Jerome Sala, Glop: Poems

 

from A Guide to TikTok
                                                —After Kenneth Koch 

Look at this TikTok video.
There is a tiny dog in the foreground.
There is a tiny dog in the background.
The tiny dog in the background yells
to the tiny dog in the foreground:
“Hey, what is your name?
What is your name?
What is your name?”
The tiny dog in the foreground
finally hears the tiny dog in the background.
The tiny dog in the foreground yells back:
“Toby!
My name is Toby!”
The tiny dog in the background yells back:
“Fuck you, Toby.”

I have to admit, upon opening New York City poet Jerome Sala’s latest, Glop: Poems (BlazeVox Books, 2026), I caught the first poem, and was immediately prompted to share a photo of it with at least half a dozen friends via text. As an opening poem, there is something quite remarkable about it, including the absurd ridiculousness of the narrative. The poem strikes, clearly. The first full-length collection (unless there’s something else I’ve missed) since the publication of How Much? New and Selected Poems (Beacon NY: NYQ Books, 2022) [see my review of such here], Glop: Poems presents itself in three titled clusters of shorter poems—“Searching,” “Headlines” and “Poetic Economy”—Sala’s is an approach to narrative lyric oddities and the surreal that connect his work to the work of other contemporary poets such as American poet Ron Padgett and Canadian poet Stuart Ross, akin to a particular flavour from within the New York School. “I know where I’m going / when I walk with a zombie.” begins the short poem “In the Key of ‘I’.” “Once I was a male war bride / now I am an idiot, walking / through an ice storm.” With poems for or after Kenneth Koch and M.S. Merwin, and further referencing Huckleberry Hound, Marianne Moore, Charles Darwin, Vallejo, William Bronk, Auden, Joy Division, Larry Rivers, Frank O’Hara, Blade Runner and the Fantastic Four, Sala writes to and through his literary heroes and pop culture icons, individuals both real and invented that figure heavy across his imagination. His poems are populated, set as responses to his immediate world, one that lays heavy in books and other media. “the dead stay that way / only momentarily,” begins the poem “Football World Reacts to Famous Coach Getting Fired,” “soon they command / the attention of suitors // a married corpse / is a born-again value // those under the whip / of the resurrected boss / scoff at the rumor / of his demise // they can feel his new life — / he takes it out of their hides [.]”

The key to Sala’s poems is almost one of perspective, of perception; offering poems-as-little-essays that each work against any kind of expectation, but also each work toward a kind of narrative inevitability. Once the poem lands at the end, the distance travelled makes complete internal sense, even if one could never have imagined the ending from the beginning. “What’s the opposite of a still life?” he asks, to open the poem “Smokin’.” “Maybe the Museum of Television and Radio / where I’m watching old commercials / for cigarettes. These elaborate plugs / look like ads for psychedelic drugs. / A woman lights up and her yard / becomes a blooming meadow. She’s pleased: / above her brain are budding trees.” Where might this poem finally land, you ask? His poems are inquisitive and quietly joyful, offering poem-bursts not always short but certainly immediate, composing a layering of lines that almost overwhelm at times, piling observational lick upon observational lick like an old pro, wildly inventive and intelligent, forever fiercely young at heart.

Bladeless Fan

The breeze propels itself
as all things do
from out of the void. 

In this case an oval —
a form that recalls
the oblong box
of Poe’s story. 

But instead of a corpse
the oblong fan
registers the absence
of any body
or any blade
offering instead
a zero —
that breather
between positive and negative. 

A moment of
the new
from which
a cool wind blows.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Robert Krut

Robert Krut’s latest book is Oh Oblivion, was released on October 15, 2025 and available here.  He is also the author of Watch Me Trick Ghosts (Codhill Press, 2021), The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (recipient of the Codhill Poetry Award, 2019), This Is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013), and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox, 2009).  He teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Writing Program and College of Creative Studies, and lives in Los Angeles.  More information can be found at www.robert-krut.com.  

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Like a lot of writers, I suspect, I was carrying around that first book for a while. Over the course of years, I would edit, revise, re-order, re-title, set aside, return to, and send out over and over again.  When I finally got it into true “book shape,” I was relieved, and happy, to have someone interested in putting it out.  So, in terms of “changing my life,” that vote of confidence was simply something I just really appreciated, and probably needed.  Also, it was simply a relief to set that manuscript, those poems, down, and begin to truly begin work on the next collection.  I felt free and energized.

 

As for how the most recent work compares to the previous, I feel like each book, while rooted in one world, always has a poem or two with an eye on the next—whether I realize it or not at the time.  So, there is always something of bridge between them, albeit a small one that maybe only I can sense. 

 

For each book, I have a sort of visualization in my mind of where I am standing when I read the poems, and that feels different for each collection.  One book will feel like I’m in a small nook inside our house, another will feel like I am pulled over on the highway, and another will feel like I’m standing on the moon. 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
 

There’s a pretty straight line from becoming obsessed with Bob Dylan in high school, reading the back of his old album covers with their rambling poem/notes, and discovering Allen Ginsberg from there.  Once I read “Howl,” that was it—I was all in.  And while the Beats are a very specific school/style, the excitement I felt toward them fueled my interest in all forms/eras.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

First drafts of poems tend to come out like a huge lump of word-clay, relatively quickly.  Then, the process of shaping them into actual poems takes a while—sometimes, if I’m lucky, as short as a week, and sometimes, months.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I’m always amazed by people who have a defined “book concept” from the get-go—at some point, I’d love to try that, but for me, it’s usually more of writing and writing until I hit a sort of critical mass of poems and step back to realize “this is where the book is headed,” thematically, stylistically, etc.  At that point, the realization of where the manuscript wants to go acts as a sort of spark to move to the end. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I really enjoy readings--there is always a sort of energy surge that fuels more writing. Also, doing readings is frequently productive in that I often read poems differently than I initially approached them on the page, so it can be helpful to find that merging moment of idea, content, rhythm, and intent.  That’s why, even though it is nerve-wracking, I like reading brand new poems at events as it can really affect the revision process.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I never know what the questions are at the start of a cycle of writing poems.  I tend to start writing, and somewhere along the line, the questions the poems are trying to answer become clearer, and at that point, the larger project starts to come into focus.  At risk of sounding melodramatic, it’s like entering a cave and feeling around for the walls and direction, and the farther I walk, I see a little crack in the surface with a sliver of light, and then maybe there’s a torch leaning against the wall, and then I’m in a room full of candles. 

 

As far as the current questions, it is a constantly evolving set of them.  There are the “Eternal-with-a-capital-E” questions, but then there are, obviously, questions that come with these horrifying times we’re in, as well.  I think we all try our best to address those, and there are as many ways to answer as there are writers.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I believe writing, simply creating art, is the role, regardless of the size of your audience or how far it echoes out into culture at large.  Putting it poems out into the world is, in itself, a positive gesture.  There are other roles connected to that, of course--being a member of the literary community (how can I support and promote other writers?), and then being a writing citizen of your city, country, and world (how can my writing respond to what I see around me, and possibly even be useful?).  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I love working with an editor, or short of that formal designation, someone who can give you honest (sometimes blunt) feedback.  I don’t want to write in a bubble of my own making. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Paraphrasing from years of advice: Read everything; read people who don’t write like you; cut, cut, cut; get over yourself; give yourself the freedom to change your mind; let people know when you love their work or what they’ve done for you as a writer. 

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

The routine changes and morphs throughout the year(s), but typically, I try to start something right before bed at night—a few lines, maybe an entire draft, and then the next morning, take that and work on it as a poem.  As for how a typical day begins: start the coffee, stretch a bit while that brews, sit down to write for a while with that cup of coffee, try to not get distracted online, and when I feel like I’ve written to an exhale point, put on my glasses and then start school work, emails, and all of that.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
 

There tend to be two main places I go to when feeling stalled out.  The first is the oldest advice we tend to get, which is to read.  For me, that means reading people who write entirely different kinds of poems than me.  I know the style I write in already, so when I’ve hit a block, I don’t need to read other poems that exist in that same universe/point-of-view/perspective.  I like reading books that are going to shake me up, get me excited, and show me things I’ve haven’t tried.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to try to write like those books, but instead, they rattle me out of being stagnant and get me excited about writing. 

 

The other move I like to make is to turn to friends who work in any of the arts.  For this new book, I was particularly lucky because I was in touch with two artist friends—one photographer and one painter—who were interested in collaborating.  T. Chick McClure, an incredible photographer, sent me some of his work which led to a handful of poems, and Linda Saccoccio, a wonderful painter, passed along a number of pieces which either sparked wholly new poems or helped me complete existing drafts.  These connections developed right when I needed a boost, and made a real impact on the writing. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
 

Home (growing up, New Jersey): pizza fresh out of the oven at DiMola’s Pizzeria on route 22 in North Plainfield, NJ; home (current, Los Angeles): sizzling onions and peppers on a hot dog cart outside of the Hollywood Bowl after a show. 

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Yes, absolutely, other art forms play a major role in sparking ideas, keeping poems moving, and even forming manuscripts.  For the new book, I had two big influences outside of poetry-specific ones.  The first was David Lynch’s somewhat-recent Twin Peaks revival season, specifically the Purple Sea that appeared in episode 3.  When I started picturing this latest group of poems, I kept feeling like I was standing in those particular scenes, and they helped me move forward.  The other big influence was Lou Reed’s The Blue Mask—even more than the lyrics, which obviously he is known for, the music on that album is the sound I hear when I read these new poems.  Perhaps these are two clichéd, or obvious, references for a writer of a certain age, but they still move me to no end.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
 

That list is so long, so I’ll focus on two people who were important as I worked on the new book.  My mentor from grad school, Norman Dubie, passed away in 2023, and his poems, and advice, were running through my head quite a bit as I worked on this new collection.  This will be the first time I’ve published a book and won’t be able to send him a copy, which was not lost on me as I remembered so much of advice working on new poems.  While studying with Norman, he introduced me to the poetry of his friend Michael Burkard, who wrote books that changed my way of viewing, appreciating, and ultimately writing, poetry.  Burkard also passed away recently—I never had a chance to meet him, but his influence is immeasurable. 

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
 

Write a half-hour network TV comedy.  

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

DJ.  I know this is a rare job position these days, but sitting in a room playing music all day sounds like a dream.  More and more placing are starting to use AI DJs—I could make my stand as a human being with records, fighting the machine. 

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

To be honest, I don’t know that something else was ever really a question.  I just starting writing, and never stopped.  

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I just finished Rivka Clifton’s Muzzle, which I loved—I am such a fan of her work, so I was looking forward to the collection, and it was fantastic.  I also really enjoyed Sara Mae’s chapbook Phantasmagossip, which came out as part of YesYes Books Vinyl 45 series—that series always publishes incredible collections, and I absolutely loved this one.  And this may be cheating, since I’ve read it many times before, but I just re-read Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars, as I was preparing the reading list for my Fall classes—every single time I read it, I am floored.

 

Movie-wise, I finally saw Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, and I could not have loved it more.  It immediately shot into my top five all-time favorites.

19 - What are you currently working on?
 

In an effort to clear my head for these questions, I was just outside to trim the rose bushes.  So I guess, the garden?

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Rachel Blau DuPlessis is a poet, scholar, critic, and collagist. Her work includes the notable long poem Drafts (1986-2012), related historical-serial books such as Daykeeping (2023), and collage poems. Her latest is The Complete Drafts (2025), published by Coffee House Press. As a poet-critic she has written extensively on gender, modern and contemporary poetry, and both feminist and objectivist poetics, with special attention to H.D., Mina Loy, Lorine Niedecker, Barbara Guest, and George Oppen.

1 - How did your first book change your  life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

            My  first book--done in a purist mode, tending to minimalism, a realist and a feminist-mythic and lyric mode --was written out of and inside of a generally Objectivist poetics that was at that moment becoming resurgent. The book was Wells (New York:  Montemora, 1980). One of four books published as a “Supplement” to the periodical Montemora, edited by Eliot Weinberger, the journal was characterized as elegant, intent, sophisticated in its literaryness. The editor sought  European, Latin American, and United States contributors. This “Supplement” enterprise published Gustaf Sobin, Mary Oppen’s poetry, a first work by Mark Kirschen, and myself.  As a first book, it helped me declare I was a writer of poetry, come what may.

            My most recent poetry book, Drafts, in two volumes (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2025) joins the modern and contemporary long poem with its ode-ic and serial works in 114/115 cantos. The long work was written between 1986 and 2012, and became an excessive and wide-ranging work of poetic scope, cultural and historical commentary within an ethical aesthetics. It has been my central poetic project from the moment it showed its potential and was variously published (in many periodicals, by Salt Publishing in England, and one set by Wesleyan another by Chax Press in the U.S, during the generally twenty-five years during which I wrote it, before I closed it in 2012.  Book-length selections have been translated into French, Italian, and Russian; and individual works into Spanish, Portuguese , and German, with a book-length work expected in Spanish. Canto-length works from this long poem have been anthologized, often in collections including the words innovative, experimental, or conceptual in the titles.  The project led me to having something like an Objectivist-Projectivist poetics, committed to working out the contradictions of those position. The Complete Drafts as an unusually compelling and varied work of summation, explores topics personal, historical, and ethical with a striking array of genres and tonal varieties. This poetry tries to manifest my well known interest in a gender-subtle attitude and a  lucidity and commitment to social poetics.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

            As I child, I was read to a good deal from both poetry and fiction. As an adolescent, I picked up one of Louis Untermeyer’s anthologies of modern poetry. Between A.A Milne and Wallace Stevens, I was hooked.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

            Well, from 1986, I had a particular writing project. Because individual Drafts are about small chapbook size, I will use those to answer that spirit of your question. Initial writing (of one work, one Draft)  may come quickly, yet I am generally a slow writer, very committed to revision, but also to the heuristic process of “making,”  following where the poem might lead me, while at the same time that I am both responding to it, and pushing and pulling it. The individual drafts of Drafts took a while to get their final shape—whether that shape was an emotional trajectory, a rhythm of understanding, a serial examination,  or an arousal to awe. The sound of the works in Drafts varies, because I have multiple goals: such as reacting to events, collecting soundings in the news, pursuing an investigation, creating  an experience. Many works of Drafts are like poetic-essays; many write to a horizon infused with my homage to and resistance to various modernisms. In a certain way these works as a whole take poetry is a mode of expressive research into cultures (and sometimes specific moments of histories).

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

            I have done both. Once I began my long poem in 1986 after I published my second book, called Tabula Rosa  (Elmwood, CT:  Potes & Poets Press, 1987), shorter writing was incorporated into a given work of making one Draft. I did not habitually craft or work through the possible shape of a given insight into a shorter poem but let shorter materials fuse and connect into longer forays. Once any single Draft started, materials often coagulated or were written with that Draft in mind. I did use citations and current realities as part of what I found as material; I also have a commitment to the literature of the past as I want to resee it.

            After the whole long poem was declared closed in 2012, subsequently I wrote several shorter books, some as collage work, but one project presented itself in several books together beginning in work published in 2015. This set of short books emerged one after another as if in chapters about my particular experiences and observations of the (now) twenty-first  century, particularly uneasy ones in the changed, authoritarian  United States. That six book group I now see under the rubric (title?) of Traces, with Days.  This set of works are (in reverse chronological order) Daykeeping. Chicago: Selva Oscura, 2023; Poetic Realism. Buffalo: BlazeVOX, 2021; Late Work. NY: Black Square Editions, 2020; Around the Day in 80 Worlds. Buffalo: BlazeVOX, 2018; Days and Works. Boise: Idaho: Ahsahta Press, 2017; and Graphic Novella. West Lima, Wisconsin: Xexoxial Editions, 2015. (the last one a college and text work.)   I am currently completing this set of works, with a work conceived of as another shorter book, called Blazes, in the mode of socio-aesthetic saturation in contemporary histories taking soundings in the sense of time that I have. .

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

            I love giving readings, particularly of my longer poems, since they have a logic through the voice. The author’s presence does not hold the poems together, but they can be dramatized through my voice, with clear readings of the syntax as a certain’s poem’s rhythmic disclosure.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

            One concern got articulated in the first essay in  my second book of gender and poetics : Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.) I  think the work of modernity is incomplete for many people (because of intolerance, compromised literacy, badly-adjudicated justice, uneven distribution, despoiling economies) and that literary writing now has a responsibility to point out that incomplete modernity (given some of its promises and even premises). Hence I say  that with my poetry, I’m trying to begin real modernisms all over again.  In the essay, I say I want to approach “power and hegemony” with (among others) the tools of a “feminism of critique,” that is, with critical insights, empathy, claims of equity, and resistance where necessary. With the critical vocabulary and its sources in multiple groups, I have felt that a “re-vision” and rectification of our global disasters  would necessitate the multiple, forceful, and polyvocal invention of a new culture” –might we say an inclusive, lively, and fairer one. At the same time, I do not for myself desire a hectoring or tendentious voice, although well-deployed polemic can have great virtues. The poetry I write does not pretend “answers,” it wants to see and register the world we know and that we want to question. I am more interested in “it” (the world and its languages and situations) than I am in “I”myself  alone as an single particular, expressing feelings and pasts without any context or sense of what histories formed the self (and selves) of my poems.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
  
          Aside from my comments above, I appreciate in many ways the implications of “a poetics of critique.” With that analytic-poetic acumen, I’d want sincerity, a poetry of observed accuracy, language-intelligence, and of necessity..  I also deeply admire Joan Retallack’s phrase and sense of purpose in “the poethical wager.” I also do not think poetry need be solemn, but rather witty and playful, filled with the joys and twists of languages and dictions, because it is serious.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

            I have learned a good deal from good suggestions and a critical eye from others on my work.Those would be most often from reader’s reports through editors of my prose. I have had almost no poetry editors, but  I was lucky enough to have George Oppen’s intrasigent eye on my very early work.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

            When I had postponed writing too many times. I would say to others,”don’t postpone. If you need to do a work now, do it now!! Things do not keep indefinitely, and you can lose their impetus.”

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?   

            Nothing is”easy”; you are working in different zones of address. But I have definitely done both with pleasure. For ease of identification for others, I  sometimes call my poems “poem-essays,” because of their tonal variety (heteroglossia), and topical change-ups (collage). A person might choose to write, or somehow be chosen by these genres. You put your all into either, but a slightly different mix of that “all.” Because I have done both,  I’d also distinguish them  from scholarly essays and books (which I have also written  with serious interest ); this is both an intriguing question and a longer term query—more than I can comment on here. First off, a work of scholarship for me is research-based at some point, might involve pertinent close readings that are essential to a chapter’s argument, and, without pretending you are the only decent critic in the world , such a genre presents a serious and efficient argument, often but not crucially to a community of professionals of which you are part. That set of commitments has degrees of difference from both essay and poetry.

               Both essays and poetry differ from this somewhat idealized model of scholarship in my field (poetry/literature). In both you have to be called in a different way to write either, often in both by a very compelled sense of listeners, a community into which you are talking, and to a self as writing voice that compells you to say just this. Risk is paramount. Compulsion and desire distinguish these modes. For scholarship, one has keen external standards that are mostly in play. For essays and poetry, there is a keen and irreducable sense of internal necessity that makes you stick to. with, and by a given work at a different level of loyalty to your vision of it. The degree of sheer drivenness and the deep need to work on the shape and tonalities of poems and essays are certainly part of the appeal for me.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? 

            In my professional life, it was quite hard for me to compartmentalize. A writing routine has been what I could manage in the time available.That seems to be true even after retirement.

How does a typical day (for you) begin? 

            I wish I had a typical scheme I could give you. Days differ drastically throughout one’s life.

I was a professor in a university. My teaching schedule changed semester to semester. I graded student work as part of my job. I saw students, often accounting for their schedules. I prepared (or over-prepared) my classes (literature, creative writing women’s studies, “Western humanities”) and had original syllabi to draw up sometimes several time a year. I had profession responsibilities inside and outside the university (editorial, administrative).. Schematizing all this, plus being married and a mother—and a person, and a poet—I kind of wonder how everything did happen.  My only answer is I didn’t watch TV.

I will say one thing, I used to revise Drafts on my commute by train. The half hour or forty minutes meant I would whip out a current poem and read it and listen to it and revise it during that private time in a public space.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

            Patience, doing something else, and giving the stalled work a week or a month off; and often reading something-- a poem in a different language than English, or a writer opposite from my mode, or a work reminding me of what I am trying .

13 - What  fragrance reminds you of home?  

            Of my home? Of the home I grew up in? Mine—spices I like to cook with; of my childhood home, maybe tea and buttered toast.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

            All on your list—arts and sciences—(science and math ideas  through NY Times science pages and general-audience books ) All , definitely, consistently, rigorously valued and pursued during all my active years  (in concerts, museum and gallery attendance, some friends in those fields). I sometimes understand my experience making my long pom as creating a “sculptual” shaping. Big chunks of matter are made by me brought into, melded into one item to experience. I therefore value the different-from-literary insights of other forms and the shaping each accomplishes to reach their total, completed shapes.  To answer this question, I would also include much foreign travel (much more than most people I know) and even  the chance to experience living in places other than my actual citizenship for months at a time.  

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

             George Oppen, Robin Blaser, Virginia Woolf, and  many contemporaries as serious companions with true writing grit and sometimes with large-scale  projects. Their names vary over lifetimes of reading and teaching.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

            Have had piano lessons or cello lesson early enough in my life so I could have played an instrument decently. Have the stamina to take a very big hike. You’ve cast the question as “what do you still want to do.” That’s not where I am temporally.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be?  

            Medical doctor.

Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

            Since I have had a negligible income from my poetry, essays, reviews, readings and appearances, reader’s reports for presses, etc. . ., I always had to have an occupation in another profession. What i somehow choose was my a definite interest, and that is “what I did” (I didn’t “end up” doing it—I wanted to do it!) I picked a profession near to writer, incorporating writing  (that is, being a literature professor), but it was a more regularly structured profession than only writing. Hence I could count on its income and benefits along with other institutional advantages, like good library access and some very intriguing.students and colleagues.I don’t think I could have survived the market as a high-end or free-lance journalist, or as an editor Plus, I thought that women should choose  (if possible) to have an income they called their own, one that a person could actually live on, so tht marriage was a choice, not done for access to an income.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

            That’s the mode my creativity took, and that path was more clearly available and valued than others to people who had an influence on me; writing also  appealed to my own curiosity.  I might also answer with Robert Creeley’s summary remark, “I’m driven to write poems.”

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

            Not sure I can formulate a response to this. I like lots of creative works for what they say, how they say it, and what they give me.

20 - What are you currently working on?)

            The book called Blazes that I mentioned already. And f I am lucky, a book of essays in poetics and poetry called Difficult Bliss. Which is exactly what this literary and scholarly career has been.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;