KARAN

Richard, thank you for these magical and deeply felt poems. You’ve said that “being inside a prose poem is like wandering wide-awake through a dream that you have,” and I feel this quality strongly in your poems. Consider “The Child” where you write, “A scrap of parchment, perhaps a message, floats down, flipping, spinning, and lands on the path. A scythe swings, harvesting the stars.” Let’s begin with the process question. How do you approach writing a poem? Do you begin with an image, a line, or an idea? And most importantly, why poetry?

RICHARD

The prose poem “The Child” seems surreal, and I suppose it is, but my means of getting there are quite literal. I am describing a collage whose original title was “The Child”. All the objects swirling around in the poem are swirling around in the collage. The poem is a lament concerning a failed love affair, mine with the artist. I was corresponding with the artist. We both wanted to use terms of endearments in our letters but found them to be too corny, so we used terms of endearment in other languages. Hence, Habibi, which is Arabic for “my love.” The collage artist used bits of found material picked up from the street, such as the scrap of foil that flies away at the end. I often talk with my students about what I call “literal imagination” — sometimes you can write something that seems surreal by describing what you actually see as if it were a dream, without mentioning the word dream. It is a trick that puts you in touch with an underground river, the flow of images from the unconscious.  Why poetry? Poetry is what I can do, and how I make meaning and find peace in this world. Like here for instance, the memory of the love affair is painful and writing from it is how I heal.

KARAN

Your work seems deeply influenced by myths and fabulist elements. In “Saint Valentine,” you weave together historical fact and romantic mythology, writing “Forget candles, chocolates and flowers — love is dangerous and deadly.” Having been influenced by Jung and Joseph Campbell early in your reading life, how do you see the relationship between myth and contemporary poetry?

RICHARD

Myth is a force that manifests in many forms, some of them powerful and dangerous. As a poet you can access myth as cultural influence, simple illustration of a shared story, your take, your version of that story, or myth can be the force that drives the poem. The poem is also a play on the love motif, we die or kill for love, we have broken hearts, and we are overcome, pierced with arrows and so on. All common images but they describe a simple truth — love is dangerous. Opening yourself to experience with another person is a risk. Of course, not taking that risk has dangers of its own. 

KARAN

You've mentioned that the South has “more of a culture of words” where “people will tell and listen to stories, and they value language, the way a phrase is turned or a story is told.” Having been very new in the States, I’ve already observed this phenomenon, and I wonder what it is about the geography that dictates this. How has living in Charleston influenced your work? I notice in poems like “The Brown Room” a particular attention to atmospheric detail that feels distinctly Southern.

RICHARD

I don't see the South that much in “The Brown Room”. I am using a kind of Catholic school imagery. I have not seen much of that but I associate it with brown, brown wainscoting, doors, chairs and tables. I am describing a girl in a convent school in another country. The narrative is based on a story I was told.  Concerning story — I used to go to this barber on James Island, where people, mostly men, would tell stories and legends without realizing they were doing so. He was not that great of a barber but I went there to hear the stories. Here in Charleston I have, for instance in check out lines, heard someone telling a story to the clerk and everyone in line patiently listening to the story. That would not happen in L.A.  I have found that people here are prized for being good storytellers. You will find this among people who have lived here for a long time. Not among newcomers. I talk about my barber and storytelling in an essay you can find in Best American Poetry online. The title of the essay is “A Shave and a Haircut”. Which is the name for the rhythm of knocking, as on a door, “shave and a haircut, two bits”.  

KARAN

In “Another Thing I Know for Sure,” you blend scientific concepts with deeply personal emotions. You've talked about trusting “the dependability of randomness” in your writing process. How do you approach these intersections between the logical and the emotional, the scientific and the intimate?

RICHARD

I think there are two useful tools you can use writing poetry, randomness and association. I use randomness when I am teaching. For instance if I were leading students in a writing exercise, if they have a choice to make, I make sure it is random. Say you had to write from images of art, I would hand them out face down and not let the students look at them until they are ready to write. Each student would have a different image but I do not let them choose it. It chooses them. Or I would have the students write using a list of old English words they do not know the meaning of. Randomness works every time. I have been using it for years. I do not think this can be explained. It is just a little beyond our three-dimensional understanding. I have been using a sort of game called metaphor dice. Dice with words on them. You cast them and form a line from the dice. The word choices on the dice are a little limited, but it is another tool, and helps take the writer out of their brain-ruts. Many scientific concepts were arrived at in dreams, trance, or as sudden bolts. I see writing poetry as a kind of divination; you can arrive at truths by trusting the process of chance. It may be possible that there is no randomness. But this cannot be explained with our logical intelligence. 

KARAN

Your poems often move between English and Spanish naturally, as in “La Lluvia.” Having been influenced by poets like Luis Cernuda and Octavio Paz (I love them both!), how do you see the relationship between these languages in your work? Does this bilingual quality create different possibilities for poetry?

RICHARD

If you write with English as a second language your American English will be twisted in interesting ways. My Spanish is not actually that good, I spoke it as a child but lost it. But I started “La Lluvia” in a dream. I dreamt I was writing a poem in Spanish. I woke up and wrote the line I had written in the dream " La lluvia no necesita un motivo para amarte." I sat up in bed and wrote lines in Spanish, I tried for fourteen, thinking that a bit of sonnet structure would be helpful. I improved my lousy Spanish in the draft by using Google Translate. Then using Google again I translated the poem into English and fiddled with both versions. I ended up liking the English better, but I kept the one line from the dream in Spanish because I like it and I like lines that come from dreams. As I wrote the draft I was also looking at a wood engraving that I own. It fell out of a book I bought in a secondhand bookshop. It is called La LLuvia and is by Leopoldo Mendez, a well-known artist in Mexico, a contemporary of Rivera and Kahlo. 

KARAN

There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving into a different direction?

RICHARD

I would say poetry of the body. There is a part of my writing that is physical, for instance I think if you can't write if you just start moving down the page writing something, just do the physical act of writing, in a few seconds you will be writing. Over the years whenever somebody has called me on the phone they have always said the same thing to me. “Did I wake you?” So I assume there is some quality in my voice that sounds like I have been sleeping. I can't hear it but others can. I see writing as ritualistic — the cup of coffee, the time of day, the notebook, the pen, are all part of a ritual that says to the muse, “I am here.” There is a physicality to that. When you read or hear a great poem you feel it in your body. I experience it along the back of my neck. I call it The Chill. You can hear it in the silence that follows a really good poem in a reading. There is a pause, and it is silent. And then there is an intake of breath, that collective sigh. And maybe a man in the audience will swear. That pause is the moment when the listener completes the poem. That is why there is a kind of uplift to it, because both the poem and the listener have participated in the making of the poem. This has been written about by others, I think it was William James that suggested that the appreciation of art involves both the artist and the audience in the act of creation.

KARAN

As someone who has taught at various institutions and maintained the Long Table poets group in Charleston for fifteen years, what have you learned about poetry from teaching? You’ve mentioned elsewhere that much of your work was generated from teaching — could you elaborate on that relationship?

RICHARD

I think the idea of the solitary writer is not quite true. Writing is partly communal, and that community might involve teaching, your friends, the person you trust to share new work with and other writers you have read, both contemporary and in history. So it is a conversation that spans your solitary space and even time, including the future. 

KARAN

I keep close what you’ve said about intelligence when it comes to writing: “Intelligence is not helpful in this place [of poetry]. It is about discovery, and you can’t discover what you already know.” Yet your poems feel both spontaneous and carefully crafted. How do you balance that initial improvisation with the revision process? When do you know to let go?

RICHARD

It is a balancing act between conscious and unconscious writing, between what you know and don't know. Not knowing is just as important as knowing. The quality I want in my work, and that I encourage in students, is surprise, and you can only be surprised by what you don't know. 

KARAN

Okay, here’s the popular advice question. What advice would you give to emerging poets and writers? Or any warnings!

RICHARD

Do some work every day. You are not writing novels, so even short amounts of time will be fruitful. Write junk for three days and then you'll write something wonderful on the fourth day. Just keep your appointments with the muse. Even if you don't write, show up at the place, the sacred place where you do your writing. 

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

RICHARD

I have always been moved by music, in recent years international music. And dancing has been a strong inspiration for me. Before the pandemic I did a lot of dancing, I had a very good Nia teacher and a great Zumba teacher. All of this changed when the gyms suddenly closed and I have been slow to get back to it. 

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master’s masters, we would love to know which poets have influenced you most throughout your career. One can easily see the influence of the Surrealists on you — how has your relationship with the movement evolved over time?

RICHARD

Yes, the French and Spanish surrealists. But now I don't often enjoy reading poets who write like me maybe because I see through the tricks. I find poems that are useful for my teaching and writing that do things I cannot do.  So it stretches me and helps me get to new places. Poets I have enjoyed recently are Pascale Petit, Zeina Hashem Beck, Barbara Hamby, and Miho Kinnas. Recently I am working on a manuscript, Pas d Deux for the Time Being, with Miho—an experiment in collaboration with renga, prose poem and monostich.