The
education of the ear
“The sound must be
true before anything else can be.”
-Joel Craig
Sheila Davies Sumner: Before I
ask about your new book, would you describe how you first came to poetry or how
you came to love it and what trajectory your poems have taken over time?
Joel Craig: I had numerous flirtations with poetry in high
school and I remember writing poems and submitting them to the school’s annual
journal. I bought a fully rhyming book by C.K. Williams and read it a lot, but
that was sort of like having one record and saying you’re really into music. My
registration happened late for the second semester of my freshman year at Iowa
and I was struggling to find classes—I needed a class that wasn't music and wasn't core, and my adviser pulled up a class on W.S. Merwin and his
contemporaries. I had no idea who Merwin was. The professor, an archivist, had
recently been employed by Ohio State University to work on the lot of Merwin
papers they had just purchased. He only taught two books; a collected Merwin
and the Vendler anthology. I was introduced to John Berryman, Richard Hugo,
John Ashbery, James Tate, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath and Charles Simic—those
are the ones that stick out—the American contemporary poetry basics. Amazed by
Berryman’s Dream Songs and “The
Wheelchair Butterfly” by Tate—I didn't know you could do that with words—I
wrote poems again, and even gave some to that teacher. He was gracious and gave
me feedback on one, encouraging me to take a poetry writing class, which I did
a couple of times. I dabbled here and there over the next few years, but it wasn't until I spent a summer largely unemployed in Minneapolis that I put
serious time into writing.
Certainly my
poems evolved over time. The White House
is evidence of how they've grown from minimal, painterly sound exercises into
denser sweeps that aren't afraid to get at or into multiple characters. That couldn't happen until I’d largely quit poetry for a few years to focus on
deejaying. When I started again it was so hard to get into the poem space and
my standards were much higher. It took a couple of years to feel good about the
process, to understand I was making something worthy of an audience.
SDS: Yes, I noticed that characters are
initiated or deepened through syntactical layerings and switchbacks which carry
narrative -- an image, observation, aphorism, symbolic theme, a constellation
of views. It’s very effective. A line from “High Park” gets at what I mean:
“Words carving through my mind / occasionally taking a wrong turn / through
labyrinthine caverns.” You seem to let that happen in your poems.
JC: Funny, those lines almost didn't make
it, but the personal truth carried in them won in the end. The key is for each
turn or decision to build off of the previous so you never leave the sense of
the moment. The audience is more apt to follow a sure-footed guide, so whether
or not the guide has actually been there becomes irrelevant.
SDS: In my first reading of The White House, I found myself slowing
down to accommodate the tone and mood and rhythm of your poems. This cohesive
medium seemed to be musical –– and for me it created an experience that was
dependable and constant –– a trustworthiness. This music gives range for your
poet’s voices to roam, and I relied on it to lead me through the diverse
language of the poems. Could you say something about the ways your creative
process collaborates in relationship to music, sound, sonics?
JC: Music is where it’s at for me, so I’m
glad the urge was prompted in you. To me, music is the primary layer of
experience and intelligence in poetry, what makes it such an inclusive contact
to anyone open to the participation required, the patience. The way we take it in, what makes it
enjoyable, is so personal to our history and maturity with it, which fascinates
me. On the one hand there seems to be a simple equation—the more we listen, the
better we become at listening and the more we are rewarded. On the other, there
is so much music to hear, different reasons for exposure, the accidental, the
purposeful, so that the basis for the experience, our taste, is always
evolving, even when we aren't trying. There are different states of listening,
too, such as rehearsal or improvisation, where you are listening in a very
different way to the parts of around you, cognizant of the moment but imagining
the whole. Actually giving a musical performance requires listening that is a
variant to that of the audience receiving that performance. So the education of
the ear can happen in myriad ways.
I spent years
studying voice, singing in different choirs, and that was my window into art-making,
of what process involves. Trying to place the voice you are responsible for,
the voice that literally resonates within your skull into a performance of
multiple parts unified, demands particular concentration—a multi-tasking. This
is also true of DJ-ing where you must be aware of both the track being
presented to the room, and the multiple tracks sampled in the cue before
sensing the fit (a kind of improvisation)—music you hear and discard, the music
you merge with what the audience is already hearing. Both of these processes
have fed my ear and made me comfortable with the process required to make
poems. It takes a lot of work, requiring many decisions about what you don’t
include in order to arrive at what you do, and those decisions are best made
quickly, for me. The goal of the process being for one idea to grow out of
another, reformulate and lead to another new idea while also achieving an inner
cohesion; a balancing of recognition, rhythm, and association that can lead to
“aha” moments for the audience. The sound must be true before anything else can
be.
SDS: The “musical density” of this tone
makes possible a certain depth and wide margin of feeling. Pronouns and tenses
can change but the tone holds –– it’s like a solution in which ambient emotions
are buoyant, submerged, diluted. I’m curious how you nurture feelings that may
emerge while writing a poem? Or when you might choose to encourage or delay
emotional development within and across your poems?
JC: Your reading is so attentive, thank
you. I like to think in terms of a monologue of collective voices, and tonality
is certainly a key to whether or not it’s successful. Emotional substance
allows for dynamic capacity and renewal. Moods and temperaments become a
palette for the audience’s (as well as my own) emotional reflexes to draw from.
I don’t mean to make it sound technical, it’s not, but I think it can be a
useful way to describe the interactions that are possible, or that I aim to
make possible. I really have to feel
my way through it, nurture the development if you will, and that process is
largely intuitive, even kinetic—there’s no scheme. There is obviously conscious
manipulation toward an overall emotional power, but I’m more interested in the
stuff making emotion happen in life, relationships, authority and weakness,
novelty, memory, our flexibility in receiving stimuli and having
experience—internal and external—on any given day during any given hour, how we
feel, use, and express these experiences, how we are guided or bound by our own
state, and what the outcomes are. For example, anxiety is something I’ve dealt
with throughout my life, so the fact of it is constantly present in my poems.
To be functional while anxious is hard—it elicits boundaries to expression,
snuffs spontaneity, leads to predictable internalization—but in a poem the
barriers can be turned into directions. A predictable structure in my emotional
being can be allowed progressive developments, I think, by inhabiting the
voices of others. A charged emotion can be stated, juxtaposed with observation
or thematic material, reshaped in the process of improvisation. That’s one
example, but I’m interested in all registers of emotion and the dimensions that
are possible for and because of them.
SDS:
Yes the anxiety is palpable. It’s released and indrawn, a kind of
pulsing, which accelerates a reader’s ability both to contain and to live the
anxiety.
JC: A certain level of discomfort can make
you more curious, too.
SDS: At first I made a political
association to The White House but as
I read, different meanings occurred to me –– for instance, a white house that
reflects wavelengths of visible light. I noticed your diction and metaphor:
“instructions for building a paper house”, “consciousness that leaks like a
house”, and “the house of dread”, as
well as the many references to floors and doors and windows inside rooms where
all kinds of people enter, live, love, and leave. What are the ways this title
influenced and shaped the book?
JC: The title fell into my lap as I was
visiting with a friend recently returned from spending a month in New Zealand.
He capped an hour-long description of the trip, his impressions, with
bewilderment at the fact of brothels, legal brothels, existing in Auckland—and
how they are not diminutive places. The most famous is called The White House
and it was a replica the White House.
I was reminded of a record I loved also called The White House by The Dead C, a
New Zealand noise outfit. The album cover was a creepy photo of (I assumed) the
White House, but it seemed more like it belonged on a cheap postcard. I’m still
not sure which one is actually represented on the cover. No matter, the
coincidence and the layers around it seemed a good sum for the poetry I was
making—I’d already written the poem. It became my working title and it stuck. I
became more conscious certainly of my description of interior spaces, or
landings as I came to think of them.
SDS: One of my favorite poems in this
collection is “Stargazing”. It has a personal transcendence, an off-the-ground
ecstasy: “My sweetheart / brings molecules and reads the sky out loud / we
should be satellites!” Or, as you wrote in another poem, “we could drift out into
space so easily.” There seems to be so much humor and playfulness here.
JC: Again I’m tickled at your reference,
as that poem nearly didn't make it into the book. In the end I think of it as a
charming little pop song that breaks the longer narratives, allowing a
different spirit for them to rub against, perhaps providing unexpected
resonance via the metaphysical.
SDS: There are ten poems in The White House that share a stanzaic
pattern: a single line which more or less extends to the center of the page,
followed by a block of indented lines. Here’s one example from “Street Dad”:
I sat for a
moment, staring at my knees as I tried
to put broad, wide images
into small, tidy words.
And another
from “Stars As Eyes”:
I could go
to her house but I’m afraid of what I might find. I sidestep
the explanatory
conversation, just a plain
Saturday night. Presenting a
succession of facts
she is surprised by the inability to
explain
why she must go. Both inward and outward
consciousness leaks like a house.
While
reading these poems, they became more and more concrete, taking on the shape of
spoons or dippers in assorted sizes. It was as if the stanzaic form was feeding
me the poem’s content. Which really impressed me. And which, at times, became
an edgy experience: would that single line be strong enough to bear its subject
matter? This was the way I entered and played with the form and I wonder about
your own experience: what it offered you in terms of symbolism, poetics,
imagery –– or something else?
JC: Ten years ago I saw the poet Lewis
Warsh give a reading at Chicago’s wonderful, unfortunately defunct Discrete
Series. Having never encountered his work before, I was completely stunned by
how good it was. I bought a copy of Touch
of the Whip, and became transfixed by his poem “We Wrote a Letter to
Jesus,” which carried some incredibly long lines into a standard five-space
tab. Some lines would only carry a word or two, which in my line of work as a
graphic designer is a mistake (we’re taught to avoid widowed words at all
costs), but some lines would extend into what seemed to be a stanza of several
lines, so I was left to wonder at his intentions. How much of this was the
result of the book layout vs. intent? But I was drawn to the effect—the way
each line was a jump from the previous, propelling the poem forward—enough to
try and make it my own. I exaggerated the tab, and was attentive to complete
each line rather than allow an arbitrary break. What I wound up with was two
distinct margins and what seemed like two automatic points of entry, and just
this simple idea felt liberating. I love your idea of a spoon, of being fed—I hadn't thought of that. A friend once described it as axes falling down a page.
It certainly seemed to accomplish both a density and momentum I’d never felt
capable of. It allowed for the rapid inclusion of different imagery, while
multiple voices could coexist and build simultaneity of feeling, becoming one.
SDS: In “Cabbage Alley, you've written the
couplet, “A beautiful poem / just fell over”. I’m reminded of how easily
inspiration can evaporate or collapse into its opposite.
JC: Absolutely, and more often than not I
find that’s why it’s so important to be mindful of opportunities and be willing
to gamble for them. Here’s a lyric I love from Harry Nilsson’s The Point:
Flying high
up in the sky, I wonder why I have to have another
Point of view
to see me through
But now I
think I'm gonna fall, I hope this isn't all
And on top of
that I hope it's not the last time
SDS: Writing
Process: Do you read your poems
aloud? If so, what relationship does that have to your writing and revision
process?
JC: Reading aloud is key to my process—it
allows me to cut through the turbulence and solve not only the musical
problems, but the extra-musical problems within the line, then throughout the
poem as a whole. Especially when writing long poems, there can be a fine line
between sustaining a viable voice and just babbling some hectic phrases.
Perhaps by solve, I mean sculpt. I’m always beginning with such a weird mixture
of things, so much raw material and potential, but not necessarily a goal. My
actual voice allows for connections to manifest themselves more readily, while
musical possibilities can be tested—it’s functional thinking.
SDS: I listened to a reading you did at
the Iowa Lab with Nick Twemlow. How important is the voice you read with? Do
you experiment with different timbres and attitudes? Does a poem tell you how
to read it? What’s the difference between reading aloud in order to revise a
poem and reading aloud in the public performance of a poem?
JC: It’s hugely important to me how I
present the voices in the poems when I read. It’s a part of the process that
continues to evolve, too, as I try to get better at it. I do experiment in
subtle ways. I’m no actor, but I do find the voices becoming clearer in my head
as I have more opportunities to present them, so I try to put myself at the
service of the personalities they contain. The primary difference between
reading aloud while working on a poem versus performing one is always going to
be pressure. Nerves. It’s taken a long time to feel remotely at ease in front
of an audience, especially one with many unfamiliar faces. I used to experience
nearly crippling stage fright, but over time I had some breakthroughs,
especially through involvement in poetics theater—those experiences especially
challenged me to face my fear.
SDS: Poetics Theater?
JC: John Beer directed and/or produced
several poetics theater events over the years. I was cast in performances of Drip Drop, created as a collaboration
between John and Robert Lax, and directed by John for the Discrete Series. Also
a performance of Louis Zukofsky's Rudens
and Fiona Templeton’s Bluebeard, both
directed by Fiona Templeton for Returning
from One Place to Another: A Poet’s Theater Showcase, and later The Dust of Suns by Raymond Roussel,
again directed by John for the Chicago Poetry Project.
SDS: Many of your poems are in the present
tense, a right now sensibility, which
offer a bracing immediacy. One of the lines in “So Far So North” verified my
reading experience: “With circulation of image comes the shock of the assembled
moment.” For me, the assembled moment, with its present tense, took on a
quality of cubism –– being truly held within moments of simultaneity and
continuum. Does this reflect how you see the world or is it more an effort to
offer possibilities in how we see the world?
JC: I have a tattoo on my left arm
inspired by Ferdinand Léger’s The City,
populated by poetic symbols. Also, I had a monthly DJ night for six years
called Right Now (just saying). I’m a
tactile learner. Studying cubism helped me to visualize narrative experiments that
baffled me in modern literature, so it was formative. It became a kind of key.
So the epiphanies it offered when I was much younger are likely just part of my
DNA now. The appeal of cubism to me is the possibility of expression: once
certain doors open the light remains. But it’s one thing to borrow effective
details, and another to transform them into a language of your own. The latter
is more motivating to me.
SDS: The opening poem in your book,
“Schema” is small, quiet, and opaque, represented by an anonymous yet universal
figure: “He was born as his name implies / as though distortion weren’t enough
/ in itself to frighten good, innocent people.”
Would you talk about the placement of this poem as it contrasts with the
introduction to The White House, and
then seems to inaugurate the rest of the poems in your book.
JC: The sequence of the book was already
final before John (Beer) wrote the forward, though I feel any poem would have
provided just as much contrast given his absurdist take, which references, I
like to think, a conversation we had years ago about Polish absurdist theater,
and specifically a play, The Madman and
the Nun by Stanislaw Witkiewicz, about an imprisoned radical poet who has a
fiery affair with the nun who counsels him, resulting in rambling, topsy-turvy
mayhem. I saw it performed around the time the first poems in the book were
taking shape, and I was taken by how an innately humane story could be so
finely crashed into senseless power and hubris. I was amazed at how well it spoke
to our post-9/11 climate—the nonsense of righteous indignation. The he in the shorter poems like “Schema”
hopes to personify the anti-spirit the collective I will spar with.
SDS: Would you talk about your other
involvements with poetry in Chicago and elsewhere? I’ve heard about the Danny’s
Reading Series and would like to know more about how the series is run and how
so much listening influences your work.
JC: Functionally the reading series is
pretty simple. It’s at a nice, candlelit bar that has a nice sound system and a
staff that is incredibly supportive of what we do. The poet Greg Purcell and I
started it twelve years ago. We tinkered with the format and at times really
had to educate our audience on how we wanted that space and time to be—which was,
for a couple of hours, the high temple of poetry. In the ensuing years I've had
the pleasure to co-curate with several amazing people in John Beer, Chris
Glomski, and Nate Zoba. While life has taken them other places, they've each
left an indelible mark on the series, and myself—each is an important
friendship. It’s also been a vast poetic education: hundreds of poets, their
styles and personalities. It’s made for an amazing immersion into contemporary
poetry, and beyond that the formulation and progression of a community. I don’t
know if I can say how it has affected my work other than to say it has
motivated me in myriad ways—not just in the exposure to some amazing poets, but
also countless conversations. On a basic level the realization over time that
we’re all just people on different journeys helps to ground me, rid me of the
measuring stick that has always been a hindrance.
I’m also the
poetry editor for MAKE: A Literary Magazine, which I've been doing for six or
seven years now. It’s been a treat to help and watch it grow, see this lovely
team of people grow it into a journal with incredible production value. Both
have taught me that to contribute on any level is a privilege, and I really
mean that.
SDS: What kind of poems are you currently
writing? Has any one of the three forms featured in The White House claimed your exclusive attention? Are you
experimenting with hybrid and/or classical traits?
JC: I’m largely throwing paint right now,
trying to figure out how to make the longer sort-of multiple narrative style
swing more, whether that’s grabbing the beat out of the air or actually taking
some. There’s so much disheartening culture that needs responding to right now,
so I’d like to find more clarity via dissonance perhaps by playing with even more
modal manipulation, emotional triggers, to see how the voices come out, see how
far I can pry open the doors to the spaceship—the one visiting from Saturn, to
borrow from Sun Ra.
Joel
Craig is the author of The White House (Green
Lantern Press, 2012), and the chapbook Shine Tomorrow (Lost Horse, 2009). His
poems have appeared lately in Boston Review, GutCult, A Public Space, TYPO, and
Rabbit Light Movies. He co-founded and curates The Danny’s Reading Series and
edits poetry for MAKE: A Literary Magazine—where he lives, in Chicago,
Illinois. He is reading at Studio One on Friday, November 1.
Sheila
Davies Sumner has an M.F.A. in Poetry
from St. Mary’s College of California. She has also written short stories which
appeared in Rampike, Alcatraz 3, and in the graphic-story magazine, one of one,
published by Burning Books. In addition, she has written and produced radio dramas,
commissioned by New American Radio, including What is the Matter in Amy
Glennon, which was nominated for the International Prix Futura Award.
Frances Richard
is the author of Anarch. (Futurepoem,
2012), The Phonemes (Les Figues
Press, 2012) and See Through (Four
Way Books, 2003), as well as the chapbooks Shaved
Code (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2008) and Anarch. (Woodland Editions, 2008). She writes frequently about
contemporary art and is co-author, with Jeffrey Kastner and Sina Najafi, of Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s“Fake Estates” (Cabinet Books, 2005). She has been a visiting scholar at
the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and is the recipient of a Creative
Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and a research grant from the
Graham Foundation. Currently she teaches at the California College of the Arts
in San Francisco.
Frances Richard
is the author of Anarch. (Futurepoem,
2012), The Phonemes (Les Figues
Press, 2012) and See Through (Four
Way Books, 2003), as well as the chapbooks Shaved
Code (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2008) and Anarch. (Woodland Editions, 2008). She writes frequently about
contemporary art and is co-author, with Jeffrey Kastner and Sina Najafi, of Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s“Fake Estates” (Cabinet Books, 2005). She has been a visiting scholar at
the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and is the recipient of a Creative
Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and a research grant from the
Graham Foundation. Currently she teaches at the California College of the Arts
in San Francisco.
Evelyn Reilly’s books of poetry include Apocalypso and Styrofoam, both published by Roof Books. Essays and poetry have
recently appeared in Omniverse, Jacket2, the Eco-language Reader, Interim,
Verse, The Arcadia Project:
Postmodernism and the Pastoral, and &NOW
Awards2: The Best Innovative Writing.
She lives in New York City and Columbia County, New York. 
