{"id":4277,"date":"2011-08-01T00:10:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T05:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=4277"},"modified":"2015-03-25T21:01:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T03:01:49","slug":"an-interview-with-d-a-powell-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/4277","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with D.A. Powell"},"content":{"rendered":"

D.A. Powell is the author of four previous collections of poetry. His newest book, <\/em><\/em>Useless Landscape or a Guide for Boys, will be released in February 2012.<\/em><\/em> <\/em><\/em>Cocktails <\/em><\/em>(2004)<\/em><\/em> and <\/em><\/em>Chronic <\/em><\/em>(2009) were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Powell received the Kingsley Tufts Award, the California Book Award, a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation . This conversation was recorded over the course of several days in San Francisco and in California’s Central Valley. Powell currently lives and teaches in San Francisco.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Interviewer: After talking with you, it seems hard to say a poem can be wrong. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: It\u2019s very rare that there\u2019s a correlation between how people value something in one age and how it lasts into another, or whether it lasts.<\/p>\n

There are so many ways in which we perform ourselves to the world, and what writing really requires is a kind of authenticity that you have to work for years to achieve. And it has nothing to do with telling all your dirty secrets, because anyone can do that. It really has to do with getting in touch with your soul, your intuitive self, your ability to empathize with things, events, ideas in the world. It\u2019s not hard to develop. I think that\u2019s why people come to poetry, because they have an intense relationship with their feelings, but being able to adapt those feelings into some conversation in the world of value, not \u201csome little thing hurt me.\u201d Nobody cares about my life. They only care about my life performed by me. Otherwise it\u2019s like\u2026 yawn.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: How do you explain the genesis of the post-ironic and post-confessional labels that have been attributed to some of your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: I think some of what people see in my work as \u201cpost-ironic\u201d is probably just a case of reading too much Ashbery.\u00a0 Ashbery often ends on this heartbreaking moment, \u201cAnd only in the light of lost words\/ Can we imagine our rewards.\u201d That\u2019s sort of an Ashbery legacy.<\/p>\n

And I guess that I am post-confessional in the sense that the confessional poets are all dead. I am living post-them. I\u2019ll concede that. But I don\u2019t see myself as entertaining the same concerns.<\/p>\n

I see myself more as a metaphysical poet. Am I post-metaphysical maybe? Because rather than using the self as a way of talking about the world, I use the world as a way of talking about the self. But I don\u2019t think of the self as myself. If I did I don\u2019t think I would be able to write a word. It is \u201ca self\u201d constructed consciously in the work and I think that is really the influence of one of my first teachers, David Bromige. In his book Tiny Courts and What\u2019s Around Them<\/em>, he has a line \u201cand I<\/em> cannot mean me<\/em>.\u201d And elsewhere he said, \u201cHow you feel personally about that apple orchard will only embarrass us.\u201d He taught me that the concerns of one person, in one time, are small.<\/p>\n

Bromige would gently remind me through his writing, his instruction, through the poets he invited me to read, that \u201cI\u201d only matters if it\u2019s capable of being inhabited by anybody, including your reader.\u00a0 You have to be willing in the poem to say the things that you don\u2019t necessarily believe to be true. Shakespeare isn\u2019t all of his characters. He can\u2019t be Lear and<\/em> Richard III and also<\/em> Prospero. But I\u2019m sure all those characters draw something from his psychology.<\/p>\n

I really think of myself as a dramatist. That was my first passion, playwriting. And I\u2019ve never stopped being a playwright. I write very short plays, in my own voice, to be performed by me, based on my life! But other than that there is no \u201cI\u201d in there.<\/p>\n

I recently wrote a poem entitled \u201cChicken.\u201d It\u2019s a very old slang expression that started out in prisons. Chicken, being a young boy or young man who is incapable of defending himself, and has to rely on the patronage, the friendship, the love of other men who are stronger and who can protect him. That language passes into the general queer argot of the 1950s\u2014 right around the time people start translating Genet.<\/p>\n

So I was playing on all those meanings, as well as the literal idea of chicken, the poultry. And I didn\u2019t know where it was going to go, but certainly there were a lot of things that ended up in the poem that were things that I knew.\u00a0 But were they from first-hand experience, stories people told me, or things imagined and invented? I wish I could go through the poem image by image, line by line, and tell you where it is me, and where it is somebody else. But to tell the god\u2019s honest truth, I don\u2019t know if I know all of that one hundred percent, nor should I.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Then, if truth in a poem does not prescribe the validation of the self, then to what extent should there be truth and to what extent should you chip away at it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell:\u00a0 The only truth that matters is what is true for the poem as it develops. But I think this other thing you\u2019re talking about, that post-ironic. I think of that in two ways. First, it\u2019s a kind of safety device that is prevalent in poetry now. Most people don\u2019t want to be too revealing in workshops. As if you are<\/em> going to be too revealing<\/em> in workshops! And I think we\u2019ve begun to reward too easily lack of true habitation of the work. We can pinpoint language, gestures, moves, and say \u201cwell, that is the poem.\u201d That would be like sitting at a piano, and playing every note correctly and calling it the song. I think we\u2019ve become craft people in American poetry. Poets should outgrow the concerns of craft! Learn your craft and then don\u2019t think about it anymore because it gets in the way of making the poem.<\/p>\n

The other way I think about post- ironic and I think this is an apt way of describing my work is that we\u2019ve gone through an age of abject sincerity in poetry. It got maudlin and then there was another shift towards the ironic mode.<\/p>\n

Surrealism, Dadaism, the New York School, the Beats. There was a lot of ways of shaking up the traditional tonalities of the poem in order to allow for a humorous shadow, or a humorous doppelganger that runs alongside every great poem of the last 50 years. But now I think people are growing tired of that. And I see increasingly \u2013 which complicates the matter more \u2013 poets, including myself, using schlock, using camp, using discardible phrases, pop-songs or the detritus of human culture, which is acknowledging that material as inauthentic and also reinvesting it with authenticity. And that was a long way around one question. Oh! my left-branching brain…<\/p>\n

Interviewer: A poem like \u201cA Guide for Boys\u201d populates a lot of the interests involved with your upcoming book of poems. In one way, identifying the mushrooms, and trees, and rabbits gives those boy scouts a certain power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: I think the deep concerns of that poem are learning about your world and your surroundings and learning about yourself and your desires. Letting those things develop as natural paths rather than trying to hide them. There\u2019s a whole section in that poem that deals with codes. And once upon my life I was a big believer in hiddenness. But now, you know I\u2019m on Twitter: anything I think, anyone can go look at. I don\u2019t mind people reading my thoughts, if they\u2019re that bored. I feel like the age of privacy is past. In order for us to continue as a body, we have to learn how to read each other, how to interact, how to communicate; and we can\u2019t communicate in hidden signals.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think we should continue supporting lies. Don\u2019t Ask Don\u2019t Tell? It\u2019s the perfect model for what we need to get rid of. We need to get rid of those structures that force people to be secretive. We need to get rid of this intelligence community that fosters secrecy. Intelligence is only useful if it brings things to light, not if it buries things.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: So I\u2019ve been drinking a glass of the Anis Shivani juice, and\u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: His articles are so specious. He\u2019s constantly currying favor from people. If you\u2019re a critic, be a critic. His bio says, \u201cAnis Shivani is currently seeking a publisher for his first manuscript.\u201d There\u2019s something really<\/em> self-serving about that. It just goes to show how for-sale his opinion is, because he\u2019s out there trying to please the people who might be in the position to publish his poetry\u2026<\/p>\n

His poetry is really sophomoric and that\u2019s unfortunate. If you\u2019re going to throw rocks through people\u2019s windows, you don\u2019t want to live in a glass house and you don\u2019t want to live where the landscaping is full of rocks. He gives so much ammunition for people to lob at him.<\/p>\n

In one of his recent pieces; he talked about which presses were publishing Great Work<\/em>. How can you praise a press? You don\u2019t know what they are publishing next year. And the fact that he talks specifically about presses, shows his focus is on production and publication. So it makes any of his criticism nugatory. It\u2019s just sad that we all have to be witness.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Tacking back, when I hear the phrase \u201cuseless landscape,\u201d it seems to wrap itself around the idea of eco-poetics. There\u2019s a piece by James Englehardt that defines this as a movement. Does this book tie into the ethical boundaries of the utilization of land vs the over-use of landscape?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: I think that any sentient being should be aware of the health of the planet and its various eco-systems. But saying \u201cUseless Landscape\u201d is about ecology is like saying \u201cHowl\u201d is about shock-value. It\u2019s not about that. It employs it, as a device. The book has two titles, \u201cUseless Landscape or A Guide for Boys\u201d either one on their own would not be interesting, but they have another conversation, behind my back.\u00a0 A guide for boys is a kind of useless landscape. Or \u2013 in the sense of what would be instructive for young men to learn, or what you should know about young men: they\u2019re useless, and they just lie there.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: I like the idea, of the language talking behind your back, can you elaborate on that kind of misdirection?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: Often times you are trying to get at the subject underneath the poem, and you have a block of thinking. Most of what you put on the page in that first draft is garbage, but there\u2019ll be a little nugget to pardon it.<\/p>\n

And when I revise, I think I go through one color at a time, shades or nuances, and I\u2019ll think about one thread or idea that needs to be developed, and then step away. And return to it to find another word working through that nuance and then go from there.<\/p>\n

Robert Duncan said that we carry a certain predisposition for certain patterns, and where we confront the world\u2019s reorganizing of our patterns, or complicating our patterns, or tripping, or anything that forces us to step a different way because nature has created a different path, that\u2019s what he calls \u201csignificant form.\u201d And what poets do, and should do unconsciously, is to work with their own internal pattern and allow it to shift based on the same pattern. A little bit of headstrongness, coupled with the ability to adapt.<\/p>\n

(Heading to Yuba City)<\/p>\n

Interviewer: When you say you come back here<\/em>, to Yuba City to remind yourself of where you came from, do you consider yourself separated? Are you a city poet? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: I considered myself a city poet years ago, with Tea<\/em> especially. The funny thing is I wrote that book while I was in Iowa, maybe it was because I felt exiled from the city that I constantly wrote about. And now I feel like I\u2019m exiled from the country.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still farming at the heart of this town. But what\u2019s interesting is, [there] used to be a Del Monte Cannery and now there\u2019s no trace of it. That was the biggest industry in town. People came from all over the country to work in the cannery during the summer, but now you can\u2019t tell where it was.<\/p>\n

Another thing that keeps resurfacing in my work is this area between these two levees which is where the Yuba River and the Feather River come together by the train trestle, and there\u2019s a park down here called River Front Park. It\u2019s also called the river bottoms because when the river overflows, it covers the park and fills all the space between two levees.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Was it always a park?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: It developed into park area in the late 70s, so when I was here.\u00a0 And the house I used to live in, in my early 20s was an Old Victorian on C Street. A mule trainer and a pimp lived downstairs.<\/p>\n

There was a slaughterhouse here, and a woman that I lived with was a prostitute and she had a trick that would pay her in steaks from the slaughterhouse. . The mule trainer would take off in the summer and train mules and she would let her place to a couple of women that would come and work the cannery. One of my neighbors was amped up on meth and it was kind of awful.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Coming back here, do you think a poem like \u201cDying in the Development\u201d still applies to the town?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: This housing development, which was really modern at the time, was built on circles. Cul-de-sacs come up in my work a lot, and I\u2019m usually thinking of houses that look like this.<\/p>\n

I guess I was trying to write about the development as it was happening in my world. That poem sort of steps back 30 years, but this is not so different than what it was like. There used to be a cool little place that had bumper cars and pinball. It was probably a front, but it was a great place to get away.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: So what eventually got you out of this town?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: Self-preservation, and luck, and an auto-accident that allowed me to buy a car and get enrolled in a college. Otherwise who the hell knows? I\u2019d be dead at The Budget Inn!<\/p>\n

A part of me really loved this place, and still does. But lordy, what would I have done?<\/p>\n

Interviewer: So is that the pivot point, the escapism, for a lot of these places you\u2019re returning to?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: Well you have to realize what age I was; so yes, everything was an escape. I don\u2019t cherish the things that weren\u2019t an escape.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: All these towns and these orchards provide fruit, but it feels like such an unnatural thing with the levees and the plots and the structures built for produce.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: In the midst of disappearing. It\u2019s so funny to drive through the older part of Yuba City and see the orchard supply and the melon packing, while at the same time the big canneries are gone. Gone. In the midst of disappearing. It\u2019s turning into a bedroom community. But there are still vestiges. In another hundred years, I don\u2019t know what things will look like.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, Virgil thought, when people were moving into the city centers of Rome and Florence, \u201coh, an entire way of life is going to die in my generation!\u201d But it\u2019s always been that way.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: We talked in Tennessee about how the artificial landscape there wasn\u2019t native but it wasn\u2019t necessarily artificial. Do these orchards (off the highway) make the land one or the other?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell: Well, orchards aren\u2019t a very natural thing, with the exception of olives I guess. Olives pretty much take care of themselves. Other trees require endless maintenance and selection. Take almond trees for example. We have learned to cultivate them. But I worry about too much cultivation. I\u2019d much rather have an apple with a worm in it. I find it reassuring to know that some other species could live inside that apple. I\u2019d much rather have that, than have an apple that\u2019s waxed and polished, bred to be red and to be hearty.<\/p>\n


\n<\/code>Powell included this poem to accompany the interview<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/code><\/p>\n

landscape with combine<\/strong><\/p>\n

My father\u2019s fields are far from here.
\nI shot my share of blackbirds there.
\nDrove a harvester in summer.
\nGathered plums.
\nGathered chums.
\nThe tractor-trailer rigs would come.
\nThe pickers, singularly or in vans.
\nAnd in summer the canneries began.<\/p>\n

If I was asked to ride the John Deere then.
\nTo reap, I\u2019d reap; to thresh, I\u2019d thresh. Men,
\nI\u2019d winnow you. I\u2019d winnow a few.
\nI\u2019d take you, dear John, or whoever is you.
\nLove is easier to achieve than you might think. Sooner
\nor later the combine gives out. & sooner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

D.A. Powell is the author of four previous collections of poetry. His newest book, Useless Landscape or a Guide for Boys, will be released in February 2012. Cocktails (2004) and Chronic (2009) were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Powell received the Kingsley Tufts Award, the California Book Award, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[23],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-16Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11808,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277\/revisions\/11808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}