I first came across Frank Giampietro's name during an interview with Julianna Baggott last year. Since then, I just kept running into either his name or the title of his collection, Begin Anywhere. Finally, I decided to ask him for an interview (he's a Facebook friend--see the power of social networking?).

One of the things I personally love about this collection is that it constantly surprised me. Every time I thought I was going down a predictable road--one I didn't care to go down--the poem would take interesting side streets to get to our destination, which may or may not have been where I thought we were going originally. Eventually, I quit trying to predict our destination. Instead, I just let myself enjoy the ride.

Here's one of my favorite poems of the collection:

Juice

I'd like to begin with my addiction to heroin,
though I never shot it, I only sniffed it.
(Snorted is so, what? Crass?)
Once after seven years without it, I talked
to an Italian ex-junkie who was still smoking hash.
Because she shot it,
she claimed that she was more addicted to it.
Instead of admitting she was right, I went on
about the purity of American heroin
while she repeated no, no, no emphatically.
I found her sexy in a big-boned
Elizabeth Bishop sort of way.
If I were Elizabeth Bishop,
with my history of addiction,
I would have to write a villanelle
like "One Art,"
but my refrains would be
A1: I shared crack with a pregnant Dominican woman
A2: at the top of a five-flight walk-up on 109th Street in Harlem.
They say you can let the arms
of the repeating lines
wrap themselves around you
for comfort. It's a great form for subjects
that might otherwise be a threat.
I wish I could say that my best poems
are written when I'm afraid. Sometimes
when my four-year-old wakes up, he's afraid.
The first words out of his mouth are
I want some juice. Now I sleep with him,
and I wake up to the request
nearly every day. Honestly, there's no better way
to slip from my dreams. I worry I won't sleep at all
when he kicks me out of his bed.
When I sniffed heroin, whole parts of my body
would go completely numb as I slept.
One morning I woke unable to move either arm,
but after a minute or two, the feeling came back. It's not
that I'm afraid to write about addiction--it's just
that this is nothing like that.

*****

What are you up to?

This summer I'm working on a second book while teaching creative writing to undergraduates here at Florida State University. Otherwise I'm making video poems I call "voems" (very original, right?) and posting them to YouTube. You can see two of them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Wn_i0PezM.

Your website lafovea.org is rather interesting in how poets become nerves that connect to each other. Could you speak a little about how the site works and what the inspiration was behind the site?

One day after hearing the usual grousing about how nepotistic the publishing world is (an idea that doesn't hold much water, by the way), I had an idea to use nepotism productively, interestingly, as an alternative to publishing in the usual submission rejection sort of way. I thought why not have an internet site that publishes poems by invitation exclusively. And then I thought about how to do that and allow the largest variety of voices to be heard. I envisioned teachers inviting students and students inviting teachers. I also thought and hoped La Fovea might get poets from outside academia too. So I came up with the idea of publishing poetry nerves, nerves all extending from a giant poetry eyeball. I started with twelve poets with very different writing styles, all of whom I know and admire, all of them gathered around the eyeball on the homepage, and had them post two poems. Then they had to invite at least one poet. That poet then invited a poet and so on. We now have over 160 contributors. It's really working well and has been a lot of fun to see grow.

Your poems deal with topics such as being a father and husband. You are both a husband and father in real life. So, where do you draw the line between reality and fiction in your poems?

I guess I don't, in my poems that is. For instance, I have a poem about my son shooting me with an arrow. And knock on wood, he hasn't shot me with an arrow yet. But we have played with a bow and arrow, and he has scared the bejesus out of me a time or two pointing the arrow inadvertently at me or his sister or the cat. That's where I get the poems from, the possibilities for drama in real life rather than the life itself. Life itself is usually dull, as far as I can tell (maybe because I have no "inner resources").

Begin Anywhere is broken into two sections. How did you decide to organize the poems in this collection?

I had a lot of help from my editor at Alice James Books, April Ossamann. She showed me some ways of organizing the book that I just couldn't see on my own.  

Your poetry has been published in several literary journals. Do you have a method for handling your submissions?

I send in spurts, usually, and then wait for the rejections to come in. One day recently I got three in the mail at once. I think that might be a record.

When do you know a poem is finished?

After I've sat with it a week or two and shown it to one of my trusty couple of readers and gotten his or her feedback, that's when I know it's ready to send out. Finished is another story. I'm more of a poem abandoner than a finisher. I never feel like my poems are finished.

If you could begin anywhere, where would you begin?

Ha, ha, very funny. I like the 12-step program notion that one can begin one's day over at any time during the day. One can just say okay enough. Let's begin this day again. I do this with my kids sometimes when they are acting up. If things are getting hairy at the dinner table one of us will say "stop, let's start our day over." And then we have a little good morning ritual and then we start again. But even on my own, without the kids, I begin my day over lots of times as a way to keep my head on straight and my attitude and outlook rosy.

Who (or what) are you currently reading?

Right now I'm reading Joel Brouwer's new book "And So." It's really amazing. He's a poetry dude. I'm also reading Anna Karenina on my Kindle iPhone application. I have a house full of books and love paper books just like the next poet, but I have to say it's great reading on my phone because the phone is so much easier to hold than a book. Plus, since I always have my phone, I always have my book and can read while in line at the post office mailing my soon to be rejected submissions.

If you could offer only one piece of advice to fellow poets, what would it be?

Hmmmm, I like to take advice a lot more than give it. If I could take one piece of advice, I would like to be told to be more satisfied with things exactly the way they are. That's what I need to do, how I need to be.

*****

To learn more about Frank Giampietro and his collection, Begin Anywhere, go to his publisher's website at http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/

Also, check out his online literary journal at http://lafovea.org/.

Or read "Death by My Son" featured on Poetry Daily (and the one he references in the interview above) at: http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14198

*****

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Monday, June 01, 2009 11:53:54 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [8]