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Guests of Space
Author Interview
Anselm Hollo in conversation with Laura Wright
Q: You live with a visual artist (Jane Dalrymple-Hollo)—does your (plural you) work "talk" to each other?
A: We talk a lot, and it is a great pleasure. I think we talk more about the visual arts than about writing. We're about to embark on a collaborative project, "Lares et Penates" (Latin for the two Roman categories of "house gods"), based on small sculptural objects we have collected over the years.
Q: You have lived and traveled in many places, and place names often appear in your poems. How do you see the role of place—both in general (e.g. where we live, work, travel) and specific to your writing (e.g. where you write)?
A: Places and people go together. In days gone by, Jane would suggest possible places to visit, and I would say, "But I don't know anybody there." But we have gone places where neither one of us knew anybody, and have had a fine time. Though there is something to that plaintive comeback: poets' and artists' communities are spread out, not only across this continent but across the globe, and by traveling one hopes to meet others of like minds and interests. Where we live and work depends greatly on the community. Except for the years of my early youth, Boulder, Colorado, is the place I have lived and worked for the greatest number of continuous years. I suppose that says something for the place in terms of my writing, even though I rarely address this particular place directly.
Q: Do you feel a part of any particular communities? And do you think the internet has changed the way community functions?
A: I have been a part of the writers' community at and around Naropa University for more than thirty years. The web certainly provides a great deal (actually, a serious overload) of news from all over the place, but e-mail is not the same as old-time postal correspondence, which seems practically extinct now. But I do prefer e-mail to the telephone—it is not as disruptive.
Q: While your work isn't what is conventionally thought of as political, current events, including politics, are very present in your writing. How do you see poetry and politics—what is the connection?
A: Again, thanks to the web, we have an enlarged global overview of events in the world. Television, as of this moment, and in this country, is practically worthless. I do listen to radio, especially my old employer, BBC, mostly at night. I can't imagine how politics wouldn't seep into any intelligent writing, including poetry.
Q: In the first poem in Guests of Space, you ask and immediately answer your own question: "Should it feel easier, writing? I don't think so. No." I like how this is a reversal of conventional, or should I say confessional, perspectives of writing: i.e., writing as something that "just happens" to the writer, gifts from the muses, and so on, or even the idea that writing is consistently any way at all. How, then, is writing not easier?
A: Let's see: How, exactly, is it a reversal of those perspectives? (Don't the "confessionals" complain a lot?) I think I was just toying with the traditional notion that the practice of (any) art gets, or at least feels, "easier" as one pursues it down the years. In my experience, it really doesn't; if there is a reason for that, it may just be that one's critical faculties evolve alongside the creative ones.
Q: Most of the poems in Guests of Space are "fourteeners" (sonnets)—what appeals to you about this form?
A: It is nice and compact. It does not lend itself to protracted repetitive rants, and it requires at least a couple of twists (surprises) between beginning and end. In performance out loud (even though this is not a major consideration), it lasts more or less exactly one minute. Thus twenty of them can be read out loud in twenty minutes, forty-five in forty-five, and so on.
Q: You often seem to manage to be both irreverent, at least in tone, yet serious at the same time. For instance, you quote, humorously, Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky: "trah-dzhed-dee ov artis / eezz: artis haff to die"—immediately after "o would that it were otherwyse / friends did not have to die." It's a delicate balance. I'm not so much interested in whether this is intentional or not, but more in where it might come from, or what it might relate to, or just what you might think about it?
A: I think that those shifts of mood and/or tone are part of the twists and surprises I just mentioned. If I can't surprise or sometimes even appall myself, what's the point of writing? It's not that I don't want to be "taken seriously," it's just that I don't want to be taken too seriously. Plus, the idea of a poem as the most intimate possible exchange with a reader, one that can get as dissonant and, yes, even atonal as an Ornette Coleman solo, throwing decorum to the winds.
Q: I like that you use footnotes, and that they provide both information and, at times, commentary. This makes me think you respect your readers . . .
A: It's not so much a matter of respect as a desire to continue the conversation with them. I also think of the notes as little bebop prose flourishes to "end" the page with.
Q: I feel like "it was all right / or, What I Learned from Kenneth Koch" summarizes how you not only think about poetry, but how you write it, including a sense of gratitude. Do you think this is accurate?
A: Well, yes. It does not cover all the bases, but certainly a number of very important ones.
Q: You once concluded a post-reading Q&A session with Kenneth Koch by asking him, "Are you thirsty?" (He responded "yes") At the time, it was the perfect question. Are there any questions in particular poets, or readers of poetry, should be asking today?
A: "What time do you think it is?"
"What's for dinner?"
"How many billions of loaves and fishes?"
"When you read or write poems, are you paying attention to the words?"
"When did you last check out the works of John Wieners, Mina Loy, Ed Dorn, Hannah Weiner, Francis Jammes, Hipponax of Ephesus, David Rattray, Edward Marshall, Joe Ceravolo, Pentti Saarikoski, Piero Heliczer, Darrell Gray, Frank Samperi, Helmut Heissenbuttel, Carl Rakosi, Alexander Trocchi, Rainer Maria Gerhardt?" (I could go on but I won't!)
Laura Wright is a poet and map librarian. With Daron Mueller, she co-curates the Left Hand Reading Series in Boulder, Colorado.
Also available by this author:
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