(Photo by Natasha Babaian) Rebecca Wolff is the editor of Fence, a journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism, and of Fence Books. Her first book of poems, Manderley, was selected by Robert Pinsky for the National Poetry Series and published by the University of Illinois Press in 2001. A native of Chelsea, New York City, she is currently in residential limbo with her husband, the novelist Ira Sher, and their son, Asher Wolff, and is looking for a teaching job and/or patron. Buy her books here. See some work here, here, here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? Jabberwocky. Because I memorized it, when I was about seven, and this was my first feat. The first poem I was shocked and awed by as an older child (fourteen or so) was Anne Sexton's "The Moss of His Skin," with its terrifying last few lines. . . . . My sisters will never know that I fall out of myself and pretend that Allah will not see how I hold my daddy like an old stone tree. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? I'm not sure it's surprising, but I read People Magazine (and any of its copycat cohorts such as Us, or In Touch) any chance I have thirty minutes to kill, which isn't actually that often. Why? Because I like to stay informed, of course. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? I would hope that philosophical ideas are inherent in my writing, but I can't say that philosophy with a capital P has taken up too much of my adult time. I had an early bonding with Kierkegaard, but mostly in such an undergraduate, angsty way that I feel silly mentioning it. I also had a crush on the Marquis de Sade, and took a long time working out why it wasn't OK to sew up old women's vaginas, etc., and, later, the metaphorical equivalent in poetry (why must one think of one's reader?). But I am always chuffed (British for pleased) when I recognize the presence in one of my poems of an actual idea. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? I guess Vladimir Nabokov wouldn't count. I must confess to being, like fellow citizen Tony Tost, a largely Anglophilic reader. I fell in love with that whole Brit thing way back (Jane Austen to Martin Amis), as a middle-schooler, and still turn there for my deepest pleasures. It's the accent, I guess. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I read a lot of poetry for Fence, the magazine that I have been editing for seven years. The reading of submissions often tells me more about what I hope not to do than what I hope to do--which makes it all the more significant when I come across something that moves me to hope to achieve or perform something like it or something that would aspire to a similar goodness. Also as an editor I have the excellent opportunity to quickly read about 900 manuscripts a year and to become deeply familiar with four books a year--the ones we publish--and this is always cheering and makes me feel less alone, as a poet. But then I like to feel alone, too. Other than as an editor, I do not read a lot of poetry, and never have. I'm just being honest. I do pick up a lot of the books that are sent to me by other publishers and often look at parts of them. But my aim is to change this bad habit: I've begun to fall in love from afar with the notion that I could, you know, just settle on one book of poems at a time and really read it. Try to educate myself. Forego novels for a while. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? I wasn't an English major, you know, and nor have I had the vigor to become an autodidact (see above) and this is my blanket explanation for why I haven't read most of any canon of great works, be it Western, Eastern, European, Modernist, Futurist, etc. You name it, I haven't read it. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? First I'd read "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" over and over to your seven year old, until he could recite it himself. Then I'd say: You know "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"? That's a poem. (This actually worked for my two-year-old: He asks for "poet-ree." His step-grandmother gave me a copy of Poetry Comics, a book by Dave Morice that illustrates many of the big old chestnut type poems, including the aforementioned and The Tyger, and we've been reading to him out of this.) 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I believe that the two are indistinguishable from one another, if not identical. The Role of the Poet involves writing poetry, whereas your average Citizen should not be required to. I guess the question is: What should that poetry, written by the Poet, be required to do? I'm inclined to say "nothing," but I sense that that's not acceptable. But I can't with a straight face say that I believe that poetry should be held accountable to the same standards as, say, a truly good Christian. "What would Poetry do?" doesn't have quite the same ring as "What would Jesus do?". At the same time I don't discount the notion that poems have altering qualities--I just don't think that just because they do, or can, every poet must keep this in mind all the time. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**True Chiseled**Rock I**Didn’t Of**For Form**Idea 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? I'm a great subscriber to that whole split thing between the mind and the body: I hardly know my body's there most of the time, and especially not when writing, unless my leg has fallen asleep or gone crazy the way it does. I think this is why my poems stick so resolutely to the left-hand margin of the page. It's kind of like the way I always walk upright, whenever I can help it.