Ed Foster is the Editor of Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. He is the recipient of various grants, awards, recognition from Columbia University, NJ Historical Commission, Choice, NJ State Council on the Arts, Society of Collegiate Journalists; Fulbright Commision, NEA, NEH, USIA arts program, Fund for Poetry, Greve Foundation. Elected member of the delegate assembly, Modern Language Association (1995-98). He has written, edited and co-edited many, many books: Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1974), The Civilized Wilderness: Backgrounds to American Romantic Literature, 1817 1860 (1975), Josiah Gregg and Lewis Hector Garrard (1977), Susan and Anna Warner (1978), Richard Brautigan (1983), William Saroyan (1984), Jack Spicer (1991), William Saroyan: A Study of The Short Fiction (1991), Understanding the Beats (1992), Understanding the Black Mountain Poets (1995); Answerable to None: Berrigan, Bronk, and the American Real (1999). Current project: the aesthetic movement in America (proposed completion: 2006). Co-editor, Hoboken (1976); co-editor The New Freedoms (1994); co-editor, Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (1996); editor, Cummington Poems (1982); editor, Postmodern Poetry (1994); editor, Stuart Merrill: Selected Works (1999); editor, Decadents, Symbolists, and Aesthetes in America: An Anthology (2000), editor, Poetry and Poetics in a New Millenium (2000); co-editor (with Joseph Donahue), The World in Time and Space: Towards a History of Innovative American Poetry 1970-2000: Essays on the Revolution in American Poetry and Poetics at the End of the Twentieth Century (2002). Poetry, The Space Between Her Bed and Clock (1993), The Understanding (1994), All Acts Are Simply Acts (1995), Adrian as Song (1996), Boy in the Key of E (1998), Saturnalia (2000), The Angelus Bell (2001), Mahrem: Things Men Should Do for Men (2002), Selected Works (in Russian, 2003). Buy some of his books here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? "Bluebeard" by Josiah Gilbert Holland. It is part of a long poem, _Bittersweet_, published in the 1850s, I think. Holland was a newspaper editor in Springfield, Massachusetts, and a friend of Emily Dickinson's. _Bittersweet_ was one of the most popular books of American verse ever published. -- My grandmother went to a one-room schoolhouse in one of the hilltowns in western Massachusetts in the late nineteenth century. Every week the students had to memorize a poem, which they then recited at a public gathering at the end of the week. My grandmother as a result knew hundreds of poems, but "Bluebeard" was her favorite, and the favorite of all her grandchildren as well. We would insist that she recite it at all family gatherings. My grandmother was a very gentle, quiet person, and that made her recitations of this poem (which concerns women who have been beheaded, floors streaming with blood, etc.) much more thrilling. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? Well, I'm always reading dozens of books, magazines, etc., and most of it isn't very literary, but I can't imagine anyone being "surprised" by it (or surprised by much of anything, these days). Well, let's see: books/magazines recently read or being read: on Victorian family life, interior design, motorcycles, Turkish/Middle Eastern history, personality disorders, kerosene lamps, Arabic calligraphy, opera, nineteenth-century pornography (esp. Teleny! a wonderful book, allegedly by Oscar Wilde and without a shred of literary value), pragmatism, Lake Pleasant (spiritualist settlement in Massachusetts), how to develop your abs (don't I wish), Slovenia, Venetian painting, John Addington Symonds, etc. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Somewhat. Precision in words. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? The usual suspects (Homer, Dante, Proust). I don't know as there is a "why." Proust is an obsession. In terms of my poetry, Mallarme has been critical. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? Yes, I read poetry all the time; it defines the world in which I live. Poems by other writers rarely influence my own work, but they illuminate the territory in which my poetry exits. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? No idea. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? I probably wouldn't try. When my son was that age or slightly older I had him write poems. I suppose that writing them is the best way for a child to understand what they are. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? No, I don't believe in such a role. I once wrote an essay called "Poetry Has Nothing To Do with Politics" and was widely criticized for it (one magazine devoted an entire issue to rebuttals). Poetry may reflect/express a writer's politics, but it isn't the politics that determine whether the work succeeds as a poem. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**car Chiseled**sheep I**taut Of**earth Form**God 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? Indistinguishable. Last month I did a reading at a poetry festival in Europe. Poets were introduced with a quotation from the work of a well known writer from their country. In my case, the writer was Eliot, and the quote was the famous line from the end of "Tradition and the Individual Talent" where he says that poetry is an escape from emotion and personality. I didn't want to be rude, but I could only reply that I disagreed with the statement completely. It seems to me one of the stupidest things an otherwise brilliant poet could have said. I don't think it is possible, or at least desirable, to escape from personality and emotion in poetry. There are certainly poets who try to do this, but Eliot, as biographers and critics have shown, was not one of them.