interview for calliop nerve

8/8/2019 Interview for Calliop Nerve

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Tell us about your book The trinity

The Trinity came on the tail end of me working on my 200 page poem TheJazz Symphonic Glass Ear which is a stream of consciousness prose poem.When I had finished it I got word that Turkey Buzzard Press which is the

poet co-opt that I am a member of wanted to publish a small book of mywork. I envisioned the book as having my say on some of the core issuesthat concern me , as Gods, war, American violence, death and some thingsthat we overlook in our every day lives. Some people believe that poetryshould be about the great issues of life and death or love and longing, but Iwanted to touch on some of the common things as a news paper manstanding on the corner selling news paper and the way that birds are shy ofhuman, the cat that is let out at night and the common act of doing jury duty.I am one who believes that even the smallest thing is subject for poetry, that

poetry has been brought down from its ivory tower and ivy leagued highmindedness. I love spoken word poetry, not only because it is a voice of anew generation but because it does not shy away from the common life ofthe everyday world.

Why do you write? Do you have any particular goals to your writing?

I believe very strongly that poets are in the service of the people, that we areto write for those who can not are will not write for themselves. Poetry is a

teaching and affirmation tool. The public tend to turn to poetry in times ofstress, be it good stress as is caused by being in love or the stress of dealingwith lost. As I have gotten into the tail end of my life I am conceded enoughto think that I have something to say about what it means to be human in theworld. While no one have all the answers and there are as many truths asthere are people in the world I see myself as just one voice among many.The goal of my poetry is to be true to myself and there-by be true to the

public. I am a teacher and a preacher at heart and I want to share what I havelearned over the years with others. It was F Scott Fitzgerald that said that hewould rather preach to Americus then entertains her and the same is true of

me.

What dose being an underground poet means? Do you consider yourself

underground?

I havent heard the term Underground poet in quite a while. If you take it tomean under the radar of the consciousness of the general public then I am an


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underground poet. If you take it to mean outside of the main stream of thepublishing world as if one is a lone voice crying out in the wilderness thenthis is also so. I tend to think that an underground poet is one who deals withsubject matters that in some sense tends to distress the reading public, thiscan be the subject of things that the public do not want to deal with, and theywould rather sweep it under the rug of our consciousness. There is a dualitywithin me; on one hand I want to a poets poet in the like of Ezra Pound andGertrude Stein and on the other hand I want to be the poet of the common

people in the like of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes.

Whats on your recommended reading list?

There are so many books out there that it is hard to pick and choose. It

depend on the person that I am recommending to, where they are in their lifeand what I have read that I think will be of some use to them. Off the top ofmy head I will say that The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins andFederico Garcia Lorcas Poet in New Yorkand The Norton AnthologyAfrican American Literature. I make a point of reading books that havenothing to do with poetry. I am also a big reader of essays.

Where does your voice comes from? Influences

As a kid I stammered all the time. It seems to run in my family as my auntand great granddad stammer also. My great granddad was a preacher anddoing the summer all the kids was sent to grand mamas farm outside ofBrookville Mississippi. I was fascinated that my great granddad neverstemmed while at the pulpit and that my aunt didnt stemmed when she sungin the choir so I started to preach and sing as a kid and everyone thought thatI was going to grow up to preach for the church. For me it was never aboutthe church but about being able to speak smoothly like everyone else. Myoldest incident of self awareness is that when I was six years old I discoverthat I didnt stammer when I thought or sang or changed the tone of my

voice and so I would hold these variety shows in the bathroom mirror whereI played all of the guests. All of this came to inform my voice. As a teenagerI discovered the plays of Tennessee Williams some of which was set in St.Louis and I learned a sense of place. Allen Ginsburg taught me that thesubject of being gay was worthy of poetry. Within this year I havesummated poetry to fifty magazines and the rejection are coming in but


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some of the comments that I have receive about my poetry is that it is raw.This rawness is the source of my strength

How do you approach a write? Believe in Writers block?

I write everyday. I start with a cup of coffee and just began to move my handto see what will come. Then I work with what I get. I dont believe so muchin writers block as I have my artwork to lead me when I dont feel likewriting or there is nothing on my mind that I want to write about. The goodthing about having the artwork to fall back on is that it presents me with awhole new set of rules to deal with by way of using paints instead of the

pen. I write long hand first then type it into the computer to work on it.

Listen to music while you write? Who?

Sometimes I listen to music or have the T V on as background noise. I listento jazz or news radio as KGNU out of Boulder CO. Once when I was astudent at Naropa Univ. The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poeticstarted by Ann Waldman and Allen Ginsburg Allen came by my room as Iwas listening to classical music as we talked he asked me if I listen to thatkind of music all the time? Then he went on to tell me that the kind of musicthat we listen to while writing seep into what we are writing. As of late Ihave been listening to Nina Somone and Nancy Wilson

Have you won any awards? How much do such accolades matter to

you?

I have won just one award the Mad Blood Literary Award in 2005 or 06which netted me $1,000. It can be rewarding to have your pears judge yourwork. Even as I enter competition from time to time and I have in the pastsponsored a few awards I do not place much stock by them because I see it

as a shot in the dark. Poetry can be very personal and what you may like thejudge of a competition may and more likely not care for it and it can bruiseyour ego to get a rejection.

Do you have an ideal reader?


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the metal. The job that I had that I like, was working as a printer at a plasticbag factory. I loved working with the color of inks and would take some of ithome to paint with.

How did you become so prolific?

I dont think of myself as prolific. During those periods of a run in poetry Itend to write about four poems a day. The thing is that one new poeminforms the other or one style informs the other so I have these little runs ofa few poems that are mined from the same vain. There are always someother way of saying something.

What advice do you have for other writer whether new or seasoned?

The advice that I give to poets more so then to writers in general is to be

true to yourself fore most because if the truth doesnt start with you thenhow are you going to recognize it when it does comes around? We all knowa little of the truth if such a thing exist, I suppose that it depends on yourrelationship within the world. There are many truths to be found in the worldand what is true today may not be so tomorrow so some of them are not setin stone Second is to know that you are in the service of the people. Putyourself in their shoes and write from some other point of view. Lastly Iadvise poets to tell all of their secrets. By doing so you let others know thatthey are not alone in what they feel or think. I can tell you that one of thehardest things that I have tried to do was to tell all of my secrets and I amstill working on it. Poets can not afford to keep secrets. This gets back to mythought that we are in the service of the people and while we can not fightall of the battles that need our attention, this is to say that we should not

spread ourselves to thin, still we must choose one that is for some reasonnear and dear to our heart.

How do you feel about spirituality?

Spirituality is something that has always been close to me from my earlierdays as a kid till now. I am not a Christian Ill state that up front but still I


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am spiritual. I write a great deal about the Christian God because manypeople believe in him so he will not be denied. For me Nature is Godenough, something that I interact with each day of my life, something that I

breathe in and take my discarded breath and put it to good use, somethingthat is greater then I and all the people of the world put together. As a God

Nature produces no waste that can not be used by something else and if thatis not God like then I dont know what is. Nature as God feed and is fedupon. She has given us everything that we need to live a righteous life and ifwe but put more faith in her and come to see that all living things are insomeway kin to us because we are all linked by life. The earth is a livingcreature. Human are born to look for a God, this is evident that we do nothave all of the answers and we long to have them all. Our search for God is asearch for some part of immortality and a validation of our life. We want todo right by our God. Some will argue that a material biological organism

such as the earth does not have a spirit but we are unable to prove that manhas a spirit. This is where faith comes into play. Faith relieves you of the

burden of having to prove that God exist and it is the faith of trust that helpsto sustains us in a world that have proven that it does not consider man asany more special then any other creature that lives. In the sixties andseventies there was a saying, back to nature, the fact of the matter is that wecan not leave nature, we can not separate from her no more then we can stepoutside of our skin.

Tell us about your artwork and sculpting?

My artwork is a kind of meditation; it has given me an out let to expressmyself long before I picked up the pen. Art is a way of seeing the world, of

perceiving what is around and/or within us and art is not just the depiction ofa thing as it is but the creation of a new thing born out of the inspiration ofthe thing that we are painting. The difference between painting and sculptingis that with one you are adding to while with the other you are taking away.There is something poetic about painting while sculpting is more logical

more hard something that you can move around while painting exist on a flatsurface. The computer artwork that I have been doing as of late leave mewanting the dirtiness of getting paint between my finger nails. Man has theability to make art of the inventions that we have made so I am a fan offound art and I take a close look at things that people throw away becausethere is beauty there; beauty of form and color. To create art I take thingsapart to see the form of their insides. I never tire of my amazement at the


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invention of form that man comes up with. We are hardwired into makingsomething functional while selected in making something beauty. It is wherethe two are merged into one where art raises to its greatest order.

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David E. Patton 08-14-09
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