From his birth in 1970 many believed David Baratier was destined to become a Saint because as an infant he was so pious that he refused to suckle on Church prescribed days of abstinence. In 1985, shortly after being inspired by reading Beowulf, he started being published in national journals and magazines. He has appeared in a horror movie, moved furniture for a living, owned a comic book store, taught at various colleges and has never been convicted of a felony. He & his fine lady Rita, a former model, who appeared in films including Traffic, live in the deep south end of Columbus with their daughter, Beatrix. He has given readings for audiences as large as 10,000 people. He does not recommend this. He is founder and editor of Pavement Saw Press. His poems have appeared in a few hundred publications and are forthcoming in Laurel Review, Slipstream, Skanky Possum, Fulcrum, Controlled Burn and others. His anthology appearances include American Poetry: the Next Generation, from Carnegie Mellon UP, Clockpunchers: Poetry of the American Workplace, and Red White and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America from University of Iowa. He has an epistolary and prose creative non-fiction novel, In It What’s in It, from Spuyten Duyvil and his seventh collection of poetry after Celan is forthcoming from Furniture Press in 2006. Buy his books here. See some work here, here, here, here, here and here. See some collaborations here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? There were a number of things growing up, Dr. Seuss, Longfellow, Service, Randall Jarrell’s Bat poet, other kid’s books from the library. I practically lived in the library, it was warm there. What was first? I keep rotating around different answers. My gut instinct keeps answering with a piece much later tho. When I was 14 I read “Anna Karena & the love sick river” by Kenneth Patchen; it changed my life. When his father was hurt at the mills, they took the time to drag him through the back door. I lived that house. Our front door wasn’t used by anyone, except royalty, even the paperboy collected money at the back, common people know better. At that moment I knew the connective power of a poem. I realize now it was also a question of masculinity, I thought poets were wusses, wore flowing clothing and spoke of love in rhyme because they were afraid to tell someone directly in person. But Patchen was this giant linebacker Italian looking dude wearing a lumberjack shirt who took up the whole space of the photo and was not afraid to speak about any subject. It instantly changed my beliefs and expanded the realm of possibilities. Guys like me, real go nowheres, weapon carrying and willing to lose their life for the sake of being right in some skanky bar, don’t write poetry. If they do, they write for life. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? The local newspapers, ones for a small, maybe at most a mile, area of our city. In Columbus there are many of these and I thoroughly enjoy reading our urban weekly tabloid. The humorous police reports. "Eight residents on the 300 block of (X) Street complained of fecal matter on their front lawn." There is a wealth of extremely petty or weird reports. There was one about a car accident caused by a box of dildos. I have an inane interest in knowing a tire piercing male prosthesis assaulted a nearby neighbor. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Very important. Philosophy is one of only other forms of writing which captures the mind in a form of suspended animation between thoughts thereby transporting me outside the book to elsewhere. Using philosophy inside poems is unimportant to me, pedantic, academic in the root sense of the word, tedious; however, the accurate description of what language does when applied to a poem’s potential to create a similar result leads me toward it as a self questioning writer further. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Not sure if you mean American or not so: for American, Carroll Arnett-- captures the essence of absence in the line, a sense of lack of sound that many attribute to Creeley, or certain students at Black Mountain, Fielding Dawson, others, that only is nearly matched by someone else from outside Black Mountain, Wm. Bronk. The turn at the end of the line has many of the box like manifestations of early Creeley but the emotion is retained without becoming sentimental. Often poet innovators of form like Melvin Tolson, Sherman Alexie; poets who stay a moving target not subscribing the hegemonic notion of "voice," avant guarde or post avant like Will Alexander, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Amiri Baraka. N. Scott Momaday's fiction was extremely liberating, Leslie M. Silko's Almanac of the Dead, that seems a start elsewhere. Non-American: Vincente Alexandre-- need the right translation, one that is not regularized but stays with a wilder sense of meaning available instead of pigeonholing a line to a sparse possibility of interpretation for the reader. Better yet, read the original poems & translate for now. Always liked Odysseus Elytis, not sure if he would qualify. Fily Dabo Sissoko is a brilliant political surrealist, I wish there was more available from all the work I've seen. I would be willing to publish a translated collected of his. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? Yes, hundreds of manuscripts each year for the press I run, Pavement Saw Press, plus many hundreds of published books that arrive in the mail for us. Vital. The reading primes the pump of writing. So does being given an assignment by someone else. There are few poets that I learn something from with longevity, usually things are just monkey tricks, like "Look Ma, shazam, increased vocab." Crappy poems make me giggle. This leads to an increased enjoyment of life which is conducive for being a writing maestro. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? The tags on my many patterned shirts. I envision myself wearing durable clothing as a testament against the fashionable vestiges of poetry and therefore do not wish to have this image broken by a white square scant with words. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? Poems are a six inch to six foot long piece of bread which is swabbed with natural peanut butter using a one inch thick paintbrush in whatever pattern seems best. Overlay this with grape jelly to start. Give these subs away, why not make them for special occasions. The more you mark the bread, the better you are at understanding each of the elements, selflessly. Then you can move onward to understand what stroke patterns will happen with wheat versus white, what variation occurs between using natural peanut butter with salt or without and all other minute differences. Once all of the ins and outs of these changes are understood you can make one helluva sandwich. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? To write variously, act as a maker, throw most away, only save good poems, publish sparsely. Boxcars or snake eyes. Not sure, guess each citizen would have their own specialty with its own macabre verity of rules. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**Pledge Chiseled**my nizzle I**eyeye Of**Pediatrics Form**mystify 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? The only "defense of the form" is in hearing and seeing the poem performed by the articulation of the original author. While, after death, the remaining text does not give up the ghost, the fullest sense of the piece is henceforth unbegotten.