Ten Questions Answer:


If you’re reading this, it means the amazing editors at TWC have gracious permitted me to deviate from the protocol and supply, well, a deviant answer. I am going for a holistic presentation, an essay that reads like a diary entry or a naked blog . Hopefully I won’t sound too much the anguished clown. The goal is to wander with purpose in the blurred and blended collage of reality. After all, as Joan Osborne sings:



The world is made of spider webs;

The threads are stuck to me and you.



I’ll try to flourish my wings without getting entangled, and maybe somehow magically flit back to the center. Wish me luck!



Sad thing is, I’m dizzy already.



Maybe you can see that I tend to digress—and then digress again. Blizzards of doors open in my mind at the end of every phrase. Which way to go? Which ingress honors my voice du jour? In terms of originality, this horde of doors is a blessing. Nature editors like me. So do political editors, love editors, grief editors, noir editors, and angst editors who work at insane asylums (I’m not making this up, check out Cerulean Rain).



On the downside, who am I among all these uppity portals? And why am I driven to fiercely ramify, never settling for comfort? These are questions philosophical, spiritual and psychological, and I have a great deal of history with all three. If they are my Muses, I’ve had decades of soap-opera adventures with the triad of them.



I earned Ph.D. in philosophy, specializing in care theory, which was developed by a psychologist at Harvard. I worked on a crisis hotline for 13 years, rising to the position of Training Coordinator. I taught phone counselors to deal with callers who had guns propping their chins, needle marks slathering their arms, or bruises from a husband’s fist.



As for my spirituality, it infuses every web strand in or out of the Me-Nexus. Hope, suffering and psyche form the crucible of my craft. Why? Childhood. Without yielding to weepy detail, suffice it to say I was not heard, even on Christmas. Rather than grow to emulate my tormentors, I have responded with what psychiatrists call reaction-formation: doing the opposite.



So I listen with empathy to everything, including quartz and cirri. Sometimes even my conscience gets an ear. If I listen long enough, and channel well enough, sometimes a poem rises up and soars free of my eccentric tenderness.



Now you know a little about what inspires me and why. Obviously, I could meander for pages (all those doors!), which brings up another point you might have noticed: I’m incredibly self-absorbed.



Politely, this could be called literary autism. Ultimately, it’s a form of conceit. I can only hope it’s not the callous variety, but instead the sort that afflicts some ardent poets, those absorbed by passion, preferably linked to a higher cause.



No, I am not beyond pettiness. I have a monkey troupe of neurotic needs doing the conga on my back. For instance, I love getting the “awards and accolades” mentioned in the 10 questions, even to the point of fixation. Similarly, my huge ego limits the time I give to other poets. I do read their work, but only in passing, as fate guides me, seemingly with caprice.



The other day, I stumbled on a poem by George Kalamaras in a journal I was submitting to (this is how I usually come to read others). I recognized his name and realized once again that he was a brilliant writer. Out of my subconscious came a mean little voice that snickered, “Better than you will ever be.”



I’d like to think that the wakizashi edge of my envy has dulled over the years, as I get more awards and accolades of my own. Or maybe—preferably— I’m accepting that I’m okay, regardless of awards and accolades, or even those great poets whose talents dance out of reach.



It’s okay. Write to write. Write as if breathing, an emotional circulatory system.



Sometimes it’s healthy to get lost in personal joy. When TWC accepted “Ghost Song,” I was slingshot ecstatic. It’s one of my favorites (you guessed it: most of my favorites are poems that I wrote—because I know them , and what they cost, and what they prevented and what they birthed). That was a stellar moment. Indelible. And when KPFK radio asked me to read my poems on the air, “Ghost Song” was first up on the program. A synergistic bliss combining two stellar moments!



I revel in these accolades, hooting and jogging for euphoric miles. But then I sink, as I always do, and inevitably ask:


So?


Then the philosopher, psychologist and prophet in me snipe at each other again.


Incidentally, my interview on Poets Café introduced me to a fantastic poet, Lois P. Jones, the show’s host. Her work boasts the sensuous style of Neruda, who is my Great Mentor, the one that started me off, wrenching tears out of my stubborn heart with melodies so oddly fluent they tugged like pliers.


Good poetry has to break something, whether it be the Matrix of culture, the nibble of time, or an old rusty fence around your tears.


I babble. Thank you and kudos to the lovely and impressive editors of Thick With Conviction. I believe I answered most of the questions, in a way …


I will add, in closing, that print journals are already nostalgic venues. The future is photons. My own view is that humanity will de-select within a few centuries, choosing to replace itself with a hybrid life form of cyberware and designer genes. You can read my thesis in a article published in 2002, before I turned away from academia. The title: “Self-Deselection: Technopsychotic Annihilation via Cyborg.”


Thank you again, courageous editors of TWC! Congratulations on your Hiss Award, and for being such humble yet effective beacons of light.