Interview by Erin O’Neill Armendarez

From the start, Aji’s art reviewers were intrigued by the unique, compelling creations of Kaya Davis.  How, they wondered, could she fashion anything so tiny?  Thanks to staff from Ability Now and to Davis herself, their questions were answered.

It’s clear that Davis is deeply focused on her craft, and on reaching a wider audience that will appreciate her work.  Her drive is an inspiration.  She has followed her own imagination and intuition into a pursuit that can only grow as she devises her own miniature tools and aspires to learn animation one day.  Are you wondering whether your own wild idea could ever become a reality?  Ask Kaya Davis. She has an answer for you.

EOA: Please share some basic background information about yourself with our readers. 
KD: My name is Kaya. I am 28 years old, have autism, and am an artist from California. I grew up in Berkeley with my parents, as an only child who was adopted at birth. My hobbies are drawing, knitting, and origami, and I do it on a very tiny scale.  I am a cat lover and I collect my drawings of dolls, specifically Barbie and Blythe dolls.

EOA: How and when did you discover your artistic talent? 
KD: I have always loved to draw. I’ve also always preferred smaller toys, such as Polly Pocket and Barbie, over bigger toys like American Girl dolls. There were often times that I found myself wanting clothes and accessories for my dolls that I couldn’t buy in the store. As many children do, I would use art to express myself, but as I got older, I discovered that I could make a career from my skill of drawing people and crocheting or knitting the doll clothes and accessories I had always wished I could buy. That was when I was about 14 years old and knitting and crocheting miniatures has been a passion of mine ever since. Throughout high school, I improved my knitting, crocheting, and doing origami skills, and when I turned 21 I found that I wanted to focus only on miniatures.  

EOA: What first attracted you to miniature forms?
KD: I have always seen my dolls as real people, not as dolls at all. I’ve also always been interested in fairytales about fairies and other mythical creatures, as well as the spiritual world. I would sit and draw the fairies, their tiny houses, and the tiny worlds I was imagining in my head. Once I started drawing and painting on a small scale, I realized that was my preference because of the control it gave me over my fine motor skills. The more I drew, the more interest people showed in buying my work, so I figured, why not make money doing something that I love?

EOA: How did you find Ability Now, and how has the program supported your art and your business?
KD: I found the program through a referral from Regional Center of the East Bay, a non-profit agency under contract with California to coordinate supports and services for people with developmental disabilities like me. Because I have autism, I tend to have art ideas all over the place. Before attending Ability Now’s Small Business Development Center, I was struggling with how to turn my passion for tiny art into a business. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today if it wasn’t for Ability Now’s Small Business Development Center. The staff at Ability Now have helped me focus on my goals and given me structure. 

EOA: Who are your mentors?
KD: Andre Wilson, the Small Business Manager, and Alva Gardner, the Small Business Vocational Coordinator, and all the small business staff at Ability Now have been mentors and supported me along the way. However, my iconic role model as an artist is Walt Disney. I’m very fascinated by animation and making a drawing come to life with a series of images, and am interested in learning animation in the future.

EOA: Please describe your process as an artist, from idea to finished piece. 
KD: This varies depending on what I’m making. I often take walks to get inspiration. Then I usually think about what I want to make and sometimes how. While I’m walking, I visualize how I want the finished piece to look. Then I will sit down and draw or paint. Because of the small scale of my work, I often also make some of my own art supplies including tiny watercolor pads, paint palettes, and knitting needles. When I sit down to draw or paint a miniature, I try to complete the whole thing in one sitting. 

EOA: Of all of your accomplishments, of which are you most proud, and why? 
KD: Learning how to work on a tiny scale. Mastering my skills, I would say, because without being able to do that, I wouldn’t have my business or passion. 

EOA: What are your short-term and long-term goals? 
KD: My short-term goal is to make more work in a shorter period of time. Long term, I would like to be well known for my art – to me, this would mean having lots of followers on my business Instagram and YouTube. 

EOA: What advice do you have for novice artists and entrepreneurs hoping to attract interest in what they have to offer? 
KD: Find your passion and what sets you apart from everyone else. It’s important to market yourself in a way that makes you stand out. I still struggle with this, I must say, so just remember that it’s a process and takes time. Don’t give up on your passions and dreams – if something isn’t working, get advice from family, a mentor, or someone you look up to. Follow your passion and remember to always do what you love. 

Interview by Erin Schalk
​
Helen Fukuhara began her visual arts education at the Braille Institute in 1987. While being blind from birth, Fukuhara has pursued the fine arts in earnest, dedicating her university studies to music. Today, she remains a prolific and passionate artist who works in ceramic, mosaic, printmaking, and fiber arts.  In addition, her print Dancing Fingers was recently awarded an honorable mention in the American Printing House for the Blind’s (APH) annual art competition InSights. 

“I like the feel -- the tactile qualities -- of mixed media projects since I use my hands to see.  I also like how multimedia allows me to work independently.  When I’m in the process of making a piece, I can feel and experience the design fully as I create it section by section.  In my work, I also am open to letting things happen rather than sticking to one specific plan.  However, when I finish a piece, I feel somewhat sad because my entire surface is covered, and I cannot experience each part of the design as well.  So, I create again.  And again.” -Helen Fukuhara

Erin Schalk (ES): Please share with us how you came to be a visual artist: 
Helen Fukuhara (HF): I started at Braille Institute in Los Angeles during the end of September of 1987, when I moved from New York to California.  That’s when I started taking art classes because the art teachers at Braille made it comfortable for me to do art, since art is generally done with your hands.  Basically, it involved the colors and materials being explained to me in more detail. 

I also learned from Hailstones and Halibut Bones, which is a children’s book.  It takes colors and puts them into poetry so I have something concrete to relate to, for example, black is the color of licorice.  I like to associate art with music since I was a musician originally.  For example, I might think of the bright colors as piccolos in an orchestra. 
The lower notes would be the darker colors, and so on. I used to do sewing when I lived in New York, so naturally, I worked with fabrics in different colors and textures.  I was aware of colors, and I wrote the color combinations on a braille sheet to remember the combinations that go together. Sometimes if I am in the mood, I’ll make something unusual, which you can do in art!  

I love doing art.  I love the making of it rather than the completion because once it’s done it’s finished and hurrah.  But when you’re doing it, I think it’s more fun.  

ES: You studied music during your college days. How did your practice evolve into visual art?  Is there overlap? 
HF: I studied music at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York.  I didn’t have any idea that one day I would be moving to California and go to Braille Institute, nor did I know that Braille even had an art or music program.  
In time, I realized art and music work together in certain ways.  I read music history books, so I figured there must be art history books!  I began reading art history, took art history courses, and received six credits from Cal State Northridge. In art history, I had opportunities to do some art projects related to the class such as a beehive tomb [from the Bronze Age Mycenaean civilization].

If I’m working on an art piece, I’ve thought about how to make the piece connect to the sound of music. Some people can do that, but I find that’s difficult for me to do. When I try to make shapes, it’s never the same as what I’m visualizing in my mind. For example, when I saw the movie Chariots of Fire and they played the running music, I didn’t picture somebody running.  I don’t know what that feels like or what that looks like visually. I can’t compare music with art that way.  However, one thing I have done is take poems that people have written and put them to music.  

ES: What artists, contemporary or classic, influence you most and why?
HF: It’s an interesting question. I mainly go by era more than individuals, since I cannot see or touch the work or have it in my hand.  I prefer Renaissance and Baroque music,  so I tend to like art of that nature as well. The difference is I do know I could write in the style of Beethoven, or I could change a song to fit a composer.  
When it comes to art, things become a bit more complicated.  If somebody says, “Do a piece like DaVinci or like Picasso,” it can happen sometimes.  One time, I made a piece at my friend’s house, and she said, “That actually looks like a scene from Manzanar!”  I said, “What do you know?  It just happened!”  Likewise, if someone says a piece of mine looks like a Monet or similar, I wouldn’t know, and I’m quite surprised because I don’t have anything touchable to compare.

I can do abstract art more than abstract music.  With music, I’m used to rules. So, when I wrote music, I preferred writing music with rules, whereas music now can be more freeform, so you can do anything you want.
In regard to art, I like mosaics.  I’d also be fascinated to try more paper mache sculpture sometime in the future.

ES: You grew up in an artistically rich environment in New York City, and your father was acclaimed watercolorist Henry Fukuhara. How have these influences shaped you as an artist?
HF: My family was supportive of me, and my parents and family came to my concerts.   My dad was always fond of watching the conductor more than listening to the music! 

My father really became influential to me as a visual artist once I started taking art classes.  Before that, we would only talk about art once in a while, and I didn’t know I was going to be taking art at Braille Institute at all.  For a long time, I didn’t ever think about doing art myself.  Also, my father didn’t know how to teach me art then, so we didn’t discuss it much.  However, I went to his art workshops and demonstrations, and I found it interesting to listen to the art demonstrations if they would talk.  And some of the people at the workshops would ask questions.  I always enjoyed the questions.

I began taking art classes at Braille Institute because I knew you could do art with your hands. Things opened up and my father and I would discuss.  Sometimes my dad would be painting and have music playing.  I would ask him, “What kind of orchestral piece did you do today?” and he would laugh.  So I could understand, he would say, “Well, I have violins here, and I have trumpets there. This one is a mixed orchestra.”

As time went on, I really wanted to do an art show with my father.  First, he arranged for me to have a solo show.  Later on when he became totally blind and still painted, he finally agreed to have a show with me.  That was exciting!  
When we had our show together, I imagined a 50-50 setup.  But, my dad suggested I submit more pieces to the show and he would enter just a few.  He was a well-known artist by then, and he didn’t want to dominate, rather, he wanted my art to be the highlight of the show.  That really surprised me! 

Later on, my father became fully blind and still continued to paint.  He confided in me that he was more sure of himself as an artist even when he lost his vision, because he knew all that I was capable of as an artist.

ES: What are some of your favorite artistic media and why? 
HF: I like them all.  I like doing mosaics because you can use different shapes and different textures of pieces, and you can make your own tiles if you want. You can also incorporate found pieces to create an image.  I’ve done mosaics that are freeform and ones more like a realistic picture.  For example, I once made a mosaic artwork of my neighbor’s birds. He had a picture taken from a magazine so we had something to work from.  Someone helped me because I couldn’t cut out the feet since they were really tiny, but I was able to put them in place.  That was a challenge!

I also like paper mache.  You can mix materials into the paper mache to give it different textures.  For example, I’ve experimented with adding in sand and sequins.  Of course, you can put in a variety of paint colors as well.  I like that paper mache is light, versus clay which is heavy.  I also like basketry because you can add a range of materials like beads, whether they’re commercial or handmade.  You can have different patterns and shapes of baskets, as well as wide or narrow reeds.  Mosaic, paper mache, and basketry...I would say these art forms have been the most successful for me.

ES: You once said about your ceramic and mosaic combo works, “When I’m making a piece, I can experience the design as I create it section by section.” Tell us more.
HF: Some of the clay medallions or shapes were found or abandoned in the studio.  With the ceramic and mosaic pieces, they’re not in my head originally.  It’s a matter of what I have to work with, and then it’s placement and glazing.  So, I just do them as they come.  I may have nine ceramic circles of a certain size, and I begin to arrange them.  Once I can say that it feels like a nice arrangement, I begin fitting ceramic or glass mosaic tiles in between and so on.  

Sometimes I work in sections, and sometimes I don’t because I have the whole board to work with, unless it’s a particular section with a particular color of tiles.  Then, I might try to do a border first, then fill the inside.  

ES: What do you hope your audience will gain when they encounter your artwork?
HF: I leave it up to the eye of the beholder.  That’s why a lot of my work is untitled.  Viewers have to look for it.  When people ask me about my art, I don’t have a list of all the textures I used, where I placed them, or what colors they are.   
I think things change in people’s minds when they view my work.  Why did I use a certain color in a certain place?  Not seeing, I have no idea.  I just hope that when I’m able to see them - if I get my sight back while on Earth - that I would enjoy seeing as much as I enjoy doing them.

My father used to say to me, “Seeing is believing.”  And I would say in return, “Believing is seeing.”

​Interview conducted by Erin O’Neill Armendarez

To think I almost missed him.  I was reading through poetry submissions (I read all submissions several times on different days for exactly this reason) and I stumbled upon Simon Perchik’s poems for the third or fourth time. This time, as I slowly read the poems, something happened, some kind of, what?   I felt a deep emotional connection, a pathos.  I reread.  What exactly was  I feeling, and why?  Based on the words, the syntax, the lines, the stanzas—I couldn’t figure it out.

Somehow, through the miracle of black shapes on a white page, words, Simon Perchik had compelled me to look, to think, and to feel more deeply, although I’d be hard pressed to explain what his poems are “about”.  I knew we had to include his work in the spring 2021 issue. After I sent an acceptance message, he offered to send a review copy of The Weston Poems (2021), and before long I had received a hard copy of that wonderful collection but also a wealth of information on Perchik and his poetry from Rich Soos, Editor in Chief at Cholla Needles Arts and Literary Library in Los Angeles, from whom I was fortunate enough to receive a digital review copy of Perchik’s magnum opus The Family of Man Poems. Through Soos, I learned that Perchik had spent 8 years tirelessly working on this book, which was published April 1, 2021, by Cholla Needles Arts and Literary Library in honor of National Poetry Month.

Soos hails Perchik as a “national treasure whose work has appeared in over 700 magazines, including The New Yorker, Poetry, Partisan Review, The Nation, [and] North American Review. He is 97 years old (born December 24, 1923) and over 30 of his books have been published since his first book of poetry, Bomber’s Moon, in 1949.”
According to Library Journal (Nov. 2000), “Perchik is the most widely published unknown poet in America….”  All these years, he has been relentlessly honing his craft, and his goal? From the poet himself, of The Family of Man Poems, to testify to humanity’s “overriding need to comfort one another.”

Maybe that’s what I was experiencing that day when I paused for a careful reading of Perchik’s submission, comfort in recognizing that these poems, while they refuse to speak of anyone in particular, spoke of us all, of things that, while almost inexpressible, are possibly more important than anything else. Interested? If so, I invite you to read on.

Erin O’Neill Armendarez (EOA): Your latest collection of poems, The Family of Man Poems, 1982-1990, represents eight years of intensive work, a true labor of love.  Please share with our readers a brief overview of this book and what it means to you as a poet at this point in your career.

Simon Perchik (SP): You asked what, if any, meaning The Family of Man Poems has for me. I don’t know the answer to that. I never considered the book as a whole. Just wrote a poem prompted by the first photograph (in the collection published by MoMA) and kept on going. I never considered the photos as a whole, nor my poems as a whole. But I now think I was wrong. On reflection the 482 photos are really 1 photo. And maybe I too, have written just 1 poem (in 482 stanzas.)

EOA: Most poets reading this interview will be jealous to discover that Charles Olson, the famous Black Mountain poet, actually wrote a blurb for the cover of one of your books.  You have known so many esteemed poets and artists over the years.  Which would you say was the most influential on your career as a poet, and why?

SP: You mentioned the blurb Charles Olson gave me for my first collection. Have a great story to tell you. Though I wrote in college, after admission to the bar in 1950 I didn’t write for about 10 years while building a law practice. When I began to write I found a copy of Black Mountain Review in the house and sent them some poems. I got back a letter saying the magazine had folded some five years ago. It was signed by Olson who went on to ask, “Did Corman get in touch with you?”  What a welcome back!  That he remembered my name, that he ever knew it had a lasting impression. He was a very generous man. But don’t think I know many poets. I don’t.

EOA: You have described your process for writing poetry in previous interviews, first writing several pages on a selected photograph or image, and then writing several more pages on disparate topics drawn from your readings on subjects in philosophy, mythology, or science.  The poem itself spontaneously emerges as you attempt to resolve contradictions, finding your “hook”, which signals the beginning of the budding poem.  Do I have that right?  And has this process evolved or changed over the decades, and if so, in what ways?

SP: Yes, you have it right. I confront a photograph with a contradictory, irreconcilable image or idea from myth or science and then reconcile the two. Exactly what a metaphor does for a living. And it never fails. A perfect cure for “writers’ block” I hope your readers will agree after reading “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities”. 

EOA: You are on record as one who eschews narrative poetry, and also as one who is deeply moved by the abstract painting of artists like Mark Rothko, the sorts of paintings that sometimes leave skeptics standing in museums thinking, “This is art?”  In your opinion, how are abstractions depicting the intangible able to inspire such deep power and pathos?

SP: You mentioned Mark Rothko. He’s my role model. He knows that when you stand in front of his painting there is nothing of the real world in it. To cope, the brain will shut down. And the viewer’s unconscious tries to make sense of it. What we have in this art form is the artist’s subconscious talking to the viewer’s subconscious. I try to do that.

EOA: The philosopher Wittgenstein is famous for having said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”  In an interview with Tim McLafferty (Forge Magazine), you defined poetry as “words that inform the reader of that which cannot be articulated.” Hence, your poetry seems to try to express the inexpressible.  Why, in your opinion, is this preferable to telling a story? 

SP: You ask why not telling a story to reach into the reader is preferred over telling a story. The answer is simple: one is prose, the other is poetry. And poetry has the power. If I say “Your mother died” and you start to cry, if I ask you why you’re crying, you say, “You just told me my mother died.” Makes sense. But if you are listening to Max Bruck and you start to cry, if I ask you why, you have to say, “I don’t know.” Music is the most abstract art form. Maybe poets should move a bit closer to the unconscious composers work with.

EOA: I am curious about one thing, so I have to ask to gain a better understanding, if only for myself, but possibly also for readers. I completely understand what you’re saying about why you have chosen to use abstraction in your poetry. Your poems operate much differently than do narrative poems, and you accomplish what you set out to accomplish with them, which is, to me, quite mysterious, given your process.  

It seems to me that there is prose that could be considered abstract as well, i.e some of Virginia Woolf’s work, some of Gertrude Stein’s, maybe some metafiction or magical realism.  Or think of that ambitious, perplexing work Ulysses, by James Joyce.  As you said in your essay, there are varying degrees of abstraction, given the writer.  Hence--surely you do not mean to say that the narrative poems of Robert Browning, Robert Frost, Keats, Yeats, or Tennyson are not poetry?

SP: I agree with you that prose can also be abstract. And you have listed 3 of the greatest. I guess, being a lawyer, I feel the literary world needs to more clearly define what words may be called poetry and what may be called prose. Thomas Wolf uses the paragraph form for some very moving poetry. So “prose-poem” could also use a more exact definition. Maybe it’s hopeless. Writers write and let others decide where to slot the work. Maybe definitions are OK for law but have no business in art.  As you see, though, as I have opinions, I also have nothing but doubts. Wish I could be more sure of my ideas.  

EOA: In the same interview, you mentioned the collective unconscious, saying, “If I’m dealing with my subconscious, I’m dealing with yours, so that would be the connection.” When I read the submission that inspired this interview, although I had not yet read about your process, I felt that connection as I read your poetry.  So—is your process and purpose more intuitive?  When you find your hook, is it something you feel, or something you know, or both?

SP: You ask about what happens once I get “the hook”.  Though you need a “starter” to make yogurt and “the hook” to begin a poem the similarity ends there. The “hook” more often than not will disappear. It served its purpose and got the ball rolling, so to speak. Once the poem has a footing, I pretty much let it go where it wants. At the end I’m as surprised as anyone.

EOA: Your poems communicate powerful feeling, yet I noticed you seldom, if ever, use words like joy, anger, courage, fear, sadness—the nouns that represent inner states of being.  Do you consciously edit those words out, and if so, how does this help to create the intended effect on readers?

SP: Yes, I edit out the words that tell the reader how they should feel. I try to use words that will suggest it in a round-about way.

EOA: You seldom read your poems aloud in public, so let me ask you this: should readers attempt to read your poems aloud?  Is it important for them to experience them that way?  Do you read aloud to yourself as you revise?  Or is it better for readers to focus on careful exploration of the visual and mental images along with the careful punctuation (or lack thereof) and shifts in syntax to fully experience each poem?

SP: I don’t like to read my poetry in public because it’s too personal, comes with a lot of baggage. Once I read a poem and froze on stage at the 4th line. I couldn’t finish the poem or the reading. Who needs it! If others find pleasure in reading the poems out loud, I’m happy. Very happy. I do not read the poem aloud while working on it.

EOA: In another interview with McLafferty, you said, “There are so many reasons why a poem is rejected.  And what makes you think that the editors know what they are doing anyhow?” I laughed when I read that, because I know that it is true.  We editors may miss some of the most unique, most profound work looking for something in particular, reading when we’re tired, pushing deadlines, etc.  We, too, are human.  What other advice do you have for aspiring poets?

SP: You ask if I have any advice for aspiring poets. Yes, I do. Don’t take anyone’s advice. Just read the poems. Just get to know the territory, what’s out there.

EOA: Are you working on another project now, or are you resting for a bit after completion of The Family of Man Poems?

SP: Yes, I am working on a new collection of photographs. I’m about halfway finished. I better be careful. I’m pushing 98 and the one thing the gods don’t like is hubris. So I won’t say more.

Interview conducted by William Nesbitt

David Kirby’s collection The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007. Kirby is the author of almost forty books. A Johns Hopkins PhD, Kirby teaches at Florida State University, where he has taught for over fifty years, won five major university teaching awards, and is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English. Kirby has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Recently, the Florida Humanities Council presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing. He lives in Tallahassee with his wife, Barbara Hamby, a poet and fiction writer who also teaches at FSU. 

In this interview we discuss his latest poetry collection, Help Me, Information, as well as his new book on writing poetry, The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them, along with heaven, hell, loss, laughter, and the Waffle House.

William Nesbitt (WN): The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them weighs in at almost 500 pages. I’m figuring you didn’t crank that all out on a rainy Tuesday morning. When did you start the project? What was the idea behind it? How was assembling the poems and writing the book different from writing poetry and what about the process of putting together The Knowledge is like writing poetry?

David Kirby (DK): Truth to tell, I wrote that book in a little over a month. Or I wrote it over 50 years, if you want to put it that way: I had a big data base of prompts and another big one of classrooms tips that I’d accumulated, and I shuffled those two files together like a deck of cards. Then came the fun part, which—oh, wait, I see that’s question #2.

WN: How did you go about selecting the poems to include in The Knowledge?
DK: This, too, was a process that had two parts. I just picked 50 or so poems that I adore without thinking too much of the lessons they taught, figuring that if my readers liked them as much as I did, they’d be self-starters and wouldn’t worry so much about having to learn or making mistakes. They’d just be enjoying themselves. After that, my publisher sent the manuscript to four readers, and those readers told me what else they’d like to see in The Knowledge, part of which was suggesting additional poems, so I added another 20 or so. 

You asked earlier how writing The Knowledge was like writing poetry, and the answer is, it was exactly like that: you gather your materials, you sequence them, you do a draft, you get readers’ reactions, you revise accordingly. All writing’s like that, don’t you think?

WN: What poem would you most suggest when teaching and/or reading to a new-to-or-not-that-into-or-maybe-even-hates-poetry-audience-but-this-poem-will-get-deep-into-them?
DK: Uh-huh, yeah. Well, I think I’d send the students on a chase and tell them to go to two websites, the Rattle site and the one for The Writer’s Almanac. Those are two sites I consult every day, and half the time I end up copying and pasting poems from one or the other or both so I can use those poems in class. But this kind of thing works best if the student makes the discovery rather than getting an assignment from their stuffy old teacher. 
Now if someone said, “Who should I read this weekend?” I’d tell them to read poems by George Bilgere. Tomorrow I might recommend another poet, but right now, I’m saying George. Take a look at his work and you’ll see why. 

WN: You state, “if it works, a poem is more likely to be half understood rather than fully comprehended.” Is that true of all art, or is it unique to poetry?  
DK: Well, all art is a game, isn’t it? And it invites the reader to play, promising to be not too difficult and not too easy but just right. Thing is, the game doesn’t have to ever end. And it probably shouldn’t. Don’t you go back from time to and look at a poem or a painting or a novel or movie and say “Dang, I never noticed that the first time”? I could read Keats forever and come up with new pleasures every time. Or listen to the Cowboy Junkies.

WN: You bring high art, philosophy, and European locales into your poetry, but you also mix in popular culture, especially music. You’ve kind of got one foot in the Louvre and one foot in the Hard Rock Cafe. Why do so many people view high art, say, Shakespeare or classical myth as something hard to understand and dull and why do so many academics think comic books, popular music, and television/movies are trash no educated adult should waste their time on?  
DK: Most of us stay in our own little boxes, but man, you got to get out there and eat the world. It’s going to eat you one of these days, so don’t you want to get your chomps in first? There’s good and bad Shakespeare and good and bad pop music as well. Point is, there’s tons of both. Find the Shakespeare and the songs you love and forget about the rest. In the end, it doesn’t matter what you love as long as you love a lot of things. If you want to be a real person, that’s mandatory. Be an omnivore, damn it.

WN: Your most recent poetry collection is titled Help Me, Information, which makes me think of Pound’s oft-quoted definition that “Literature is news that stays news” and Mr. Aaker in “Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator Ode” from Help Me, Information who says, “Facts don’t work. People counterargue. They’re skeptical. But if you tell them a story, all that goes away.” News, facts, stories, information—they are not always the same thing, but they might overlap and intersect. What is the meaning of the title Help Me, Information?
DK; Shoot, I knew you’d ask me that. 
[Laughs]
Let’s see . . . okay, the first thing is that that title comes from “Memphis, Tennessee” by Chuck Berry, who, along with Little Richard and Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis and a hundred others whose names we barely remember, were the pioneers, the artists who invented the music that changed the world. Other than that, everything is information, isn’t it? The odor a dog smells on your pants leg is information to that dog, as is a radio signal or a note you find on the sidewalk or a childhood memory or a space rock that pings you on the head while you’re walking along thinking about your childhood. 
Look back at question #5 and my answer to it. The world is made of information that’ll help you be your most three-dimensional, so get out your catcher’s mitt, because it’s all headed your way. By the way, I had to get permission from the Chuck Berry estate to use a couple of lines from his song. It took months, and they were going to charge me $300, but in the end, they said, “Wait, we’re talking about poetry here, right? Hey, those lines are yours—no charge.” Who says poetry doesn’t pay? Or at least it doesn’t cost you anything.

WN: What did we lose when we lost Aretha Franklin whom you mention in “My Girlfriend Killed James Brown” and “Hitchhike”? When I read the end of “My Girlfriend Killed James Brown,” I wonder: do we ever really, completely lose people?  
DK: We didn’t lose a damned thing. Somebody asked Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead if he missed Jerry Garcia, and Weir said, “I see him in my dreams all the time. I hear him when I’m on stage. I would say I can’t talk to him, but I can. I don’t miss him. He’s here. He’s with me.”

Oh, and here’s another quote, this from Septimus Hodge in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, who tells a grieving character:

We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again.

Nice, huh? By the way, I hope you don’t mind the quotes. When I find that someone has said something better than I can say it, I let them have the floor.

WN: The way I read “My Girlfriend Killed James Brown” James Brown accompanies the girlfriend in heaven’s waiting room and then escorts her into her personal heaven where she finds her parents sitting at a table in the house where she grew up. Insert yourself into the end of that scenario. Who escorts you into the next room and who is seated at the table?
DK: Man, do I love these questions. In 1967, Otis Redding was touring Jamaica, and one night he walked unannounced into an after-hours club where Bob Marley was playing. Otis appeared “like a god,” as eyewitnesses say, and when Bob Marley looked up, he stopped what he was doing and went right into “These Arms of Mine.” Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if you’d been one of those in the club that night? The bartender points you to a seat and hands you a bottle of Red Stripe, and you think you’ll listen to a couple of songs and go home because you need to get to work early the next day, and the door opens, and in walks the Big O. Yeah, I’d know I was in heaven then.

WN: “Europeans Wrapping Knickknacks” suggests that there are physical ways we can give ourselves to others or carry others with us. What are the non-physical ways? Can the poem or the song be both a physical and a non-physical item or entity that endures?
DK: Well, any words can, can’t they? The words of a poem or song or just something someone says? Think about the dozens of snippets of language that you’ve read or overheard or dreamed up on your own over the years that recur to you constantly and that are almost forgettable, but not to you because you’ve charged them with meaning. 
An editor took a poem of mine recently and said he and the other editors at the journal were wowed by the fact that the poem is so “straightforward,” by which I guess he means that most of the poems they get are not straightforward. So, yeah, a good way to work is find something around you that’s pretty trivial and make it the most important thing on this earth. If you can pull that off, your readers will start looking at the world differently. If you want to see what I mean, look at “Today,” that short poem by Frank O’Hara that turns the ordinary things of this world into sacraments.

WN: In “Having a Chat with You,” the narrator asks, “When you die and I still want to talk to you, / will you hear me?” What is the answer to that question? Can the dead hear us and vice versa?
DK: As far as I know, no one’s ever heard back from that “undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns” (Hamlet, act 3, scene 1), but we can keep in touch with the departed. When the poet Edward Field lost his partner, he put up the most extraordinary Facebook post, saying, “we were together for 58 years. it was so wonderful i don’t mind being by myself for a while and reflecting on our life together. i am so grateful.” May everyone who loves someone else feel this way when their time comes.

WN: “Hitchhike” explains that according to Simone Weil, “Hell isn’t endless suffering; it’s endless monotony.” In “Legion, for We Are Many,” the devil himself explains that “hell’s just boring.” We learn in “This Magic Moment” that “Bravery is doing / the same thing every day when you don’t want to. / Not the marvelous but the familiar, over and over again. / Do that, and the magic will come.” Is this the secret, then, to getting out of hell whether it is spiritual or physical, real or imagined? Is poetry a passport out of hell?  
DK: It is, but it’s not the only way out. I never want to come across as one of those people who says there’s something wrong with you if you don’t read poetry or you’re not a poet. There are plenty of ways to add to the world’s beauty. Jack Gilbert has this wonderful poem called “The Abnormal Is Not Courage” in which he describes a Polish cavalry charge against German tanks in the early days of World War II. Fine, he says, but attacking armored troops on horseback is not courage. Courage consists not of single king-size dramas but of basic decency over the long haul: the whole marriage, Gilbert says, not just the rapture of the first month. Go for the beauty “of many days,” of “normal excellence, of long accomplishment.” 

I read a piece recently by a man whose father’s last words were, “Take care of everybody.” That’s a way out of hell. That’s heaven right there. And you don’t have to write poetry to know this, but I will say that, given its concision and precise use of words, poetry is the best way to get the message across. And what’s the message? It’ll be different for different people, but one possibility is “don’t just be kind—be kinder than you have to be.” In other words, when you’re in the drive-thru line, always pay for the person behind you. Don’t look at their bumper stickers, and don’t dawdle when you’re done in hopes of getting a wave and a honk. Just pay.

WN: “The 1909 Air Show at Brescia” says that “the things you love can kill you.” The baby in “A Baby in the Piazza” says, “Nothing’s worth loving unless it can kill you.” Is that a contradiction or an explanation? 
DK: I take it more as a definition of what’s important in this life. Nothing really counts unless it has power, and to have power, there needs to be power for good and evil, power that’ll make you dance with joy or knock your teeth out. Take the internet: now you can chat with Aunt Gracie in the comfort of your own home, but you can also convince your fellow dimwits that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Yeah, I like to order crap online, but I was also able to walk into Sears and buy stuff back when Sears was a thing and not pay delivery fees. I could get along fine without the internet as long as I wasn’t the only one who didn’t have it.

WN: I see this sort of baseball diamond in Help Me, Information consisting of death, love, God, and sex. What’s that all about? Are those just topics that poets tend to write about, or do you think you focus on them more? If that baseball diamond metaphor is accurate, which one is home base for you?
DK: I’m thinking now that those four words just might be synonyms. In Howards End, one character says, “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.” If we lived forever, we’d probably think ourselves so excellent that we’d be, like, “God who?” And love and sex would just be things that drift in and out of our life. No, no: death makes you sit up and take notice. It makes you get busy, makes you think, “Okay, time to come up with some priorities here. No more reality TV and bong hits for this slacker: I’m going to make my time on earth count for something—I’m going to make my time on earth count for something, by God.” 

WN: Blake, Whitman, and Ginsberg are recurring presences in your poetry. I also notice works by them form the top three of your list in The Knowledge of the ten books you regard as “essential reading for young poets” and you describe the trio as “dithyrambic.” Why do you dig them so much?  
DK: Well, they’re exuberant, aren’t they? They celebrate. They make a lot of noise. In the EQ department (or “emotional quotient,” for those who don’t throw that term around as much as I do), they’re the most emotionally healthy poets out there. Every optimistic cliché applies: they see the glass as half full, they make lemonade out of lemons, they turn mountains back into molehills.
 
Frank O’Hara works the same way. Check out “Today.” I’m always dreaming up new classes, and I’m putting one together now called “The Daughters of Frank O’Hara,” because, for whatever reason, I notice that a lot more young women than young men are trying to match O’Hara for sheer exuberance these days. Hera Lindsay Bird and Chessy Normile are two who come to mind.

WN: I had a student who said of Ginsberg’s “Howl,” “When you read ‘Howl,’ you know where you are.” When you read “Howl,” where are you?
DK: I’m right there on the back of Big Al’s motorcycle. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for just about any kind of come-on. What a masterful poem, huh? The poet only has to utter those first few words of invitation. Who could resist? 
By the way, he and the other poets I mention in my answer to the last question aren’t just exuberant about chocolate sundaes and back rubs. They’re boisterous and excessive about everything. Take Blake: he’s as political as all get-out, but he’s never sour or resentful. He lived in a day before two-stroke combustion engines, but he invites you to clamber aboard his cosmic Harley and head out on the highway, see what’s going on, celebrate it if it’s far out, kick its ass if it isn’t.

WN: “Three’s Company” lists, explores, and documents the power of three in subjects such as politics, history, and America. There’s one heart, two eyes, and four seasons, but three appears an awful lot. Morning, afternoon, evening. Youth, adulthood, old age. Heaven, purgatory, hell. Past, present, future. Id, ego, superego. Lower class, middle class, upper class. The three Star Wars trilogies. The three Fates. The Three Stooges. Blake, Whitman, Ginsberg. Small, medium, large. Why is three such a powerful number and why does it show up so much?
DK: Gee, I don’t know. I guess it’s a Goldilocks number, isn’t it? Just enough and not too much? You always want choices, but don’t you hate those BuzzFeed article with titles like “23 Ways to Cook a Chicken Breast”? 
My last two big decisions were to buy a car and get a new roof put on the house. I looked at two cars, a Toyota and a Honda. And I called four roofing contractors to get estimates. In other words, I had a little less or a little more than three options in each category. I was thinking three-ishly. Works for me, and if there’s anything to the poem, that way of thinking works for the general run of mankind as well.
Besides, three ingredients are just about all you can remember anyway. And a three-part list is punchy: you can nutshell life aboard a British naval frigate with just “rum, sodomy, and the lash.” So why would you say, “rum, sodomy, the lash, scurvy, body odor, lousy rations, bad teeth, sadistic officers, and surly bunkmates, not to mention that I haven’t heard from Molly in the two years I’ve been at sea”? Too many details can rob a punch line of its power.

WN: Now that we’ve gotten The Knowledge and some Information, let’s talk Wisdom. With all of the instant and constant access the internet and other connective technologies have gifted/unleashed on us, it’s also become proportionately difficult—for me, at least—to unplug or know when I am done working for the day or week. How do you figure out the work/life balance and allow yourself to take a break?
DK: A break to me is an event. It’s just as important as a bike ride or a meeting with your lawyer. It’s not that I get up and write 

1. Get up.
2. Exercise.
3. Breakfast.
4. Write or at least get ready to write.
5. Take a five-minute nap.
6. Write more, using ideas that came during nap.
7. Eat lunch and nap again

and so on. You need to be aware of what both body and soul need, but you should try to satisfy them in a way that’s as seamless as possible. The ideal would be glide through life as though you’re on roller skates, moving from one worthwhile activity to the other with as little self-consciousness as possible. 

I’ll add two codicils to this pronouncement. The first is that you should throw in a worthless activity from time to time, though by doing so, that activity automatically becomes worthwhile. The second thing is that I’m talking the talk here, but I don’t always walk the walk. There are days when I write nothing, days on which I skip one or both naps, and other days still when I throw my head back and yowl like a cat with its tail caught in the door. I try, though.

WN: I was glad to see you giving Waffle House some love in “Waffle House Index.” Over the years, Waffle House has been sanctuary, retreat, social club, entertainment venue, shelter, headquarters, make-out station, hideout, and study space for me. I probably wrote half of my undergraduate papers after midnight in the Waffle Houses of Georgia. I don’t know that I have a question in here so much as a thank-you, but please riff on Waffle House anyway. Oh, and I saw what you did there at the end with the take on section 52 of “Song of Myself.” I think Walt Whitman would have enjoyed the diversity, the American-ness, of Waffle House.
DK: Jeez, Waffle House is like the Vatican, isn’t it? Or Buckingham Palace. Or Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It’s the center of the universe. But whereas those other places are ground zero for particular populations, Waffle House is like that Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty, saying come one, come all. 
Waffle House is to greasy spoons what Shakespeare is to the rest of us. Man’ll tell you a great story, but he never stops there; he always throws in lots of useless beauty as well. Therefore, to fully activate the potential of your local Waffle House and have it radiate its magic throughout your entire region, remember the one thing you must always do, which is to get a waffle. They serve other stuff there, but even if you just want a cup of soup or a salad, order a waffle as well.

WN: If I went into a bar and ordered a “David Kirby,” what ingredients would the bartender put in the drink?
DK: Again, I’ve loved every one of these questions. I do a lot of interviews, and I’d rather drink a glass of gasoline than be asked “where do you get your ideas?” again. But this one stumped me, so I called in a consultant, my most mentally adventurous grad student, Brett Cortelletti. Just as I knew he would, Brett gave me the formula you’re looking for, complete with hand gestures. I’m thinking we should make an instructional video.
​
Anyway, what you do is tell your barkeep you’d like a David Kirby, please, whereupon this mixologist of many years’ experience makes you a martini but neither shakes nor stirs it. Instead, he hands you the drink and a couple of quarters. You take everything over to the jukebox, put the drink on top, slip the coins into the slot, select “Long Tall Sally,” and let the machine’s vibrations marry the gin to the vermouth in a gentle and nuanced way. In just two minutes and ten seconds, your icy beverage is finished to perfection. Enjoy!

Selected works from David Kirby are available in Aji Magazine's Fall 2021 Issue (#15).