Interview With Todd Moore

This is also exerpted from a Special Edition of my newsletter, PPR Hope you enjoy it.

INTERVIEW WITH TODD MOORE

OK, I'll admit it. Todd Moore has inspired me and scared the hell out of me since Raindog first put me onto him. His massive, fierce intelligence is intimidating. His poetry is brilliant. Epic in scope, economic in style, not one misplaced word, and razor-sharp. His poetry insists upon being read, and re-read. Ladies and gentlemen, meet a modern day Master of the Art...TODD MOORE.

"The Interview"

Q: What initially inspired you to become a writer?

A: I wanted to be a writer for almost as long as I can remember. My father, who was a railroad man and then a fireman, was both an alcoholic and a failed writer. He was a natural born storyteller and for about fifteen years tried writing novels. It was during this time that he got into the habit of reading parts of his novels to me. Even after he realized the futility of what he was trying to do and gave up writing, I continued to think of him as a writer.

I mention the alcoholism because that contributed both to his failure as a writer and to circumstances which landed the family in a skidrow hotel for twelve years. This really has nothing to do with inspiration, but the experiences I had in that hotel shaped me as a poet. I didn’t realize it at the time. In fact, it took a college education and another ten years before I finally began to discover who I really was and that mysterious thing called
style.

As for literary inspirations, I’ve always been drawn to the visceral in fiction and poetry. Hemingway was a big discovery. Ginsberg’s HOWL, Rimbaud, Plath’s ARIEL. Bukowski came later. I put off reading Bukowski even though I’d heard plenty about him simply because I had a story I wanted to dig out of me all on my own.

Q: Do you consider DILLINGER to be your magnum opus? What was the inspiration for that poem, beyond the obvious?

A: DILLINGER is the big one. I have no doubt in my mind. It seems as though you can divide my work into some fairly distinct categories. There is the infamous short poem that I’m pretty well known for. I remember when I first started sending out those twenty line poems where the core of the poem is strictly action. I had had enough poems where the poet meditates on the problem of violence, death, time, love, or just simply taking a crap. What I wanted was a poem that gave you the visceral feel of the thing happening as it happened. I remember a friend once saying, you should’ve been a film director. My answer was, I need to write a poem that plays out like a movie.

I’ve also written the medium length long poem. For me, a poem that approaches a thousand lines in length is medium length. In the last ten years I’ve written several medium length long poems including WORKING ON MY DUENDE, which was published back in 1999 and is now out of print. Also, A SACRED MEMORY OF BILLY: NOTES FOR A DADA WESTERN, which is almost finished. The BILLY of the title is Billy the Kid.

However, DILLINGER is probably what I am mainly known for. I started writing it back in 1973. In 1976 I wrote the first really good section entitled “The Name Is Dillinger.” Since then I think I have written about a hundred or so sections. Each one is about 800 to 1500 lines in length.

When you mention the American epic, most people think of Pound’s THE CANTOS or Williams’ PATERSON. DILLINGER as it stands may be at least twice the size of THE CANTOS and many times longer than PATERSON. And, it is distinctly different because in those two long poems, there really is no central character unless you count the poet’s persona as character. However, Dillinger is portrayed as a real life person as well as an archetypal figure out of American history. And, because Dillinger is based on a real person, I have been able to see him with all his flaws, expectations, and desires. He is both as large as life and larger than life. This is why DILLINGER is not the typical American epic, even if you go as far back as Whitman’s SONG OF MYSELF. It’s a break with that whole tradition and it’s also a break with the classical idea of epic with Homer’s ILIAD and ODYSSEY. Dillinger is an outlaw, not a hero. Still, as an anti hero, Dillinger becomes a kind of American everyman because he comes closer to our collective renegade fantasies than nearly anyone else in American literature with the possible exceptions of Melville’s Ahab, Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden, and Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. Also, Dillinger has an inner life, something you usually don’t associate with criminals.

Q: For those readers who are not familiar with the “outlaw” school of poetry, how would you describe it, and the poets who follow it?

A: In 1949, when my father landed the family in that skidrow hotel, I became an outlaw. I became an outlaw because I became an outcast. I became an outlaw, because for the first time in my life I realized what it meant to be down and out. I was twelve going on thirty. I became an outlaw because all of a sudden my friends were other kids who were street thieves. I became an outlaw because I was rubbing shoulders with all kinds of derelicts. I got to know all the hookers by there first names. I learned the art of shoplifting from the best. the word outlaw was second nature to me.

How I escaped jail or worse, I’ll never know. But I did realize that if I wanted to escape this cycle of petty crime and poverty, I’d better get an education. However, even after I graduated from college I still had some of that outlaw in me. And, even after I taught in the public schools for several years, that outlaw was still there. Finally, I realized that my skidrow background was what I was meant to write about. So, I present myself as a kind of explanation.

However, Outlaw Poetry has been around for a long time. It just has never been seen that way before. Francois Villon was probably the first Outlaw Poet. Arthur Rimbaud may be the most famous Outlaw Poet. Along with Lautreamont. Then segue to Hart Crane and down to the Beats. Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. Burroughs shot and killed his wife in a drunken orgy. The question remains: did he mean to or was it an accident? Then Charles Bukowski. Bukowski was a whole poetry movement unto himself. Bukowski was an enormous force in poetry in still is even though the snobs in academia refuse to give him any credit for it.

Bukowski and I were writing contemporaries though he started publishing about fifteen years before me. In some ways, we are two sides of the same coin. Bukowski grew up in a middle class home and at the age of eighteen opted for the down and out life. From the age of twelve until 1961, I lived the down and out life in a skidrow hotel. Bukowski didn’t really find his voice until his mid thirties. The same thing happened to me. Bukowski and I are both known for creating highly recognizable poetic styles. And, we have both pretty much been loners.

What is Outlaw Poetry? I’ve been writing it for almost forty years. But I haven’t always thought of it as Outlaw. I’ve known it was outside the acceptable limits of polite poetry. I think the force and thrust of things outlaw really picked up impetus with the publication of THE OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY edited by Alan Kaufman and S. A. Griffin, Thunders Mouth Press, 1999. I am told this is the best selling poetry anthology ever. And while it is flawed and fat with celebrities, it is also maybe the most important anthology to come down the pike in many years.

Outlaw Poetry, basically, is a stance against academia and the writing degree establishment. Outlaw Poetry is also a stance against the politically correct in poetry. Outlaw Poetry comes along at a time when the arts in general and poetry in particular are moribund, stale, boring, cowardly, candyassed, and dead. Pick up any major poetry mag. The American Poetry Review, or Poetry Magazine are the best examples. The dead wood practically falls off the page. And, try this test. When was the last time you read a poem that truly made the goose bumps crawl up your back. That popped your eyes into your soup? When was the last time a poem mattered so much you jumped out of your chair but didn’t exactly know where it was you were going except that you had to be going somewhere, it was that important to you. For me, this happens almost on a never basis. I have to go back to Whitman or Pound or Eliot or Crane or Tom McGrath or the best of Ted Hughes.

The big problem in our society is that academia owns poetry lock, stock, grant, kiss my ass rewards, and blowjob poetry chairs. The small press is the ghetto. There are no honors there, there are no awards there. There is no money. And, the irony is that the small press is where some of the most important poetry is being written today. Keep this thought in mind. There are no Outlaw Poets writing in academia. Zero. There are no Outlaw Poets teaching poetry in academic writing programs today or really ever. Outlaw Poets, if anything, come from the dark side. Outlaw Poets live at the edge of the edge. Outlaw Poets do not live off foundation money.

Before I bail out of this question, let me list some of the Outlaw Poets whose work matters and is making a difference. Tony Moffeit, Dennis Gulling, John Dorsey, Kell Robertson, Mark Weber, John Macker, R. D. Raindog Armstrong, Scott Wannberg, and S. A. Griffin, among others. Other Outlaws to keep an eye on are Christopher Robin, Misti Rainwater Lites, Joe Pachinko, Theron Moore. And, I apologize to those whose names I have inadvertently left out. I’m not so sure I answered this question except for bludgeoning it to death.

Q: What poets, if any, have inspired you? Classical, or neo-classical influences?

A: Influences are like time bombs or floating mines in the psyche. They float around inside the dark and have a way of going off when you least expect it. Shakespeare is always there. Melville for MOBY DICK, Faulkner’s THE BEAR, Fitzgerald’s GATSBY, Hemingway’s Santiago in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, Bukowski’s continuing saga of Chinaski, Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH, and much of Dostoevsky. Lately, Tony Moffeit, Mark Weber, John Macker.

Q: I have asked other famous poets this question, and I’d also like you to weigh in on it…what is your opinion of critics in general? Do you think they should have the power to determine the direction of poetry?

A: I have almost always been at war with critics. Harold Bloom is probably the classic example of the snob critic in America. His close second is Helen Vendler. Bloom’s dilemma is that he wasn’t born Shakespeare so he’s decided to install Shakespeare as god of the literary canon. Vendler’s problem is that she wasn’t born as T. S. Eliot. These two critics are hellbent for leather to maintain a strict canon which has completely overlooked the poets and writers of the small press in America. As far as they are concerned Bukowski never existed. Or, anyone else from the lower depths. The kind of criticism they espouse takes no chances, brooks no risks, invites no dares, loves no poem that is not Harvard clean and New York Times Book Review sanctioned. These kinds of closed in and closed up critics are part of the reason for Outlaw Poetry.

Q: I have read in one of your essays about the “unknown territory” a poet should explore…the frightening “no-man’s-land” within each of us. Could you tell us a little about how you made this discovery?

A: Everyone has an unconscious. Everyone has a dark river flowing just under the skin and down through the blood. I’ve always more or less known about this kind of darkness through such characters as Hamlet, the Karamazovs, Ahab, Faust, Judge Holden. It really wasn’t until I started getting deeper into Dillinger that I realized this no man’s land was part of all of us. My breakthrough into this country happened when I wrote “The Corpse Is Dreaming” which I later incorporated into “The Dead Zone Trilogy” which forms the last three long sections of DILLINGER. “The Dead Zone Trilogy” is what Jung would call a Nekyia, a journey into the deepest part of the psyche. What I wanted to do with Dead Zone was try to get inside Dillinger’s experience of what it felt like to be shot to death and then go from there. I wasn’t interested in the cliché of your life passing before your eyes at the point of death. I was trying for a combination of THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD and THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS, all of it sort of mixed together into a cluster of death metaphors, a potent death stew. I’m still not sure if I got there, but I think I came close.

Q: Do you ever feel any pressure, now that you’re well known, to tame your brutal honesty in your poetry?

A: It’s what I do, what I have to do.

Q: What advice would you give to an aspiring poet?

A: This might be the toughest question of all. First, you have to understand, there is no money in poetry. Most of the poets I have known have worked at something else to survive. Then, there is the example of Charles Bukowski. Bukowski actually became a well to do writer later in life. But, he is the exception to the rule. Becoming the next Bukowski is kind of like trying to win the Lotto. What are the odds at that, like a billion or so to one? Whatever. There are two ways to go as a poet. You can get into a writing program, work toward the MFA and basically become inauthentic and at best a very mediocre poet. Or, you can dig the poems out of your own guts. This is tougher but in the long run, you’ll be able to look at your face in the mirror. And, yes, there are no guarantees. We live in a big country where more and more almost no one reads poetry, let alone reads at all. Most people, both educated and not, do not give a royal fuck about poetry in the first place. Little do these folks realize that without poetry, this country would become the next thing to lobotomized. Not that we aren’t close right now. The fact is, we probably need poetry now more than we have ever needed it before. We need the power of the word, we need the witness of the power, we need great poems, great works of art and not just for a kind of absolution but also for our national survival.

Wolfie: Thank you very much, Todd. We appreciate your thoughts very much.

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