Jonathan Minton lives in Helena, Montana with his wife Allison Farrell. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in GutCult, eratio, Castagraf, The Columbia Poetry Review, and other journals. He is finishing his PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and is the editor of the online journal Word For/Word. Buy his Chapbook here. See some work here, here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? I'm pretty sure the first poem I ever loved was Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" -- because of the pure pleasure and strangeness of its language. Although I also remember falling in love with poetry again after reading George Oppen's "Discrete Series" my first year in college. Lines such as "Thus/hides the/Parts--the prudery/Of Fridgidaire, of/Soda-jerking" seemed so startling in their careful partiality and quiet refusals that I felt as if I were reading poetry for the first time again, and seeing the world, with all its lyrical and troubled commonplaces, with new eyes. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? Most of my peers are so widely-read and have such an amazing range of interests that I doubt I could surprise them, but I've been reading comic books since I was a kid. I'd feel guilty about this, but thankfully the distinctions between "high" and "low" culture have been thoroughly critiqued and no longer make much sense. Of course, I read comics because they're fun, but I'm convinced they are also a very accurate window to American politics and pop-culture. For instance, the popular comic book "hero" evolves from the WWII square-jawed "do-gooder," to the morally ambivalent hero of the 70's, to the excessively violent and glossy hero of the 80's. Plus, there's something innately cartoonish about human behavior. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? My (limited) understanding of philosophy is often inseparable from the work I do as a poet. Thoreau is my philosophical guardian angel. And Wittgenstein's philosophy is as important to my writing as it is to most of my peers, but the philosophy of science informs my work more than anything else. For instance, Lewis Thomas writes beautifully about the fact that our particular evolution from the symbiotic linkages between prokaryotic cells, plus our continuing symbiosis with hosts of internal and external micro-organisms, means that marks of identity distinguishing self from non-self have long been blurred. I've always taken this as a compelling poetics of "otherness." And Alan Turing's mathematical theories of the "uncomputable" have informed my sense of writing as social gesture and subjective enigma. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Lately, I've been reading the Cuban poets Omar Perez and Nicolas Guillen. Admittedly, I'm especially interested in the ways in which Anglo and non-Anglo poetries intersect, collide, or disperse, which is especially vital in the work of Guillen. In his book "The Great Zoo," for instance, American poetics and culture are re-interpreted in light of Cuban history. His assessments are sometimes convincing, sometimes propaganda, and sometimes outright distortion, especially in his sense of the Southern United States. But it's the flaws that I find the most compelling. There's an ungainly resonance to them that's missing from what often passes for "objectivity." Since I can only read in English and a bit of Spanish, this question also raises the problematic issue of translation. In my experience, a translated text ordinarily disguises the fact that it is a translated in order to better facilitate its consumption in domestic markets: the "foreign" is seamlessly translated and invisibly contained within the domestic. In this regard, I'm a big fan of the book "Renga," a multi-lingual collaboration between Charles Tomlinson, Octavio Paz, Eduardo Sanguinetti, and Jacques Roubaud. Written in four languages, no one language in "Renga" serves as a domestic frame of reference. Every language, and every reader, is rendered "foreign." It's a wonderful book that hasn't received enough attention. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I read as much as possible, and I try to stay aware of what my colleagues/peers are writing. I used to feel guilty or neglectful if I didn't write every day, but now I don't so long as I'm actively reading, as I see the two activities as very much related to my own sense of what it means to be a "poet." This is especially true of the work I do in editing and assembling my online journal Word For/Word, which comprises a large portion of what I read. I might be naive about this, but I like to think of such journals as collaborative writing spaces, or, at the very least, as building some sense of a writing community. I'm not sure I could pinpoint instances of this in particular poems, but I'm sure the work I do as an editor informs my writing, especially in terms of invention and composition. Selecting the contents for the journal is akin to "invention" or "discovery;" designing and editing the journal is akin to composition. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? I haven't read Descartes. Not directly. Which is amazing. I think it's because I've absorbed so much of his work second-hand, especially through all those post-structuralist critiques of his philosophy and tradition. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? I would tell your seven year old that poetry is play. I'm probably being naive again, but I've taught enough poetry workshops for children that I'm convinced they have an innate understanding of the value and joy of play and that poetry is a kind of play -- like making all sorts of improbable shapes with building blocks, or word games, making funny noises, and dressing up in borrowed clothes. In poetry, this sort of play takes place on the page. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I'm ambivalent about it, but I think this question is of enormous importance for most of the poets I've been reading lately. For instance, Aaron McCollough's book "Double Venus" and Jean Donnelly's "Anthem" come to mind. Both scrutinize the role of poetics and the poet in "civic responsibility," and I think both of their approaches are beautifully written and ultimately useful. In Donnelly's book, civic responsibility and public life are the inventions of such seemingly private matters as childbirth and childrearing, thereby imploding the "confessional" mode as it turns to bodily, cultural, and linguistic gesture. In Aaron's book, the "good life" is also a particular kind of implosion of public fact and private fiction. However, neither book makes any final claims for what an ethical citizenis or should be, but leaves it as a "work in progress." In fact, I'm suspicious of anyone who makes a definite claim for the "Role of the Poet" or the "Role of the Citizen." At their best, poets help us see the world anew or with a greater sense of urgency and mystery. But it's hard enough to define "poetry," let alone what role it serves. This particular question was often put to George Oppen, especially after his famous years of exile, during which he wrote no poetry. His response was that there are "situations which cannot honorably be met by art." I've always taken this as a way of saying: if you want to be an active citizen, be an activist; if you want to be a poet, write poetry. The two can certainly inform each other, but they're not the same activities. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**Ice Chiseled**Block I**Island Of**Being Form**Friction 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? Thoreau writes that climbing a mountain is the best way to understand the body's relation to space, and that walking is a form of "sauntering," a word that derives from "sans terre" -- without land or home. I try to incorporate both of these forms of discovery in my writing.