Keyhole Magazine

Andrew Zornoza is the author of the photo-prose novel, Where I Stay. Born in Houston, Texas, his fiction and essays have appeared in magazines such as Gastronomica, Sleepingfish, Confrontation, Porcupine Literary Arts, CapGun, and Matter Magazine, among others. He has taught at The New School University, Gotham Writers' Workshop, and the ASA Institute.

The following interview was conducted using Google docs between September 17, 2009 and November 14, 2009. The photos and captions that appear here were cut from the final draft of Where I Stay, but are no less exemplary.

1.
On Book Reviews

I can't believe someone wanted $500 for this! This old Volkswagen looks filled with sheetrock and plywood, but it isn't empty. A child is sleeping inside it. There's actually a cleared space on the left-hand side floor. He left behind a box of crayons, a ratty old pillow, a rainbow colored crocheted blanket with leaves stuck in the stitches, some Power Rangers.

MOLLY GAUDRY: Hi Andrew. Thanks for agreeing to be a part of the Writers Respond family. Your book, Where I Stay, has earned some impressive praise. At HTMLGiant, Blake Butler calls this a "refreshing" and "unforgettable" work. Cynthia Reeser at NewPages invokes the grad-school holy trinity when she says, "The movement of people and lives; chance meetings between strangers destined never to cross paths again; moments that can never be recreated; the uncertainty of people, place, relationships—all collide across culture and class, gender, and race to form an anthem of displacement." Marc Shuster at Small Press Reviews calls it "a hybrid of textual and visual arts." And I could go on and on. Tell us, though, is there anything that the critics haven't quite nailed? Something they've missed? Anything you'd like to share about Where I Stay right off the bat?

ANDREW ZORNOZA: Yes, the reviews have been good, and I'm glad to hear it. Though (and I've been clearly and heavily advised to not say this), I wouldn't mind a bad one or two. It seems as if there is a rule in much of the new criticism: you don't give bad reviews, you just review books you like. I'm not a critic, but this seems a disservice to the literary community. Reviewers should not be promoters, that's the publisher's job. I appreciate where it's coming from; there's so little money going around, why would you want to hurt another starving writer? Critics shape and paint the literary landscape surrounding the monuments. Right now there's a lot of pastels and petunias and sunrises in that landscape, there's a lot of gushing praise and summarizing. It's usually one or the other. I can't count how many New York Times reviews I've read where I've come away thinking: the book sounded good in the beginning but now I feel no need to read it. The reviewer has rewritten it for me and I've taken the journey already. Pretentious drivel. That's how I'd like to see a review of my book start.

MG: Have you ever purchased a book as a result of reading a fantastic review? If so, did it live up to the hype?

AZ: I bought Robert Lowell's "Collected Poems" because of William Pritchard's review. It's a very large book—I use it to prop open the sliding back door. What I learned there . . . is never to buy the collected works of anybody. Those books are impossible to take around town and have covers you don't want to be seen with, even inside the house. "Collected Poems" is significantly less sexy than "Lord Weary's Castle."

MG: When it comes to book reviewers, who do you love (or love to hate)?

AZ: I liked David Itzkoff's old "Across The Universe" Column in the NY Times. I miss that very much. I try to read whatever Michael Wood puts out, he had a great essay recently on meandering, broken, interminable books. The Last Night of All The Unfinishable Work as a Genre was the title of that one. Newsweek's David Gates does what I like best, he gets to the heart of why you might read a book, what pleasure is in it. He wrote a superb piece on re-reading recently and I appreciated his pessimism with Salman Rushdie's new book (a snippet from that: And sure enough, that’s where he began to lose me. . . . ). Out on the internet, my favorite critic, by far, is Joanne McNeil of "Tomorrow Museum." And Will Schofield. He's not a critic, more of a curator, but Will's "Journey Around My Skull," is the other website I check frequently. I hope someone is archiving his work.

2.
On Labels

It may not look like it, but there's a space between the bottom second and third haystacks. Everyone should sleep on a haystack before they grow up. Or after, it doesn't matter much.

MG: How would you classify Where I Stay? I saw online that someone called it a "photo-prose novel." Do you agree with such a label, or do you resist labeling?

AZ: It's as good a label as any. I took the photographs and wrote the prose. Some of the photographs we had to pull because of copyright issues. Some of the subjects were unhappy, desperate, potentially litigious people, so I had to remove their images. Some, I couldn't muster up the courage to call on the telephone.

MG: Are you a trained photographer? Did you develop the film yourself? Why photographs?

AZ: I developed some of the film and printed most of the black and white shots. Those, on old Ilford fiber based paper that is now curling and decomposing. A few are scans from contact sheets because the negatives were lost or irreparably damaged. I am not a trained photographer. I did spend some time, long ago, with Emmet Gowin. I learned a tremendous amount from him. At his level, photography is a craft, a process, and a relationship with a very tactile (not visual) world. Capturing a moment in time is only a small part of the story he tells. There is always an element of voyeurism in photography, but Emmet was so intimately connected to the complicated relationship between chemicals and fiber, light and silver, shade and tinting, that his technical aesthetics broke through to a higher level of empathy. It's difficult to explain, but once you put a frame around something it creates a conflict—an exploitative and, ultimately, prosaic, fictive wall. Even if that frame is simply the front and back covers of a book. Emmet taught me you can fight the perils of this by just caring more than anyone else.

Gabriele Basilico and Robert Polidori, Bryan Schutmaat (who did my cover) and Gregory Crewdson are the photographers I follow. And Hiroshi Sugimoto. Sugimoto takes these large-format photos of anonymous swaths of seas and oceans. They are very moving to me. Sugimoto has said that a lo-fi aesthetic is essential to art. I don't know if there's such a thing as hi-fi writing (or lo-fi) but I understand what he's saying when I look at his photographs.

MG: Tell us about the process of writing (maybe even first just conceiving of) this book.

AZ: It took me several years to think of the book in a way that didn't make me cringe. Early on, I had scrubbed out, erased, the narrator from the story. Losing yourself, that's part of his piece in time, that's also part of the story I'm trying to create for the reader. Hitchhiking, language, imagination and reality, memory, past and present and future, heroin: all these shapes were dancing behind me in the service of dissolution of self and a certain rhythm. 1, 2 and 3. 1, 2 and 3. Sort of the old synthesis/antithesis=thesis. Or, more accurately, image/symbol=meaning. Do you know Schrödinger's cat? I just put a human being in Schrödinger's box and called the box Wyoming. But then the story was too cold, collapsed, 2-dimensional. Too unobserved. I began working with the photographs. And, mentally, it was like pulling up the top of this collapsible box, instantly it became a three dimensional space again and I was able to work with feelings, real life.

I've been obsessed for a while now, stuck . . . the question we've all been asking for quite some time is, "Who am I?" I'm not sure that the more appropriate question now isn't, "Where am I?"

MG: That's a really good question, actually. Where are you?

AZ: I'm in a basement under West 13th Street in New York City. There is a power outlet down here.


MG: Wow, I was completely unprepared for this answer. What's it like down there? Or, why are you there?

AZ: I am hiding from Ras the Destroyer.

MG: Does this mean you live in NY?

AZ: Brooklyn and Paris are where I feel the most at home. Also certain parts of Wyoming. I try to avoid venturing north of 14th street in any of those places.

MG: Do you lead a transient lifestyle?

AZ: Well, now I am in Newport News, Virginia, sitting on the seat of a discarded Soloflex. So, I suppose, yes, I do.

MG: What does travel mean to you?

AZ: The only time I don't feel that I am traveling is when I am with the ones I love. Have you read Wayne Koestenbaum's Hotel Theory? I feel the same way about travel as he thinks about hotels. . . .

3.
On Tarpaulin Sky Press

It's amazing how much Americana is leaning slightly to one side. Old bicycles, barns, coca-cola signs--they're never quite straight. Anyway, I wasn't planning on sleeping in this one at all. It's outside a very nice house in rural Virginia. My in-laws house, actually.

MG: Tell us a little about Tarpaulin Sky Press and how you came to publish this book with them. I should add that they've done an amazing job with the design, and the photographs look great. My understanding, when it comes to photographs, especially black and white, is that they are very difficult to reproduce. How did you submit this manuscript?

AZ: Yes, Christian Peet, the editor over at Tarpaulin Sky, did miraculous things to get this book in shape. He's an incredible designer and if I had a wish, I'd wish that any and all of my author friends would get a chance to work with him. I submitted the manuscript in a very similar form to what was printed, just exponentially more primitively—if you took the book now, photocopied it eight times, put some pages in the wrong way, left out some pertinent sections. . . .

MG: How long did it take to transform Where I Stay from a manuscript into the object that is available for purchase now?

AZ: About a year and a half.

MG: Why did you submit to TSP?

AZ: A friend of mine, Alex Carnevale, suggested I do so. Also, I had read Jenny Boully's work the year before. I was more than happy to share space in a catalog with her.

MG: Jenny Boully is the reason I keep working on a ms. for Essay Press. It's not much now, but maybe one day I'll be ready to send them something. What about you? What other writers have made you notice a particular press?

AZ: Matthew Derby and Back Bay Books. When I finished Super Flat Times I thought, "Who would publish this?" It was along the lines of how I wanted to work, it was broken, very matte in tone, but punctuated with very visceral ribbons of emotions, and it was a new thing. I don't know Matt, but when my book came out, I snooped around to find his address and sent him a copy. I did the same for Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, Eddie Vedder and Jim Carroll. Well, I didn't hear from the rest. But Matt wrote me a very nice blurb; I still feel very good about that, it means a lot to me.

MG: If TSP had passed, what other presses might you have tried?

AZ: I'm not sure. I took it back from a few places once TSP signed me up. I don't tend to think of the presses, more of the authors. The only press I follow loyally is Archipelago and most of their work is in translation.

4.
On Literary Influences

This is Centralia, an entire town that has caught on fire. The coal that used to run the town's economy has combusted under the surface. It's worth pulling off the main roads. Though, you have to be careful, the residents realized they had a problem when 12 year old Todd Domboski suddenly fell into a sinkhole that opened up in his backyard. The hole went down about 120 feet, but his cousin pulled Todd out just before he plummeted. Great peanut butter shakes at Brennen's Big Chill up the road.

MG: What about Sebald's influence?

AZ: Sebald is one of my favorite authors. But I've never really thought of him as an influence. Hello, My Name Is Erica Jong, by Kathy Acker, was a real influence. Also, The Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard, Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries, Pier Pasolini's Roman Nights,. All those authors are gone now, sadly. And then there's Wittgenstein's Mistress. I guess David Markson has been hinting that he'll be gone any day now. . . .

MG: Really? Sebald, with his images and text, wasn't an influence? As I read, I kept thinking: Which came first, the photographs, the captions, or the text? It was a dizzying experience, which took me straight to Sebald.

AZ: Yes, but it wasn't in my head at all. Sometimes, as an author, I think you have to shut certain voices out. Hemingway, for example. I only read Hemingway when I'm not writing, otherwise it's like having a long-lasting flu of short declarative sentences. "Read all the Faulkner you can get your hands on, and then read all of the Hemingway to clean the Faulkner out of your system." That's what John Gardner said to a young Raymond Carver. I stick with motorcycle magazines and nonfiction when I'm in the middle of something.

MG: Are you at all familiar with the work of John Baldessari? One of my housemates, a video-text artist, brought him up after flipping through Where I Stay.

AZ: Wow. Well, I guess he's got the text/image thing going on. Or did have it going on. And he always seems to leave big blanks spaces for the viewer to put themselves in. He's sillier though, or silly to the point of being extremely interesting. I'm not sure I have a funny bone anywhere in here. Also, I've never been in the Whitney Biennial.

MG: What, or who, are you reading now?

AZ: I'm reading Tatyana Tolstaya's The Slynx. I saw Shelley Jackson reading it late one night on the F train, so the next day I went out and bought it.

MG: What? Are you serious? What other famous literary types have you spotted? And were they all reading?

AZ: I've seen Haruki Murakami in the NYC marathon, but he wasn't reading. He was jogging. There was some joker in a giant green frog costume trying to hand him some water from behind the lines.

5.
On Craft

MG: I read that you have a BA from Princeton and an MFA in Fiction from the New School. Education is clearly important to you. What would you like to say about formal education?

AZ: I was never a good student. I missed far more classes than I attended. I regret that now. I left college for a bit, but managed to graduate in three and a half years. I've been blessed and spoiled by people sticking by me despite myself. There's a scene in Billy Madison when a third grader tells Adam Sandler that he can't wait to get to high school. And Adam Sandler becomes unhinged: "Don't you say that. Don't you ever say that. Stay here. Stay here as long as you can. For the love of God, cherish it. You have to cherish it. . . ." That's how I feel about it, too.

MG: What can you tell us about the New School?

AZ: I teach some in the MFA program at Parson's—in the design and technology program. Parson's is the art and fashion division of the New School. And these kids are fantastic. There is no place I'd rather be. They are courageous, forward-thinking, open, practical. They make me wish I hadn't quit math when I was 14. The combination of living in New York and being caught between being an artist and a designer . . . it's hard to put my finger on, but the New School is very good for people who are between ideals, people mixing forms, technologies, systems of thoughts. . . .

MG: What is the best piece of craft-related advice you ever received? How often do you follow it?

AZ: "Don't let anyone tell you how to write." Cynthia Heimel told me that. She was a columnist for Playboy for seventeen years. I wouldn't want to live with her, but she's a very good advice giver.

MG: Worst craft-related advice?

AZ: "You've got to know all the rules before you can break them."

MG: How do you think you were able, in Where I Stay, to combine so many different narrative threads and make them work in one overall narrative?

AZ: I'm not so sure that I did. Or rather, if they are threads, they are sort of like a ball of yarn with the cardboard center removed. So it might be fun to play with for a bit. But if you wanted, say, to play tennis, you'd be unhappy.

MG: Are you an experimental writer? What do you think about the possible overuse of the term "innovative"?

AZ: I like the word innovative. I don't like the word experimental. To me, the word conjures up failure and the white humped backs of balding scientists. All writing is experimental if you insist on having a reader. Even Judy Blume. But I'm not experimenting. I'm not trying anything new. New has nothing to do with it. I'm just putting the words the way I want to hear them. You may be experimenting by reading it, but me, I'm just trying to make it feel right.

This must be Kansas City, but at that age I should have been living in Houston--we moved a couple times back then. This is me, though I have no way of proving it. I don't have blonde hair anymore. Diagonal shoulder stripes and matching cuffs, look at the quality of that shirt fabric. Where is this jacket now? Is it slowly molding away in New Jersey or spinning away in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Is it torn at the sleeve still? Is someone else wearing it? What is he or she like? There is a science to the study of lost things, but it's impenetrable. Call your mother. That's the solution I've found. Call your mother. 

Blake Butler needs no introduction, which means all I need to say here is that the following interview was conducted using Google Docs between August 10, 2009 and October 18, 2009.

1.
Scorch Atlas

MOLLY GAUDRY: Hi Blake. Thanks for doing this. What would you like to say, right off the bat, about Scorch Atlas?

BLAKE BUTLER: I would like to say that the first thing I wanted to do when I had the book in my hands is eat it. So I am going to. My plan is to eat one page of the book every day or thereabouts until it is all gone. Page by page, with sauces, maybe some candles. A bubble bath. When I am done maybe I will start with a second copy, if I'm still hungry. I am always very hungry. This book had been a long time coming in a way, and so now that it is here I just want it back inside me. I mean that in the best way.

MG: What would it mean to be "back inside" you, not literally?

BB: It would mean that now that it is an object and having removed itself from me it is a picture of my brain and shit and mindstate of that period, if not fully even back then controlled by me. It would mean that having seen the thing come out of me I would have as just as much relationship with it existing if I were (and am) to eat it and have it come through in my flesh, but even then it would shit right back out of me again if not quite resembling what it did the first time. At least then it would be a thing I could fully wipe away. All of this said I am very happy with the object as an object and my relationship with it is the same as it would be with my bed, which is equally to me known and unknown, ruined and not ruined, soft and full of bugs.

MG: There are some videos of you actually eating your book; the first page you eat raw, and the second you drowned in ketchup. I believe you've eaten a few more, though the videos aren't up yet. So far, which pages have been the tastiest? Do you have ideas for future recipes?
BB: The tastiest was the most difficult one, which was the first. The very first page in the book is pure black on both sides, all ink. I didn't think about it when I started with that one. I didn't think about water making it easier either, so choking was involved. It was pretty good to taste that way. Since then I've gotten lazy. I've done some more but yeah, none have made it matching with that first black mass. I'd like to make one with a fruit cocktail and a tube of icing. I'd like to wrap some inside veal saltimboca and maybe one with human flesh fritters (I really do want to try human). When I get serious I'll just take a straight up bite out of the book and break my teeth.

MG: Tell us about the design. It is a beautiful book--perhaps what I consider the most beautiful book on my shelf. Usually, one wouldn't think that things of beauty should be destroyed, but in this case it makes perfect sense. Why?

BB: That's all Zach Dodson. I'm still amazed by what he did. I had high hopes for the way this object would appear when it was finished, and he far exceeded those hopes. I've really never seen another book that looks like this one, and that is a blessing I can only continue to be thankful for. Each page in the book has a unique texture to it, handmade and scanned in. I feel grateful that even if the words in the book were shit, one could still sit and stare at this book and see something in it. It's like batting with a quadrupled sized bat.

We wanted to destroy these books because they were designed to look as if they'd suffered through their contents, the rains and bugs and bloated babies and weird fire. It seems interesting that the books themselves appear destroyed in their freshly-printed state, and in going on and destroying them physically, they really take on that aura in full. If bookstores would stock books that were bloated triple sized with slick water and covered in dust and burned some and smelling of rot, they would all be like that, I imagine. I like the feeling of something that's been beat. Some of the books I most remember in my life are ones I snuck wet out of ruined houses. One year when my friend's neighbor's house burned down, there was a bag of books out on the lawn. I fished a picture book out of the pile that had a shot of a nude woman on it. I had never owned a picture of a naked body. The book was covered in bugs and mottled and made mushy. I took it home. I think I hid it underneath some junk deep in my closet, and I would take it out and look at the woman's hair and I would sweat.

MG: Without giving too much away, I love how your DIAGRAM piece functions, spatially, in this collection. This is an odd comparison, but I was reminded of the intercalary chapters in The Grapes of Wrath. I'm not sure I've encountered the structuring device in many other books. What led to that decision? Or, which came first: the DIAGRAM piece or the idea for Scorch Atlas?

BB: The layering of the storms from the DIAGRAM piece actually came about as a design element, thought up by Zach. His idea was to put one of the storms before each story so that the story itself could then be designed to look as if it had suffered through that storm. Though we ended up keeping that idea contained to the paper that the storms appear on, rather than throughout the book, but the effect I think was even more provocative in how it played out as an intermediary for the mood of the whole book. Because of the nature of that piece, as a series of storms that continually worsen in breadth and horror, it really for me added a sense of continuity and gradation that brought the book together that much more as an object than if the storms had appeared as the singular story, as it was in my original manuscript. I am really lucky that I had Zach and Jonathan on this project, as it was ideas like that that really took the book as a whole to a whole new level, beyond what I'd even imagined for it during its becoming.

As for which came first, I didn't really intended to write Scorch Atlas as a book as it was going on. I simply was pounding out these stories, one after another, and only after I'd finished them all, the DIAGRAM one included, did I realize I had a full on manuscript. I think the only story written after I had assembled the book is 'Want for Wish for Nowhere,' which oddly might be my favorite in the book.

MG: I often ask writers to name their own favorite pieces, and many kindly refuse. Why is "Want for Wish for Nowhere" your favorite? And why did you write "oddly"?

BB: Yeah, having a favorite seems hard, and kind of stodgy. I probably change my opinions on how I feel about certain bits regularly, based on the way the mind changes and like if I happen to open the book and be in a bad mood and see it shitty, or find some error in how I'd phrased it, how I'd do it differently now. I kind of don't like reading things in print I've made as I always want to edit them some more, which is less a result of not having edited it fully in the first place, and more of how flesh morphs the more you eat and listen. Then there's the problem of going back and editing something you made a while back and then coming back even later and finding the edits you made ruined the original voice. I like concentrated phases of writing, concise eras: it's got more value to me than the constantly affirmed 'love labor' of writing something over years and years. Why not get a picture of yourself in a moment? You have a lot more time to get old.

I realize none of that answered your question, which points to that favorites are fucked.

MG: Do you have a least favorite from the collection? Why or why not?

BB: Everything I write is my favorite and least favorite. I don't think about it past that. Thinking too hard about one's own writing as a mantle is asking to be shit on in the hair.

MG: I think Matt Bell and I are agreed that "The Gown from Mother's Stomach" is our favorite. Have you received much feedback on this story? I'd be interested to hear some of it, if you'll share.

BB: That tends to be the one I hear the most about, which kind of confuses me, honestly. I shat that story out in a few hours. Actually, I wrote the first sentence down on a scrap while I was asleep once, and found it, and sat down and wrote the first half of the story from it in about 45 minutes. Then that sat on my hard drive for about 4 months, and I came back and added the bit about the bear, then added the second half, about another 45 minutes. Then I edited it a few times. I think people like it because it seems to me the most contained. I'm not sure what else it is about the story that people respond to any more than the others, but I am glad people like it. Maybe it also kind of comments on how sometimes the least amount of work you put into something, the quicker it comes out as it is supposed to be, the more aura it has about it, and the more immediate light, maybe. I don't hate the story, but if I had to go back to the above question, it might be my least favorite now simply because I am a contrarian.

MG: I feel compelled to share with you that I'm teaching Scorch Atlas in a sophomore-level Introduction to Literature course. I've learned that in this setting, as opposed to a creative writing workshop, it is absolutely necessary to facilitate the students' discussion. To this end, I've given them handouts on plot, character, setting, tone, style, etc., and I was really pleased to discover that your book really works alongside these sort of generic questions (e.g. Who is the protagonist? What does s/he want? How does this complicate the plot?). How do you respond to this--the idea that your writing, which I think is so stylistically brilliant, also satisfies, or fits into, these rather traditional constraints? (If the stories didn't do so, I think my students would be absolutely lost. I, and they, are grateful!)

BB: That is nice, that they respond well. I think everything has these elements. Even the most obscurist, language-oriented, symbol-laden text you could conjure would have these things in them, particularly if you are scrounging for them. Story architects itself. This is why I find it amusing when people, as authors, are so concerned about roadmapping these kinds of elements during the creation period, as if it has to be something they set up and intone, like some kind of wizard, instead of just letting it generate itself naturally, out of ideas, the way most days do, in life. I don't understand, or rather, don't buy, the notion that any one person can be so in tune and ahead of every reader that he or she must design and present these elements, however covertly, to their audience. It cheapens the fun, and you can smell it usually a hundred pages away, this kind of furtive bending, implanting. "This story has fake tits!" There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, I'm sure, but I'd rather not know about them. Let the magic be the magic.

MG: One of my academic interests is ecocriticism: the study of literature and the environment. Do you consider Scorch Atlas to have an investment in fate of the natural world? To what extent are the characters responsible for the downfall of their habitat?

BB: Honestly I've never been much of a nature person. I hide inside a lot. The dirt and air confuse me. Maybe I'm a bitch. I like clean pants. More than that, I think I am afraid of water and of mud. I am afraid of being ripped up into something. At the same time, I am fascinated by it. A lot of my natural interaction comes from dreaming: the way that water and mud is embedded in my blood.

I wouldn't say particularly that the characters in Scorch Atlas are 'responsible' for the destruction of their surroundings any more than they are responsible for the destruction of any other element in air. Rot is natural. People are rotting. It breeds itself. It's what comes. You can be as clean and progressive and protective as you want. Still. It does.

2.
The Internet and Year of the Liquidator

MG: What is your relationship to the Internet and what was your introduction to online writing?

BB: My relationship to the internet is when my house's computer started being able to talk to buildings outside of our building I began to masturbate using information that those other places would sent to our house's computer. I am from the BBS land where I would use dial up to make my mother's phoneline interact with adult servers so I could see women remove their clothes. Now the nudity on the internet is so clear you don't need to look at it anymore.

My introduction to online writing was with what I think of as the first wave of strong independent publishing personas, including Eyeshot, Pindeldyboz, Haypenny, the Glut, McSweeney's, and some other places. Part of me misses the days when that community was very small like that and yet seemed larger than it is now, as large as it is now. Without finding that, I might be still using computers to talk to other computers but they would talk about machine languages and databases. Jesus christ.

MG: Do you believe in Internet personas? Or do you think people are as they really are? Who are some of your favorite Internet presences?

BB: I do not believe in internet personas, I believe in personas. I don't think people are what they really are. I do not believe people believe in their personas. I do not believe people are personas. I believe people are a mash of things mostly shit and a little bit of tickle and some candy if they are good people and I guess a little light. My favorite internet presence is Lorf Ben Undwadsensen who lives inside a subnet of Google and delivers the mail with his teeth.

MG: From personal experience I can say that you are very generous with your time. I had stumbled upon an issue of Ninth Letter, read your story "The Gown from Mother's Stomach," loved it, pulled up your blog, sent you fan mail, and you responded! And it was your blog that introduced me to online journals. I read your stories, I stayed at those sites, I read others' stories. A world unfolded. I've always wanted to thank you for that. If not for you, there wouldn't be me. Such a strange thing to say, but I know it's true. Do you feel an obligation toward other writers? Or, why are you so nice?

BB: It's not that I am nice. I am not nice really. I just really do enjoy words, and I get such pleasure out of words that I want to see more words and I want to do what I can to extend the pleasure I receive in the form of words to other people who also have the receptors for that pleasure and who have the same want in them to make words that I do. I get a bigger kick I think out of publishing and hyping other people's work than I do spreading my own. Ultimately though it is about the reflex and the condition and I exist inside that condition more than I exist anywhere else, and so it is very natural for me to breathe and eat inside and around it, it is a thing I could not change if I wanted to. Not nice, a blood obligation. It is nice though maybe that it seems nice because that maybe means that it feels true what I am saying and I am not just a mouth.

MG: Tell us about Year of the Liquidator. I think we're all interested in the long version.

BB: I'd always wanted to start a small book press. It was a matter of inevitablility. I think I get more pleasure out of working with other people's ends than my own, outside the hemisphere of just writing. I was just waiting for the right time. When I found Kristina, I knew immediately her book had to be the beginning. Shane and I had thrown the idea of working together around for a long while, and when I sent him K's manuscript, he had the same reaction: this is the one. So we committed to it, and the commitment pressed the birth. I am really excited about the prospect, and hope that things go smoothly enough that we can do a couple of titles a year. We are approaching it very calmly, and yet with great excitement, as we want it to go exactly right, to be a small, good thing that has an aura, and in the tradition of my favorite small presses: making book objects that might not appear anywhere else.

Not sure yet what we will do after the first book is finished. We're kind of waiting to see how things go, and moving from there. Hopefully one day we can read submissions openly, but for now we're moving one nidge at a time, and there's already so much I want to do. Time is hard.

3.
The Book Deals

MG: It's no secret by now that you've landed yourself a two-book deal with Harper Perennial. How far along are you in these two manuscripts? And do publishing companies often sign deals for unfinished books?

BB: The novel is finished, other than minor tinkering and copy edits, and has been for some time. The deal was initiated around the novel, and the addition of the second book, which came up in discussing the contracts, was sold on a proposal for the idea of the book. I think
that's pretty standard, actually. I've heard of many deals where the second book was on spec. And especially for nonfiction, which is often I think sold on proposal. As for how far along the nonfiction is, I started work on it a couple of weeks ago, and it is coming very fluidly. It's a book I've had in me for a long time. I feel excited for it.

MG: You now have an agent and a major publishing company behind you, which I'm sure includes a publicity department and such--possibly even eventual tour money. Does this relieve you of any burdens? Do you feel you have more time to write?

BB: I haven't gotten too deep into feeling how it feels to be with a major house. So far it's been as good as I could ask. My editor, Cal Morgan, is wicked smart and knows what he's doing. I've felt nothing but encouraged in my vision, as surprising as it might be for such an odd book at a big house. I think Harper Perennial is really interested in pushing boundaries and getting new, interesting books out there. I feel blessed and excited to be a part of that. Still not sure about publicity matters, or touring support, etc., but that's always been a backseat concern for me. I'm just happy to have a wonderful publisher for the books, one that will surely help me get my work to a larger audience, I believe, without compromising its essence in the slightest.

As for having more time to write, I've always had a lot of time. I make it my priority, and my freelance jobs have allowed me a great deal of fluidity. I'm lucky in that regard, that I've been able to maintain such a loose schedule for moneymaking around what I really love. Everyone should look into freelance writing online: there's just so many ways to make a moderate amount of money that clears your work week enough that you can write from home. It's much easier than it seems.

MG: What, if anything, is different?

BB: Well, for one, writing a book that has been already sold feels interesting. I've certainly never done something like that before, and while at first I was afraid it might feel weird having that looming, it's actually been very freeing. I've always worked best with deadlines and schedules, and if anything it really is motivating me even more to be focused and rigorous and push myself to make something wild and good. It's been especially nice in that up until a few months ago I felt like I'd wasted a lot of this year spinning wheels and slightly off-focused. I'm getting more done on the actual work than I have all year. Things feel strong.

MG: Your non-fiction is about insomnia. Is it about your insomnia?

BB: It is about my insomnia, and insomnia in general, and also about obsession, and obsessing, which I believe has been the cause of a lot of my sleep trouble since I was very young. It is also about tunnels and masturbating and weird light and encryption and video games and film and fear.

MG: When did your insomnia begin? Is it constant or does it come and go? Any relationship to your creative output?

BB: It is a thing that has been inside me since before I was born and is still inside me now even though I sleep rather well most nights, this year. It had been unrelenting in the insomaniac form through various periods of my early childhood and especially in my midteens to late twenties, if studded in different places by errors in speech or moving or other brainwaves. It has an influence on creative output in that it is all through me at every moment and when I can control it best I am at my best, and when I can not control it it makes me feeble, but it is always in my flesh and I am always breathing it and without it I would not exist. In all of this I mean insomnia as an understanding more than simply the medical condition of not being able to sleep. I'm pretty deep in the midst of all this thinking right now as I am writing a full length text about the condition.

MG: What can you share about the fiction manuscript?

BB: It's a full length novel in segmented scenes about a family who comes to live inside a new house and finds copies of themselves already there. There is also a black box on their new neighbors' lawn that continues to grow in size. There are strangers who come to the house to visit wearing gloves. I think I thought of it as a novel in a David Lynch kind of mind while I was writing it, though it might feel totally different than that overall. It is also about consumption, young death, sleep action, tunnels, creation, weird light, haunting, disease, and death. It is a book I have been trying to get out of me for years and years now, and feels like the best thing I've ever written. I hope people like it.

4.
Who is Blake Butler?

MG: Take a look around. Describe something about where you are, right now, that you haven't really noticed before.

BB: There are patches of weird sparse hair on the skin below the knuckle of my pointer and middle fingers of both hands, but not on the other fingers or the thumbs. As much as I see my hands, I'd never seen that until you asked. I can almost count the follicles. Is it true that each hair is held into your body by little microscopic insects? Did I make that up or is that common knowledge? Those four fingers are the fingers I type most with. Maybe those insects wrote this book. If not, they should have. I'll say they did.

MG: Tell us about Blake Butler as a kid. And as an adolescent? A high schooler? College boy? And now?

BB: I think I've always been the same person. People too highly rate the idea of mental change. I feel like the melding of an 8 year old and and an 80 year old, in a body of whatever age I am at any time. If I could have changed I probably would have done so by now. I will probably spend the rest of my life saying the same thing. I will get older. I will eat more. Hopefully I will go deaf.

MG: That seems an odd thing to say. You tend to be full of odd things to say. What are some of the oddest things you've ever said? (Maybe not odd to you, but odd to anyone listening in.)

BB: What's the oddest thing I've said. I durno, man. Send me a tape recorder, I'll give you hours of what I say inside my sleep.

MG: Where do you see yourself a year from now? Five years? Twenty-five?

BB: Hopefully I will go deaf. Other than that, I don't see myself anywhere, even tomorrow. I don't mean that morbidly, I mean that I don't know and I don't want to know. If I knew where I was going to be, even if I loved where that was, I would probably do everything I could to make that not occur. Again, I am a contrarian by nature, and yet when mostly around strangers I give in to others' wills. The more I love a person the more mean I am to them often, I fear. A lot of the time I just want every day to be even more exactly the same as every other day than it already feels they are. What am I talking about? I have no idea.

MG: What are you talking about? I have no idea.

BB: Glorbbenbit pu-sis londum difdong, queebibbit andit ressmonblerrib.

MG: Do you have any pets? If not, why not? If so, what do you call them/it?

BB: I'm not good at pets, I get bored, impatient. The same reason I'll likely never have kids. My one true love as a pet is my Margot, a chihuahua, who now lives with my ex-girlfriend who gifted her to me. I miss my Margot.

MG: How about some more favorites? Favorite liquid?

BB: Urine while it's coming out. Coffee in my mouth.

MG: Favorite vowel?

BB: o

MG: Favorite consonant?

BB: b

MG: Favorite air?

BB: Whatever air is inside my mother at any minute.

MG: Favorite human shape?

BB: Pleased

MG: Favorite sound?

BB: No sound

MG: Favorite hue?

BB: Black or fire engine red

MG: Favorite digestable?

BB: Money

MG: Favorite texture?

BB: Beckett

MG: Favorite shelter?

BB: No sound

MG: Favorite "recipe" of "ingredients" [that make up anything]?

BB: Masturbate in the shower until you are about to come then stop. Go wet into the bedroom
and wrap yourself in a bedsheet, constricting just your arms and head. Lay down in the floor for 45 minutes.

MG: Is there a single book you've read more than any other?

BB: I used to read Donald Barthelme's Snow White once a year. So like 8 times of that, but I haven't read it the past couple years. In terms of quantitative time spent with one book in hand it might be Infinite Jest, the book that made me want to work. I have read that book through fully twice and in bits and pieces many times and certain sections of it more times than I have read Snow White in full. In my mind I've been reading the same sentence in the same book for my entire life but it's been a whole life figuring out what that sentence is and I still haven't got it right.

MG: If you could have any combination of three superpowers, what would they be, and why that particular combination?

BB: I would like to cry money; I would like to be able to turn off sound and turn on sound, and make the sound into what I want the sound to be; I would like to be able to shrink people and grow people and throw people in the air largely and touch them and make them laugh. That particularly combination because it's the sounds that just came out of my hands when I did not think at all about the question, which is my greatest respect for the question.

________________

1.
The Featherproof Tour

MOLLY GAUDRY: Hi Amelia, thanks for agreeing to be a part of the Writers Respond family. You might notice that instead of "interview" up there in the title, we have "conversation" instead. Essentially, the Writers Respond interviews and the Writers Respond conversations aim to serve the same purpose: to give writers a chance to talk a bit about their work. But not long ago I realized I preferred the interviews that got a little goofy, the ones that took risks in terms of what "should" or "should not" go into an interview. For instance, Shane Jones shared his favorite sexual position in his interview, and Kyle Beachy, in his interview, admitted he doesn't understand the difference between cupcakes and muffins. To differentiate the serious from the fun, I decided to start an offshoot--a conversation series. The first of the conversations was with Lily Hoang, who, like you, has ties to FC2, and we'll certainly get to that in just second. First, I want to ask you if you would define "interview" and "conversation" differently? And if so, would you rather this be an interview or a conversation?

AMELIA GRAY: Let's get silly as quickly as we can, Molly. Do you remember when you tried to pick a single flower at that gas station in Philadelphia, but you pulled out the whole plant? That was silly. I treasured that. Anyway, they say the best interviews are like conversations. I think we should aspire to do the best we can.

MG: I like how you ask if I remember--as if to imply I might have been so intoxicated (by your presence in Philly, of course) that I could have forgotten. Well, in fact, I had forgotten. Until slowly the details all began to trickle back, many with the help of the photographs in my cell, and those that popped up on the Dollar $tore Reading Tour Twitter page!

AG: The Twitter page that launched a thousand ships. Best to make a scene among friends, I think. That long walk to the cheesesteak place was good for all of us. Don't ever show me on a map how far we actually walked--I want to keep the memory that we were going for forty days and forty nights.

MG: It was more than three miles, I can tell you that much. So, tell us about the tour. What did the tour van smell like?

AG: I will tell a story from the Featherproof tour. We were in New York City, and mostly everyone had gone out to drink more after the reading. Jac and I stayed behind and slept, and I woke up at about six in the morning. Our host was house-sitting and had kindly opted for the couch, so I found myself in this bed in a very bright room with the windows open, and the entire city of New York doing construction below. I got up and stepped over everyone sleeping on the floor and went downstairs. I walked a long way and got lost. I found myself at a scary little nail salon, where I paid a man five dollars to wax my eyebrows while yelling at his wife. I walked back and everyone was still asleep. I had to wake Mary up to let me in. I felt bad about that, but the truth was I wanted to wake everyone up to tell them about the hooked plastic fingers with fake nails at the salon, the back room with a wet vac where I sat on a folding chair and put my face in the man's hands. I wanted to bring my friends coffee and pastries and do their laundry while I told them about how the man's wife showed me the open sores on her arms. Anyway, that van straight up smelled like a butt.

MG: Ha ha. A butt! Wow. (Wait a sec: your host was housesitting? So some poor people left their home in the care of someone who decided to let a bunch of butt-van travelers in?

AG: It's true. By then, though, we were so used to traveling that we didn't leave a trace. There's an efficiency involved when your home is the half-foot radius around your sleeping bag. Ask Shane Jones how fast we got up and left in Albany. It was five in the morning and we did it all in our sleep. The man barely had time to make a pot of coffee.)

MG: Tell me about the eyebrow waxing? Aren't you afraid to have that done? That some weird man will rip off your entire eyebrow?

AG: I usually do it myself, so I know how easy it is, but I ought to have been more afraid of that man. I often find myself in situations like that, where I should have apologized, said I thought that this was a public restroom, wished them a good day on my way out. I'm too stubborn. Plus I figured I'd get a good story.

MG: I love how your answers are perfect little stories within themselves. In fact, your brief recap of that experience is representative of much of your writing--you are a storyteller, and the stories you tell do not need a gazillion words to get the emotion across. I especially like the line (can I call it a line?): "I felt bad about that, but the truth was I wanted to wake everyone up to tell them about the hooked plastic fingers with fake nails at the salon, the back room with a wet vac where I sat on a folding chair and put my face in the man's hands." It's just gorgeous. It's "Amelia Gray" all over. Let me ask: Do you ever pull from real-life events and craft fictions?

AG: Sometimes little elements of real life get into the fiction, but in funny ways. There was a girl covered in seeds in AM/PM, which came from the morning my little eye pillow broke and put a couple of sesame seeds on the bed and I wondered, half-asleep, what would it be like to sleep in a vat of sesame seeds? Would that be nice? Probably it would be slippery.

MG: You know those stress relievers? One of my profs had one and one day it broke, and these tiny little silicon beads (the size of sesame seeds) exploded all over the room. They were soooo slippery. And because they were so slippery we couldn't sweep them up. Basically, for a long time we just had to be really careful how we walked in that room.

AG: How stressful!

MG: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to dive into a swimming pool filled with Jell-O? If so, what flavor?

AG: I've never wondered that. Christ, wouldn't you just sink down to the bottom, helpless? Would it be like quicksand? Maybe I'm thinking of pudding. I'd try it in cherry Jell-O but only if you tried it with me, Molly. And only if we had a crew of emergency medical technicians and lifeguards to haul us out and flush the gelatin from our lungs.

MG: One day, when we have the means to arrange such an idiotic experiment, yes, we will do this. But let's go back just a second: perhaps a few details will make their way into future fictions, but would you ever try and write your New York eyebrow-waxing adventure as a non-fiction? Or is it better to let it exist just as it was--a strange morning in a strange city populated with strange people?

AG: I made a piece of toast while I thought about this: I think I'd have a hard time writing a non-fiction that involved people I know or care about. It occurs to me that I picked one of the few tour stories where I'm walking around by myself. It seems that people like to be thought about and written about, but they don't like to seem strange or uncomfortable, and that's sort of my bread and butter. No pun intended, breakfast.

2.

AM/PM

MG: I just realized we have the same last initial. Looking at "AG" and "MG," I thought, "Aggie and Maggie," and then "Harold and Maude," and then "Benny and Joon." What is your favorite "______ and ______" pairing?

AG: Bonnie and Clyde. I've been getting the facts on Bonnie and Clyde this week.

MG: Good answer. Can you share why you're fact-gathering?

AG: There's no purpose at the moment. I get into fact-gathering. I made the mistake of watching Warren Beatty's Bonnie and Clyde on my computer. I couldn't get through it without researching every little question I had: Is that guy in the background drawn from real life? Did this scene really happen? Where are they buried? What book is Beyoncé reading in the empty swimming pool in the video for 'Bonnie and Clyde '03'? I can really take all the magic out of watching a movie.

MG: Tell us about the John Mayer concert T-shirt. Do you have one? (For those who do not understand this reference, would you provide a little recap?)

AG: I had an Alan Jackson concert T-shirt, which I bought at Goodwill because it looked like his head was floating on the front, and on the back it read DON'T ROCK THE JUKEBOX. It was cool. I don't know where it is now. I might have given it to my sister. It ended up becoming a John Mayer Concert Tee in AM/PM because I have more complicated feelings towards John Mayer and his merchandise: in my mind, the John Mayer Concert Tee looks like one of those Phantom of the Opera shirts kids wear at a performing arts middle school, but instead of the mask, it's John Mayer's face.

MG: What are five things (other than the T) in AM/PM that have some real-life significance for you? Or, hell, fantasy-life significance? Whichever you prefer.

AG: While writing AM/PM, 1) I was drinking a lot of flaxseed oil, 2) I went on a date with a guy whose parents had just survived a plane crash, 3) I had just moved into a place with serious squirrel nesting troubles, 4) My cats had worms, and 5) I observed a gas station setting on fire while I was waiting in line for the pump.

MG: Is there a particular character from AM/PM that you feel most connected to? If yes, who and why? If no, why not?

AG: Not really. One of my goals in writing the book was to create characters that, good or bad, were each an accurate depiction of some believable element of person-hood. In the first draft, nobody had a name. Later I decided to tie them all together under different characters.

MG: How long did it take to write AM/PM, from start to finish?

AG: The generation period was one story in the morning and one at night for two months. Then I spent about a year on and off editing it.

MG: How or why did you decide to publish it with Featherproof?

AG: I was going from of the experience of looking at their books at an AWP three or four years ago. When most of the other tables were offering peppermints and pens, the Featherproof table was giving away their mini-books, and I liked what that meant. Otherwise, I knew precious little about the publishing world when I found them. I got lucky.

MG: Can you tell us about your experience with Featherproof?

AG: Featherproof has this perfect combination of design and story interest. There's nothing finer than working with a couple of people who are sharp at what they do and care a ton about the final product. The stories I hear from people at bigger publishing houses involve editors jumping ship, a total lack of control over design, contract wars. I don't know why anyone would actively wish for something like that to happen for their first book.

MG: Here's a funny (or maybe not) story from last year's AWP: you and I crossed paths in a bar, we were both a bit tanked, we recognized one another, you said you would be at the Featherproof table the next day, and the next day I searched far and wide to find it. Finally, I gave up, returned to the Keyhole table, and asked some folks at nearby tables where in the heck that dang Featherproof table was. Someone pointed, I turned, and there you were, behind me, sitting on the floor. These many months later, was it [AWP] as good for you as it was for me?

AG: Oh, Molly! AWP was good. I got to meet all the people I've worked with for a while. One night I walked alone to the Quickies reading and sat by myself at the bar and just felt excited to be there. This is a good damn time for readers and writers in America. I'm looking forward to Denver.

MG: Tell us about Five Things.

AG: Five Things is a once every-other-monthly reading and music show I put on in Austin with my co-host Stacy Muszynski. We take five objects, images, or ideas, and task five writers with creating a five-minute piece. The idea comes from the Dollar Store Show and Quickies. We just celebrated our first anniversary with a 'Best of Austin' nod. We're thinking of doing a party around the Texas Book Festival, and a writing contest after that.

3.

Museum of the Weird

MG: Let's discuss your forthcoming collection,Museum of the Weird. How long had you been working on the manuscript? Why did you choose to submit it to FC2? What did you do when you learned you won? Details, woman, details!

AG: The oldest story in the collection is about four years old, but I had been fussing with the more-or-less finished manuscript for about a year before I submitted it to the contest. A friend of mine who works in the FC2 office encouraged me to submit. Obviously, the submissions were all anonymous, and my friend didn't know I had even entered until she connected the winning manuscript's assigned number to my name after she got them back from the judge. So, once she found out that I had entered and also had won, she called me and left a cryptic message. I was on a flight from Tucson to Austin and got the voicemail when the plane touched down. I wasn't sure if the good news was that she was pregnant or that the manuscript had won.

MG: Oh wow, we are so at the age where all of our girlfriends call to say they're either getting married or pregnant. Oof. What say you?

AG: God bless girlfriends with babies! There's a special place in heaven reserved for girlfriends that let us say hello to the babies when they're cute and then take them away when they mess themselves. I think of having a baby from a practical standpoint and wonder at the women who write and work and do the motherhood thing at the same time. I can barely keep the litter box clean some days, you know?

MG: Why is it that caring for other living things, people included, and taking care of their excrement is so often synonymous? Anyway, back to Museum of the Weird. If you had to provide the back cover synopsis, how (or what) would it read?

AG: Oh no, I'm horrible at this, I'm an awful pitchman. Here's part of what the FC2 marketing people wrote for me: "A monogrammed cube appears in your town. Your landlord cheats you out of first place in the annual Christmas contest. You need to learn how to love and care for your mate—-a paring knife. These situations and more reveal the wondrous play and surreal humor that make up the stories in Amelia Gray’s stunning" etc.

MG: Do you have a middle name? Why not use it?

AG: Morgan. It's a good one, but if I used it I'd have to write Garden of English Roses or similar.

MG: Amelia Morgan Gray.

AG: Author of The Forbidden Locket.

MG: Okay, I won't ask what would be on the cover of the book. But if it were made into a movie, what would the be on the cover of the DVD case?

AG: Maybe a large birdcage with a man crouched inside. Should it be Adrien Brody crouched inside? Should he be naked? None of this is in the book.

MG: I just totally thought of this cover. Yes? No?

AG:This is exactly what I was thinking of, except the cage must be more ill-fitting. I want the DVD audience to say, "How did naked Adrien Brody get into that cage? He looks uncomfortable." I've got Bender on the brain. She's doing a cool thing with Madras Press.

MG: Goddamn, it seems like every time I turn around someone somewhere is doing something awesome with some press. Thanks for pointing that out! So are you done with the edits for Museum of the Weird? Are you working on anything new?

AG: I'm done! It's weird to have to let it go for a year before it's out. I'm working on a couple new things and mostly returning to old habits, which means starting small, writing a lot of handwritten notes that go nowhere, paragraphs in voice, violent little short-short stories, empty threats, and sprawling openings to novels that are immediately shelved. Nothing has emerged quite yet. I've been lucky to have some little projects, thanks to Drew Burk at Spork and others.

MG: I think this is interesting--your process of getting started. Best-case scenario, what will happen (and how) as a result of these notes and paragraphs?

AG: I'd like very much to write a novel. It is going to take a while and I'll probably end up with eight little chapbooks or a book of sonnets. We can't always get what we want! But if we try sometimes, you know, we get what we need.

4.

Day Jobs, The Golden Girls, and Texas

MG: Do you have a day job?

AG: A couple: one writing job, mostly articles about career training; another writing job, a reading comprehension study guide for fifth graders; and a teaching job, a once-a-week comp class at a community college. None of it offers health insurance, but It's nice, because I don't have to clock in, which means I don't stress out too much when I can't sleep because the theme song to The Golden Girls is stuck in my head and every time I close my eyes it's all, "Thank you for being a friend," on loop, and I want to drive to a retirement home and drop my brain off there. Just say to it, Go, brain. Go find your personal Bea Arthur.

MG: I always thought The Golden Girls would be best watched in the company of a gay man. Not sure why I think this. Is that a weird thing to think? Go ahead, you can say.

AG: Everything's a weird thing to think when it comes to The Golden Girls. For the record, I can imagine you and a man with a nice crew cut sitting on a couch in a dark living room, watching The Golden Girls and eating cheesesteaks. During the opening credits your each reach over and clasp hands. Everyone's sexuality is unclear. Your eyes are brimming with tears. I mean, it's hard not to cry during the opening credits of The Golden Girls, if you're really listening to the lyrics. Who writes "Thank you for being a friend" on a birthday card?

MG: What's Texas like?

AG: You can buy a lot of things crafted in the shape of Texas here. Cheese shaped like Texas, cookies, little iron brands you keep near the grill so when you're grilling meat, you can brand it with the shape of Texas. We drink a beer called Lone Star. Still, I'm not from here, and sometimes I wake up and I have to convince myself I'm really in Texas. It seems like everyone should need a passport to enter or leave the state. Rick Perry is probably working on this. But the weather has been lovely this week; I've had my windows open.

MG: We're just about done with summer here on the east coast. Is it always summer in Texas? Do you have any bad summertime habits that you'll put a stop to? (Me, I'll give up paperback romance novels from the grocery store until next summer.)

AG: Oh man, paperback romance novels are old-school vice. I can't even keep those in the house anymore. It gets chilly here, but never too bad for too long. We had an ice storm in '07 that shut the city down, but that was mostly because nobody had chains for their truck tires. I don't pay for heating, so I'm snug as a bug regardless. I have a bad summertime habit of getting up at noon--that's going to need to come to an end this winter. I want to be back in early mode for spring. There's nothing finer than a spring morning.

5.

Amelia's Picks

MG: Okay, let's have some pick-and-choose fun. Feel free to elaborate, if you like. Thongs or boy shorts?

AG: Tough economic times force honest Americans to scale back on fabric. Patriotism dictates thongs.

MG: Thongs (butt) or thongs (toes)?

AG: Toes toes toes. You can get married in flip-flops out here.

MG: Coffee or tea?

AG: Coffee these days. I've got my eye on those tea packets that bloom underwater, though.

MG: I love those. They are really pretty to watch bloom. Okay, lattes or cappuccinos?

AG: I'm embarrassed to not know the difference. One has more milk, right? I like a good americano.

MG: Cats or dogs?

AG: Either a dog that is in every way like a cat (lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, consistency) or a cat.

MG: Wow.

AG: This is how I feel.

MG: Hardcover or paperback?

AG: Paperback! Better for the bath.

MG: Goodwill or upscale consignment shops?

AG: I'm taking a bag of stuff to Buffalo Exchange today, actually. So, downscale consignment?

MG: Scissors or shears?

AG: Scissors, unless you are pinking.

MG: Saran wrap or tinfoil?

AG: It depends where you're wearing the hat.

MG: [I think I snorted when I read your answer.] Apple juice or tomato juice?

AG: Tomato on an airplane, apple if I'm giving blood.

MG: Favorite freshly juiced-in-a-juicer juice combination? (I like apple and carrot, but the barista where I go likes to make me orange, beet, and ginger, which I guess is supposed to be good for me.)

AG: Those all sound good. I like a nice hibiscus lemonade.

MG: Bottled water or tap water?

AG: Tap, unless you live in Charleston.

MG: So You Think You Can Dance or American Idol?

AG: Ryan Seacrest eats six egg whites a day. He adds one yolk on Fridays.

MG: '80s or '90s?

AG: We went to the work of fixing the time travel machine and this is the best we can do? Let's go farther back and find out what it was like to be primordial sludge.

MG: I bet diving into a Jell-O pool would be something like that. Push pins or staples?

AG: I once knelt on the floor of a cabin during summer camp and a push pin went into my kneecap. What's weird is it didn't hurt. I stapled my finger once and that did hurt. So, pins.

MG: That is weird. I hope that push pin made it into your writing somehow. Pocket folders or manila folders?

AG: LISA FRANK TRAPPER KEEPER

MG: Wide rule or college rule?

AG: I wrote a secret admirer letter to a boy when I was in the fourth grade. Sadly, I was the only nerd who used recycled wide-rule. This was back when recycled paper looked like dirty newsprint. I was discovered.

MG: Wallpaper or paint?

AG: Paint, unless you're outfitting a cozy bar. Then, heirloom damask burgundy velvet on red flocked wallpaper.

MG: Copper or cast iron?

AG: Cast iron. Seasoned cookware is useful and charming.

MG: Cheesecake or quiche?

AG: A good quiche is better and more rare than a good cheesecake. I wonder, should the ideal form be the avatar of the object?

MG: And my favorite, cupcakes or muffins?

AG: Scones, for real. But cupcakes are a
tantalizingly close second.

MG: This is why you're fat or Look at this fucking hipster?

AG: Passive-aggressive notes.

6.

Questions from our Facebook Friends

MG: And let's wrap things up with a few questions from our Facebook friends. (Do we need a backstory? Backstory: I updated my status to read something like, "What would you ask Amelia Gray if you could ask her anything in the whole wide world?" There were immediate responses. John Domini asks: "Based on recent experience, which would you say is cooler: Portland, OR, or Austin, TX?"

AG: It's easier to find a margarita in Austin and easier to find dessert in Portland. Otherwise, besides soil composition, the cities are exactly the same.

MG: Erika Moya wants to know: "What will you be this year for Halloween, or is that a surprise?"

AG: Zombie Vanna White? Sexy James Joyce? The possibilities are limited.

MG: Tim Kerlin says, "Remember when we were swimming at my apartment and those teenagers were making out on the picnic table? Wasn't that funny? Then you and me and Michael did synchronized swimming. That wasn't a question, I guess."

AG: This interview is over!

MG: Randy Cauthen wonders: "What's the fastest land animal?"

AG: A cheetah running inside the third car of the Shanghai Maglev train.

MG: Matt Walker wants to know: "Which room in a house is most conducive to a successful seance?"

AG: The loudest.

MG: John Domini asks another: "Italo Calvino, his SIX MEMOS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, consistency. Did he leave out anything? Or, is there one on which you'd care to expound?"

AG: Timeliness. Timelessness.

Amelia Gray is a writer living in Austin, TX. She is the author of AM/PM, published by Featherproof Books, and Museum of the Weird, due Fall 2010 through Fiction Collective 2. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, DIAGRAM, and Caketrain,among many others. She blogs at ameliagray.com.

Joshua Michael Stewart, poet and editor of Big Toe Review (Where Prose Poems Go To Do Naughty Things), is the author of the chapbooks Ordinary Mysteries (White Heron Press, 2004) and Vintage Gray (Pudding House Press, 2007), as well as a full-length collection, Son of a Minor Key, which is forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books in 2010. I can’t express how grateful I am for the chance to discuss Joshua’s poems—several of which will be included here in full. In the past weeks, I’ve come to appreciate how the speakers in Joshua’s poems consistently bare profound sensitivities; post-abandonment, they ache for human connection, and many share a deep yearning for faith—spiritual, sometimes, but moreover for the kind that just plain keeps a person going in a sort of willful, hopeful trudging along. I have found, in Joshua’s poems, moments of serenity, and I’m hoping that by the end of this conversation you will too.

1.

In Memory of the
Nearness of You

I use the heels of my palms to thrust

open a stubborn window,

causing a book to plop on its side,

slide off the shelf—washed over

by a wave of other books,

then crash into a rose-filled vase

before smacking down on the hardwood

floor. What follows is silence,

like the split second after a mother slaps

her child. But no wailing or pleading here.

We’re given only the quiet, and that inherited

fear that turns the heart to sand

slipping through an hourglass.

We watch the water search with its fingers

the valleys of the room, and allow

our eyes to blur, shards of prisms

gleaming in late afternoon.

I say we the whole time meaning I,

and I look up: eggshell walls

that give and give until I give way

to the revelation that you will not

lean in the doorway smelling of strawberries

and righteousness. The last grains

will trickle out. Pain will not enter this house.

I have all the time in the world

and my heart is a rose is a rose is a rose.

MOLLY GAUDRY: Tell me about this poem—the title, the roses, Stein’s influence, the speaker, and the “you.”

JOSHUA MICHAEL STEWART: As with many of my poems, it started out with a simple image that sets things in motion, allowing the poem to spiral out to whatever the poem wants to become. You know the old saying: the poem writes itself. Which is one of the joys of writing poetry, I’m just as surprised as the reader is. If I sat down and said, “I’m going to write about such and such,” I’d completely go blank. Many influences run through this poem, nods to Bob Hicok and folk singer Dar Williams. The title of course, is taken from the Hoagy Carmichael song, “The Nearness of You.” I often use the titles of Jazz standards for titles of my poems, again, giving a nod to those great composers while also acknowledging William Matthews, who would title many of his poems the same way. I wish I could say this poem isn’t autobiographic, but that would be like when John Berryman claimed he and Henry weren’t the same person. Essentially this poem is about my relationship with my mother, or to be fair, one aspect of it. However, I use “you” in a number of other poems in which it’s not clear who the “you” is. I love that. Depending on how the reader approaches the “you” may lead to many interpretations of the poem. In Jazz there’s this thing called “echoing,” which is when a musician is blowing through an improvised solo he’ll play a few bars of a familiar tune then jump right back into improvising. That is pretty much what I’m doing with the Stein quote, but I guess I’m also saying that despite whatever hardships I may have gone through, the beauty of art has always been something I could count on. Death doesn’t bother me, but the idea of never hearing Sinatra sing “Come Fly with Me” ever again does.

MG: What is the significance of “Come Fly with Me”? I mean, why this particular song and not some other?

JMS: It makes me smile. That song says, “Everything’s gonna be alright, Jack.” But it’s not just that song. It’s that song and every other song Sinatra sang, it’s the duets of Ella and Satchmo, Hitchcock films and the paintings of Edward Hopper. People will come and go, that’s life, but as long as I have art in my life it’s okay.

MG: In this poem, what was the image that set things in motion?

JMS: The first one with the narrator trying to open the stuck window, It’s usually a simple mundane image like that. However, it’s not always the first line. I also have a thing with objects. I’ll pick an object such as an oak leaf or an answering machine and try to see those objects in a new light. I’m a firm believer that poetry is everywhere and in everything.

MG: I’m intrigued by this idea “that poetry is everywhere and in everything.” Do you ever experience writer’s block? Can you pick up any random object and find inspiration?

JMS: I’m plagued with writer’s block. I often go months without writing anything or at least anything good. This is how my typical writing schedule works: stare at blank page. Doodle. Do this for three to five hours, four days a week, for a month. Then out of nowhere, an image or a phrase bleeds out of the pen, and once it hits the page the poem flows out almost whole. Before you ask, yes, I always start my poems with pen and paper. It needs to be organic. I need to feel it in my arm, neck and back muscles. Then once I get it rolling, first stanza, or so, I’ll switch to the computer. I do believe poetry is everywhere, but the drudgery of everyday life makes it hard to see sometimes. It takes effort, but I’m determined to put in the work.

MG: It’s interesting—I read the “you” not as mother but as girlfriend, or wife. Mother changes everything! How do you respond to “girlfriend, or wife”?

JMS: Whatever gets you to connect with the poem and gives you the desire to turn the page to read the next one works for me. Again, that’s why I love using “you” in a poem. Another example of this is my poem “When the Surrealist No Longer Remembers His Dreams.” In this poem, the narrator is walking down a country road with a corpse who is addressed as “you.” The reader may think that the corpse is a former lover or deceased relative, and will read the poem in one way, which is fine with me, but when I tell you that when I wrote it I was thinking that the narrator and corpse, the “I” and “you” were all one person, it totally means something else.

MG: That would seriously alter any person’s reading. Clearly, you enjoy the multiplicity of interpretations. Is this why you write poems and not stories? I think, maybe, that stories leave less room for interpretation—traditionally narrated stories, anyway.

JMS: Well I don’t write stories because I haven’t found the right story to write. I’ve been trying my hand at flash fiction with limited success. It’s far more challenging for me. It’s funny because I love Flash and read it almost more than straight poetry, but I just haven’t been able to break through that wall yet.

MG: Where did the tagline “Where Prose Poems Go To Do Naughty Things” come from?

JMS: My friend and artist Bret Herholz suggested that I add an online store to the site and that the store should be called The Foot Fetish. I think it came from that. I guess this would be a good time to mention that Bret and I are working on a book together. We’re planning on a graphic novel based on a few of my poems. It’s still in the early stages.

2.

Over the River and
Through the Woods

My grandfather threw her out

of a moving car on Route 4

after a Tracy Hepburn movie.

She said this as I sat on her lap,

giddy at the wheel of the blue Nova

while she worked the pedals to K-mart.

*

All she wanted was a baby.

She’d cradle me, watching

her soaps. I sucked her nicotine

fingers until sleep took me.

She wanted a girl, dressed me

in a red dress, ribbons in my hair,

and snapped Polaroids my brother

dangled over my head for years.

*

She took in a pregnant runaway:

free room and board, medical

bills, in exchange for your baby.

The police steered the girl

to the squad car. She clamped

the baby to her chest, inhaling

the smell of his scalp. Grandma

sobbed as Bert and Ernie chirped away.

*

Grandma’s dying, says
the answering

machine, Emphysema.

She wants you to write her eulogy.

She showed me how to cut out snowflakes,

made the best bologna sandwiches,

could skin a squirrel in ten seconds flat.

MG: This poem is so heartfelt. I’ve loved it since I first read it, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reread it. I even taught it in a GED class this past spring. After explaining how this poem functions as the eulogy for the grandmother, that each section is a memory of her, my students began to understand. We spent about an hour on this poem, but by the end of that class I felt that they actually began to appreciate poetry—the deliberate choice of words, lines, images. What would you like to share about this poem? Is it autobiographical?

JMS: Knowing that you taught it in a class fills me with joy, and I have to say I’m honored more to have it taught in a GED class, than let’s say at a university setting. It seems to matter more. This is another autobiographical poem. For years it was my mantra to never to write anything autobiographical. The reason being is that everyone assumes all poems are autobiographical, and that assumption annoys me. It has only been the last few years that I’ve been writing from my own “experience,” which is another concept that I have issues with. What is “experience,” and how is it valued? I’m far more interested in the life of the factory worker or, more importantly, the life lived within the imagination than that of someone who swam with sharks and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro or what have you. What I like about this poem is that every word of it is true. It’s a perfect example of where truth is stranger than fiction.

MG: It wasn’t easy at first, helping them to understand how the words, the lines, were working to tell a story. It was a very literal bunch, and we spent quite a bit of time on each section. “worked the pedals” and “nicotine / fingers” posed particular problems, and trying to figure out who “Bert and Ernie” were was an experience. It was a humbling day for me, realizing that the joy I get from reading isn’t a universal experience. Did this poem actually function, then, as the eulogy? Or did you write this much later? How much distance from an event do you need to be able to write about it?

JMS: I wrote it much later. The actual eulogy was horrible and I guess I wrote this to make up for it. The problem was that I was very close to my grandmother in the first ten years of my life, but then I didn’t see or speak to her for well over ten years. Then one day I receive a phone call saying she passed away and that she requested that I write her eulogy, and oh by the way, can you have it done by tomorrow. I felt like I was writing a eulogy for a complete stranger. In general when writing about my own life, I tend to need quite a bit of distance from the event. Recently I wrote a poem about chasing a ball on a playground. That happened when I was in the second grade. With that said, I’ve been noticing that writing about the present is occurring more often.

MG: You have two chapbooks already published and a full-length on its way. When you look at each of those manuscripts, do you categorize them in terms of where you were when you wrote them, artistically speaking? Maybe another way of putting this is: What are the differences and similarities between the three books?

JMS: They’re similar because many of the poems in the chapbooks are of course in the full-length. Chapbooks are like the singles to the LP. When I sit down to write a poem I have no idea what I’m going to write. Thus, I have no idea of what the feel of my books will be until I put them together. I have a few concepts for books floating around in my head but they
haven’t made it to the page yet.

3.

Watercolor on
Canvas

“It’s a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.”

—D.W. Winnicott

My brother painted it back in high school:

a bottle washed up on a beach. It won

a Governor’s Prize, hung in the statehouse,

all that talk of a scholarship. Everyone

assumes ocean, a crab’s view—the bottle close.

But the shore’s made up of the flat stones

we’d skip across Lake Erie. Dad taught him

how to paint the sky, but it was the shadows

Frank loved. After he lost another job,

during each stint in jail, he’d give the painting

to an uncle or a sober friend for safekeeping,

so he couldn’t hawk it for a fix. A week after

his funeral we found it in his closet. Inside

the bottle there’s a letter. If you squint

you can make out the ghost-lines of script

done in pencil, then erased.

MG: I mentioned in the intro that the speakers in your poems ache for human connection, post-abandonment. In all three of these poems, I’d say this is accurate. Do you agree?

JMS: I do agree, though I never thought of it that way, especially the post-abandonment part, but now that it’s mentioned I can recognize it in so many of my other poems. This proves that the poem knows more of what the poet want to say than the poet does. It’s that sense of discovery, for the writer as well as for the reader that makes poetry so delightful.

MG: What does the letter read?

JMS: Oh, I don’t remember. He must have painted it back in 1984, so I was only nine years old at the time. I think it was suppose to be one of those message-in-a-bottle type things, but in the end, he chose against it. After he died, it was the only thing I took. It hangs above my bed and in the back is still the tag from when it hung at the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio.

4.

O Come All Ye Faithful

Midnight Mass:

Give peace to your neighbors, commanded the priest, so I dodged down under the pew. I always ended up shaking hands with the guy who was picking his nose moments before. No one seemed to notice I was missing, but then I saw I wasn’t alone. Two pews down an old couple slithered on their bellies heading my way. We’re trying to cheat death, said the old man, who smelled of cabbage. What are you hiding from?

Snotty fingers, I replied.

Ah yes, we’ve seen a few of those in our day, said the man’s wife.

To kill time we played a few hands of poker, and by the third round I looked up from my crummy cards to see half the congregation under the pews, each with their own reason. I hope those choir ladies haven’t quit their day jobs, on man muttered. I caught an altar boy staring at my breasts, whispered a woman in a low-cut V-neck. Just then, a guy tanked up on too much eggnog began belting out Christmas carols. Soon we were all singing, face down on the floor, patting each other on the back. I didn’t even care what was on their hands, because I felt like we belonged to one big, happy family.

MG: What’s going on in this poem? When I read it, I immediately circled “slithered” and thought “snakes, sneaky, devil?” But I’m not sure that reading holds up . . .

JMS: Why wouldn’t it hold up? It’s word association at work here. On a subconscious level, did I pick that word for its associations with the things you’ve mentioned? Maybe. Honestly, when I wrote it I just picked that word because I like the word, and it best described the physical actions of the characters.

MG: Do you prefer linear or prose poems? Do you think they should function differently?

JMS: I do have a deep attraction toward the prose poem. It was love at first sight for me. With that said, I tend to write more linear poems. Same with form as with subject matter, the poem will let you know what form it wishes to take. As for functioning differently…I’m not sure. I know I approach them differently. Linear poems have an urgent, serious aura about them, while prose poems say “We’re about to have some fun here.” Now of course I’ve read serious prose poems and lighthearted linear poems, but at first glance those are my expectations.

MG: What makes an effective line break? How would you explain the difference between an excellent line break and a questionable one?

JMS: For me it’s organic. It’s important to have your lines end on the most interesting words possible. Ending on a strong verb or noun is a good rule of thumb and never ending a line with a preposition or conjunction is another good rule to follow. Of course when deciding on which word to end on you have to consider the rhythm and length of the line. Normally, it’s not a good idea to have one line stretching a mile out from your other lines just so you can end on that verb.

MG: Tell us a bit about the surrealism present here, if you would call it that?

JMS: The surrealism often found in prose poems is what made me fall in love with the form. As I stated earlier, the life lived within the imagination, subconscious, dream, or daydream is of deep interest to me.

MG: Who are some of your favorite poets?

JMS: Charles Simic and Russell Edson of course, and then there’s James Tate, Billy Collins, and William Matthews. I guess William Carlos Williams would be the patriarch of the poets I enjoy. I really love the prose poems of Louis Jenkins and Bob Hicok is just amazing. Lately, I’ve been reading many women poets: Dorianne Laux, Kim Chinquee, and Rachel Contreni Flynn.

MG: How do you feel about the man (or woman) behind the work? Do you believe the writing should stand on its own, that it should be read while keeping the writer’s life-story in mind, or do you think the writer is more interesting sometimes than the work? I ask this because, as you said earlier, most poems are assumed to be autobiographical. I wonder, then, about how surreal poems fit into this assumption . . .

JMS: The work should always stand on its own. One day my father confessed that he didn’t really care for Sinatra, and instead of expressing a disappointment in his performance, delivery, or craft, his opinion on the man’s music was based entirely on his judgment call of the man himself. Meaning he didn’t like the fact that Sinatra had Mob connections, or was a womanizer, therefore he didn’t like his music as if the two have anything to do with the other. Moral standing has nothing to do with talent, skill, or intellect, to which should be the only things used in judging a piece of art.

MG: Before, you said you haven’t had much success with flash fiction. This one reads like a flash to me. A little fleshing out, and it could be a very short story. Yes? No? What’s missing here that keeps you from calling it a fiction?

JMS: It could be called a flash piece, though I’d say it would lean more toward a prose poem. It’s not that I haven’t written any flash, just not as much as straight linear poems. One piece I’m particularly proud of is titled Squeak, which I’d say is a flash fiction story.

MG: Is there a difference between prose poetry and flash fiction?

JMS: To give it a modern analogy, the prose poem is the profile photo you post on your Facebook page, while the flash fiction is your YouTube video. Of course, there are many examples that blur the line which make this debate old and tiring. It has more to do with our excessive need to categorize the shit out of everything than anything else. As far as I’m concerned, the only question that should be asked is, did you enjoy reading it?

5.

Caring For the Dead

A woman lived in a house of tombstones

and baby doll limbs, married a young etymologist

and gave birth to thirteen dead languages.

She couldn’t pronounce their names, nor understand

their Tiki god appearances. When swatted on their back-ends

their mouths stretched the length of their bodies

and exuded a black volcanic ooze. They were happy,

docile little tikes, but they were born dead

and didn’t live for very long. They’d lie in their cribs,

mouths gaping as always, then turn to dust,

black smudges on their small pillows.

The father performed the autopsies, grinning

with the excitement of discovery, then demand more children.

His wife would nod, then turn to face the wall,

praying every word she uttered was heard, and special
attention

given to all the words she’d leave out.

MG: Here’s another example of a not-quite-realist poem. Tell us what this one is about, and what the initial image was.

JMS: I’m quite interested in etymology, and it was thinking of etymology that gave birth to this poem. I can’t tell you what this poem is about because I have no idea. This is another example of word association at work. I write one line that leads to the next, and then to the next, not having any more of an idea of where it’s going then you do. It’s that sense of exploration that I love about poetry.

MG: Do you ever use prompts? One of my favorite poems, Richard Garcia’s “My Grandmother’s Laughter” (available online in Ploughshares) was inspired by Jim Simmerman’s Twenty Little Poetry Projects (also online). Have you ever tried anything like this, with success?

JMS: Oh, I try. I have at least fifteen of those writing-prompt books. My success with those tends to be limited. The bottom line is if it doesn’t inspire me then it’s not going to work. I wish it did.

MG: How does (or doesn’t) this fit in with the rest of your work?

JMS: Charles Simic and Russell Edson heavily influenced most of my earlier work, and this is an older poem. I’ve been moving away from the surreal as time has gone by but I think you’ll still see it here and there in my work. It fits in with the rest of my work via that sense of exploration and surprise. I have those “image” poems, those “object,” and “autobiographical” poems; and this poem would fall in the category of poems that I would call “fun” poems, poems that are strictly for entertainment. Unfortunately, this poem didn’t make it into the full-length collection.

MG: Whose call was that? Am I allowed to ask this question? Oh, I’m going for it. Was it your decision or your publisher’s? And why not include the “fun” poems?

JMS: Some of the fun poems are included in the book, many of them. O Come All Ye Faithful, which I consider a fun poem is in there as well as a poem called Saint Francis Back from Paradise. It was my mentor Ellen Doré Watson, who suggested taking it out. It simply had to do with the flow of the book and not having too many poems with the same color stuck together.

6.

Snow Angels

Each night they stare into the sky

and wonder why even with wings

they can never get off the ground.

Good reason for their creator

to take three steps, cock his head

and disown his gift to the world.

Abandonment: a likely origin of anyone’s

lack of faith. And faith: precisely what’s needed

to soar in the deep purple abyss of winter.

We step out into our lives like sun slicing

between buildings and perform this one angelic

act that melts from our consciousness.

We go back into our houses and accomplish

something important, leaving behind

the ones that don’t know any better,

the few who see the wings as open arms,

snow as flesh, and are willing to lie back down.

MG: Well, when it comes down to personal preference, I’ve saved the best for last. This one gets me every single time. I’m sure this is where I got “abandonment” from, in fact. So tell me, what is faith?

JMS: Ah, another central theme that runs through many of my poems. I’m fascinated with “faith,” and “hope,” interchangeable as far as I’m concerned, and how much they drive us. It’s amazing how faith/hope latches on to us. No matter how defeated we become, no matter how many times life kicks us in the teeth there is always that ember of hope/faith burning inside of us. I mean if you think about it, even if you’ve come to the point where you wish your life would end, you’re still hoping for an end of suffering. So what is that thing that drives us forward? It’s far too powerful and gripping to be only a flimsy thing such as desire.

MG: I find this poem so powerful—the image, or the idea of, grounded angels, angels unable to fly, useless manmade wings just makes my heart ache. Where did this poem come from? What should we know about it?

JMS: This poem falls in the “object/image” category. I simply meditated on the image of a snow angel for a long time and in one swoop (with much revision afterwards,) the poem flowed out from somewhere deep inside. There’s that exploration thing again. Someone once stated, and I wish I could remember who, that “At some point as a writer, you finally become humbled to the fact that the poem is smarter than you are.”

MG: Will you close this interview with a particular favorite of your own?

JMS: Well since I mentioned it earlier in this interview, it only makes sense that I share the following poem:

WHEN THE SURREALIST NO LONGER REMEMBERS HIS DREAMS

Summer. We were walking

a country road before dawn,

and you were dead.

I don’t remember your dying,

but there you were, dragging your feet,

your eyes like the bottoms of glass ashtrays.

Your breath.

I said it smelled of death,

and you just groaned.

I felt like an idiot.

I never wanted this.

I never wanted it to rain.

Do you have any idea

what a soggy corpse is like

so early in the morning?

I tried to pick up the pace,

but all you could do was slosh across the road.

Eventually we came to a barn,

and hobbled inside to get dry.

Soon the sun was up. The rain had stopped,

and the insects were getting jiggy in the fields.

You slumped into an empty stall.

Sunlight beamed through slits in the boards

and the dust of your body mingled

with the dust of the barn, the outside world

and possibly me. Despite the decay,

you looked lovely disappearing like that.

And I confessed if I wasn’t such a fool

I’d love you right down to the bone.

Vultures usually do.

It was the first thing you'd said all morning.

To check out Joshua’s Chapbooks and updates for his Full-length collection, Son of a Minor Key, not to mention on where to find some of his poems online, visit him at www.joshuamichaelstewart.yolasite.com. Also, be sure to check out the online literary journal www.bigtoereview.com.

[Editor's Note: Thank you to the following journals in which these poems first appeared: "In Memory of the Nearness of You" in Mannequin Envy, "Over the River and Through the Woods" in Stickman Review, "Watercolor on Canvas," in Connecticut River Review, "O Come All Ye Faithful" in South Boston Literary Gazette, "Caring for the Dead" in Diner, "Snow Angels" in Heat City, and "When the Surrealist No Longer Remembers His Dreams" in Worcester Review.]