A Non-Quickie Interview w/ Peter Jay Shippy Pt. 2

12. How do you feel teaching helps or hinders the life of a poet?

Teaching has enhanced my writing. No question. In real life I’m a lazy, indiscriminate reader. I move from poem to poem, play to graphic novel, article to essay with little sensitivity or reflection. Teaching, especially teaching literature, forces me to isolate what I believe and explicate those charms to a curious, dear horde. Last semester I was paid cash money to thrash out Anne Carson and Haruki Murakami, Jennifer Knox, Linh Dinh, Harryette Mullen, George Saunders, Kelly Link, Caryl Churchill and Borges. Plus, the schedule and labor cost (the outlay on soul and body) (even as an adjunct) tolerates poetry. I grew up on a fruit farm, so I know what it is to work, to labor and toil. After 12 hours of picking and loading apples, one does not wish to climb Robert Frost’s two-pointed ladder and feel the boughs bend. One wishes to go to the Stone Jug and drink beer and feel the boughs break.


13. I kind of love that answer...I think a lot of poets (myself included) do a lot of whining. A ton of poets I know work in a cubicle, so I find myself wondering how poetry has changed now that our daily lives are so disconnected from the physical world. Even our writing is virtual...while most poets I know jot down ideas/thoughts/lines in a notebook, there aren't too many that draft long-hand any more (though a poet friend I just talked to says he still drafts in cursive because he'd been told that writing in cursive was one of our most stimulating and complex activities...kind of like piping Mozart into the womb to smarten up the fetus (or...in your case...fetuses...feti?). How do you see poetry and the business of poetry being changed by our hermetically sealed contemporary way of life?

And virtual interviews. From start to finish, it’s taken me almost 4 hours to complete this answer (2 1/2 feedings, 2 diaper changes, 3 loads of laundry, 1 aspirator session (or water boarding, as my wife lovingly calls it), tummy time, and dancing (to Moby’s Bourne theme—it drives Stellatrix (see #14) insane with delight).

I love reading about writer’s habits—what pens/software they use, what music they listen to, Helvetica vs. Courier. Each generation seems to have its technology bugaboos—fingers to bone to quill to nub to Remington Portable. Back to W.C. writing his poems on typewriter (although, I love that fictionalized scene from his episode of Voices & Visions where he’s scrawling a poem on a prescription pad at dawn as the sun rises over the distant silhouette of New York). Are Remington skull portals are next. Was it Carolyn Forché who advised her students not to compose on computers? She was worried (I think) that the discoveries made when one makes errors, would be lost. Or that early drafts might be lost? Of course, for many young writers the idea of not composing on a computer would be insane. The quality/content wouldn’t seem to be an issue—writers have always been airtight. I may be off, but there appears to be a lively face-to-face scene, too, especially in Boston. The reopening of Grolier’s Books is exciting.


14. How has fatherhood affected your writing?

I think this is an answer I’ll be editing my whole life. For those who don’t know, my wife Charlotte and I are the deliriously happy parents of twins—Stella and Beatrix (Stellatrix! (branded by Kathy R)). I’m learning to be flexible—taking the free minutes when they come and not fretting when they don’t. When FedEx makes a delivery, I let them hold a baby for 5 minutes and knock off a rondeau or two. Next week my wife returns to work—so everything changes again. When the girls hit 3 I plan to farm out most of my writing to them. Actually, I’ve already started to read poetry to them, which is a great joy. I have a wondrously strange children’s book by Gertrude Stein: The World is Round. I can’t wait for them to read it to me, “Once upon a time the world was round and you could go on it around and around.”


15. You mentioned the scene in Boston...how has it changed over the years. How has it stayed the same? How does it compare to the NYC poetry scene in your experience...or does it even? What would you like to see happen that would improve the Boston poetry community?

I don’t think I can compare & contrast with any accuracy because beyond what happens at Emerson, I’m not really part of the scene: Old, old, I wear the bottom of my trousers rolled! Or is that my scene? The unique advantage that Boston has over other cities is the embarrassment of colleges, each with its poets, readings, and after-reading parties, where the real education begins. A big difference between now and then is the number of MFA programs. In the early 80s there was only BU’s. Is there any cross-pollination? Do Emerson students (and alums) go to BU events? Do Terriers go to UMass-Boston? Pine Manor? Lesley? Probably not—Boston is so tribal, and proud of it! Do non-academics go to readings at Harvard? Do non-poets go to any poetry readings? Do all the wonderful magazines have regular readings? That might be something that could help—an on-line message board to keep poets aware of readings and book-signings. Is there one already? Back in the day, we’d go readings at the Blacksmith House, Grolier’s, the Woodberry, and Stone Soup readings. Ploughshares had readings/benefits, too. I often attended a series at the Watertown public library hosted by Stephen Dobyns—that was very valuable to me. Also, bookstores actually invited poets to read. (Although, Shippy-plug: I’ll be a part of a Redivider benefit organized by Brian Foley at Brookline Booksmith). There were readings at bars, open mic nights, but not yet a slam scene. I have no experience with NYC—I’ve never lived there, except for one eventful summer (1982) living on Avenue A when Avenue A was Avenue A!


16. If you will, introduce our readers to Isaac Makepeace Watts, the hero of How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic. Start with his name and go from there. How do you relate to Isaac?

My book, to quote Publishers Weekly, is: “Told by a resident of a very modern-sounding Thebes, the poem presents itself as a Bizarro-world remake of the Oedipus cycle.” His name is spot-lit in the opening lines: “I am Isaac Makepeace Watt— / The lamb / of light. / / Believe you me.” He’s a braggart, comparing himself to Melville’s Ishmael and the son of Abraham. That swank may remind one of Oedipus. But Isaac is painfully self-aware, reflexively reflective—to the point of stagnation—like all us 21st century Americans, more and/or less. That’s not Oeddy. Watt and light hit on Sophocles’ use of counterpoints—light and blindness, knowledge and ignorance, Apollo and Dionysus, Pepsi and Coke. Makepeace? Well, as the great Tom Andrews put it in “William Makepeace Thackeray Follows His Bliss” (from his sublime hybrid masterpiece 25 Short Films About Poetry (from Random Symmetries (Oberlin College Press))): “Assembled passerby (in chorus): Oh boy! Thank you, William Makepeace Thackeray, possessor of one of the strangest middle-names in history!”


17. Why Thebes...why did you feel it necessary to create resonance between that world and our contemporary one?

Attic drama is so compelling to me—the ritual, the tableau. And the masks, of course. After 9/11 so many people returned to the classics to find solace or answers—riffs in time. Contemporary writers have always found a plinth for their work in the Greeks, from Jean Anouilh’s Antigonê to Charles Mee’s recent Iphigenia 2.0. I’ve been enjoying the stupendous Beckett on Film DVD Set, and you can really see the influence of Greek drama on his latter work, especially something like Play. That’s why I overjoyed when I received permission from Beckett’s Estate to use excerpt from Ghost Trio as an epigraph.


Hear Peter Jay Shippy read: Saturday January 19th 7pm Redivider Launch Party @ Brookline Booksmith