Writers Respond: An Interview with Joshua Michael Stewart

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.]