1. What or who gives you inspiration and perspiration?

Inspiration: Bob Dylan, my mother’s spaghetti, my children, Hitchcock, They Might be Giants, James Joyce, Taco Bell, aluminum foil, Steve Nash, Jackson Pollock, The Marx Brothers, The Beatles, Rocky and Bulwinkle, Frida Kahlo, Peyton Manning, Godard, Joni Mitchell, Little Big, Zooey Deschanel, Ugly Things magazine, Steve Stern, my medication, Albert Brooks, scrabble, Twilight Zone, Grace Kelly, The Velvet Underground, the no-look pass, George Clooney, Richard Brautigan, the runcible spoon, Monty Python, Jennifer Connelly, t-shirts, my border collie Fly, David Markson.

Perspiration: Gus’s fried chicken.

2. Have you always wanted to write, or did you have a secret desire for something else, like spelunking?

I have always wanted to write. When I was a toddler I wrote a sestina with my finger in the pabulum. The only other thing I could imagine being is a rock star, but that ambition is hampered slightly by my tin ear and inability to carry a tune even from the kitchen to the den.

3. Do awards and accolades make you swoon? Have there been any that you're particularly swoon-y about that you've gotten?

The awards I’ve been given would have been better sent to someone else. I deserve no accolade and, if nominated, I will not run. Oh, except for the stuffed manatee my daughter gave me as a prize for being a pretty good daddy. That I accept whole-heartedly.

4. When you're not leaving your poetic footprint, what else in the world makes you warm and fuzzy?

Listening to my daughter talk about Charlie Chaplin or Hair or Edgar Allan Poe.

5. Give me names. Who are the best new poets, in your opinion?

I don’t know from new. Here are some faves: Frank O’Hara, James Tate, Mark Strand, John Berryman, Sharon Olds, Heather McHugh, W. S. Merwin, C. K. Williams, Mary Mary Molinary, Booker T. and the MGs.

6. Best of the Net or Pushcart? Which matters more and why?

Though the net is more welcoming to my piss-ant scribblings I have to go with the Pushcart because it exists between covers, printed on paper, bound with glue. I own an antiquarian bookstore, by the way, which means I still love holding the physical object called Book in my sweaty hands.

7. Then and now. What poem made you start writing and what poem do you absolutely love right this very moment?

“Constantly risking absurdity,” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was printed in my high school English lit book, smuggled in there between the Chaucer and the Christina Rossetti. Though I wasn’t taught it, I noticed it, espied its weird line breaks and highwire act and thought, hmm, they call that poetry too, do they? Today it still seems to me a wonderful poem, its power not diminished by the years nor by my astonishing maturity. A poet I am thinking a lot about these days is Matthea Harvey. Her singular poems worm inside me and their mystery and their music keep me up nights, heart racing.

8. Are online poetry 'zines a crushing blow to traditional print 'zines, or are they the meat and potatoes of the poetry world now? Also, which do you prefer?

I cannot pick one over the other. As I say, I am more welcome on the net—my ugly mug is wantonly displayed on many a webzine—but I can still get all goozly over a lovely print magazine like our local good’un, The Pinch. Also, I don’t think webzines detract from print zines. They are not mutually exclusive and you can love both, as you can listen to both The Monkees and Captain Beefheart in the same morning without your head exploding.

9. Where do you see yourself and your poems in five years?

Incarcerated. Or, on a reality TV show where people chuck household items at my head. My poems will have all evaporated when the government pulls the plug on the Internet and institutes a “family values” www in its place.

10. What are the ingredients for a tasty poem?

Irony, wit, high falutin’ language, penetrating insight, diablerie and tinkertoys.