Lisa Fishman is the author of Dear, Read, which  was selected by Brenda Hillman for publication on Ahsahta Press (2002). Her first book, The Deep Heart's Core is a Suitcase, was published by New Issues Press (1996). Her poems appear in recent issues of Colorado Review, American Letters and Commentary, Elixir, and elsewhere. She teaches at Beloit College. Buy her books here. See some work here, here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved?   Why? The cursive alphabet, divided letter by letter, upper case by lower case, pasted at the top of the walls so that it wrapped the fourth grade classroom.  I remember being so fixated on the letters—in retrospect it seems because of their distinctness, their materiality—that I think of it as the first instance of attentive, non-narrative reading (apart from nursery rhymes and nonsense poems) and therefore as the first poem I loved.  It’s the only act of concentration I remember from elementary school, except for reading James and the Giant Peach and the idea of “borrowing from your neighbor” in subtraction on the board. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues?   Why do you read it/them?   If I read “read” to sound like “red,” I have more to say, since I have read everything by Agatha Christie, Stephen King, other mysteries and horror, lots of fantasy, and all the Harlequin Romance novels published up to 1984.  But this was all before college.  Now almost nothing comes to mind, except old postcards when I find them and other peoples’ notebooks and letters when I find them.  Also astrology.  Sometimes tarot.     3. How important is philosophy to your writing?   Why?   People find its presence in my poems, but how it got there or why is not conscious; it’s more like Mercury going “obliquely through the keyhole” when he first escapes from his cradle.  What I’ve read more comprehendingly than philosophy, and more often, is psychoanalysis, because I can play with it more in association with things I wonder about—people, memory, relationships (self, selves, other/s) stories, language . . .  Why or how it is important to my writing I also couldn’t say specifically, except that everything in that list seems like problems/reasons in or for my poems. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers?   Why? Recently, Gennady Agy; ongoingly, Edmond Jabes.  These are writers other writers first told me about, so I don’t feel as if I discovered them on my own, which makes naming them feel somehow derivative, even though my reading of them, I think, is not.  Non-Anglo writers in whom I feel my interest is native, uninfluenced, are Euripides and Sophocles (because of the stories, and the same concerns that arise in psychoanalysis), and people who’ve re-written them, like Racine and Anouilh.  In this category, rather than the philosophy question, I would also put the pre-Socratic philosophers, because their ideas are more like magical thinking than like modern philosophy.  I love the images and metaphors and debates about whether the world began as mud, water, fire, air, etc.   5. Do you read a lot of poetry?   If so, how important is it to your writing? Yes, but not always, though it is always important to my writing, whether I am reading at the time or not reading.  It’s a huge commitment to read; you have to make the psychic space which sometimes is not there. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t?   Why haven’t you?   Chaucer, Pound’s Cantos, Blake’s Jerusalem in full . . . time, timing, possibly a sense of waiting, possibly inclination. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? I would let the seven-year-old explain what one is to me, by making up a definition.  Then we could go from there. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet?  If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen?   No.  9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**salmon Chiseled**chalk I**if Of**cove Form**hand 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing?   It’s the relationship of if to I (contingency to subjectivity?):  the text is iffy and the body’s I or you, so there is room for anything, as it happens.