Gaton's 1984 chapbook Of Grenada has been re-printed by Keith Gaustad and Jon Lohr of Teppichfresser Press. Both Gaton and I have worked closely with them to make sure that everything was reprinted exactly as the original. The only real drama was when the two wrote a page of endnotes for some of the dated references. Although Gaton was reluctant to do so, he eventually conceded, making them promise to "keep them tiny and sparce."
The launch party will be Monday, July 27th at the backyard of 2979 N. Bremen, or as Gaton and the old timers remember it, the Suds beer garden.
Gaton has agreed to read from, talk and answer questions about Of Grenada. This will be his first Milwaukee reading in almost a decade. Unfortunately as I will be out of the state, your humble host will be unable to attend.
The launch party will also be a going away party for Jon Lohr, who will soon be moving away for school.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Q&A with Chris Gaton
What do you like or dislike about poetry today?
(CG) I can tell you what I dislike first. Only because I have to confront it anytime I open up an anthology or go to an open mic, and God help me I don't know why I go to these, I don't even read at them! (laughs)
I keep reading and hearing all these youngsters going on and on about their sex lives. Not their romantic lives mind you, but it's all graphic or maybe I should say pornographic but then that feels like it congratulates them somehow. See, I get all bothered by this because I was married for years and years to a beautiful woman. I write things all the time about her still to this day but I never felt the need to discuss her intimately with anyone else. If I wrote about her it was about her temperament when I made an ass of myself. She was so patient.
But it comes down to this: aside from what I may think of my poems poetry is not me. Poetry is not you or the sex you think you have. It can be about the big sunshiny idiot you try to be when the absolute truth gets you nowhere near the sex you think you have to have or the scar you hide. But poetry is never you.
Is this like dictation?
(CG) It can be. If you are really lucky and get those signals that guys like Spicer were talking about. Or that notion of Duende that Lorca had. Some of us aren't blessed that way. It doesn't mean we stop writing. I think of myself as one who traces pictures in a magazine and then colors it differently if that helps any.
A little.
(CG) Literature isn't supposed to be absolute truths of formula that you can prove out on a blackboard. It's only truth is the complicated nature in all things. A celebration of mystery. It's not science and even scientist will tell you that the more things they learn the more questions they have. It's because we're not supposed to know everything. That's the biggest lie going right now, this idea that we can know everything. I saw a picture of Steven Hawking in a strip club. That right there proves he doesn't know everything and if he does he doesn't care and in that case what good is the knowledge?
I'm a bit confused.
(CG) It happens and when it does I change the subject. For instance I forgot to mention what I like about poetry today.
Oh yes that's right.
(CG) The fact that there is an absolute tidal wave of writing out there now allows the uninterested writer to continue on in obscurity. There isn't any bother with us. The TV guys went on strike but that was over getting paid. Writers and poets ought to be paid but anyone can read my poems and I gotta say there's a fifty-fifty chance they'll read them better than me. I always liked those kids that go to open mics and read out of other peoples books. I did that myself but that was before open mics, back then you just stood up on buses and went for it until someone stopped you. Nowadays there are places for poetry, but hey that gets me back to the things I don't like. The poet is not to be celebrated. Just the writing. This idea of ushering people around to read their poems is absurd.
You don't like places for poetry?
(CG) No, they seem to segregate poets out of society. If there's any reason to admire a poet, and I mean the actual personage it's the truly crazy ones. You can spot the difference between these ones and the fakers. And let me tell you there are an awful lot of fakers coming out of those graduate programs.
What are they faking?
(CG) Everything! From how they achieve the poem to the manner they affect, they even fake having personalities. Usually they just sit and talk about what they don't like about popular culture but then of course all they write about is popular culture so what's the point? But you know it isn't their fault really. They're all the same middle class kids who had TV as the babysitter, and in some cases, dad. I met this young poet recently in a jagged little crowd. He said he learned how to shave from watching a movie. No dad.
But they go to school like this and maybe they read a few poems in high school and tried writing some and now they're in College not sure what to do and they go to these classes where all they hear is how much they have to reject the thing that raised them.
So then they write these horrid faker poems. The only thing worse than the one who try to sound proper are the ones trying to sound cutting edge. Get the hell outta here you're not from the new york school and what does that school have to do with you anyway Midwest! That's what I wanna scream at them.
Sounds like you got it in for Regionalism?
(CG) On the contrary. It's one of the things I really like about today's poetry. The only problem is the entire nation needs to actively reject everything that happens in New York. Now before you make anymore faces just listen. Reject in terms of not allowing it to dictate what they do. It's why they teach Beat classes everywhere, to get people interested in all forms of life and all the places life can happen. New York is too big. Too many writers there, but thankfully it's dying out a bit. I'm holding my breath for Ashbery to go. (Laughs and waves it off)
That's sounds....bad.
(CG) In that case I take back everything I said.
Shouldn't you wait until the end to say that?
(CG) Right! But, No I love his writing. But the head needs to die off so the body can be free again. It's the last step in decentralization of poetic thought. Or a big step everytime some famous poet drops off, the we get to see if any of it mattered without that person sitting at a desk writing reviews of other people's books or favorable blurbs. I'm old too and when I die nobody will give a shit. But maybe somebody will pick up the books someday and read what I got and think about it and hopefully by then all the prejudices we have coming down from academia and New York will be gone and it can be read on its own merit. Everything on its own merit.
Are you a fan of "authorless" poetry then?
(CG) I'm a fan of it but the only problem is in some ways it is a shield. Hiding the identity of the author serves the poem only if it is completely universal. If the elements of the author are still there then what is the point? If your doing authorless poetry then you need to get a job with Hallmark.
So why the attack on New York?
(CG) Haven't they suffered enough? But listen, it isn't an attack on a place for the sake of attacking but for the sake of liberating....You know what though, aside from dear John they've not got much there anymore. Nobody that packs a walllop, it's an intitution now which is weird to say about a city. The weird irony is here in Milwaukee we've got Woodland Pattern, one beacon in a city is all you need, more is desirable but enough stuff comes through and now every town with a University has any number of writers coming through...it's all happening just like I thought it would back in the 70's when the program started up around here at UWM.
I went to classes and thought I'd be hot shit but I sat down and had a long talk with the department head and I realized, it might be good for a while but soon every place will be like this place and all we'll have left to distinguish us is the people that didn't go through the system. And suddenly it felt okay to let that slip away. Getting a job to pay the bills was important and I was able to switch majors.
Yes, this is a famous element in your biography.
(CG) I have a biography?
Well I'm starting one.
(CG) Oh, good God.
Do you think it's a bad idea?
(CG) Well yes only in that it won't be very interesting. I had a steady job and one wife most of my life. I live in blue collar city, as my hip hop neighbors might say "I ain't the one"
What can I do to make it interesting?
(CG) Embellishment comes to mind. We can make B. black or better yet say I bought her during a trip to Haiti brought her home and married her in exchange for her freedom.
That might be a little extreme.
(CG) Actually, we used to make jokes about that all the time, how boring we were I mean.
If you are comfortable I'd like to talk a bit about B. if that's alright?
(CG) Well I think I'm over the anger stage. So whatever's after that is what you'll get. I don't know if I'm at acceptance yet though. But in broader terms writing about death is never easy. Only because we are always so unsure of the next topic. Kids always dabble with it when they're down in the dumps with high school depression. When you're older though is when it starts to look like such a tantalizing option. In fact death sort of becomes a companion. A long term illness will do that to a person. And if you can accept your own role is when you are able to move on past death. Until of course you actually die.
What do you have to accept as your role? The role of a poet?
(CG) No no. Poet is just a title or description. That's why I don't like poets being celebrated for being poets. The role is life. You are life, I am life, that's the role. It's a bunch of horseshit pretending the definition of a person is what they do. Human life is always more than that, it just became easier for a lot of people at some point to identify this way. Of course they reach the mid-life crisis and crap their pants because they suddenly realize that this isn't how to define anything. It's just what you do to get by more than anything.
Okay sometimes it really works out to a tea. A baker is a baker or a priest is a priest or in my case a rabbi, but not very many people can actually bring this to the perfect alignment and use the job title as the ultimate identifier. If I ever call myself a poet and mean it then I'm fooling myself. What I do in life is not "being a poet" but writing poems. If other people call me poet then I'm flattered and I take it as a compliment. But if I call myself that it's presumptuous. It's one of those things.
So a baker is a baker but a poet writes poems?
(CG) Yeah. Doesn't that sound nicer?
I admit it does.
(CG) And it doesn't aim to offend the bakers of the world. Who they are is very important to me. I have a thing for fresh bread.
And a good deli?
(CG) You better believe it.
(CG) I can tell you what I dislike first. Only because I have to confront it anytime I open up an anthology or go to an open mic, and God help me I don't know why I go to these, I don't even read at them! (laughs)
I keep reading and hearing all these youngsters going on and on about their sex lives. Not their romantic lives mind you, but it's all graphic or maybe I should say pornographic but then that feels like it congratulates them somehow. See, I get all bothered by this because I was married for years and years to a beautiful woman. I write things all the time about her still to this day but I never felt the need to discuss her intimately with anyone else. If I wrote about her it was about her temperament when I made an ass of myself. She was so patient.
But it comes down to this: aside from what I may think of my poems poetry is not me. Poetry is not you or the sex you think you have. It can be about the big sunshiny idiot you try to be when the absolute truth gets you nowhere near the sex you think you have to have or the scar you hide. But poetry is never you.
Is this like dictation?
(CG) It can be. If you are really lucky and get those signals that guys like Spicer were talking about. Or that notion of Duende that Lorca had. Some of us aren't blessed that way. It doesn't mean we stop writing. I think of myself as one who traces pictures in a magazine and then colors it differently if that helps any.
A little.
(CG) Literature isn't supposed to be absolute truths of formula that you can prove out on a blackboard. It's only truth is the complicated nature in all things. A celebration of mystery. It's not science and even scientist will tell you that the more things they learn the more questions they have. It's because we're not supposed to know everything. That's the biggest lie going right now, this idea that we can know everything. I saw a picture of Steven Hawking in a strip club. That right there proves he doesn't know everything and if he does he doesn't care and in that case what good is the knowledge?
I'm a bit confused.
(CG) It happens and when it does I change the subject. For instance I forgot to mention what I like about poetry today.
Oh yes that's right.
(CG) The fact that there is an absolute tidal wave of writing out there now allows the uninterested writer to continue on in obscurity. There isn't any bother with us. The TV guys went on strike but that was over getting paid. Writers and poets ought to be paid but anyone can read my poems and I gotta say there's a fifty-fifty chance they'll read them better than me. I always liked those kids that go to open mics and read out of other peoples books. I did that myself but that was before open mics, back then you just stood up on buses and went for it until someone stopped you. Nowadays there are places for poetry, but hey that gets me back to the things I don't like. The poet is not to be celebrated. Just the writing. This idea of ushering people around to read their poems is absurd.
You don't like places for poetry?
(CG) No, they seem to segregate poets out of society. If there's any reason to admire a poet, and I mean the actual personage it's the truly crazy ones. You can spot the difference between these ones and the fakers. And let me tell you there are an awful lot of fakers coming out of those graduate programs.
What are they faking?
(CG) Everything! From how they achieve the poem to the manner they affect, they even fake having personalities. Usually they just sit and talk about what they don't like about popular culture but then of course all they write about is popular culture so what's the point? But you know it isn't their fault really. They're all the same middle class kids who had TV as the babysitter, and in some cases, dad. I met this young poet recently in a jagged little crowd. He said he learned how to shave from watching a movie. No dad.
But they go to school like this and maybe they read a few poems in high school and tried writing some and now they're in College not sure what to do and they go to these classes where all they hear is how much they have to reject the thing that raised them.
So then they write these horrid faker poems. The only thing worse than the one who try to sound proper are the ones trying to sound cutting edge. Get the hell outta here you're not from the new york school and what does that school have to do with you anyway Midwest! That's what I wanna scream at them.
Sounds like you got it in for Regionalism?
(CG) On the contrary. It's one of the things I really like about today's poetry. The only problem is the entire nation needs to actively reject everything that happens in New York. Now before you make anymore faces just listen. Reject in terms of not allowing it to dictate what they do. It's why they teach Beat classes everywhere, to get people interested in all forms of life and all the places life can happen. New York is too big. Too many writers there, but thankfully it's dying out a bit. I'm holding my breath for Ashbery to go. (Laughs and waves it off)
That's sounds....bad.
(CG) In that case I take back everything I said.
Shouldn't you wait until the end to say that?
(CG) Right! But, No I love his writing. But the head needs to die off so the body can be free again. It's the last step in decentralization of poetic thought. Or a big step everytime some famous poet drops off, the we get to see if any of it mattered without that person sitting at a desk writing reviews of other people's books or favorable blurbs. I'm old too and when I die nobody will give a shit. But maybe somebody will pick up the books someday and read what I got and think about it and hopefully by then all the prejudices we have coming down from academia and New York will be gone and it can be read on its own merit. Everything on its own merit.
Are you a fan of "authorless" poetry then?
(CG) I'm a fan of it but the only problem is in some ways it is a shield. Hiding the identity of the author serves the poem only if it is completely universal. If the elements of the author are still there then what is the point? If your doing authorless poetry then you need to get a job with Hallmark.
So why the attack on New York?
(CG) Haven't they suffered enough? But listen, it isn't an attack on a place for the sake of attacking but for the sake of liberating....You know what though, aside from dear John they've not got much there anymore. Nobody that packs a walllop, it's an intitution now which is weird to say about a city. The weird irony is here in Milwaukee we've got Woodland Pattern, one beacon in a city is all you need, more is desirable but enough stuff comes through and now every town with a University has any number of writers coming through...it's all happening just like I thought it would back in the 70's when the program started up around here at UWM.
I went to classes and thought I'd be hot shit but I sat down and had a long talk with the department head and I realized, it might be good for a while but soon every place will be like this place and all we'll have left to distinguish us is the people that didn't go through the system. And suddenly it felt okay to let that slip away. Getting a job to pay the bills was important and I was able to switch majors.
Yes, this is a famous element in your biography.
(CG) I have a biography?
Well I'm starting one.
(CG) Oh, good God.
Do you think it's a bad idea?
(CG) Well yes only in that it won't be very interesting. I had a steady job and one wife most of my life. I live in blue collar city, as my hip hop neighbors might say "I ain't the one"
What can I do to make it interesting?
(CG) Embellishment comes to mind. We can make B. black or better yet say I bought her during a trip to Haiti brought her home and married her in exchange for her freedom.
That might be a little extreme.
(CG) Actually, we used to make jokes about that all the time, how boring we were I mean.
If you are comfortable I'd like to talk a bit about B. if that's alright?
(CG) Well I think I'm over the anger stage. So whatever's after that is what you'll get. I don't know if I'm at acceptance yet though. But in broader terms writing about death is never easy. Only because we are always so unsure of the next topic. Kids always dabble with it when they're down in the dumps with high school depression. When you're older though is when it starts to look like such a tantalizing option. In fact death sort of becomes a companion. A long term illness will do that to a person. And if you can accept your own role is when you are able to move on past death. Until of course you actually die.
What do you have to accept as your role? The role of a poet?
(CG) No no. Poet is just a title or description. That's why I don't like poets being celebrated for being poets. The role is life. You are life, I am life, that's the role. It's a bunch of horseshit pretending the definition of a person is what they do. Human life is always more than that, it just became easier for a lot of people at some point to identify this way. Of course they reach the mid-life crisis and crap their pants because they suddenly realize that this isn't how to define anything. It's just what you do to get by more than anything.
Okay sometimes it really works out to a tea. A baker is a baker or a priest is a priest or in my case a rabbi, but not very many people can actually bring this to the perfect alignment and use the job title as the ultimate identifier. If I ever call myself a poet and mean it then I'm fooling myself. What I do in life is not "being a poet" but writing poems. If other people call me poet then I'm flattered and I take it as a compliment. But if I call myself that it's presumptuous. It's one of those things.
So a baker is a baker but a poet writes poems?
(CG) Yeah. Doesn't that sound nicer?
I admit it does.
(CG) And it doesn't aim to offend the bakers of the world. Who they are is very important to me. I have a thing for fresh bread.
And a good deli?
(CG) You better believe it.
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