We love learning more about our contributors, and an interview seemed like a fun way to hear more about the writers and artists we publish, so we gave them a choice of questions to answer. We hope you also enjoy hearing more about the artists and their works. Get yourself a copy of our Work and Labor Issue to read "Short Order" from Sean Mulroy...
What was the inspiration for the piece published in the issue?
My last full-time (non-arts) job before becoming disabled was at a corporate restaurant that doubled as a showroom for kitchen devices. Most of my day was spent waiting on a clientele composed of foreign royalty who refused to tip merely on principle, fashion models whose vomit I sometimes had to clean from the bathroom floor, and teenage children of billionaires who questioned how I came to possess my (inherited) jewelry, "considering [my] station." It was a surreal experience. The work itself was easy and the pay excellent, but management (whom I mostly liked despite their tyranny) was utterly unhinged, abusive, and seemingly hell-bent on creating an intolerable work environment. Everyone working at that job hated it there, so much so we eventually got fired en masse after a failed managerial coup. That said, and pardon the cliché, my coworkers and I were like a family—we squabbled, we supported and celebrated each other, had hilarious ongoing and elaborate inside jokes, we went to parties at each other’s houses, celebrated birthdays together, knew each other's life stories and personal struggles. Despite our close-knit camaraderie, as an artist whose once-promising career at the time had suddenly and unexpectedly stalled, I felt like an outsider, and what was once a persistent but manageable melancholia worsened into a severe depression—one which would later become (literally) crippling. The last straw? One of the Real Housewives franchises filmed an episode in our restaurant during my shift, and while lugging a heavy tub of dirty dishes to the kitchen, I overheard a cast member being interviewed after a engaging in a staged conflict with another member of the idle rich. "I’m a serious artist,” they said, “I’m a real talent—how do you think I got this successful? I deserve respect for what I do." I wanted to die. This poem is really me making fun of myself in that moment—a suicidally angry young man of 27, utterly certain I was intended for something greater than my job, yet feeling that certainty waver when faced with the utter certainty of everyone around me that they, too, were destined for greatness.
What turns you off when you see it in a work? What are your creative pet peeves?
God, so many things. I’m actually sort of infamous amongst my friends and colleagues for being a very demanding reader of poetry, to the point that one of my professors at MFA suggested I critique others’ work less harshly if I wanted to make friends in the art form (I demurred). I'm a very judgmental and unsentimental critic, and though I do judge my own work twice as harshly as the work of others—hence me taking 20 years to put out my first full-length collection—the older I get, the more severely critical I become. Anywho, since you asked, here’s but a mere handful of things I can’t abide:
Work which follows current trends, chiefly in imitating the voice of someone currently en vogue (I think it would be in poor taste to name the names of those being imitated-to-death here, but for the record I do so, very easily). Trendiness in writing usually extends beyond voice to imagery and subject matter, too—remember a few years back when Tracy K. Smith put out her (fabulous) book, Life on Mars, and suddenly everyone was wedging outer space imagery into their poems as if they’d all had an interest in astronomy as children and just forgot to write about it until just then? Pepperidge Farm remembers (in this scenario, I am Pepperidge Farm, although in real life I’m more of an Entenmann’s guy).
Meta-poetics (that is, direct references to poetry, the writing of poetry, or the life of a poet) when deployed in a poem about something else entirely. I don’t mean writing about one’s life as a writer or artist, nor do I have any issue with ekphrastic responses to other poems (obviously), but I haven't read a manuscript in ages which doesn't draw attention to the fact of itself being poetry multiple times for no apparent reason. I can’t tell you how disappointing it is when I find myself drawn into the world of a poem, and just as it approaches the heart of a tangible and imperative life experience, I’m slapped out of the moment with something like, "and that's the reason why I must now talk about poems,” “but who am I to write a poem about this moment,” “is it wrong to be poeming right now,” “what use, a poem?” Poem, poem, poem. It’s as unnecessary as it is exhausting, and worse, serves to prove those who accuse poetry of being myopic by nature, are correct in this assertion. This trend has been especially bad of late, likely in response to the current cultural moment being marked with collective feelings of helplessness and uselessness? God, I hope it ends soon—the cultural moment, yes, but also the endless meta-poeming. If poetry is to be more than simply making noise about ourselves, we need to start writing as if to offer something to the reader, rather than asking them to soothe our insecurities as if this were interesting in and of itself. As I told a client during a recent manuscript consultation, "Every second you spend writing about writing, is a second you’re stealing from the beautiful earth and the complicated life of humanity as witnessed and weathered by your powerful intellect and leonine heart."
Roughly 3.5” x 6.5” columns of free verse being called sonnets because it feels like a sexy way of disguising otherwise mediocre writing. The sonnet is an exquisite and improbable wedding of two culturally significant traditional short forms: the zajal (invented by writers of Arab descent who immigrated to Sicily in the 12th and 13th centuries), and the strambotto (a form commonly found in the royal and religious institutions of Sicily at around the same time). The two forms were very simply fused together—the volta traditionally placed at line 8 (or line 12, if you’re nasty/Elizabethan) serves as proof of this lineage. The tight formal constraints of the sonnet, and its traditional focus on topics of longing and loss, are a reflection of a centuries-long cultural winter brought on by the genocide of the Occitan people by the papacy during the Albigensian Crusade. People act like the sonnet was put here by old white men to annoy them during high school English class, but its survival into the present is owed to centuries of cultural exchange, spiritual perseverance, emotional resilience, and creative labor. Co-opting this legacy by name and devaluing its history in order to fashionably accessorize an otherwise only-okay poem as if a fedora worn at a rakish angle? It’s more than just annoying, it’s low-key profane. It’d be one thing if said “sonnets,” resembled their namesake in any way whatsoever—I know not everyone is willing or capable of executing meter & rhyme, but it’s comparatively easy to include some kind of a volta or throw in a Shakespearean oxy-moron or two. Sure, when Hayes wrote his book of American Sonnets in 2018, it worked (mostly because he’s a formidable craftsman and one of the more important living poets writing in English)—but the flood of imitators to follow? Nah. None of them have earned what he’s earned. Lest we forget, nobody is forcing anyone to write a sonnet, so instead of devaluing the meaning of a word, folks should probably just stick to the vers libre they're capable of and keep the sonnet's name out of their mouths/manuscripts/whatever.
What is your "white whale"?
English quantitative verse. The consensus amongst most prosodic scholars is that it's impossible, but if Edmund Spenser could do it with The Faerie Queene in the 1690s, we should be able to do it in the 21st century, especially with the whole of history’s scholarship right in our pocket, readily accessible at any time.
What is your favorite vice? What are you drinking at happy hour, in a literal or a metaphorical sense?
Honestly? Sex and drugs. A line or two chased with a shot of tequila and a kiss from a pretty boy. In terms of my time at the bar, my mom always says the best champagne is either very expensive or very cheap. As a poet, you can imagine which I have more experience with (I've spent many great nights with my good friend Andre), but even still, when drinking I tend to avoid the middle and aim either high or low. If it isn't a good scotch (up), it'll be something sticky sweet and stupid strong, of late, mostly gin and juice or anything frozen (bonus points if dyed a color not found in nature).
If you're part of a workshop group or other creative community, tell us about it! How did it form, what all do you do, and how does it help your creative process?
I occasionally teach online courses on erotic literature and neuroscience, as well as queer history and formal prosody; in a session a few years ago, I had the great fortune of a workshop attendee (now a good friend) who took on the work of putting together a regular video-conferenced writing workshop, with others from the class (including me) invited to join. We call ourselves the Gay Gremlins, and we're a scrappy little band of queers. We've got ongoing group chats (one for work, one for memes, pictures of our kids, partners, and cats), we've watched each other grow as writers, encouraged each other to submit work to journals, we even went to Saints & Sinners together this year, which was just...so much fun. I consider myself exceedingly lucky to have a close friend group with diverse life experiences, expertise and styles, on whom I can rely to give me honest feedback (and to put up with me as they have thus far, with commendable grace).