop,” about my kids having grown up and out and away, I think it was waiting for me to write it for a long time, just winking at me from the side of the driveway every day for years. I had no idea how to dismantle and throw out that old basketball hoop in the driveway. So I asked my Deaf handyman to help me. He used a metal saw to cut it down into manageable pieces that we threw into the back of his pickup truck and took to the dump. But that base, the one with all the sand in it (which ended up at the end of my poem), what to do with that? There was nothing for it but to tilt it up and over and pour all the sand out—like an hourglass, that device used for measuring time. The poem is also a device used for measuring time: for twenty years that old rusted basketball hoop stood in my driveway, but I didn’t need a handyman or a pickup truck for the poem. I just needed that sign above my writing desk telling me to trust my voice to tell the story the way I wanted to tell it.

SHANNAN

There is a lot of movement in your poetry. Locational, physical, human…connected with limbs, with running, climbing, falling, jumping. And I think “Delve” actually has all of those! I wonder about the speed at which a poem functions. Do you think your desire is to have the reader enter the world you’re laying out and sail through it seamlessly, quickly, before they realize what hit them? And in doing so, invite or even reel the reader back in for a second or a third experience? Or does this movement act as natural places for the reader to pause, to try and live with the speaker and feel the movement within them also? How much is the poet responsible for the reader’s experience, whether visceral or subliminal?

PAUL

Yeah, I sometimes like the movement of a poem with no periods or end-stopped lines, or very few, the only pauses being the ones I create by breaking the line (I am of the school that says you should pause, however briefly, at the end of every line in a poem). I like (some) poems that are all one sentence. And I like (some) run-on sentences. In Michael Chabon’s novel Telegraph Avenue he has a chapter that is one very long run-on sentence that goes on for some 17 pages without a single period. It’s exquisite! A tour de force! And there are thematic and stylistic reasons in the novel for his choice to do that. As for me, I’m not exactly sure why I choose to do that in some of my poems and not others. I think it’s a number of things, really. It may have something to do with wanting to keep the reader’s attention—being afraid to lose it— and it may also have something to do with the spell that I’m under when I’m writing the poem—the spell the poem puts me under when I’m writing it—and not wanting to break that spell, or that music, by inserting a full stop. Sometimes I will even eschew all punctuation in the poem, the only pauses being the line breaks, which is something I probably learned from Merwin, because I think I started doing it a lot when I was reading him. I don’t do it that much anymore, but once in a while it can feel like the right choice for a poem.

AAAAAs for the poem you asked about, “Delve,” it has a couple of periods. And a colon. But you’re right, there is a lot of movement in it, and the poem is sort of about movement, i.e. climbing down the basement stairs of my childhood home. I go there a lot in my head, that childhood home. Sometimes when I’m not feeling well, or when I can’t sleep, I will go there in my mind, entering each room, picturing the furniture, the floor, the walls, the doors, the door knobs—as many details as I can remember, or imagine. “Imagination is memory,” is a line I stole from Joyce, though I don’t remember where I read it. Maybe I imagined it (smile). Good writers borrow, etc., right? I don’t remember how many treads there were on those basement stairs, but in the poem I try to count them as I imagine myself descending. The more I imagine, the more I remember. The more I remember, the deeper I descend. “Delve” happened to be Webster’s Word of the Day on the day I wrote that poem (do you subscribe to Webster’s Word of the Day? I love it!), so I used “Delve” for the title of the poem, because how perfect was that?

SHANNAN

Some people look down on poems about poems. Karan and I are very much not in that camp. My favorite poem of yours in this packet was “Revision”. God. I laughed. I furrowed my eyebrows. I tried to search for the missing pieces that might have – gasp – gotten revised out perhaps! And I was seriously impressed that you took out the chicken and then put the whole “Pacific Ocean,” “Adam” and “God” all together in this small firecracker of a piece. I think that’s what guts in poetry looks like. Talk to me – if you will – a little bit about the idea of the “wildcard” in poems. While I was preparing my MFA portfolio recently, a professor told me to include a “wildcard” poem, something to jolt the reader out of their poetry-loving stupor. If I’d written “Revision”, this would be my wildcard.

PAUL

Tell me about it! I have a poem about people who dislike poems about poems. I dislike those people. One of those people was a publisher who rejected my latest manuscript because, she said, it contained poems about poems. Well, her loss. I got it published anyway. As a matter of fact, the book just came out. (You can check it out here.)

 AAAAI don’t know much about MFAs, never having done one myself, but I know what I like. And I do like poems about poems. I love to read them and I love to write them. And I’m glad you liked “Revision.” I like it, too, if I do say so myself. Of course, it’s making fun of itself. It’s making fun of poets. (I like to make fun of poets; we’re such an easy target.) It’s having fun and it’s playing. It’s playing with itself. Playing with itself (come on, admit it, writing is a little masturbatory, isn’t it?), and how about that, we’re back to sex. Back to the beginning. We’ve achieved a perfect circle!