Christopher Davis's third book of poetry, A History of the Only War, will be published by Four Way Books in 2005. His second book, The Patriot: Poems, was published by University of Georgia Press in 1998, and his first book, The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the Future, won the 1988 Associated Writing Programs Award. Buy his books here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? The first poem I ever loved was "The Waste Land." I had read Kinnell's "The Book of Nightmares" and had been excited by it, but a couple of years later, my freshman year, I discovered Eliot's poem in a comp. class and went haywire. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? I read The New York Times constantly. I also read a lot of political journalism, The New Left Review, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, The New Republic. I subscribe to them, anyway. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Only in tonal, imagistic ways that have little to do with the actual content of philosophy. Some philosophy is important to my life, especially the Stoics, and Cicero's transcriptive writing about Greek philosophy...words from Cicero and Marcus Aurelius appear in poems of mine, because I love the words, not for real programmatic reasons. The philosophy and literary criticism I have read which could be called "contemporary" has contrubuted a lot to my intellectual growth, but it does not have much influence on my poetry 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Eugenio Montale and Zbigniew Herbert will always be among my favorite poets, for their art and scope. There is such aesthetic, intellectual and experiential profundity in their work, and, for both of them, a self-depricating, comic (in both the sitcom and Dantesque senses) streak that brings their grandeur down to a a human scale. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I try to keep aware of, and responsive to, poetry as it unfolds around us. Sometimes I fall in love with a particular book or the work of a particular poet. I do think that reading poetry is crucial to my writing. Usually, when I'm engaged in writing, I'm reading a lot of poetry. These days, I write very slowly, building poems in increments, and my absorption of poetry tends to be similarly concentrated, committed. It's a relationship, it's intimazy, reading poetry and writing it. Both constitute by most emotionally-engaged activity. Reading the newspaper and reading about Byzantium is so much easier...it's an activity that makes me feel smart, whereas poetry, good poetry, makes me feel, not "smarter" exactly, but more aware. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? I've only read a few Sharon Olds poems. Even though my poetry could probably be called "post-confessional," I've always spent a lot more energy reading writers such as Barrett Watten and Marjorie Perloff. I don't read in order to reinforce what I already know. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? It's like doing whip-its. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? Yes, a poet's role has to do with language and aesthetics, to keep our ears sharp and our hearts and minds correspondingly strong. A poet functions within the genre of poetry and the medium of language. It's a specialized activity. A citizen is simply obligated not to vote for Bush, etc. I think a poet functions as a member of a community of poetry readers -- which is not a stupid group of people! I believe there is, for many poets, a subtle "political" aspect to the need to write in a way that "reaches" that audience, while allowing whatever is unique, volatile, uncertain in one's imagination to live in the work. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**tart Chiseled**men, torsos, marble, the dying Gaul I**fuck Of**you Form**taxation (with representation) 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? Well, I'm a typical American gay guy, and my life is very "physical." I love waking up on a nice Saturday morning, getting a little high, riding my bike around while listening to Beethoven's 4th piano concerto in the headphones. I've always spent a lot of time doing that kind of thing, and those kinds of experience, that general way of being-in-the-world, is in my poetry.