Matthew Thorburn’s first book, Subject to Change (New Issues, 2004), was selected by Brenda Hillman for the New Issues Poetry Prize. His other honors include a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Mississippi Review Prize. His poems have also appeared in places like American Poetry Review, Poetry, Indiana Review, Pool and Poetry Daily. He lives and works in New York City. Buy his book here. See some work here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? The first poem I really loved was Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Fortune” (“Fortune / has its cookies to hand out / which is a good thing….”). When I say “loved,” I mean not only as a reader, but as a would-be writer. That poem made me want to write a poem. What better praise is there? And what a day. I was in ninth grade. We were supposed to be reading aloud from Antigone – this was Ms. Sullivan’s “Great Books” class – but I hadn’t been assigned a role, so I was flipping through our text book looking for anything more interesting than crazy old Creon and that whole crowd. In retrospect, it amazes me that Ferlinghetti was even in that text. He definitely didn’t make it onto the syllabus. (What poetry did? Only Shakespeare, that I can remember.) And on the facing page was Allen Ginsberg, no less: “First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels,” the second poem I ever loved, just moments later. Why I, a shy middle-class kid from the suburbs of mid-Michigan, should have felt such a kinship with the hard-partying Hell’s Angels is one of those things only poetry can explain. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? Some people might argue that these are literary – but my escape hatches, when I’ve OD’d on too much poetry and “literature,” are spy novels. Especially John LeCarre’s Smiley novels, which I reread pretty regularly. Someone told me that Auden has a poem in the form of a spy novel, though I’ve never tracked it down. I’d like to try that too. The other very non-literary thing I read, on account of my day job, is legal writing. Tons of it. I work as a business development writer for a big law firm, so I read (and then write) all kinds of attorney-ish prose. For instance, I recently spent an afternoon working my way through a handbook on “intellectual property law for corporate executives.” 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Not at all, frankly. I’ve never been even an amateur reader, let alone a student, of philosophy. This is no boast – just one of several large blind spots in my reading. Possibly someone reading my poems might suss out some connection to a certain philosophy or other, but it would be news to me. What is very important to my writing, if you want to know, is painting and music. An emphasis on the visual (details of color, light) and the aural (one word ringing against another) is vital to me. I could and probably will live a happy writer’s life not knowing a thing about Heidegger. But I wouldn’t be the writer I am if I didn’t know about Pierre Bonnard and Thelonious Monk. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Surprisingly to me, I see now, they’re mostly prose writers. W.G. Sebald. Haruki Murakami. Ha Jin. Umberto Eco. Wang Ping. Peter Hoeg. Nabokov, if he belongs in this list. (He belongs in every list.) But also those three wise men, Basho, Buson and especially Issa. There must be other poets, but they’re embarassingly absent from my shelves. (Some that I definitely don’t like are there, but that’s an answer to a different question.) Also I recently enjoyed rereading Rexroth’s 100 Poems from the Japanese and 100 Poems from the Chinese anthologies. For the most part, as a reader I don’t distinguish between A-A and non-A-A writers, except to feel a pang of guilt that I ought to be reading more of the latter whenever I’m not – particularly when it comes to poetry. Those listed here I enjoy for their different angle on things, their voices (though I hear them through translation’s filter) and idiosyncrasies. But these are reasons to like writers of any ethnicity. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? Yes, yes. And whenever I’m hit with that “I should be writing” feeling, or feel like my writing just isn’t clicking, it’s almost always the case that I haven’t been reading any poetry lately. There’s a definite connection there for me. When I’m reading someone else’s poems – or, better yet, hearing someone read their work – some line or phrase or even just a word I read/hear will trigger a word or phrase in my head, and I’m off. There’s that thing about other people’s best work that acts as a kind of sparkplug for my own. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? This could easily be a long and embarrassing list. And while I’d like to say it’s the result of an overly electives-based undergrad curriculum, I think at this late date I had better just shoulder the blame. I have a lot of Shakespeare (going beyond the greatest hits) that I need to read, though who doesn’t? I would like to know Keats better than I do. And John Donne. In the 20th century department, I’m starting to plug the gaps (just read Roethke’s Collected Poems, now working on Berryman’s Dream Songs), but I haven’t read much Lowell or Pound. Of course, people like Donald Hall are always advising younger poets to read more widely in previous centuries’ poetry, but like a lot of people I know I don’t do a very good job of taking that advice. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? A poem is like a song you make up as you sing it. Almost anything can be a part of your song if it sounds good. You can sing it over and over, if you want, changing the words till it sounds just right. Mostly you sing this song just for you. But although many people won’t give a hoot about what you’re singing, there will be a few who love your song and want to sing it with you. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I’m reluctant to outline any lofty or honorable role for The Poet, since I’d almost certainly be guilty of not living up to it. But I think that one thing we poets should do is to help make poetry (and poem-writing opportunities) available to kids and students who might really love writing poetry once they see and hear what it is. Many poets I know want to teach college-level creative writing, which is great, but there are also a lot of after-school and alternative learning programs out there for middle and high school students that could use our help. I was a senior in high school when I joined a school club called the International Poetry Guild – an online writing program for students around the world, run by the University of Michigan – which was the crucial experience (and the encouragement and “safe space” in which to write) I needed to realize that what I really love doing most is writing poems. One other role I think every poet should try filling at some point – and sooner, rather than later – is to take on some editorial post at a literary magazine. Maybe don’t start your own magazine, but put in a good stretch of time on the staff of a poetry journal, reading through the slush pile, or helping stuff the replies in all those SASEs. In my own experience as an editor of the journal Good Foot for several years, being on the receiving end of all those submissions helped me to understand the hard work that editors do, what they’re up against – the submissions pile that just never stops growing, the high out-of-pocket costs of producing a print journal, and the fact that many editors are unpaid volunteers – and the honest effort most of them put into reading, considering and replying to submissions nonetheless. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**Lime Chiseled**Rock I**Spy Of**Course Form**Function 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? I’ve always liked best (and consequently usually write) poems with people in them. So in a very literal sense, there are lots of bodies – bony elbows, sun-burnt shoulders, brown eyes – in my poems. It has always seemed strange to me to read poems with nothing human in them, or only some unnamed “you.” I used to get a real kick out of putting my friends in my poems (naming them there, that particularity), though more often now the people in my poems are imagined, not real. But they still have names and bodies. And they have plenty to say.