If you were new to contemporary American poetry and asked me what you should do to learn more, I’d tell you to follow Don Share on Twitter. Yes, Twitter.
Share (a fitting last name for this celebrated poet, translator, and editor) frequently tweets and retweets about all kinds of news from any camp, clique, or corner of the poetry world. Readings, publications, histories, criticism, gossip, feuds, experiments, etc. He tweets it all. Oh, and he blogs about poetry too.
Between those tweets and blogs he manages to write and translate poems, live his life, and continually guide one of my absolute favorite magazines (Poetry) toward yet another month of great poems, essays, pictures, and reviews. In 2012, Poetry Magazine celebrated its centennial year, and Share (along with editor Christian Wiman) went back and read through 100 years worth of words, picking out 100 poems that best represented the publication’s history — at least according to their own tastes. The resulting anthology is called The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine.
Somehow amidst all that reading, Share’s enthusiasm for poetry remains undiminished, and you can hear it in his voice on the monthly Poetry Magazine Podcast, his genuine delight in unexpected ideas and phrases within poems.
After listening to his podcast for almost 5 years now, and after many Twitter exchanges, it was nice to finally meet Don at the AWP Conference in Boston this year and put the face to the face — the voice to the voice. And I was psyched that he agreed to do an interview and talk about some of the writing in his most recent poetry collection Wishbone, so here’s that interview:
15 questions for poet Don Share
CR: Before I ask you about your own poetry, I wanted to ask — while things are still in transition — what’s happening at Poetry? What will things look like after Christian Wiman leaves (for you, for the staff, for readers and listeners)?
DS: I wish I knew! There should be some kind of announcement soon, perhaps by the time anybody sees this; but I don’t know a thing, as of this writing, unfortunately.
CR: I once took what I thought would be a dream job as a music editor. 3 years later it felt like a curse, and it took me another 2 years to recover enough to even feel open to being moved by music again.
I can only go on what I hear in your monthly podcast, but you seem as responsive as ever when it comes to the big and little joys of poetry. After working as an editor at the Harvard Review, the Partisan Review, and Poetry Magazine — (and especially after all that extra reading you had to do for the centennial issues and the Open Door anthology) — how have you not shriveled into a cynical bastard? Or maybe you just hide it well?
CR: In what ways does your reading/editing hinder and help your own writing?
DS: It keeps me honest: I can’t find fault with something in a poem and then turn around and do the same thing myself! In a larger sense, it’s all of a piece, all on a strange and wonderful continuum. Reading never hinders; it only helps, and not just with writing.
CR: Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about “voice” — and how it’s given shape by all these small moves and adjustments throughout a poem. One of the things I love about your poems is that tragicomic tension of opposites (hey, a Wishbone!) between a kind of absurdist self-loathing and a wit that buzzes with pop-culture detritus, slangs, and pump-fake diction (“the lattes are on the froth!”)
I asked for some TLC,but all I got was
The Learning Channel.
— from “Fantasia on the Rapture”
Wild anything, fishy screamer, I’ll tell you a tale
of the Yo-Semite I yam, of my pyrrhic experience as a seer.
I’m… a slow learner … Entirely self-taught. I lie.
I’m a glaciologist of gloom, which is as bad as it sounds,
So cue the engrams! Send in the clowns!
— from “On Screaming Your Head Off”
So that is my detailed setup for a vague question: how do you discover your voice — or the voice for a poem? How did you discover THIS voice? To what degree is voice/style a matter of impulse/intuition vs. trial-and-error? Are those the same things?
DS: Well, the voice in a poem of mine is pretty much my own, though I don’t write “confessional” verse, which is another thing entirely. What I realized, in the comic abjectness of my own ridiculous life, is that I have no choice in the matter: I’m stuck with what I can say. It’s no use pretending to be something or somebody else, not even for the sake of a poem. And poems, like lives, are nothing if not trial and error. As for impulses, I’m not impulsive; I try to be careful. But intuition: well, it’s a pat answer, but as Frank O’Hara says, you go on your nerve. What else is there to go on?
CR: Yankees Vs. Red Sox; Beatles Vs. Stones; Share Vs. _________________?
DS: Share.
CR: Do you have any rules for writing or revision? Or a practice that, in hindsight, seems like a rule because it’s become a habit?
DS: If there were rules for writing, it would be like everything we yearn to escape from. It would be a chore, or worse, a game. Same goes for habits. Why deaden yourself? If I ever get in the habit of writing poems, it’ll be a good time to quit.
CR: What makes a difficult poem fail? What makes an accessible poem succeed? Are any of these terms useful?
DS: Difficult poems can fail because they may be so intensely ambitious. But in that, they can be excellent, or at least enlightening, failures, if they’re honest failures. We can learn so much from poems that don’t quite work out; I wish failed poems had a better reputation and readership. As for accessible poems… the “a” word is not in my vocabulary. Perhaps it’s useful to those who like to argue about such things. If I’ve read a poem, then I have accessed it. Period.
CR: I heard you read from your translations of Miguel Hernández recently, and this stanza really stuck with me for days afterwards:
A dark woman
dissolved in moonlight
pours herself thread by thread
into the cradle.
Laugh, son,
you can swallow the moon
when you want to.
Why is Hernández an important poet in your own life? (As much as a Spanish poet could be) why isn’t Hernández more of a recognized name in America?
DS: Hernández is important to me because his work elicits just the response you’ve described: it has stuck with me. That particular poem, “Lullaby of the Onion,” was one of the first poems I ever read – long story, but the first poems I read were in Spanish – and in a time and culture that professes to hate “sentiment” in poetry, it still leaves me on the verge of tears when I read it aloud, which means that it makes me feel like a human being. I simply don’t know why he isn’t better known in the U.S. I imagine it’s because we’re so used to pigeonholing everything in poetry that for many readers, Lorca and Machado is all they want to know about poetry from Spain. I hate to think that, and maybe it’s not so.
CR: Eduardo C. Corral (at the same reading) introduced you as a poet, editor, translator, and … avid tweeter, generously retweeting all kinds of poetry “content” throughout the day from all kinds of poetry “camps.” What do you think the internet and social media does to and for poetry? Why do you love Twitter in particular? Does your plugged-in-ness ever erode your offline concentration?
DS: I’m not really sure what those things do to and for poetry, to be honest. I’ve met some haters; but I’ve also met some extremely talented, generous, interesting, and warm folks – like you, for instance. On balance, I feel that Twitter can make poetry really feel like news that stays news: there’s so much going on, moment to moment, and I love trying to keep up with all the excitement. As for concentration, I’d say that being plugged in is part of my concentration!
CR: If the last surviving anthology had one of your poems in it, which one would you pick as proof that you were here? (and why?)
DS: I don’t think I’ve been able to write a poem yet that could prove anything. I’d have to imagine that my work as an editor or translation might suffice, if I’m extremely lucky.
CR: Your short, short poems are great. Sad, hilarious, punchy, enigmatic. Did those get pulled out of longer attempts during revision? Or did you just kinda know to stop while you were ahead?
DS: Waaal. I realized that most poems, even pretty bad ones, have a few pretty good lines. So I just pulled those out and excised the surrounding dross. Having done a bit of that, I realized that some poems just want to say things very briefly. Some of it you can maybe file under “soul of wit.” But yes, you want to quit while you’re ahead, assuming you ever find yourself ahead. More like quitting while you’re behind. actually.
CR: So… all this poetry. What else do you do? Netflix? Softball? Karaoke?
DS: Music. Lots of music! I used to paint, but I lived down the street from the Museum of Bad Art for a few years, and it gave me the shivers. Otherwise, I stare a lot. And I wander around.
CR: What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to write poems, or who says “I wanna be a poet when I grow up?”
DS: For the first kind of person I would say keep writing, and read tirelessly; no secret there! I hate it when poets say they’re overwhelmed, and can’t keep up. A poet should keep the fuck up. Above all, don’t let people, especially other poets, put you down. For the latter kind, I’m not sure: I’d want them to be able to make a living somehow.
CR: What sort of poems, themes, or essays have not yet appeared in Poetry that you’d like to see in the magazine?
DS: If I get to stay on here, you’ll see! I’m brimming with ideas. All I need is the opportunity to do something about them.
CR: And what’s the next new thing for you? Any upcoming book projects?
DS: The next new thing will be job-related, it seems. But I’m working on a critical guide to Basil Bunting’s poems, and I’m writing prose about poetry – just what the world needs, eh??
[Photo from Concord Poetry.]
