When I was a child my grandmother read poetry to me—Whittier, Longfellow, Tennyson, mostly.  Around the same time, I used to fold and staple 8½ x 11 sheets of paper into “books” and write superhero and sports stories in them.  I was intrigued by the idea of poetry too, but didn’t think it was particularly interesting until I picked up a copy of Paul Carroll’s The Young American Poets from my high school library.  On the day the book was due to be returned, I flipped to “one last” random poem—Ted Berrigan’s “Tambourine Life.”  It was so exciting—I didn’t know, for instance, that a poem could begin with the word “Fuck,” that it could be spread all across the page and full of funny lines and specific references.  I never felt the need to stop writing after that. 

What poets inspire you? How?

I read and love lots of new poetry from a variety of genres and styles:  Gerstler, Equi, Trinidad, Scalapino, Berssenbrugge, the Waldrops, Wang Ping, Jarnot, Lauterbach, Sirowitz, etc., etc.  I still love Creeley’s poetry, Padgett, Guest.  Like so many people, I mourned the loss of Kenneth Koch a couple of years ago, had to pull over my car when I heard the news.  & I’ll go back always to O’Hara, Cage, Olson, Schuyler, Spicer.  I tend toward Williams and HD and Loy over Eliot and Pound, and I love Dickinson and Blake.  I went to graduate school thinking I would be studying the late Victorians. 

I believe in the notion of influence but, like everyone, try to resist it.  I try not to read too much of one author at a time—otherwise s/he gets stuck in my head, and some (like Ashbery) are dangerously tough to expunge.  I try not to steal lines from 20^th Century poets unless it’s obvious (I finally wrote an elegy for Koch this summer composed of one line each from 20 of his books—I couldn’t figure out a more fitting way to write a tribute to him.)  Often I come across a brilliant form that I wish I could have thought of first—I read Scalapino’s “Crowd and not evening or light” (a sequence in the form of photographs and poem/captions) when it came out a decade or so ago and couldn’t sleep afterwards—it was so wonderful.  Or some of Osman’s forms or Retallack’s or Jarnot’s or Trinidad’s.  There are so many terrific things being written now—they all keep me awake at night and at the computer.

What other interests inspire you to write? What, if any, and how?

I’m really interested in many kinds of language and forms; sometimes texts that are awkward, artificial, and forced can be so beautiful.  I love, for instance, the language of physics and mathematical proofs.  My parents are both chemists—I remember hearing 10-syllable words constructed in elaborate syntaxes at our dinner table, understanding none of it.  I was at the dentist’s office last week and became enthralled with dental terminology—the “shedding” of baby teeth and “eruption” of permanents.  The language of sports and games like bowling and billiards.  Old TV shows.  Comic books.  Pro wrestling.  Instruction manuals.  I’m in the midst of writing a sequence of poems composed solely of found texts from “I’m Feeling Lucky” google searches on scripted sets of associated keywords.  On the more serious side, my daughters (ages 4 & 2) inspire me every minute—their approach to language is breathtaking.  & as difficult as it is, at the moment I feel compelled to write political poems for the first time. 

What is most apparent to me when reading selections of your work is your range of voice.  In poems like "unfolding" and "scissors" you seem to speak in a more lyrical and fragmented voice, whereas in poems like "Ra Ra" and "Telephone Books," you speak with a more narrative, straightforward voice. Do you think that poets, and artists, in general, are not encouraged to experiment with multiple voices? What do you see as the benefit and/or the downfall of working with a large range of voice?

I think the idea of a singular “voice” is something that many poets try to achieve, something that’s taught in many graduate writing programs.  My feeling is that a poem is so many things—a visual, rhythmic, structured text invested with some sort of intention—that voice seems like a rather arbitrary quality to make absolute or constant.  I prefer a more elaborate matrix in which form and content, visual and oral, are always interrelated and dependent upon one other.  I’m not sure how I could—or why I would—write in a single voice all of the time.  I applaud those who wish to and do.  I’m a fan of Ron Padgett’s poem “Voice,” which ends, “I hope I never find mine.  I / wish to remain a phony the rest of my life.”  That said, I do believe my poems are united in different ways, particularly within each book. 

The poem "Blend" has a very musical quality. In addition to parallel structure, you make use of anaphora, or repetition. How did you come to choose the use of anaphora to structure the poem?

I write most of my poems to be read out loud or performed, so really am enamored of repetition and other musical features.  The structure and its implications (all of the various dichotomies it introduces, including most prominently the play with cause and effect) came first in that poem, the content afterwards. 

What do you think ultimately holds a poem together?

The relationship between form and content, and the relationship between the visual and performative elements.  I like to believe that each of my poems is real and alive and finished in some way, that it can live a life on its own.

Would you consider yourself an "experimental" poet?

I guess so.  I’m not sure, however, whether it’s really possible to be such a thing anymore.  It seems to me, as a specific endeavor, that pure “experimentation” within poetry—experimentation for the sake of experimentation—might be over, at least for the time being.  That said, I believe a good poem is an original poem, and originality requires experimentation.  I want each of my poems to be as unique and new and mischievous as possible. 

What made you move from the NY and CT area to Atlanta? Has being in a different region influenced your work?

After living most of my life in the Northeast, it seemed time for a change.  I think the shift in region has affected my work, but I wouldn’t say dramatically.  I’ve never considered myself, for instance, a regional writer, whether in NY or New England or in the South.  However, the everyday buzz of the city, for me, contains many wonderful words and a rhythm for writing.  I miss riding trains and subways and walking everywhere; all of these actions contained great moments of silence amidst the chaos.  Atlanta is a post-car city—its neighborhoods seem randomly constructed and always 20 minutes apart—so there are fewer pauses, caesuras.  I think the change to the movement and sound of Atlanta has in some ways adjusted the continuo of my writing.

You have three collections of poems, The Greek Gods as Telephone Wires, Ten Pins, Ten Frames, and the forthcoming Glass Is Really Liquid (all from Front Room Publishers). Can you tell me about the journey of these books and how you see your current collection?

The Greek Gods as Telephone Wires, as much as anything, revolves around the roles of myth and legend in our culture, from how we incorporate ancient narratives to contemporary myths such as baseball and Batman.  It’s composed in large part of poems I originally wrote to read aloud or perform.  Ten Pins, Ten Frames is more or less centered on memory—not my own, which would be dull, but using specific memories to explore the weird ways in which memory works or fails to work.  Glass Is Really a Liquid seems to be mostly about language, although its final shape hasn’t yet appeared. 

I have begun to publish more and more on-line. I see you have a significant amount of web publications, in addition to your books. What do you think of publishing on the web? Do you think it reaches a wider audience? How does it compare to publication in a print literary magazine?