Spencer Short won the 2000 National Poetry Series Open Competition with Tremolo (published in 2001 by HarperCollins). Of Tremolo, Emily Nussbaum wrote in the New York Times Book Review that "Spencer Short's work will probably not be to everyone's taste: some may find the wordplay, or the mix of high and low, unserious, the concern with self-destructive behavior adolescent. But for others, it will very likely be the perfect panacea: a source of wisdom disguised as a thrill ride." Indeed. A graduate of James Madison University, the University of Michigan & the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is now hard alee & studying law at the University of Chicago. An ex-frat boy & an ex-Marxist, he is no longer the party-animal he once was. He is, however, still remarkably adolescent. Buy his book here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? Well, the first poem that I ever loved was “Casey At The Bat”. I even wrote a sequel to it in seventh grade (who can resist a line like ‘the former was a puddin’ & the latter was a fake’?). The reason for that was, of course, my inexhaustible love of all things baseball. A love so strong that I was disappointed to find out Catcher in the Rye wasn’t about some prairie-born signal-caller. But the first poem that I responded to as a ‘potential poet’ was Ezra Pound’s ”The Garden”. I was 16, maybe 17. My love for the poem was, without a doubt, hardwired to the affection &, er, lust, I showed for the girl who read it to me – from a room away, standing with her legs crossed, in the door jamb, while I sat on her bed. It was the moment of indecision that I responded to, the almost-visceral sensation that I was falling into the lonely abyss of the line break in the last lines of the last stanza: In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like some one to speak to her, And is almost afraid that Iwill commit that indiscretion. The message she was trying to send slipped past me at the time, though the sad, sentimental power of that last bit (not to mention, earlier in the poem, the emphatic music of ‘And round about there is a rabble/Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor’) was the first time I’d ever experienced the knee-buckling capability of a well-wrought line. Throw in that random neural firing that is teenage emotion & you’ve got a pretty heady combination. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? Well, the last three books I’ve read that aren’t for review are: The Last Lion Volume I, by William Manchester (biography of Winston Churchill); Richard Posner’s The Problematics of Moral & Legal Theory; & Free Markets & Social Justice by Cass Sunstein. I’m starting law school in the Fall, though, so most of those choices are somewhat explicable. What do I read that might surprise my peers/colleagues? Probably The Economist &/or The Weekly Standard -- not to mention a couple of libertarian-minded blogs, like The Volokh Conspiracy (http://www.volokh.com/) & Daniel Drezner (www.danieldrezner.com/blog). Why do I read The Weekly Standard? I suppose it’s because I’ve always thought it good to know what you’re up against. My move toward the legal profession is mostly an attempt to take my definite pain-in-the-ass tendencies into the public realm. And it’s important to know what’s waiting for you out there. When I moved to New York, in September ’01, I’d been drunk in, like twenty bars in the greater metropolitan area but still didn’t know where Brooklyn was relative to Manhattan. I head to law school in roughly the same kind of shape. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Philosophy is incredibly important to my writing. It is also strangely unimportant. The contradiction, I think, rises out of a kind of pragmatic skepticism about the efficacy of most philosophy, in either its prescriptive or descriptive form. Mostly, I take a sort-of ad hoc approach to moral decision-making (which many of my fellow grad students could likely testify to) &, while I love theory/philosophy’s ability to break down/deconstruct/parse a block of text, find that many critical/theoretical methods bottom out, in the end, the moment they attempt to break out of a microscopic, academic relevance to become more generalizing -- the theoretical writ large. At the same time, I love to read in & about all kinds of philosophy & critical theory –though I’ve read only the typical grad student litany: Kant & by extension Habermas; Lyotard; Foucault; I carry a deep debt to early Marx, etc. – but mostly I find that in reading philosophy & theory that I’m simply scouring for the rhetoric. I’ve always been fascinated by the weird music of a powerful analytical mind. Plus, I like to pilfer little bits & pieces here & there. And hope they shimmer, silvery, gumwrapper-like, in the admittedly thatchy confusion of my poems. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? This is actually a very difficult question for me. I spent most of my time in graduate school throwing myself into the vernacular of modern/contemporary American poetry. The before-mentioned pragmatism plays a part in this. Because I’m not a believer in universals, I tend to downplay the ability of poetry to transcend culture/language (especially in translation). I think I sound very ‘American’ in my poems. Which is appropriate. I’m from a small town. I’m not remotely cosmopolitan. Further, I always saw poetry as dominated by a certain privilege. By class. And one of my (unconscious) goals early on, I recognize now, was very much an attempt to co-opt that language, that privilege. It was almost an obsession. Still, there were writers who I’ve read, & loved, who weren’t Anglo-American. Rilke, to name an obvious one. Though also Nazim Hikmet. Robert Desnos. I read a great deal of Neruda, Cesar Vallejo. I found and find Italo Calvino’s fiction, as well as his short book of essay-lectures, Six Memos For The Next Millenium, inspiring. There’s some Borges stirred in. Trakl. Kafka. I am consistently blown away by Nabokov’s exquisite sentences. To drift back to philosophy, there was a certain proud stubborn-ness to Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus that, with Marx’s Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts, came closest to forming the backbone of any world-view I might have. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? Less now than I once did. There was a period of time about eight years where 75-80% of what I read was poetry or poetry-related criticism. I’m paying the price now, in trying to prepare for law school. Poetry was, & is, though, very important to me – even compositionally. A fellow workshop student once called me – disparagingly, in one of those late-night, whiskey fueled pissing contests - a haunted house. I still can’t help but take it as a compliment. Politics aside, I’ve always been a fan of Eliot’s “Tradition & the Individual Talent” – everything I’ve read breathes in me &, simultaneously, everything I write acts back on all that I’ve read (modest, no?). It’s a kind of cultivated instability, which is something I always find attractive. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? Faulkner. I can’t read Faulkner. It seems incredibly indulgent to me. And this from a poet. Hypocrite lecteur, anyone? 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? Well, I’d read Kenneth Koch, first. Then, I guess, I’d say it’s kind of like a dream, a joke & a riddle all in one. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I’d be happy if most Poets simply took more seriously their (for those who teach) role as Teachers. Other than that, with a nod toward the destructive/self-destructive self-mythologizing long-common to Poets, simply fulfilling the role of “Citizen” might be a good start. I say this only because I’m more guilty of this self-mythologizing than almost anyone I know. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon** Tree….(…’very pretty, & the lemon flower is sweet/but the little yellow lemon is impossible to eat’) Chiseled** Bristled I** Claudius Of ** Human Bondage Form** Force 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? I’m considered by many people (many? I’m not sure ‘many’ know who I am) to be a formalist – though my use of form is a strange, exoskeletal, indeterminate, chance-y kind. So, there’s very much the sense of a restless intellect (ego? id?) & voice bouncing off of this constraining outer limit. Which is how I’ve always thought of mind/body duality, too. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt like an anxious ghost in a pretty crappy machine.