I know that The Book of Orgasms was originally touted as fiction. The new edition is being sold as prose poems. What do you say? What territory does the prose poem inhabit in America?

I believe the orgasm is officially fiction, though men and women tend to disagree. Honestly, I don’t know how the book is categorized these days.  Maybe prose poetry is the best definition, though I liked the prose poem as a form far better before it became accepted. I think illicit things are much more interesting.  When a form is not accepted, it has to pass intense scrutiny, to be somehow transcendent. Once it is accepted, it becomes humdrum.

You translate Henri Michaux. Why? The surrealism? The paintings? What draws you in?

A child in a Henri Michaux poem has a magic bag in which he inserts idiotic grownups and slaps them. A man has a magic glove that bops annoying people all by itself. Another man carries a bed in which he can go to bed with anyone he pleases and whenever.  Let’s just say, I relate to him. He is funny, brilliant and original. Also Michaux was very much an independent thinker. He lived on the edge of his psyche, trying to see who and how he was. He was a seeker unlike other seekers . . . Everyone should read him.

Scenes we'd like to see: A translation panel featuring you on Michaux, Lydia Davis on Maurice Blanchot, Linda Coverdale on Emmanuel Carrere, and James Kirkup on Herve Guibert. What do you think?

I am in love with Henri Michaux, yes. And I think it would be fun. I edited the book of Michaux translations called Someone Wants to Steal My Name with the help of a woman who is fluent in many languages and who wished not to be named or acknowledged in any way. Without her help I would never have been able to edit the book. Even with her help, the book was incredibly difficult for me to put together because I wanted it to be perfect. Michaux is complex and magical, and my French is not up to snuff.  But I think a lot of great writers are just waiting to be translated. I wish there were a greater audience for translations.

As the father of a 2-year-old and 4-year-old myself, I wonder how you get anything done with 2 kids of your own. What's your strategy?

I have two kids in college, one, a daughter at Princeton, and two, a son in the computer science college at CMU—he has already published about five times, and I’m nauseatingly proud of them both. And my kids are very supportive of my work. They have less inhibitions than I do. We used to trade play-time for work-time. When they were young, I’d make a deal: you allow me this much time to write, and I will take you swimming for that much time. Back and forth, back and forth. But it was always challenging. Now by habit I rush. A day is never long enough. I miss so many of my thoughts as them pass by me like strangers on a subway . . . That is the nature of haste I guess.

Most poets try every job under the sun and then wind up teaching. Do you ever teach workshops? If not, what's your secret? What's most important for the care and feeding of Nin Andrews?

I am an introvert. I have taught conferences, and although I enjoy teaching, I find it very tiring. I like to be alone as much as I can. I dream of going into a retreat for a year or two. If I were to teach, I’d prefer to be a meditation and-or yoga teacher.

Music? What was the first album/cd you ever bought?

I grew up on Elvis. Really. But the first piece of music I ever bought was “Red Rubber Ball,” a 45 by The Cyrkle. I was in second grade. I and my sisters used to lie on the floor and color and listen to our 45s. I remember the names of the songs and some lyrics, not the groups. We listened to a lot of the familiar oldies: The Doors, The Beatles, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan... At the horse and cow barns I listened to country music. Patsy Cline. Loretta Lynn. But the best was Elvis.

Please give me brief takes on:

Malcolm De Chazal? Magical. Flowers, sunshine and brilliance. As if the world could hold that much light.

Lorine Neidecker? Not sure. I have seen some of her work, but I don’t know it. Honestly, what I recall most about her is that she mentioned paw paws in one of her poems.

Mina Loy? Anais Nin? Mina Loy, Anais Nin. Women who wrote about sex . . . in order to break a kind of sound barrier. I think I like the impulse in both . . . better than their work.

Leonora Carrington? She’s inspired. A wonder. A cold and peculiar and magical mind. An independent thinker and a feminist. I love what she says in her essay, What is a Woman? The idea that ‘Our Masters’ are Right and must be loved, honored and obeyed is, I think, one of the most destructive lies that has been instilled into the female psyche.

Max Jacob? A mystical and comic genius. What attracts me is his sense of the numinous mixed with the absurd.

Joyce Mansour? How bold she is, how in-your-face. I’d love to see her Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism translated.

Montaigne? In college I liked his work, but you would have to bribe me to read him again. I love philosophy once it’s over.

Jean Garrigue? All I think of—when I think of her- is a cat peeing in the coal bin.

Remedios Varo? Another surrealist and yes I admire her work. I think of her painting, “Lovers,” with two mirrors looking at one another. Or “Encounter,” with a woman finding herself in a little box. The paintings are both ghostly and intimate, other-wordly and almost tender. The women appear very old and childlike. They attract and repel at once. They remind me of the human state of being, the wish to be living in a fairy tale, the ever-present capacity for denial of our actual state. A true visionary, I think she was.