Aaron McCollough's third book of poems, Little Ease, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press in 2006. His other books include Double Venus (Salt, 2003) and Welkin (Ahsahta, 2002). McCollough's poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Volt, Denver Quarterly, Slope, Colorado Review, LIT, American Letters & Commentary, Verse, Typo, and other periodicals. He is a PhD student at the University of Michigan. Also, he edits GutCult. Buy his books here. See some work here, here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? I think I would have to go with William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say.” I already knew that I liked poetry by the time I read this poem in a high school English class, but something about it (more than much of Williams’ other anthologized work) struck me. On the one hand, the poem baffled me. I knew that poems should mean something, but this frustrated my expectations. It was just a refrigerator note! Adjusting to the possibility that the bourgeois and ‘low’ could produce powerful emotional effects in poetry knocked a lot of things loose for me. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? I read a lot of sports stuff. No one who knows me would find this surprising, and I know many other writers who do the same, but it does seem to take people who don’t know me off guard from time to time. I read about sports because I love sports. I get very excited about certain teams, technical details, statistics, all the kid’s stuff. Also, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see sports as an interesting cultural lens. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? I think philosophy (with a small p) is essential to what I’m up to. I would include philosophy of religion there. In any case, for me writing is a key tool for negotiating my experience as a being in the world. It is philosophy – ad hoc philosophy. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? I used to love the French, but I’m off them at the moment. My favorite non-Anglo-American would have to be Osip Mandelstam. He manages the eastern European idioms in a way that avoids the excesses I dislike in those poets who lean more towards fabulism. I like the “cold of poetry” (to heist from Lyn Hejinian) that Mandelstam (even in translation) cooks for us on an icy stove. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I read a lot of poetry, but I tend to do it in stretches or streaks. Mainly, this is due to the demands of my graduate work. I am reading lots of secondary criticism all the time, writing my own criticism and re-re-re-reading the primary texts on which my critical work dwells. Reading poetry is crucial to my invention process. Guy Davenport points out that “invention” means “to find.” I tend to find most of my poems when I’m in a real reading tear. Alternatively, after long silences and solitudes, bits and pieces sometimes visit me from my reading and spark me to write. I’ll write just to steal that fragment. It’s like a compulsion – must build frame around this chunk. Sometimes, I go looking for the chunk later and find that I had it all wrong. I love it when that happens. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? That’s probably a long list, but let’s say…The Secret Gospel of Thomas. I don’t know why I haven’t read it. I will read it. Life is long. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? A poem is like your favorite song, except most people haven’t heard it, and if they have they probably don’t like it. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? This is one of the areas where I get pretty old-fashioned. I do believe there is a Role for the Poet. I’m not sure I would say it is different from the Role of the Citizen, except by degrees. Mainly, I view the work and ‘meaning’ of the poetic Role as a mysterious (yep, mysterious) distillation of what is best about the human animal and its special gift for semiosis. I don’t know – with any clarity – what lies behind this gift and neither does anyone else. In this vacuum, I find (for myself, at least) that it is necessary to work under the assumption that something metaphysical is at work in semiosis. As a poet, I feel compelled to pay a kind of sacred attention to this work. I feel a similar obligation as a citizen. I think it is important to pay the same kind of attention to the small details – the syllables – of experience. Meeting these details with love is what keeps us from flying off the earth. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**squeeze Chiseled**jaw I**want Of**being numerous Form**form 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? Nothing original. I imagine the text to be an extension of the body. The whole body: which I take to include exterior and interior, material and metaphysical presence. The point of departure is mainly language’s capacity for temporal/ideational transport. I don’t think the poem is a conduit for my self or my person, exactly, but it has the potential for shuttling parts of the self or the person around in a way that isn’t possible with feet…um, literal feet.