SHANNAN

Dreams collide with waking life throughout your poems. Sometimes there is a transition from the tangible world to the dream world, as in “After Years Thinking About Dying” when the father “sits with his coffee at the dining table” then, seamlessly also “sits in [the speaker’s] mind.” Other times, as in “Druthers, CA”, you write about the desire to “sleep late and have a full day.” Though dreams are not outright mentioned here, that long sleep alludes to dreaming. And dreaming is a place of fulfillment, of beauty, promise. In the final moments of “Sons of God”, the speaker appears to hesitate at first while pondering a potential dream wherein he reveals his true feelings around faith to his father. But, reassured that it is a dream, and repeating it three times in three lines, envisions reconciliation where in reality there would be reproach. Your speakers (or perhaps as is likely the speaker is one across the poems) fashion dreams and almost force them into an idealized space. Do you think, then, of poetry as an extension to such multifarious ways of dreaming?

ZACHARY

Ever since I found ONLY POEMS in January of this year, I’ve often dreamed (get it?!) of my own interview—what the questions would look like and what my answers could possibly be. I mention all of this because it’s a metaphor for later. In the meantime, I’d like to say I love your questions and observations. You’ve really made me seem more than I am.

AAAATo start, I’d like to mention that my wife and I are realizing a dream right now, traveling the world for a year. We’re ten months into it, currently spending time in Tokyo. And this morning, I’ve been walking through Shibuya and Shinjuku and considering your questions, re-reading them, sitting with them some more, trying to form answers.

AAAAI read this question to my wife and part of her response was that it seems I use sleep as an escape. And maybe she’s right. I’ve always loved to sleep. I think it’s my favorite part of the day.

AAAABut the thing is, I don’t dream a lot. When I do dream, they’re vivid, but I find them to be infrequent.

AAAADaydreaming though, now we’re talking.

AAAAGrowing up in a very strict, Evangelical Christian family, I wasn’t allowed to have opinions which disagreed with the opinions of my parents. The threat of physical abuse was constant, so I learned very quickly to keep my mouth shut. This resulted in my internal dialogue and imagination growing to be very strong, so strong my parents would often comment about it, wanting to know what I was thinking (but not talking about), often growing frustrated when I would laugh to myself in the back of the car. To tell them anything, to let them in, was dangerous. So I often lied regarding what I was thinking about.

AAAADaydreaming (or maybe it’s disassociation) became a mechanism for survival, where I could imagine something better—a better life, better parents, a better relationship with my father—one where I could admit, openly, how I don’t believe the same things he does and he would, in my dreams, still want to be my father. Some dreams are just intrinsically impossible.

AAAARegardless, dreams are wishes. The very definition of II Corinthians 5:7 which reads, For we walk by faith, not by sight. Verses which talk about, in their larger context, about being absent from the body and present with God. And what is this, if not daydreaming, if not disassociation? My internal dialogue started as secret prayers to God. And as I’ve gotten older, I think my disassociation might still be prayers or incantations. To circle back to the metaphor I mentioned at the beginning of this answer, I admitted my wish to be interviewed by ONLY POEMS about my poetry. Maybe I wished for it so strongly, it was like casting a spell. Maybe I manifested it, I don’t know. But here we are.

AAAATo answer the crux of your question, I believe poetry, (and maybe this should be narrowed down to “my poetry”), in its highest form, should raise the collective consciousness of humanity. That’s the poetry I want. That’s the poetry I strive for. The poetry I imagine. I don’t care if I succeed in this endeavor a little or a lot, the goal remains the same.

AAAAPoetry should be holy in some way, even if it’s drowning in the throes of carnal humanity. My favorite poems are the poems which ask me to consider the divine in each of us. When Danez Smith says “bring the boy” in “not an elegy for Mike Brown”, they’re asking us to consider the divinity of Mike Brown while at the same time asking us who are benefitting from white supremacy (like me) to sit with hard questions. When Andrew Hudgins says “As I fall past, remember me” in “Praying Drunk”, I read it as a reminder that even when we’re at our worst, we still possess something worth saving. Every poet I love tries to reach for enlightenment somehow and everyone fails. We will always fail. But it’s the trying, over and over again, that makes poetry into art. 

SHANNAN

Memory is another meditation that preoccupies your poems. Perhaps it’s a bit expected to bring up Marcel Proust, but alongside memory your poems also feature France quite robustly so I really can’t help but get Proustian. Some of your poems, though, can be read as almost anti-Proustian. This is very refreshing. And strange. And wonderful. I notice that you wrestle with ideas of searching vs. remembering, true memory vs forced recollection. Furthermore, in “Quiet”, memory is compared to “Kansas countryside”. So, you frame memory not as being of a place but rather as a place. Memory is not triggered so much by external stimulus, but rather is all that stimulus combined. Are poems a way to wade through, dissect, and understand memory for you? Can poetry preserve memory or does it, in serving language over memory, do a disservice to true memory? Also, what the hell is true memory?

ZACHARY

I wish I was cool enough to say I’ve read Proust. Sounds like I could benefit from the effort.

AAAAMy understanding of memory is that it’s always biased, so regarding “true memory”, I don’t think such a thing is possible (though it often feels that way). My memory has large holes in its construction since I tend to disassociate a lot—my wife finds it extremely frustrating. It’s interesting how you point the way I frame memory, “not as being of a place but rather as a place”. It’s an astute observation, and probably speaks to the strength of my internal dialogue more than anything—that is, my imagination and daydreaming almost seem real.

AAAATrauma has a way of instantly transporting you back to the time and place where it first scarred you. For some people, trauma can take on a PTSD-like quality where you can physically relive the moment, feel again the anger or fear or whatever emotions you felt back then, your mind taking you to a reality which existed once upon a time and feels like it exists again. Not only that, your body is reliving its response to that trauma.

AAAAThe act of writing poetry again, twenty years after my undergrad, has been good for me, a means of sorting through my childhood, re-visiting memories of my father, the many conversations I had with him, and then taking away the power of those memories. In doing so, I’m not trying to preserve memory, but reclaim it. Things I’ve said in these poems, I’ll never say to him outright; nor will he ever be in a place to hear what I have to say, in these poems or otherwise.

AAAAMaybe I’m still a coward when it comes to standing up to him, I don’t know. On the other hand, maybe I’m just being merciful. My father is incapable of open and honest conversation, where we approach each other in good faith. You’re either on his side or you’re not. You either believe in his god or you don’t. You’re either his son or you’re something less than.

AAAATo finally answer your question: poetry almost always takes on the role of reclamation when it comes to memory. I see this even now when I look to the poets of Palestine who are reclaiming what it means to be Palestinian while facing war, starvation, and death. And at the same time, these poets are also asking us to consider, reconsider, consider again, the divine present within their own humanity. Is their poetry painful to sit with? Of course it is. But that’s the point. Enlightenment is never easy.

SHANNAN

Dealing with death, speaking about, knowing it comes, and then writing about it — these seem like crazy things to do if we think of life as an act of survival. But your poems refuse the fear of death. You wholeheartedly embrace and even welcome death to commune with you, have coffee even you, be a friend. Alongside this, there is natural fear. In “Exiting Lines”, the speaker goes from the grand and eloquent to the grounded and raw “when death meets me / in person, me possibly shitting my pants.” The way the poem ends with a dialogue from death personified — it humanizes death, or perhaps the act of dying. Likewise, “Druthers, CA” ends with the hauntingly simple lines: “I can’t seem to live in this world on my own.” Confession, honesty, humility – are these all small deaths for the ego? And in that dying, is there a way to enter a deeper poetics? A way of seeing the world that challenges conventional capitalist-driven consumption and asks us to instead be okay bleeding out before everyone? 

ZACHARY

I’ve had suicidal ideations since I was ten or eleven. We lived in an 100+ year old farmhouse with asbestos shingles, surrounded by crop fields. There was an old grain silo I could see from my bedroom window. I was very young when I first imagined taking a header off of it. Probably too young.

AAAAI didn’t find a good therapist until I was 40. My life was going great and I still struggled with suicidal ideations constantly. So “Death” as an idea, had become an old friend by this point. A 30-year relationship. I knew Death like Simic knew Death in his poem “Eyes Fastened With Pins”—except for me, Death looks and sounds like Grace Kelly from The Rear Window. And I’m scared of her, but I want her like a love I can’t have yet. I think of her often because I know she’s always waiting. 

AAAAGrowing up, I was very much influenced by Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament and was very young when I first understood that some level of ignorance was required to be happy. Ecclesiastes, which was supposedly written by King Solomon, and who was supposedly the wisest person who ever lived, did every possible thing his heart desired and then wrote about it. For almost every experience he encountered, Solomon would do the whole True Detective thing and pontificate about time being a flat circle. For example, Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” 

AAAAI must have been seven or eight years old when I read this and realized I, too, was not impressed. And whether I like it or not, Solomon’s words have become a pretty foundational way I look at the world.

AAAAI’ve spent the last twenty years in the tech industry and honestly, I’m tired of having every aspect of life viewed through the lens of unregulated capitalism. Unregulated capitalism, the capitalism we have in America, asks you to turn a blind eye. It asks you to be ok with injustice. It asks you to believe in the system just enough to work until you’re dead. It says: if you don’t have any money, you don’t deserve to live.

AAAAFor poets, capitalism asks us not to rock the boat too much. It asks us to toe the line. Make art, but be careful about it. Make it look like everyone else’s art. Don’t piss anyone off.

AAAATo use your words, I’d rather bleed out. If I can write about my own father like I do in these poems, what do you think is going to happen when I get around to writing about capitalism? How do you think I’m going to write about White Supremacy or patriarchy or misogyny?

AAAAThere’s nothing sacred here, only accountability. 

AAAAConsequently, my poetry is not, and will not be, for everyone. And I’m fine with that.

SHANNAN

You write about God a lot. I like that. I have found, of late, there seems to be an aversion to writing about religion, even if it is writing that wrestles with all that religion can mean to someone. You  handle this complex topic very comfortably despite recollecting the discomfort with which your speaker has been raised to blindly believe. In “After Years Thinking About Dying”, the divine and the dead commune when “God like a ghost” appears in the poem. In “Sons of God” you play with expectation vs responsibility and love vs duty as the father refuses to truly respond to the son and instead demands to be carried and then instructed that he ought to feel “lucky to have a roof over my head.” Is forced gratitude truly gratitude? Same for religion, for faith. I’d love to hear more about how you choose to enter these theological questions and manage to create nuance and feeling. 

ZACHARY

I was an Evangelical Christian until I was 33 or something. When I was young, my father sent me to a private Christian school. I was a nationally-ranked Bible Quizzer. Has anyone heard of this (lol)? It’s like a scholastic bowl, but only for the New Testament. We would memorize scripture verses and compete to answer questions against other teams from around America. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t a Christian. The only sports I played was against other Christian schools. I went to church three times a week. I prayed for my own salvation all the time just in case the first conversion I did at five years old didn’t stick. I was terrified of going to hell. I prayed constantly for God to show himself to me. I saw demons everywhere.

AAAAIt was very scary to “deconstruct”. I had to give up the only social circles and support systems I had ever known. And now, even though I don’t believe in Christianity, my entire worldview is still permeated by it. I can’t help but write about religion and faith, because it’s such a core part of my DNA.

AAAASo I treat faith like I treat Death—like an old friend.

AAAAI’m not sure I have the choice or ability to not enter into poems about theological questions. It feels like the mafia in a sense, that even though I’m out, they pull me back in. I think “Sons of God”, especially, is the result of me learning and understanding a lot more about the history of Christianity. Where doctrines like Hell and Original Sin come from and who made them up. That the character of Satan/Mephistopheles/The Devil was invented by early Christians.

AAAAFor me, there is nothing more true than the idea of man creating God in his own image. The image I have of God is through my father. My father who claims to walk blameless and perfect before his God. And yet, this is a god of genocide and war and stupid little games, like we see in the book of Job. An all-powerful Father that could simply choose a better world but doesn’t. My father doesn’t believe sins against his children are sins and neither does the God of the Bible.

AAAAI think for most of my life, if given a choice about it, I would have chosen to not be born. Add that to my father treating his children like a burden and you get a kid like me who wanted to die at eleven. The truth of the matter is that my father failed me and by extension, the god of my father has failed me. I don’t need their forgiveness. But my heart and mind are still inundated with the idea of God, so when I enter a church, I still feel that old euphoria. Sometimes, I commune with it—like an addict falling off the wagon.

SHANNAN

As far as buzz words or buzz phrases go, “intergenerational trauma” feels, unfortunately, like a common one. I love how you describe these “little traumas passed on to me” and really explore the distinction and connection between “father” and the desire to be “farther”. I noticed something striking in “Druthers, CA” and then kind of simmering beneath the surface of many other lines. A desire for parenting by proxy emerges. You wonder about the whereabouts of “the world is never on fire from war and I get to watch the children of my friends grow up.” Here, too, that distance is subtly explored. The speaker does not wish to have children of their own, it appears, but does wish to share love in a fatherly, friendly sense – something they themselves did not receive. Is that fear or intelligence? It’s not that clear, I suppose. Animals, too, connect with this theme. There are “bats flying about”, “giraffe(s)”, “dog(s)” “bird(s)”, and subtly images that conjure animals in a state of memory and decay such as “leather boots”. A kind of liminal transmogrification is desired in the face of abandoned fatherhood, or incomplete fatherhood and the inability to bridge the gaps. A most striking moment occurs in the final lines of “Sons of God” when the speaker realizes that the father expects communion but not with any sort of kinship, rather simply to pass judgment. In this case, things like “I don’t believe it’s climate change, he says, it’s punishment – for all the laws tolerating homosexuals.” In lieu of paternal love and connection, then, kinship is established with a figure like Mephistopheles, a demon, something other than human, like the animals. You are tussling with so much here, I’m finding it hard to articulate the question I had in mind. Would you like to take these strands of thought here and braid them or respond to them in some way?

ZACHARY

I’m going to approach this question in two parts, and then weave them together. 

AAAAThere is an idea here around “chosen family”. All the good things in my life weren’t given to me by my biological parents. I went to college because of Howard, a gas station manager I worked for when I was 19, and his wife Debbie. They made me quit that job and go to college.

AAAAThere is David and his wife Lynn, who are friends and mentors and yes, like parents to me too. I tried to quit David’s programming class in my undergrad and he wouldn’t let me. Because of him, I’ve gone on to a very successful career in tech. And that success is the reason my wife and I are fulfilling a lifelong dream of traveling the world.

AAAAWe’re getting back to full circle.

AAAAMy family, my real family, are the people I’ve chosen and the people who have chosen me. My in-laws, Howard and Debbie, David and Lynn, and so many others. People I can be myself with, who love me no matter what. People I feel safe with.

AAAAAnd while I’ve never wanted children, as I’ve gotten older, this desire to pay the kindness of strangers forward to another generation is slowly overwhelming me. And so I look for opportunities to invest in the lives of others. Sometimes, it’s a small thing and sometimes, it’s interjecting yourself into someone’s pain and saying I see you. I’ve done both and will continue to do what I can for any soul that comes along needing help. It’s not the same as being a biological father, but I know what I was given and I know what I owe.

AAAAWhen I look at any story centering the Satan character in the Bible, I see a Son of God cast out simply for asking questions. I see someone whose narrative has been co-opted and lied about. When my parents divorced, I was very young. So I grew up with stories from my father about my mother. I was told how my mother was a liar and a cheater and she didn’t want us and she was going to hell. Imagine being a father who tells your children their mother is going to hell. But as I got older, I realized all these narratives were wrong. Was my mother perfect? Absolutely not. But the stories I was told about her were biased at best or just outright lies. They were narratives that made my father the hero.

AAAABut my father is no hero. And so when I look at the story of Lucifer/Noctifer/Mephistopheles or “Luci” as I call them, I see a child abandoned by a father for not believing the right things or saying the right things or asking the wrong kind of questions. In the Luci character, I see family I would choose. I see myself.