January 19, 2021
AM: What do you see as poetry’s role in our present society? A unifying force? A destabilizing force of social and personal change? A reprieve from the mundanity and suffering of day-to-day existence? An access to greater empathy? A glimpse of inspiring beauty and truth? A compass that reveals new clarity of thought, redirecting our collective course?
MJ: Fascinating catalogue, all of which I have experienced over the years in reading and teaching poems, that in fact, are not mutually exclusive. Political poetry that I love, for example, pushes me toward a greater consciousness of complicated issues that point to imbalance of power and injustice, and many of them I’ve also found to be exact and beautiful in their lyricism. Yet almost always, with the best poems, I am awakened to language (its palpable presence in the body and mouth) and thus, too, sensory experience. I’ll add to that a growing sense of wonder that marks us as human beings. The best poems are multidimensional and multimodal in that way.
Your most recent book of poems, The Absurd Man, confronts the struggle for meaning in a technological world and ponders the value and nature of creation in the face of meaninglessness. What, in your view, is the meaning of your life?
Of course, on any given day I could answer this differently. You’ll have to forgive the lack of clarity as I truly believe the answer is far more complex than what will land here. In the past and today, I have talked about challenging the precincts of meaning, which takes a great dosage of critical intelligence and, believe it or not, love. I find meaning in the passionate pursuit of the “real” as Milosz phrases it. In writing poems, I am strongly committed to the possibility of uttering something that cracks and breaks through the veneer of my insecurities and fears, that pierces the armor I’ve built up that disconnects and alienates me from humanity.
What is the most radical thing a poet can do in his or her work?
We are bound, regrettably, by the strictures of language; meaning is its own prison, and thus, our lives become faint replicas of outdated ideas and what was previously discovered. No matter how beautiful the garden evoked in language, if it merely alludes to some biblical origin story then it is valueless, and quite possibly redundant. We rarely discuss the ethical imperative of “making it new.” Understandably, it is a weighty responsibility to put on poetry, a tall order as we say. Yet still, out of relevancy and quite possibly a spiritual urgency, a poet has to discover radical ways of picturing and sounding out this moment. That’s pretty far-reaching to me. In this way, poetry speaks to the living fact of being alive today. For example, some in our country believe it is 1776; I have been saying lately that we need a new image of patriotism so that we do not fall victim to a vision of the past that constrains us.
What, in your view, should that new image of patriotism look like?
My favorite image of patriotism is new Americans taking the oath of allegiance which I had the pleasure of witnessing once during a friend’s naturalization ceremony. There was not a dry eye in the room. It made me hopeful about the future of our country, and the bedrock foundations of freedom and opportunity. Scraggly hordes of men pretending we are in colonial America carrying weapons is the stuff of history books that exploits political divisions and frankly stokes the flames of populism that seem aimed at the worst of our humanity. Every American is a patriot and no one group can claim greater right to that label than another.
What 17th and 18th century poets do you read? And what has their work awakened in you?
Probably the Metaphysical Poets, chiefly Andrew Marvell and John Donne. Donne’s poems “The Ecstasy” and “The Good-Morrow” are favorites. I like poems that are intellectually demanding yet aim for a single argument about love and life, not to mention the transcendent aspects of sex. Also, someone who reads my poems closely knows that I hinge quite a bit on metaphor and its ability to order thought and give it shape.
You edited the 2019 edition of The Best American Poetry. What was that experience like for you? How, if at all, did editing the anthology affect you? Are you proud of the book? How do you feel about the process—and the product of your labor—in retrospect?
As I write in the Introduction, editing the book had me fall in love again with poetry; after many years of teaching and editing, I was becoming cynical and dispassionate. The experience was akin to standing on a beach for a year and deciding to plunge into a series of crashing waves; the richness of life in American poetry is stunningly humbling. Human beings transcribe as much joy and love in poetry with great relish and embodiment as they do their pain. Such inner musings authentically rendered in language deeply impacted my spiritual life. I only wish I could have doubled or even tripled the anthology in size. So many other poems would have found their way into its pages. I read all of the previous Best American Poetry introductions, which was its own education. Also, too, I was reminded of the importance of magazine editors whose curating is so underappreciated. It was a joy to work with series editor David Lehman. One gets a sense of his and others’ huge contributions to literary culture.
Ed note: For Aspen's interview with Mitch Sisskind, which we posted last Thursday (Jan 14, 2021), please click here.
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