(1) Who is your Muse? May we borrow or rent her/him/them/it?

I am alive/ and plush/ and final,/ as a plum tree. //
The world/ can now/ begin.
or something like that.

Writing makes me write. If you can write, you can write.

(2) Have you written something, crumpled it up and tossed it across the room, then rescued it and smoothed it out - - only to spill coffee/tea/Koolaid on it? (If so, did you write about that?)

No. No.

(3) How does your daily life affect your writing, and vice versa?

No borders.

(4) How has your own writing been affected by the "rules" of poetry (whichever list you use), and by teachers, programs, seminars, etc?

No rules. Early teachers saved my life which is why I became one. I thought I’d try to return the favor. Writing program teachers are writers, not teachers. I had to learn a new way of learning from them – by fire, rather than water. Writers need other writers but writers are other writers worst enemies – it’s a profoundly sado/masochistic existence. But we don’t choose it.

Ferlinghetti says: “If you have to teach poetry, strike your blackboard with the chalk of light.” I have no idea what this means but I try to do it. Many of my mid-Michigan college students convert to Poetry. I have met poets/teachers who would cringe at the thought of a mid-Michigan poetry lover, but their existence is relative – I do not believe they are who they say they are. They get drunk at parties and spout self-important rhetoric trying to impress young writers who are still naive enough to want to sleep with them. Just read Billy Collins’ introduction to Best American Poetry, 2006.

(5) When did you start writing, and why?

In Seventh Grade when my “Language Arts” (what a beautiful phrase!) teacher forced us to keep a journal and a rat crawled out of my mouth across the page leaving footprints and a trail of rabid saliva and my stomach finally settled.

I remember, I was in love with a boy who didn’t love me back, like all girls in seventh grade. It was easier to obsess over him than eat the glass of home. I wrote about Nuclear War and him and Ronald Reagan, who scared me to death. I avoided all the important stories until much later but I still suddenly knew I needed writing.

(6) Best rumor about yourself?

I sold a car for a bag of weed.

This is the only rumor about myself that I am aware of. Anything else anyone says about me is probably true.

(7) Where are the best and worst places you've ever been?

The best place I’ve ever been in my life was a cabin I hiked to in the Bieszczady mountains in Poland where there was no running water and no electricity.  We called it “Arek’s cabin” because the caretaker’s name was Arek.  He would let us stay there all weekend for a couple of packs of cigarettes and a bottle of Vodka.   
The worst: A jail cell in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

AND, The Bonus Eight!

( 8 )

How do you define “erotic” vs. “pornographic”? (And Sydney wanted to know about the Tattoo)

I've heard that when a man writes pornographic stories, they are called 'pornographic' but when a woman writes pornographic stories, they are called ‘erotica’. Some of the ‘erotica’ written by women that I’ve read recently proves this theory true (unfortunately). Pornography’s main purpose is to get someone off. You are supposed to be able to ‘use’ pornography in order to actually reach orgasm. If something is pornographic, it’s main meaning and value lie in how well it does this job. But, ‘erotica’ SHOULD be (and when it’s done really well, it is) literary. Maybe it gets people off too but it’s main meaning and value should lie in its literary quality and merit. Erotic writing should enlighten the reader or get them to think about some aspect of the body’s sensual life that they hadn’t before. I think some of Anais Nin’s and Margueritte Duras’ works achieve this. And, in order not to be sexist, I guess I’d also say that some of Vladimir Nabokov’s work achieves this as well. But, Penthouse Letters are a perfect example of pornographic writing not erotic writing. You do not read a Penthouse Letter in order to be enlightened or uplifted by its literary quality.

But I don’t consider any of my work pornographic or erotic. So far, I’ve only ever attempted writing one thing in my life that’s main purpose was to get someone off and that piece of writing will NEVER see the light of day. And I guess my understanding of ‘erotic’ is that the main theme of the work should still center on sex. Almost none of my pieces are actually written ABOUT sex, they just happen to mention sex in them. Mentioning sex in poetry is like mentioning eating or sleeping or talking, I’m merely referencing something everyone does (or thinks about doing) everyday. Sex is just something humans do. It is part of who we are. I think its puritanical (but so typical of American culture) to label anything having to do with sex (or even mentioning sex) at all as either ‘erotic’ or ‘pornographic’.

I always tell my students that if you are attempting to write literary quality poetry or stories, one of the first things you have to try to do is to accept and expose the real complications of being human. They want to write about how much they love their boyfriends or they want to write about how much they hate war; but the literary nugget in either of these subjects is the complicated part. They love their boyfriends despite the fact that their boyfriends have cheated on them, don’t have jobs, tell them they’re fat, etc. They hate war but they want to support soldiers and the families of soldiers. Inside these complications is the interesting part the part that readers will connect to the part that will try to say something new or something worth saying. Sex is a complicated aspect of being human. Not least of all because, most of the time, we refuse to discuss it with any candor for fear of being judged or ostracized. I hope that when sex comes up in my writing, it is because I am simply trying to accept it and expose it as part of the complications of being human, not because I’m trying to be titillating. I can see how some lines or passages of my work are erotic but I don’t think they could ever be pornographic; they are too clumsy and dark (and hopefully real) to be pornographic.

Tattoos --

I only have one tattoo: the fish. My mother called me fish when I was a little girl because I would never come out of the water at the end of a day at the beach. I love(d) to swim. I swam before I could walk. Also my mother is a Pisces so in my own (really underdeveloped) sense of humor, my tattoo is the equivalent of that stereotypical ‘Mother’tattoo. I also wanted something I could draw myself and I can’t really draw anything so that speaks for the simplicity of the design. I also wanted a tattoo that would take under a minute to get and it did, only about 30 seconds and I screamed the entire time. I had this tattoo done in Seattle at the end of a cross-country camping trip with my ex-husband and his brother. Seattle was the farthest we got away from our starting point; so we decided to commemorate our trip with these tattoos. They didn’t get the same tattoo but we all got it on our upper right arm. If you look very closely at mine, you’ll see that the eye of my fish is actually a beauty mark and there is a matching one on the tail. So, my fish is also one of those sneaky fish that tries to confuse its predators. I don’t know what that means on any figurative level exactly, but it seems a little erotic to me.

Recently, I’ve been considering having long, thick, bright red flames tattooed on my lower abdomen to cover up the stretch marks my babies have given me and so I never (again) forget the pain and sacrifice of pregnancy and birth. But since I’m pretty sure that would take more than 30 seconds, it might take me awhile to get around to doing that.

Home | Privacy Policy | Search

The Hiss Quarterly ISSN 1556-245X

All content contained within this site is protected by copyright laws.
Unauthorized use of graphics or literary material is strictly prohibited.