Christopher Nealon grew up in upstate NY, was a newspaper reporter in Boston for Gay Community News briefly after college, and now lives in SF and in Washington, DC. He teaches in the English department at Berkeley, and has a chapbook of poems, Ecstasy Shield, from Black Square Editions, a critical book, called Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall, from Duke UP (also 2001), and a recent full-length book of poems, The Joyous Age (also Black Square). Buy his books here. See some work here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? No first I know for sure, but early? Adrienne Rich’s “21 Love Poems,” for queer courage, “whatever we do together is pure invention” … 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? I don’t know what surprises my peers, but I’m reading a lot of Marxist political economy these days – part of a restlessness with what passes for “economics” in the paper, on TV, etc -- 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? I’m not really interested in logic, or in analytic philosophy, or in the separation of philosophy into tidy branches, ontology, epistemology, ethics … but I’m very hungry for what the critical tradition has to offer (starting with Adorno and groping back to Kant & Hegel) – which, for me, is something like a more fully social vocabulary, a more restless one, for those traditional questions about knowing, being, living right … 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? I’m grateful for the Eshleman Vallejo and the Katherine Washburn Celan; also for the translation journal Two Lines, which always has terrific contemporary stuff – Anyway, Vallejo for “O Marx! O Feuerbach!” and Celan for every hyphenated violating neologism … 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I read a lot, I guess; I’m urged on by the stuff that excites me, and chastened by the stuff that turns me off. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? I haven’t read much Benjamin, I keep getting distracted by Adorno. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? I’d read a few with her! 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I don’t believe in the Role of the Poet, no. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon Chiseled I Of Form Sorry, my eye went vertical first, so my first impression is a total one: “Lemon Chiseled I Of Form.” 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? They flirt but haven’t exchanged numbers yet.