Writing In An Unfamiliar Light

KARAN

Matthew, I like these poems a lot. “The Odometer Might Not Be Accurate” is one of the most inventive takes on midlife reckoning I’ve read. The odometer measures in “regret” then “the number of birds you are from peace” then “baseball cards” then “transistor radios.” You write, “a journey through life is hard to quantify.” What draws you to measurement, quantification, the impossibility of reducing experience to numbers? Where did this poem come from?

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MATTHEW

This poem, as with a lot of my poems came from the smallest kernel of an idea and then grew during the drafting process.  In improv comedy/theater, there’s a practice where you build on the unexpected or surreal or nonsensical by asking yourself something like “If this is true, what else is true?” You embrace whatever impossible scenario you’ve been given and try to heighten it. Sometimes, when drafting a poem that veers toward the absurd, the process feels similar to that kind of improvisational spirit. I pretty much never start out with a whole concept worked out. Instead, there’s an impression or a question or a half-formed concept. And then I add to it piece by piece. And as I build on the premise, expanding it or intensifying it, I look for the implied metaphor that’s being created. As for the impossibility of reducing an experience to numbers: the philosopher Susanne K. Langer often talked about how the purpose of art is to give feeling a form. I’m probably very much aligned with that; poems give me a way to understand or ask questions about some kind of mystery, a way to (try to) comprehend something that doesn’t feel quantifiable.  

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KARAN

“Commencement Speech for Those About to Wake from this Dream” is devastating. You quote Marie Howe: “an elegy / is not made from grief. It’s made from love.” The poem addresses someone who has died, imagining their waking into another reality. “I can’t imagine the dream with you no longer in it.” Who are you writing to here? How do you write an elegy that refuses to be consumed by grief? 

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MATTHEW

In relation to that Marie Howe quote, I think the elegy comes from love because there’s nothing to grieve without it. We don’t grieve when we lose something trivial. We grieve when we lose someone we love. And so, a poem like an elegy—which does contain grief, and its maker or speaker might very well be consumed by it—is still an extension of love. And for a reader, the elegy is most impactful if that element is present. 

Who am I writing to? The “commencement speech” is a mode I’ve been intrigued by for a while. I’m drawn to it as an approach that addresses multiple listeners at once, a collective. And this poem began in that manner: thinking of several people who have passed away. But I recognize that there’s an ambiguity in the “you” coupled with the expectation we have for an elegy to mourn a specific person—and I think, by the end, it feels like the poem is addressing one specific person. And maybe, by then, it was. 

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KARAN

“Lock” (my favorite poem of recent times) and “King” are both prose poems that operate as philosophical fables. In “Lock,” you trace backwards from turning a key to “childhood traumas, / interest payments, tension headaches, desire.” In “King,” everyone heads toward the horizon rather than obeying orders. What draws you to the prose poem?

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MATTHEW

I’ve always been charmed by the prose poem. Without the line as the primary unit, something else must step into the spotlight. In terms of recognizing any text as “poetry,” the poetic line has such a powerful magnetism. What I mean is: you can take a newspaper column or a legal contract, and if you organize it in lines, quickly show it to someone and ask what it is, they’ll likely see the lines and tell you it’s a “poem.” But if the line is taken away, what makes something a poem? Often the prose poem has some other element that’s amplified. That might be music, compression, or some type of associative logic. Regardless of what element it is, there’s usually some aspect that we associate with poetry that’s been heightened to make the thing feel like a poem. It’s kind of like in basketball when your star player is out: one of the role players has to step up if this thing is going to work.  

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KARAN

“Portrait of the Poet as a Painter and Musician” is hilarious. Your spouse Vievee says, “We don’t need children. I have your bad art to hang on the fridge.” You describe yourself as “a national tragedy / when singing in the shower.” Then the drum teacher says, “You have to hit the emptiness.” How does humor function in your work? When does self-deprecation become something more serious?

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MATTHEW

As a reader, I react to humor in a number of different ways. Sometimes it disarms me, sometimes it creates a sense of curiosity, and sometimes it just entertains me. I mention how I react as a reader because it was definitely something I was drawn to in the work of other writers (or more broadly, in the work of other artists regardless of medium) long before I was able to attempt it in my own writing. I’m actually not able to write “jokes,” but I am able to recognize the potential for humor in various types of incongruity, and over time I’ve learned to trust that more and more. I think it can be a powerful tool for defamiliarizing the contents of a poem or for disrupting a reader’s ability to anticipate what comes next. But the thing I’m most interested in is a type of emotional contrast. Often a second emotion is intensified by being placed next to another. Humor can be a very noticeable way to set off that kind of contrast. 

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KARAN

“All Objects on Earth, Sentient and Cheering Your Name” uses Newton’s third law to argue that if the world conspires against you, there must be another world radiating in your honor. “The blood you believe / is on your hands has returned itself / to the body in which it belongs.” This is radically optimistic. Where does that optimism come from? Do you actually believe this, or is the poem an act of faith?

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MATTHEW

I see it more as something I want to believe in rather than something I truly believe in. But the optimism in that poem is real to me and as much a part of me as the panic, skepticism, and existential anxiety that might be in any of my other poems. I find that being present in the world can mean ample amounts of both dread and wonder. And I try to get at both in poems, though they don’t always make it into each, and when they do, it’s not always to the same degree. This poem leans much more toward a type of hope that is not always sustainable, but when writing a poem, I try to align with “what makes sense for the art? what does the poem want to be?” instead of pledging allegiance to a predetermined or even consistent worldview. Joan Didion said “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” That feels accurate to me. The writing doesn’t always come from or mirror a deeply held belief, but might explore a belief, or test it. It might question beliefs I thought I held or place them in an unfamiliar light. 

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KARAN

Physics and science move through these poems—Newton’s third law, odometers, units of measurement. You write, “sit your ass down, science is teaching / a lesson.” What’s your relationship to scientific thinking? How does it interact with the more mystical or spiritual elements in your work?

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MATTHEW

I don’t always see science and poetry as being entirely different in terms of their goals. My brother is a cell biologist / molecular biologist. He often points out that we’re asking similar questions; I’m usually doing it on an existential level, and he’s doing it at a cellular or sub-cellular level. Mostly I think science and art are two different ways of being in the world, trying to understand its mysteries, and searching for an ephemeral truth. 

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KARAN

Perhaps this is an extension of the last question but: I like how you toggle between the philosophical and the quotidian—Janus and door locks, Newton’s laws and Swingline staplers, knights and dragons and villagers at the drawbridge. How do you move between registers without whiplash? What makes the everyday worthy of philosophical attention?

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MATTHEW

There’s a thing Szymborska said in her Nobel Lecture that I think about often:

Granted, in daily speech, where we don’t stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like “the ordinary world,” “ordinary life,” “the ordinary course of events” … But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.

I love that so much I might explode. Another idea that I hold close is Viktor Shklovsky’s idea of ostranenie, which we translate to something like “defamiliarization.” He’d argue the job of art is to show us the world in a way that’s slightly askew, not for the sake of novelty or strangeness, but so we pay attention to it and perhaps look a little closer.  When we start thinking of things as “everyday occurrences” or “common” or “ordinary,” we begin to take things for granted that are actually quite spectacular. Or we might write off terrible events as “just the way things are.” Poems are a thing that pull me out of that potential numbness or away from that possible malaise.  

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KARAN

This is a question we ask all our poets, because the answers are always so wildly different: there’s a theory that a poet’s work tends toward one of four major axes—poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, or poetry of the soul. As with all good poets, I see all of these elements in your poems. Still, if you were to place your work in one of these, where would it be?

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MATTHEW

I’m tempted to say the spirit. That’s ultimately a subject (though not always an overt subject) of a lot of my poems; Maybe all poems are trying to get at something elusive, something out of reach, or something that doesn’t have a shape; that feels like the realm of the spirit. But I think the real answer is “the mind” as the manner in which I try to get at the aforementioned subjects is through speculation, asking questions, and imagining. 

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KARAN

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received? Also, what would you tell young poets, by way of advice or caveat, who are beginning to find their voice?

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MATTHEW

Try to pay attention to when writing is actually fun. “Fun” can be a weird word for poets, but you probably started writing because you enjoyed it on some level. It’s very easy to get away from that. You can become concerned with the business of writing and publication and who is getting what. You can become attached to an idea of what poetry “is supposed to be,” and then you start writing toward that when that mode might not align with your own unique gifts. But you get more writing done and you grow more into your own voice when you’re sitting at the desk enjoying what you do. So pay attention to the moments when you feel locked in and fully present in your writing. Then do more of that. 

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KARAN

Would you offer our readers a poetry prompt—something simple, strange, or rigorous—to help them begin a new poem?

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MATTHEW

My last book was a collection where pretty much every poem was a letter to an object or a person who was not in the room. So, if you get stuck in your writing try this: pick an object and talk to it. Then try to see if there’s a metaphor in that conversation and turn toward that. 

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KARAN

Please recommend a piece of art (a film, a song, a painting, anything other than a poem) that’s sustained you lately or that you wish everyone could experience.

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MATTHEW

Caravaggio’s St. Matthew Cycle—a triptych of paintings (The Calling of Saint Matthew, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew) located in the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.

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KARAN

And finally, Matthew, since we believe in studying masters’ masters, who are the poets or artists who’ve most shaped your sense of what’s possible in language? Who taught you that poems could be this playful and this serious at once?

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MATTHEW

I mentioned her earlier, but Szymborska is one of my all-time poetry heroes, and she is a perfect example of a poet who is able to approach “serious” subject matter with a sense of playfulness and wonder.