Poems on this page © Christophe Casamassima2005-2006

Christophe Casamassima is the editor of Ambit : Journal of Poetry & Poetics and proprietor, with his wife Sarah, of Furniture Press. He would rather engage you in the discussion of poetry and its longstanding dilemma. Email: furniture_press@graffiti.net

What's your favorite poem that you've written? Care to share it with us?

My favorite... to write, “Sedici, Ulysses”, which is still in the making, which involves reading Joyce’s text alongside Latin and Italian dictionaries, Dante, Yeats, Milton, etc. etc. the list goes on! But my favorite to read are from “Dozen” a short book of short poems centered on the ironies in politics, language and humor. Here are some examples:

from "Dozen"

THE ACTION MOVIE BAND-AIDä
STUNT DOUBLE MICROSOFTä
EXPANSION [RITUAL]


Imagine yourself a lone jet-fighter
or when Jen met Brad
because it rhymed, like,
it was sad, sad like
concubines, if sadness can be sexualized.


BHANGRA IN BAGHDAD


when we used
to say
before the bomb
before detainment
before ethnic conflict
we meant it
when your ass
don’t like something
it lets you know

And one from "Sedici, Ulysses" (which does not look like this, formatted, because it is a three by three square block of text, each 16 lines):

“Adonai”, he pressed on, “Ohio!”, and so,
it was over, “white bowknots”, I don’t know,
he presented another, “It is meet to be here”,
he paused, his mare bulging, a grass purge,
“He wants you for the pressgang”, aloha,
Gutenberg, “Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu”,
plausible thoughts, “Long, short, and long”, 
he plodded, “A perfect cretic!”, he spoke,
“spells finis for a man”, he raised one finger,
arranged images and made this suggestion,
“Your hat is a little crushed”, but was
inconsequential, his armature vanished,
“The telephone whirred”, where by God is
this telegram?, “The divine afflatus”,
“Hop and carry one”, he divined, hopelessness,
he broke into riddling, “Ohio!”, “As
he mostly sees double”

What is your favorite poem by another poet (still alive still kicking still publishing now).

Recently I found (in my own collection) a copy of Ted Pearson’s “The Devil’s Aria” which in a lot of ways resonates with my own work, especially working within the gestural rather than the literary and following the logic of the word-string and not meaning.

What poets have had the most influence on your work?

In the beginning Lyn Hejinian and Cole Swensen, but now I am no longer able to associate good writing with faces (I also have a very bad memory for names, name-dropping...) I tend to read whatever is at hand, either at home or in the library I work in. I tend to read – mis-read usually - good and bad poetry, and to that extant I tend to formulate poems from these accidents. I can no longer read poetry without stopping to write in the margins, re-writing lines, stealing them or reworking certain things (but always language and never themes – I don’t know about themes, I’m not sure I’d want to take sides). Lyn H is still a trip, Clark C always has the best lines, Kevin V knows what English sounds like, could sound like...

What's your pet-peeve in a poem? (ex. comma splices, obscurity)

Literariness. Period.

What's your favorite print journal and why?

Ambit: Journal of Poetry and Poetics, not because I edit the damn thing and it almost ruined my life (twice) but because I think I am taking more risks than a lot of editors. I like to mix and match styles, loquations, moods, ideas. And I have a psychotic need to think up these grand projects and bindings for the magazine so that each issue is unlike the previous.

Do you have a writing ritual? Care to share it? Do you ever break this ritual for artistic
reasons? If yes, how does it change or improve your method?

I tend to write when I’m most busy, especially at work. I have to slip in and out of writing mode very quickly. A lot of my short writing (especially Dozen) emits the unnecessary jargon from poetry, like words. They’re actually poems without words because the idea is there, and that’s about it. Talk about economy! My wife Sarah just began studio classes at Towson University and I spend many hours with her in the empty Fine Arts Building, to the wee hours of the morning, and, being trapped, permits one to become bored. Remember there’s something special about boredom, permits the mind to become fruitful. It brings consciousness back to consciousness, meditation, and clears the mind of the garbage of life (what are we eating tonight? I should really exercise, did I pay the electric bill?) And early mornings too because inactivity, then activity, spurs life.