Betsy Fagin’s poems appear in a number of literary journals including Five Fingers Review, Fence, Skanky Possum, So to Speak, Torch, Van Gogh’s Ear and The World among others. She is the author of For Every Solution There is a Problem (Open 24 Hours, 2003). Recent work is forthcoming in dusie. See some work here, here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? Depends what’s called a poem. The first written-out poem I ever loved with a kind of gratitude was Williams’ “so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.” We’d been having to memorize Wordsworth (“I wandered lonely as a cloud”) and Frost (“Whose woods these are I think I know…”) and Biblical verses in school, poems that seemed to have so little to do with me or with anything real. This was, at last, something I could recognize from life and relate to. If lyrics count as poems (and they do. why shouldn’t they?) then I loved the perfect rhymes, wit and truth in all the old-school hip-hop. I memorized & recited it with everybody else in my neighborhood, “The Message” by Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five most favorite of all. Filled with the fury and violence that permeate living. It was much more relevant to my experience than any poems (lyrics) from school had been. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? I like to read reference books: computer manuals, cookbooks, how-to home maintenance books, travel guides. These are purely practical though. Some people are surprised that I read as much arcane material as I can get my hands on: tarot, astrology, hidden religious texts etc. Is that not literary? I love systems: computer systems, planetary systems, electrical systems, number systems. It’s fascinating to see how each small part relates to the whole. The relationships are as true for a misplaced comma in a poem as a planet shifting its orbit. I think there must be some sense to things: as above, so below. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? It used to be more important to me than it is now. I struggle with keeping my own writing grounded in the practical world, in the physical: not an idea of the physical, but the physical itself. How else can poetry stay relevant? 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? I spent a long time studying Spanish poetry and the poets of the Golden Age were very important to me then (Garcilaso de la Vega, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Lope de Vega). I still very much enjoy reading later Spanish poets like Federico García Lorca. I think I had an infatuation with the language itself, the sounds of it: (“vuestro gesto…honesto”), but also the ideas of the poems found me at a time when they really resonated deeply. I was thinking of poetry in languages other than English, but non-Anglo is a whole separate thing. Claude McKay and the poets of the Harlem Renaissance were very influential when I started writing. There are so many non-Anglo favorites, where to start? 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I used to read poetry voraciously. Lately I’ve been easing my way back into reading fiction. I couldn’t get through a novel for many years, I lost patience for the pacing and the flatness compared to poetry. Reading poetry is very important to my own writing, I’m always excited to see what’s happening. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? People assume many things. I’m confident that there are classics of the experimental cannon that I’ve either deliberately neglected or managed to avoid out of ignorance that I may have been expected to have read by now. I can’t think what that might be. In another time I was quick to fill any glaring holes, purely from insecurity. If someone quoted Niedecker casually or asked me ‘don’t I love that bit in Oppen when’ I would feverishly read everything even tangentially related that I could get my hands on. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? I’m not sure how technologically-savvy your seven year old is, but I was just hanging out with a five year old and imagine her fast-forwarded a couple years. I’d explain a poem as gift that’s wrapped in the most beautiful paper and inside is a photograph, like a digital photograph but more like a hologram with sounds, smells and colors. Sometimes music. But made entirely out of words. The words sound differently according to whoever reads them and anyone who would look in the box would see and feel something different from everyone else. Opening the package creates new ideas and emotions in whoever opens it. Also the box automatically re-wraps itself after it’s opened so it can be opened again and again. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I do believe there is a role for the poet. (I also think there are infinitely many variations of what a poet can/should be that I would disagree with but that are perfectly valid.) I think both roles of Poet and Citizen demand a high level of engagement with the world: participating in political life, caring for the physical environment, being involved with the community among other things. One of the primary differences between Poet and Citizen is that the Poet may have more responsibility, the Poet is always answerable to the Citizen. Poet can manifest as historian, scribe, propagandist, visionary or entertainer any of these guises are possible, but they all serve the Citizen. It is for the good of all that we make these records, leave these marks, each sounding a different note. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**Ice Chiseled**Features I**II Of**course Form**function 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? We experience all things through the body. Even ideas which seem to float through the ethers, transferred from consciousness to consciousness are actually transmitted through the body. The text, the words are only symbols through which one body communicates to another.