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Author Statement
André Breton—giving credit where it’s due—defined Automatic Writing as, The dictation of thought, free of any influence, exercised by reason, heedless of all moral & aesthetic concerns. But for me, the globe spins most smoothly through the dictation of thought, immersed in all of its influences, exercised by both reason & the lack of it, including language’s particularities & sonic resonances, inclusive of the freedom to err—err with language & thinking—devoid of old-surrealism’s misogyny & elitism, mindful of moral & aesthetic concerns, even if those aesthetic concerns aren’t always intentionally acted upon, but instead are more a matter of discovery than purpose. Everything is grist for the mill. And my hope is that my poems represent such.
3 Questions
Bob King
INK: What most inspires you to write?
B.K.: Gosh. Everything. What a world. I read or listen to at least a couple hundred books a year. I thrive on the creative energy my students provide. Music & nature & ideas & the strange & sad beauty of the world & beyond. My daughters & Bridget & others’ poems & gosh, let it all in.
INK: What does your writing routine look like?
B.K.: Poems sprout anytime & anywhere & I work hard to allow that. Years ago, I promised myself I’d find a way to… Write. It. Down. So, I’ll: voice-to-text while jogging, hiking, or driving. I’ll get out of bed to type, even if just comfortable. Sometimes, that’s 11pm. Or 3am. Maybe 6am. Hypnagogia & Hypnopompia. I try to let it all happen.
INK: Name a favorite poem you feel everyone should read and why.
B.K.: “What Work Is” by Philip Levine is among my favorite poems ever. It points at us. It has verve & swagger & vulnerability & imagination & specific props & sense images. And it shows just how much work we have to do to emotionally connect with people, even, sometimes, our own relatives. What a great & lovely responsibility.
Q&A with C.W. Bryan
C.W. Bryan: And & And is perhaps one of the more apt titles for a collection I’ve come across. The connections you make seem organic and natural, almost as if you’re stream-of-consciousness journaling. How close are these longer, winding poems to first drafts?
B.K.: The real joy of writing comes in creating those first drafts, where I lose myself in association & discovery. I rarely begin a poem knowing where it’s going. The longer poems often grow or shrink significantly from those first drafts, however. I’ll move pieces, delete (save in a separate file) other pieces, or find new, associated sections in whatever I’m reading or experiencing that week. One of the cooler side effects of working on long pieces: some of the deleted/saved passages sometimes become short poems that stand on their own. Poems that were hidden inside other poems.
C.W. Bryan: And what is your editing process like for poems of this length and breadth? How do the pieces fall into place?
B.K.: At a Kenneth Koch reading decades ago in Chicago, he was reading from a cloth version of a Knopf collection. He stopped mid-read. Grabbed a pen. And changed a line in the poem & then restarted, with the correction in place. And I thought, Man, if Koch can do that, are poems ever finished? It was sort of a permission, though, to keep tinkering.
With the longer poems, I sometimes have to tell myself—after a couple weeks—to stop working on them. But more often than not, if I set a longer piece aside for more than a few days, & that poem isn’t calling to me or swimming around in my head, a cool fermentation process takes place & I’ll make some final small edits, pat it on the head, & move along to the next piece when it comes jogging down the street.
C.W. Bryan: I felt a very kindred spirit with so many of the references you made. Absolute superfan of Douglas Adams, loved the multiple Catcher in the Rye nods, and many of the pop culture references hit for me, too. Are all these references made up on the spot? Or do they occasionally precede the drafting of the poem?
B.K.: Most of the references—maybe 80% plus—come out in the first draft of poems. Often, I’m working off a line or idea I recently read/heard in another book, poem, or film, so they are rather direct & natural these borrowings, these allusions. But some material I reread/rewatch often, so it stays pretty fresh in the silo. The Catcher in the Rye is the novel I’ve taught the most, to the point where I feel like I could recite most of it & I see it everywhere (Finding Nemo is Catcher in the Rye in animated form). Douglas Adams is required (re)reading every few years. Monty Python movies & clips, too. Churchill biographies. Colston Whitehead’s novels. Sharon Olds’ poems. Anything Neanderthal related. Rilke’s beauty & terror & advice to just keep going. Lately, my brain has been getting stuck cycling through images & quotes from places like Jojo Rabbit, Inglorious Basterds, & Yorgos Lanthimos films.
C.W. Bryan: I felt that momentum was a big theme of this collection, too. I’d love so much to hear your thoughts on momentum in poetry.
B.K.: Love momentum. This attempted harnessing of energy & time & thought & action. The first time I really became aware of momentum as a poetic device I could wrestle with was in a Dean Young lecture about Frank O’Hara. This was back in the mid-1990s. “Personism: A Manifesto” planted itself in my mind & gratefully hasn’t left. The compulsion to go on nerve, risk everything, risk vibrancy & connectivity & vulnerability, let it all hang out, let the dog drive, go go go! It’s advice I often pass on to my own students, scrawled in large letters across the bottoms of their own energetic poems.
C.W. Bryan: I was a huge fan of this collection; one of my favorites I’ve read in this series. I saw that it was your “long-awaited debut” as well. Do you have anything else in the works to look forward to? Or where can we read more of your work?
B.K.: Thank you. I’m grateful for your close reading & time. On March 10, 2020, we received our first communication about remote work due to the coronavirus. In those hours, I decided—after decades of dedication to a heavy teaching load & raising our daughters—to use my new-found-extra time to put a full & serious effort toward my own work. Calculus had already been invented during a different plague, so during my lockdown, I could finally create a new manuscript. This collection arose from those efforts. And the momentum hasn’t stopped. My second collection, And/Or, will be out from Finishing Line Press in Fall 2025. And I’m currently submitting my third manuscript to presses around the globe.
1 thought on “Book Review – King”
Thank you for reviewing Bob King’s remarkable collection of poems. I think you captured the humor, depth/breadth, momentum, and enchanting re-readability of And&And. Teriffic interview, too.