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From:  Oranges & Sardines

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Interview with poet Andrew Demcak

Andrew Demcak is an award-winning poet who has been widely published and anthologized both in print and on-line. His latest book of poetry, Catching Tigers in Red Weather (Three Candles Press, 2007), won the Three Candles Press Open Book Award. His poems, including Young Man With iPod (Poetry Midwest, #13), are taught at Ohio State University as part of both its English 110.02 class, “The Genius and the Madman,” and in its “American Poetry Since 1945” class. His work has appeared recently in The Best American Poetry, Ourorboros Review, Court Green, the American Poetry Journal, Juked!, and Pearl Magazine. Visit Andrew at: www.andrewdemcak.com.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Absolutely- my whole graduate thesis was based on an idea of Piet Mondrian’s: to find the pure, plastic medium, one that is endlessly recyclable, moldable. He chose pigment; I chose poetry, more specifically: the nature of the poetic “voice.” Why is it that “voice” is the only thing which can be translated from one language to another when none of the “poetry” remains? That investigation into linguistics is how I got my first Master’s degree (my second is in Library and Information Science.)

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Yes. In my very first book of poetry when I was 22, The Psalms (1991, Big 23 Press) the first poem is called “Les Deux Péniches.” It is based on the painting of the same name by André Dérain from 1906, which I encountered in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA. I describe 2 péniches, which are boats or barges, crossing alongside one another on the canvas in the autumn, mid-afternoon, leaf-tinted light. It is completely a sexual/emotional relationship metaphor. Such is a poem of a 22 year old.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Mondrian, without hesitation I choose him. I essentialized my work to the bare elements of language through the use of OULIPO cut-up: word and line. He essentialized painting to its primary elements, color and line.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

At first I wondered who read online publications. Then I familiarized myself with what was out there and I made a concerted effort to establish a web presence a few years back. It has paid off. I am now in the Wikipedia (someone in New Castle, UK put me in there!) and the last Google search of my name I did turned up 5,150 hits. So I have infiltrated the web and published quite a bit there. More people will see work online than will ever see the printed versions.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

I have several blogs myself, but I like blogs as news disseminating tools, not publication spaces. A real website is nicer for publishing than a linear blog.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Absolutely, and no. Sometimes I send out blindly (most of the time) and when I know the person/people behind a publication and his/her/their aesthetics I send there too. For example: the American Poetry Journal. I met the editor, J. P. Dancing Bear, when he asked me to be on his radio talk show @ 91.5 KKUP to promote my book, Catching Tigers in Red Weather, which he really loved. I didn’t know anything about his publication, but because I got to meet him for the show and now I really admire his work- I submitted some poems to him and had 2 of them accepted.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

I can’t remember the most recent one, but the very first poem I wish I wrote is “The Black Snake” by Mary Oliver. When I met Ms. Oliver for the first time years ago, I told her how much I loved that poem. She didn’t even talk to me about the work- she wanted to talk about when she found that black snake “looped and useless” in the road. Wait, I know, the most recent poem that I wish I wrote is “Broken Girl” by the fabulous Joan Larkin. I love this poem. It is from her second collection, A Long Sound. What a gorgeous poem about Recovery.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Yes. My two new collections of poems are:  "A Single Hurt Color" and "Night Chant."  I have been working with minimalism:  I love the idea of something winnowed away almost to the point of uselessness, but with some meaning or universal truth remaining.  I am also simultaneously working to complete my novel, Limboville, which I have been writing for the past 2 ½ years. Will Sally Moon ever get out of the Underworld?

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Kaya Oakes, Joan Larkin, John Vick (of Shy Fag & Adroitly Placed Word), Steve Mueske (Three Candles Press), my buddy, Richard Siken, and of course, I wouldn’t mind it.

An Interview with Andrew Demcak

(originally published in elimae magazine 03/2009)

Andrew Demcak is an award-winning poet whose book Catching Tigers in Red Weather won the Three Candles Press Open Book Award. Since then, Andrew has published another full-length poetry collection with BlazeVOX books entitled Zero Summer.

Wahlgren: Your poetry seems to possess extreme plays on words, (if this isn't a play on words, already); explain your process of calling a poem complete.

Demcak: My writing process is 3-fold: 1. Pull scraps of cut-up poems from a bag, see if the words on the scrap inspire me to write a line, 2. After all the lines have been written, determine which ones "are" the poem and which "aren't," and delete the "aren't the poem" lines, 3. Edit by putting remaining lines into a form (usually with a syllabic line and varying internal rhyme structures); this becomes the whole editing process. It is in this last phase that I play around with things like puns. I "hear" a poem continuously as I work on it. I add things which I think "heighten" the language -- what I mean by that is: I use devices that call attention to features of words and deep language structures. I sometimes have a completed poem (by my standard -- I am tired of working on it; it's done) or I continue to kick it around for a few weeks while it is still "wet" -- a final draft is one that feels like it has solidified or fossilized. It becomes unchangeable, fixed. If I can't add or subtract anything from the poem, it is completed.

Wahlgren: You integrate a lot of situations & characters, as if snippets of a moment or lapse of time. Where do these sources originate? Are you very perceptive? How do you deal with the personal?

Demcak: All my poems are cut-ups of other poets' work. The very nature of the cut-up is fragment. That is why my images jump around so much. But that is not to say that I don't allow them to do that -- it is completely by my command and by my choice. Sometimes when I work on a cut-up my own story begins to emerge from the poetry fragments -- then I continue to write the lines bending them in the direction of my story. Sometimes the words themselves decide another story, which I also bend towards that subject by editing my lines. How perceptive am I? I suppose I am as perceptive as any poet, but I am particularly keen at observing language.

Wahlgren: I noticed Catching Tigers in Red Weather has poems dedicated to poets who are dead. Do you dedicate poems based upon style or topic? Which takes precedence?

Demcak: My dedications are completely subjective. It could be that I think the dead poet would have liked this poem, or maybe it is in the style of that poet. I also like to dedicate poems as a way of saying "Thanks."

Wahlgren: In Zero Summer, you take on the role of Weldon Kees. Do you feel as if the poet is an actor, replacing the scenes of other's lives?

Demcak: In a way, poets of the past are like actors, or characters. Ginsberg meets Whitman in the grocery store. I was just imagining a suicide note that Weldon Kees might have left. Or the events that led up to writing of a suicide note.

Wahlgren: Are you a pop-culture poet?

Demcak: I am a pan-cultural poet, "Pop" being just one part of the whole. I am fearless in terms of subject matter. I will write about anything.

Wahlgren: When submitting poems to magazines, do you preview the magazine's style & look for certain parallels between your poems & the magazine's content?

Demcak: Yes and no. I think magazines/e-zines which feature only one "style" are boring, like The New Yorker, for example. When people can identify work as "The New Yorker style" of poetry, that would be a time to stop writing; the work would have been homogenized to the point of anonymity. When Georgie O'Keefe was just a beginning watercolor painter, she came across a glut of paintings which all looked just like her own. She instantly stopped painting in that way, and her thinking was "Why do what has already been done?" Editors either like the way I write or they don't.

Wahlgren: Why did you end Zero Summer & Catching Tigers in Red Weather on different notes?

Demcak: Again, it was very subjective. I felt the weight of Zero Summer was in the first section because it was edgy, in terms of subject and style. It's not to say the other 2 sections don't have weight -- the third section has my usual collection of death and disease. But I wanted to play into the over-arching theme of Zero Summer which is "longing." Having an achingly beautiful lyric as the last poem felt very wistful and "Romantic" to me. It filled me with longing. Catching Tigers in Red Weather was much more structure driven. The whole book is strict formalism in action. It had to end with death. That is logical. But I ended it with a guardian angel lamenting the failures of humans. It was like listening in at a 12-Step meeting for angels. It contradicts the title of the book, and I like that kind of contradiction, the impossible vs. the actual.

J Michael Wahlgren edits Gold Wake Press. He is author of Silent Actor (BeWrite, 2008)