Showing posts with label sound. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sound. Show all posts
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Here Is Clean
We've had straightforward poetry, some visual art in the mix, and now Richard Fox presents his adopted poem in a sound format. It's got a beat, you can dance to it. And if you like it, you can download the thing for free, because Richard is a giver, and because Lives of the Spiders shies away from commerce.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Just Upon Waking: An Interview With Richard Fox (Part the Third)
Here is the third part of my interview with poet Richard Fox. Hopefully I have mastered the "more after the jump" feature for ease of reading. Up later in the week: a new poem by Richard.
RM: I was thinking I would say that your poems are not really poems of the self, about a self that “is” Richard Fox, and much of American poetry of the past 75 years has been one long song of the self. But then, in the poems of Swagger & Remorse, I detect more autobiographical elements than in your previous work. Poems like “At the Barracuda Lounge,” “4 January,” and “I was watching you sleep” seem to stem from a distinctly personal, experienced heart-ache. Do some of these poems come from personal experience, the poem as diary entry? Would you be comfortable having them read or perceived that way?
RF: It’s not my style to reveal much of my “self” in any aspect of my personal life. But some of the later poems included in the collection came about as the results of self-examination. Some came from indulging myself in a little self-pity over heartbreak or anger. It’s hinted at in the title of the book, too, I think. I don’t really keep a diary, so that would never have been grist for the mill. When I “get personal,” it’s usually in a broad sense, and is somewhat whitewashed by the “universal experience” brush. Loss and death are big themes, and if one can get behind those, one can get a lot of mileage out of them. Furthermore, I simply can’t imagine that anyone would be that interested in me, personally, except for my friends and family. I really can’t help how the poems are perceived, and it doesn’t bother me if someone were to read the “I” in my poems as “the real me.” And I would be VERY interested in how a reader might interpret my work; how he connects with the poems on some personal level of his own.
RM: As you prefer to steer away from exhibitionism in your own work, is this also a quality you now avoid in your reading of contemporary poetry? Plath, and especially Sexton were taken to task, particularly at the time they wrote, for being too revealing about themselves. Of course, one might argue that most of their readership’s fascination with their lives was created by the fact of their suicides. Are you interested in the personal lives of poets as revealed in their poems? Do you feel that singing the song of one’s self is a trend that has taken up too much space in American poetry?
RF: I do admit that I enjoy unearthing some arcane bit of personal history, or personal likes and dislikes that will inform/confirm what I’ve read when I’m reading someone else’s poetry. But again, I’m not much of an exhibitionist! I don’t consciously avoid reading any particular type of work; although I am put off by, and will not continue reading, any poem that reveals itself to be of a more-or-less masturbatory nature. I do become interested in the personal lives of some poets, but only if the poet writes something that inspires or interests me. As for any trend in American poetry that leans in the direction of self-exposition—and I suppose the most egregious example of that trend is slam poetry—I think good work can come out of many trends and movements, in spite of themselves. I admire the work of Patricia Smith, for example, whose stunning, heartbreaking poem written in the voices of a group of victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is one of the best poems I read last year. She is originally a slam poet from Chicago, and she may still consider herself to be a slam poet.
RM: In a workshop we both took with David Wojahn in the late 90’s, I remember taking you to task for using a sort of royal we. Who is this “we” in your poems, I demanded. It’s pretentious! Now, of course, my poems are populated with “we’s” of various make-ups. And you are still fond of the pronoun: “There were multiple things we did in all the wrong order.” “We begin by forgetting the planets:” Do you know how and why you’ll be using “we” in a poem as opposed to “you” or “I”. Maybe I am still asking, but in a kinder, gentler way, in order to help see why I use it, too, who is this ‘we” anyway?
RF: You know, I am beginning to see the error of using that “we” pronoun, but it’s so convenient: I can relinquish personal responsibility by using it. Not only that, but there is also a perverse joy I get out of implicating others in my poems. And it does hark back to some antiquated, poetic usage. But to answer your question about who this “we” is, I think that it’s nobody and everybody. Or at least, it is when I use it in a poem: I can really hide a few skeletons behind that pronoun. On the other hand, it is inclusive, but not in an embarrassing, USA Today, “we Americans,” populist kind of way, which is a “we” that is not very inclusive at all.
RM: I was thinking I would say that your poems are not really poems of the self, about a self that “is” Richard Fox, and much of American poetry of the past 75 years has been one long song of the self. But then, in the poems of Swagger & Remorse, I detect more autobiographical elements than in your previous work. Poems like “At the Barracuda Lounge,” “4 January,” and “I was watching you sleep” seem to stem from a distinctly personal, experienced heart-ache. Do some of these poems come from personal experience, the poem as diary entry? Would you be comfortable having them read or perceived that way?
RF: It’s not my style to reveal much of my “self” in any aspect of my personal life. But some of the later poems included in the collection came about as the results of self-examination. Some came from indulging myself in a little self-pity over heartbreak or anger. It’s hinted at in the title of the book, too, I think. I don’t really keep a diary, so that would never have been grist for the mill. When I “get personal,” it’s usually in a broad sense, and is somewhat whitewashed by the “universal experience” brush. Loss and death are big themes, and if one can get behind those, one can get a lot of mileage out of them. Furthermore, I simply can’t imagine that anyone would be that interested in me, personally, except for my friends and family. I really can’t help how the poems are perceived, and it doesn’t bother me if someone were to read the “I” in my poems as “the real me.” And I would be VERY interested in how a reader might interpret my work; how he connects with the poems on some personal level of his own.
RM: As you prefer to steer away from exhibitionism in your own work, is this also a quality you now avoid in your reading of contemporary poetry? Plath, and especially Sexton were taken to task, particularly at the time they wrote, for being too revealing about themselves. Of course, one might argue that most of their readership’s fascination with their lives was created by the fact of their suicides. Are you interested in the personal lives of poets as revealed in their poems? Do you feel that singing the song of one’s self is a trend that has taken up too much space in American poetry?
RF: I do admit that I enjoy unearthing some arcane bit of personal history, or personal likes and dislikes that will inform/confirm what I’ve read when I’m reading someone else’s poetry. But again, I’m not much of an exhibitionist! I don’t consciously avoid reading any particular type of work; although I am put off by, and will not continue reading, any poem that reveals itself to be of a more-or-less masturbatory nature. I do become interested in the personal lives of some poets, but only if the poet writes something that inspires or interests me. As for any trend in American poetry that leans in the direction of self-exposition—and I suppose the most egregious example of that trend is slam poetry—I think good work can come out of many trends and movements, in spite of themselves. I admire the work of Patricia Smith, for example, whose stunning, heartbreaking poem written in the voices of a group of victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is one of the best poems I read last year. She is originally a slam poet from Chicago, and she may still consider herself to be a slam poet.
RM: In a workshop we both took with David Wojahn in the late 90’s, I remember taking you to task for using a sort of royal we. Who is this “we” in your poems, I demanded. It’s pretentious! Now, of course, my poems are populated with “we’s” of various make-ups. And you are still fond of the pronoun: “There were multiple things we did in all the wrong order.” “We begin by forgetting the planets:” Do you know how and why you’ll be using “we” in a poem as opposed to “you” or “I”. Maybe I am still asking, but in a kinder, gentler way, in order to help see why I use it, too, who is this ‘we” anyway?
RF: You know, I am beginning to see the error of using that “we” pronoun, but it’s so convenient: I can relinquish personal responsibility by using it. Not only that, but there is also a perverse joy I get out of implicating others in my poems. And it does hark back to some antiquated, poetic usage. But to answer your question about who this “we” is, I think that it’s nobody and everybody. Or at least, it is when I use it in a poem: I can really hide a few skeletons behind that pronoun. On the other hand, it is inclusive, but not in an embarrassing, USA Today, “we Americans,” populist kind of way, which is a “we” that is not very inclusive at all.
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