Marcella Durand is the author of Western Capital Rhapsodies (Faux Press, 2001), City of Ports (Situations, 1999), Lapsus Linguae (Situations, 1995), and The Anatomy of Oil (Belladonna, forthcoming this fall). She is the current editor of the Poetry Project Newsletter (www.poetryproject.com) and also co-editor of an anthology of contemporary French poetry, forthcoming from Talisman House in 2006. She lives in the East Village and grew up mostly in the windswept wilds of pre- Robert de Niro Tribeca. Buy her books here. See a couple of e-chapbooks here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? My fifth-grade teacher (thank you Gloria Solimando) gave us mimeographs of e.e. cumming's poem, "Just Spring," which I totally adored at the time for its freewheeling linebreaks. My mother also used to read to me Theodore Roethke's "The Meadow Mouse," a real tear-jerker. Thomas Hardy's "Hap" was the first poem that gave me the idea that poetry could be kind of interesting. It was then a break of several years until my father introduced me to Rimbaud's "Vowels," which made me look at poetry and language in an entirely new way. But hearing John Ashbery read "The Instruction Manual" when I was a college student really sealed the deal. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? My usual non-poetry reading of choice is science and nature writing, particularly dense tracts on geological formations that I suppose many would find utterly indigestible, but which I find soothing. I occasionally indulge in comic books, the more juvenile, the better. I read magazines by the truckload, which I excuse as part of my freelance work. I also read travel guides. Right now I'm reading Lonely Planet's Guide to the USA. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Philosophy is fairly important. I like the shapeliness that it can give to my poetic thinking. I've experimented with symbolic logic (such as seeing what happens when in improbable "if/then" constructions--going into the "if" without knowing how the "then" will end). I've also been working on this constantly expanding essay on ecology and poetry and on a long collaboration with poet Tina Darragh using shared source materials that include eco-philosophy books, such as Michael Zimmerman's Contesting Earth's Future. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? French poetry and poetics are extremely important to me, particularly Ponge, Jacob, Cendrars, Mallarme, Rimbaud, and Denis Roche (and more currently, Michele Metail, whom I am currently translating). I love Aime Cesaire and the other Negritude poets, such as Senghor and U Tam'si. Another more recent favorite is an out-of-print translation from Chinese of the Wen Xuan that I found for a quarter at a yard sale. It's like the history of a stylized civilization, a tapestry in words, and yet it's completely unknown--I've found no other reference to it in various anthologies of Chinese writing. Cecilia Vicuna and Nicole Brossard are more recent influences and inspirations. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I read a lot of "raw materials" (i.e. unpublished) through my various editing capabilities, but I always feel like I don't read enough. I think that I could be a better writer if I read more outside of what I feel obligated to read, because when I do have a chance to sit down with something that I really want to read, I get so many new ideas and a feeling that I found something for which I was searching, but I didn't know I was searching. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? Oh litany of failures: I've only read sections of The Cantos and the Maximus Poems. I haven't read Zukofsky's "A." I could use some serious catch-up in Byron, Shelley, and Keats (and Milton). I need to read Alice Notley's Disobedience. I need to read more Mallarme. I need to read more Jackson Mac Low. I need to read Bernadette Mayer's Utopia. I need to read all the books I keep buying, but that end up sitting in piles around the apartment. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? Oh, I don't think I could explain what a poem is--it's too various. I'd just give her or him some poems to read and then maybe write some together—do some fun collaborative poems on birds or something. Make up nonsense words that maybe could mean something. Make up fake definitions for them. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? The Role of the Poet is to write poetry and not let society/life/the Man crush it down and make a poet feel like she constantly has to explain and justify why she is a Poet. Being a poet runs contrary to everything our society is about, but that doesn't mean it's not in and of itself a wonderful thing to be. It's always better than building bombs or thinking up ways to screw the populace. Poets are very bad influences on children: we incite suspicions that they don't have to become what they think they have to become. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**lumpy Chiseled**abs I**quick Of**what Form**a thought 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? While it's not a continual relationship, I do delve into various anatomical/medical conditions of the body. I wrote a short series called "Reading Postures" that was partly inspired by a show of paintings by Ingres. I was fascinated with how he dealt with the spine. I love that story about all the critics arguing over whether his "Grande Odalisque" had an extra vertebra. That series led into a slightly more extended exploration of bones, spines, and skeletal structures, and how they all stack up, making gestures and postures. I've also been interested lately in writing towards interior absence and how unknown our own physical interiors are to ourselves--that mystery, darkness, and emptiness.