Steve Mueske

If you could have lunch with any poet who would it be?

I've had lunch with some poets I really admire, and you know, they're just regular people. It's cool to be able to talk shop with someone who knows what you are talking about, but it's always, you know, a bit polite. It would be cool to go to a brew pub and sit around smoking cigars and shooting pool and listening to some real cool blues or jazz and just letting go. Most of the guys I'd like to meet, though, are dead. I'd give anything to be able to have a scotch with Larry Levis or a beer with John Engman.

It seems the latest internet fashion is to have a blog. What has your blog done for you lately?

Blogging is strange in the sense that it's a little like having a public diary, but it's more cohesive and organized. It provides a loose sense of community because we're all sort of doing the same thing: moving through the day, reading articles and books, submitting poems, dealing with rejection, celebrating important events, engaging in discussions with poets on other blogs, responding to essays, and that sort of thing. But there is also an awareness of distance. Nothing happens in real-time: you can't hear the poet farting or eating doritos and listening to old Clash records; you're not going to trip up and say something you'll instantly regret (if you do, you can always delete it). In that sense, it's safe. It's like a more literate form of reality TV. Writing is a lonely, solitary business. Your wife or husband, parents or friends have no idea what certain milestones mean—being published in journal x or getting award y—but some cyber personality does. And the trick of it is, you don't really perceive the fact that it's all bytes, colored pixels, software, routers, databases and such. You get the feeling that it is a real person, with real concerns, desires, and fears. Someone like you, but in a dimly lit den in England, or a bedroom in Tennessee. For me, it's especially satisfying because it's a little less public / task-based than a bulletin board or workshop, and I can easily keep track of topics that interest me. A lot of really promising up-and-coming poets are blogging. It's an exciting time.

Are you working on a manuscript at this time? Tell us about it.

I'm always working on a manuscript, it seems. About every six months or so I print off everything I have and set sheafs of paper around the living room, organizing poems into little piles. Right now, I'm about two-thirds done organizing the next version, which has a working title of "Into the Realm of Angels and Radio Waves" from a poem of the same name forthcoming in Water-Stone. The hardest thing for me, it seems, is to get the poems to play well together. I have a wide variety of interests and styles—lyric, narrative, quasi-experimental. I really want to get it all in there, the best of these interests, and do it in a way that's not too schizoid, and feels authentic.

What advise do you give to someone just starting out?

Call yourself "poet".
Be serious about your calling.
Attend to it every day.
Make it a practice.