DAVID SPICER

Hekate Publishing is honored to work with David Spicer toward publication of Waiting for the Needle Rain. He has kindly agreed to answer a few questions, some of which are his own.

David Spicer

What led to Waiting for the Needle Rain, and could you describe your process composing this collection (which to me is unlike anything I’ve read from the current poetry landscape)?

I stopped writing for twelve years. I had to feed my face and, at 40, think about the future. I rationalized by telling myself it’s self-indulgent. I skated with that cop-out until the Muse began hectoring me. I wrote a few poems, but they weren’t worthwhile. So, I began leafing through Vanity Fair, randomly picking nouns and verbs until they filled a 5x7 tablet.  I then constructed poems from the pages. After Vanity Fair words resulted in similar poems, I scanned thick novels and volumes of Collected Poems, selecting words. I wrote that way for close to four years, producing six manuscripts of what I call word pool poems. Waiting for the Needle Rain was one of these. I recommend that method to anyone wallowing in writer’s quicksand; composing poems that way challenged me, led to many themes, scenarios, characters. But after awhile this method felt like a crutch.

What kind of poems are you working on now?

Abecedarians, anagrams, lyrical pieces, prose poems, sestinas, sonnets. I’m always in search of a new challenge. But maybe not an epic.

Why and when did you begin to write, and did you know it would be a permanent activity of yours?

Words and their loaded meanings have always fascinated me; many of my poems try to explore the connections of those loaded words.

I was a senior in high school when I met my first muse (an English teacher). Since then I’ve been compulsive about writing poems, in search of the next poem. Poems have always been my way of dealing with an absurd world. When the everyday world becomes too crazy, I retreat to my imagination, where I control the scenario and create a different kind of reality that, hopefully, some readers will understand.

What did you do between high school and the age of 40?

New Directions Press original cover.

Acquired a Bachelor’s in English, joined the Air Force, returned to Memphis, worked various jobs, founded my first poetry magazine, raccoon, and then Outlaw. Ion Books arrived later when an investment banker supported my ventures for a few years. Then I met my muse for life, continued the magazine gig for a couple years or so, and proofread for a printing company and medical journal.

Who’s influenced you?

Too many poets to list, but a top twenty that could change the next time I’m asked: Addonizio, Bukowski, Cohen, Colby, Corso, Duhamel, Dylan, Ginsberg, Terrance Hayes, Merwin, Olds, Poe, Rollings, Seuss, Sexton, Pamela Stewart, Stanford, Strand, James Tate, Whitman.

What would you describe as your major subjects?

Conflict, women, language, society’s absurdities.

Detail, from MERMAID, by Nancy Clift Spicer

Why women?

They’ve always fascinated me; I’ve pondered them all my life. To me, they’re more interesting and complex than men. I admit I’m a Romantic, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have ambiguous or mixed attitudes toward them in my work.

Do you think a poet can possess more than one voice?

Yes. Mine are the romantic, the black humorist, the wistful, probably others. I don’t buy the notion that a poet has one voice. I think one can be multi-layered.

What would your advice be to a younger poet?

Read, read, read. Revise, revise, revise, but don’t overthink a piece. If that happens, you may ruin the poem’s spirit.

Write poems that swing for the fences. Not popsicles; i. e, poems the reader reads once and forgets. Many poets write popsicles, because, in our instant-gratification culture, we want something that tastes and feels good in the moment, not a poem that’ll knock our asses into the next time zone.

Don’t be afraid of rejection. After a certain level of competence, a poet will face a given: whether an editor accepts a poem is a matter of taste and bias. The road’s a long haul, slow and deliberate. But don’t worry about a career; be concerned with the work. Be unrelenting.

Believe in your writing. But be humble, because poets are a penny a thousand; nobody gives a fuck about poets, not even most other poets.

Buy peers’ work. Learn from them. If somebody in a workshop has a book coming out, buy two and give one to a poet buddy.

How do you feel about workshops?

I’m ambivalent. If a poet is fortunate enough to learn from a brilliant teacher sensitive to one’s process, voice, and language, that’s terrific. I never found that person until I enrolled in an online workshop five years ago. Before then, workshops were not productive for me because of incompetent leaders and fellow participants insecure about their writing who offered malicious feedback that temporarily made them feel better. It will invariably happen to every poet. But, one can never be too old to learn from a master and fellow writers. So I may take another workshop if the world doesn’t blow up.

What are the best and worst things about the contemporary literary “scene”?

Best: MFA schools and the Internet. Worst: MFA schools and the Internet. Best because both of these have had a tremendous effect on the burgeoning population of writers, which is important to the preservation of culture and society. More talented people than ever are writing today. Worst because they’ve contributed to a glut of sameness; most of the poems in mainstream magazines are almost clones of each other. Generally speaking, there’s lack of passion, energy, too much intellect, not enough emotion. The proliferation of thousands of internet journals contributes to that blandness. One of the problems is that some editors are amateurs: they begin a new magazine on the internet with a girlfriend or boyfriend, produce a couple issues, misspell words or practice bad grammar in their website guidelines and rejection letters, quit, and don’t tell contributors they’ve shut down.

What’s missing—generally speaking—from today’s poetry “scene”?

A fearlessness. Wacky wit. An embrace of the absurd. A panache without pistol-whipping the reader’s brain. Brave editors. A literary guerilla who’ll middle finger the establishment.

Are you that guy?

Maybe. Who the hell knows?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Writing poems—maybe one that lives a long time. I never said I wasn’t ambitious.

Any last words?

Uh, to appropriate part of a past president’s speech: Ask not what poetry can do for you, but what you can do for poetry.

Amen, bro, Amen.

Background image for title of interview was detail of watercolor color cover design by Nancy Clift Spicer.