Interview: Michael Dickman [PART II]
Friday, 5 August 2011
This is definitely Michael Dickman, and not someone related to him.
This interview is a continuation of my four part ‘conversation’ with esteemed poet Michael Dickman. The interview is conducted over e-mail, in such a way that we each become formally aware of the limitations and advantages of our discussion.
Check out part one, here.
An Excerpt
II. In Theory:
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I imagined—from your writing—you’d be very severe, but instead you’ve joked and disagreed and really made this fun.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
I’d like to begin by saying how much I love that photo of my twin brother, Matthew, that you used to illustrate our last conversation on your website. I think he looks great in it and not just because we look alike. He has a rad haircut that calls back to our days as skaters and post-no-wavers, which is perfect as the photo was taken on a visit to our high school to talk to a group of writers there.
That said, severe? Really? Bummer. I can’t really see it, but then again I can’t really see my poems at all. When they do appear to me though, they seem more quiet than severe. Does that make sense?
Disagreed!
But still having fun!
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And I knew you’d disagree with me about Yeats. I just knew it. But I also disagree with you; I do think—and not simply as an alarmist—that poetry faces an unprecedented marginalization. Generally, the audience for poetry seems to be mostly the people—amateur or professional—who write poetry, which is not a very stable demographic.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
I suppose this might quickly dwindle into a drunken-grad-school-late-night-why-aren’t-we-in-law-school argument that in the end is sadly about money. So for now I will just say that regardless of who makes up the reading and listening and feeling audience and public and republic of poetry I think there are more of them than there used to be.
Now who’s severe!?
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We can agree to disagree, too. On to the next thing; I’m looking to turn the “written interview” into an art; I’m curious about how it can be exploited, amplified, and besieged by willing or unwilling hosts. The form lends itself to an exciting tension, don’t you think?
MICHAEL DICKMAN
I love interviews. I love hearing people talk to each other, especially when they are really present and open to the conversation at hand, which we should all be. I am addicted to the Paris Review interviews and to Bomb Magazine. Yes, written interviews. Yes, more, more, more. And there is an exciting tension there, in a really great interview/conversation. The tension or excitement of two people discovering something, whether about themselves, each other, or the subject(s) at hand.
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Still, there are some limitations. You’ve already pointed out (and played with) the problem of static questions. However, I wonder if you’ve thought about the inverse: by having you write responses, I’ve basically got you creating new literature at every turn.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
Perhaps “literature” is putting too fine a point on it. What you are doing is giving me the best chance possible to keep my foot out of my mouth. Sadly, I may still not be able to avoid this. What I am creating at every turn are typed characters from a borrowed computer. An iBook G4 to be exact. With a sticker of a goldfish on it.
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I could even formulate some sort of exercise in poetry. You might refuse, but then…well the result in any case would be interesting.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
I refuse on principle! Or on principal.
Or both.
The only exercise I really like right now is running along the D&R Canal. Come and join me! It will be fun, I promise.
You can jump over turtles.
Hurdle turtles.
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So, the focus of this “conversationnaire” is art theory, which, despite its dull name, some people find fairly interesting. Are theories or philosophies of art at all important to your writing?
MICHAEL DICKMAN
It’s right of you to put “conversation” in “quotation marks”.
I personally don’t find art theory dull at all. Art is important to our survival and so is our thinking, writing, imagining, arguing, and theorizing about it. That said, when I am writing, I am not conscious of thinking about any theory at all. I am too dumb for that, in a Grace Paley sense. Also, it’s all I can do to try and remember what a maple leaf is like. Here is something that Gerhard Richter had to say about it:
“Painting has nothing to do with thinking, because in painting thinking is painting.”
I like this a great deal and have it written down in a couple notebooks as a kind of guide. There are some writers who are able to bridge the gap, or show there is no gap at all, between theory and art. The poet Ben Lerner is one of these genius magicians who can do just that, erase all the lines.
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I think, at least, theory suggests a different method of thinking, especially across modalities. For example: Abstract Expressionists concentrated on the interaction of paintbrush on canvas, the energy behind—rather than the product of—brush strokes. Would you consider a piece where the concentration was typography rather than a specific poetic?
MICHAEL DICKMAN
Physical interaction between brush and, say, canvas was very important to Abstract Expressionists, but I think we would be amiss to imply that that was all that was at stake. Certainly people like Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning were highly interested in the product of their gestures. Those are two painters, as Richard Serra has pointed out, that you can easily trace back to more formal traditional painting through their work. Unlike someone like Barnett Newman. It is often the Barnett Newman that I am most interested in. Though when I come across poems whose entire purpose and action and intent is typographical I tend to think of them as drawings and not poems. A good example of this is the work of Carl Andre. These are beautiful drawings made with a typewriter often using one word as a repeating image. But they are not poems in the sense that Yeats wrote poems.
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It seems sort of absurd, I know. But these ideas refresh stale literature. I reference Raymond Queneau, who, by writing a few interchangeable lines and encouraging readers to cut and mix and match them, created the aptly named (and possibility of) A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems. It’s said that reading twenty-four hours a day, this would take 200,000,000 years to finish. Of course this isn’t practical, but it is an important commentary on the form.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
What do you think the commentary is?
Perhaps for Queneau it was job security in a way. At least in the society he was running in. Social security? An editor and publisher and half-hearted surrealist, his work you mention may simply be a comment on the uselessness of automatic writing among the surrealists of his moment.
And then again, maybe not.
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A thing I wonder about: It’s common advice to students that we should disregard authorial intent while reading a piece. However, if a computer wrote the poem it would bother us. We wouldn’t consider it art. Where do you stand—regard the author, or ignore him completely?
MICHAEL DICKMAN
We need to regard the author. The advice you are talking about seems to be a trapping of the received rules for a workshop. It is advice that is supposed to protect the “narrator” of the poem while an intense conversation is going on around them. The advice is kindly but I think we would all be fine if we didn’t follow it.
It would be a mistake, I think, to read someone like Stevens and not have in your mind and heart somewhere the fact that he was a steely insurance salesman and a racist. You do the artist a disservice if you simply think of him as the ruddy author of cool poems about jars and ice cream.
Now, too much regard I suppose can get in the way of the poem. But in general I like to try to hold the whole complicated messy author in my mind while reading.
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There seems to be a lot of mix-ups in academia like this. For example, we continue to base interpretations on Freud’s and Jung’s theories, though they’ve been proven inaccurate.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
Where do you go to school? You should leave that place immediately.
This is news to me, to say the least. Perhaps because I have always worked as a cook in the past and in kitchens we base interpretations on Jean Anthelme Brillat-Severin and Alice Waters.
Last year was the first time I have ever worked in Academia and I didn’t notice too much Freud and Jung emanating from the hallways.
Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil my friend.
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Speaking of forms, how do you feel about E-readers? Because, to me, it’s absurd to think that one might convert an art from one medium to the next and pretend it’s the same.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
I have complicated old-school fuddy-duddy feelings about them. In the end I think they are a great service. I hate them and love them. I wish they never existed and I am so glad they are available. The medium of poetry, by the way, is a spoken medium.
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Maybe it’s an opportunity for popularity though.
MICHAEL DICKMAN
As Fats Waller said, “One never knows, do one?”
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