How did you start writing poetry? Did you gradually get into poetry or did it happen all of a sudden?

I wrote some poems in grade school and even had one published in Reader’s Digest. Actually, that was my first publication. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I think I was in sixth or seventh grade, and I got a check from them for $25! It seems amazing to me that I had the audacity, at that age, to send them something – and even more astonishing that they took it. But I love the idea of making my literary debut in a mass market magazine known for its clarity and accessibility, two qualities that are still important in my work.

I didn’t write much in high school – too many distractions – but when I was about seventeen, I picked up a copy of The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca (from New Directions) and that completely changed my view of what a poem could say or do. Lorca seemed a lot more radical than any of the American or English poets I had studied. I especially liked his combination of child-like, simple lyrics with bizarre surreal images. More than any other writer, he made me want to be a poet.

Do you have a particular method in which you write your poems or revise? What are your thoughts on revision as opposed to Kerouac’s slogan “first thought best thought”?

I don’t trust my first thoughts, or even my eighth, ninth or tenth ones.

Sometimes I get lucky and write a poem in one take, but generally, I do a lot of revising as I go. I’m a very write-five-words-cross-out-three type of person. I might start out trying to express one idea, but the poems usually changes directions on me several times. Whatever idea finally does come across often feels like a lab mouse that just made it through a highly complicated maze of critics and censors.

Was there a trigger, or inspiration for your series of “object” poems?

Partly the poems were a way to go back to one of my favorite early influences, the French writer, Francis Ponge. He wrote an entire book about soap called Soap, and another called Things, and another called The Return of Things. He always wrote about objects in an incredibly precise and detailed, but wildly metaphoric way.

Another Frenchman, the theorist Jean Baudrillard, also has a great and provocative book about “the modern object and its destiny” called Revenge of the Crystal.. In it, he emphasizes the seductiveness and power of passivity we normally associate with objects.

On a more personal note, I’m quite superstitious and/or fetishistic. I’m always assigning symbolic meaning to objects and trying to figure out if they’re lucky or unlucky.

Finally, writing about objects seemed like a good way to reconnect to childhood – a time when the borders between animate and inanimate are more fluid.

Can you explain what you meant by “gender boundaries” for women writers in your essay titled “What is American About American Poetry”? What do you believe the gender boundaries are, today as opposed to 20 years ago?

I was never thrilled with the idea of being a woman. While growing up, it seemed necessary for me to create and carry around a male version of myself in my mind. I was born in the 1950’s and both my parents came from Italy, so they had pretty strict and definite ideas about how men and women should behave. It didn’t seem like women had a lot of options, and the ones they did have (like having children) didn’t appeal to me, so I guess, by process of elimination, if I didn’t identify with the women, I thought I must have secretly been in some way male.

Today that kind of thinking seems absurdly outmoded. Since both men and women have more freedom and latitude to choose different ways to express their identity, the whole question of gender becomes more playful. I’m sure I still have a few shadowy male-personas lurking in my psyche, but they’re more for my own amusement than anything else.

In the same essay, you suggest there are anxieties created in the American landscape – for example, the mixed feelings one might have in a shopping mall or a WalMart. I agree with you. How do you feel these tensions are effecting contemporary poetry?

I wouldn’t want you to think that I don’t love to shop – nothing could be further from the truth! What I don’t like is the way everything in our society has to be so peppy and upbeat, so productive in every way.

Would I rather everyone be miserable? No, but it would be nice if people didn’t have the added pressure that they had to be in control of every situation at all times. As for how this relates to poetry, I’d have to say that there isn’t as much spontaneity in writing today as I’d like to see. A lot of it feels very programmatic and safe.

You are married to the poet Jerome Sala. What are the pros and cons of marrying a poet? Do you edit each other’s work, or collaborate?

Shortly after I met Jerome, I went over to his apartment with a whole stack of my poems. He brought out a whole stack of his poems, along with a bottle of vodka and some grape Kool-Aid. We proceeded to take turns reading our work aloud and downing numerous drinks. Later we had sex.

The next day Jerome called me from his job at an insurance company (where he worked as a copywriter) to read me a new poem. A few hours later, I called him back to read him my latest. It was the beginning of an intoxicating period in both our lives. We were drunk on poetry, love, and of course, vodka.

It seemed a shame to keep so much high-energy to ourselves, so we soon began doing readings together all around Chicago. This was during the late 1970’s when punk was big and in fact, we did read at a number of nightclubs, bars, and art galleries. Performance poetry was not as popular or well-defined as it is today, and I think we helped lay the groundwork for it. Our readings were always on the theatrical side. Sometimes music was involved, and a lot of effort went into combing the best thrift stores for the coolest clothes to wear.

These days Jerome and I don’t read together that often. We do, however, still like to share our work at home. As soon as I finish anything, he’s always the first person to hear it and vice-versa.

Many or even most readers of poetry are poets themselves. What restrictions, if any, do you feel this puts on the poet regarding content?

Let me give you the demographics for my ideal audience. It would be 30% dead writers (mostly poets), 30% living writers (a mix), and 40% people from all walks of life. I would never want to write exclusively for other poets and I deliberately try to make my work as accessible, reader-friendly, and entertaining (a bad thing for serious poets I guess) as possible.

It’s a terribly narcissistic indulgence, but I’ll admit I sometimes look around at a room full of strangers in a movie or restaurant and wonder what, if anything, my poetry would have to say to them.

You have cited Frank O’Hara as one of your role models. How has he helped to develop your voice and style, and have you been influenced by other poets from O’Hara’s circle such as Edwin Denby and James Schuyler?

I love the New York school and Frank O’Hara in particular. He seemed very passionate to me, and personal in a really witty way that no one had ever tried. You could say that the NY school poets are what I grew up with. When I was studying at Columbia College in Chicago, Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery all came to my school to read. I remember having coffee with Anne and giving John Ashbery a joint as a token of my esteem for his work.

But the NY school was certainly not the only, or even necessarily the most important influence on my writing. In poetry I’ve always thought globally rather than locally. I had a long and intense Objectivist phase, an on-going affair with surrealism, a deep appreciation for Chinese and Japanese traditions of poetry, a wouldn’t-go-anywhere-without-my-Paul-Celan period. Jerome turned me on to Mayakovsky and a number of Russian poets.

I think a poet can only be as good as the variety and scope of styles that inform his or her work. So I guess I do agree with Pound on some things after all.

What were the largest obstacles and greatest benefits of writing your collaborative poem with Martine Bellen and Melanie Neilson?

There weren’t any obstacles. We all liked and respected each other’s work and we didn’t put any pressure on ourselves. I think eventually, we made a time limit, but it was very flexible. Besides, it was hard to feel stuck knowing you only had to come up with eleven or six syllables (since it was a renga).

Although our voices and styles are very different, we seemed to find a wave-length right away that made for a nice harmony.

Are there any current political issues you are concerned with or interested in writing about – both in poetry, and outside of it?

Even if there were topics I’d like to write about, it doesn’t mean I’d be able to. I am interested in religion though and have found it turning up in several recent poems. At the moment, it feels like the gods or Gods (depending on your degree of reverence) are taking over our air waves. I’m not interested in converting anyone, but I do enjoy the interfaith dialogue. Like sexuality, religion is finally, at this late date, coming out of the closet.

Another direction I’d like to see my work go in during the next ten years is more toward translation – to be able to think and dream in languages other than English. I’m currently taking Spanish which brings me back to Lorca which is where my interest in poetry began.