I see teaching as a mutual exchange, what have you taken away from your best teachers and what have they taken from you?

I’ve had a lot of good teachers and a lot of bad teachers. The best teachers I’ve had, aside from informing me regarding whatever subject matter it was that they were teaching, encouraged me to pursue my own talents and encouraged me to learn on my own. They gave me confidence. On the other hand, my worst teachers made me feel like shit. As to what my teachers have taken from me, I really have no idea. I hope I was at least one of those students who cause me, as a contract/adjunct guy, to take extra pause when I’m grading a paper or reading a poem. I hope I was the kind of student that I’m thinking of now. The ones who are amusing and seem, somehow, from a slightly different planet than their peers. Extra fun.

How does this inform the interaction you have with your own students?

I try to remember something that is too easy to forget: I have a lot of power. I mean, when I was a student—and for most of my life I was a very bad student—I took my teachers’ comments seriously—even personally—and their thoughtful or off-hand remarks had the power to make me mad or happy or distraught. A word or two of encouragement can mean a whole bunch.

You are a musician, visual artist and a writer. How do these different forms of expression inform, contradict or enhance each other?

I don’t know. I tend to become heavily involved in one or the other for months, or years, at a time and then find myself moving back to music, or writing, or drawing, or whatever it might be at the particular moment. I know these activities do inform, contradict and/or enhance each other, I just don’t know how to articulate how they do this. Or rather, I probably could vaguely articulate it, but it would take up lots of space and I’d come across as especially pretentious and moronic. I am, of course, pretentious and moronic, but I try to avoid demonstrating that I can be especially pretentious and moronic.

What musical influences have found their way into your poetry?

Bob Dylan has meant the world to me. I still listen to him, but I no longer worship him the way I did when I was in high school and through much of college. I suppose, looking at it now, it’s clear to me that his particular thread of surrealism is stuck in my head. No other person has meant as much to me as he has, but I like to think that I’ve learned something from Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, The Velvet Underground, Big Star, Elvis Costello, The Replacements, Louis Armstrong, Patsy Cline, and my mom, who is a beautiful, classically-trained singer and pianist/organist. She sings hymns and spirituals at church, where she plays the organ. She also plays Scott Joplin on the piano. Lastly, but perhaps most adamantly, I plan on raising my son to believe that Chuck Berry is one of the main support beams of our house.

What influences, musical or otherwise, have you fought to keep out of your writing?

I’m not sure I do this—I mean, fight to keep something out…If it wants to come in, I try to open up my arms and say, “Welcome home, no matter who you are.” Sometimes part of me might want to fight it, but I fight that part of me instead.

Fatherhood, fatherhood, fatherhood, what has this opened up in your writing or other creative expression?

It’s reminded me that my work will, most likely, be read by one person who is concerned primarily with my biography. If my father had creative works—poems, paintings, songs, etc. I would carefully comb them for the details of his personal history and development. I’d be looking for the dirt. For no great reason, I assume my kid will be like me. What’s this opened up in me? A realization of a specific line of communication in my work—one through which I’m helplessly and exclusively speaking to, and have always been speaking to, my son.