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  -You have been very involved in the spoken-word side of poetry, what other forms of media and presentation would you like to see poetry have a place in?

I would like to believe that poetry belongs in the air.  Hanging, floating, whatever.  Everything I write, whether poetry or prose, I attempt to bring to it a sense of orality, a sense of performance.
Voice is so necessary in this art.  Other good media for experimentation are audio-books on CD (at the time of this interview I am presently wrapping up the last bits of production for my own
Audio-book) and internet streaming.  I had my performances from the Starfall Tour in Las Vegas recorded on digital video but I found that the visual element really didn't add anything except novelty or reminiscent appeal.  I don't know if audio-books are ever going to explode in popularity, but I do know that poetry belongs in that medium.

  -How do you feel poetry can be kept relevant to those who don't typically read poetry?

They need to put Shakespeare aside and forget all they learned about the art in high school.  If they listen to good hip-hop or interesting lyrical music, they are already "reading" poetry.  My first engagement with poetry was through what scholars would call a "close reading" of different song lyrics.  Then I found my way into the dusty tomes of Romantic poets, whatever.  You find your own path and keep blazing it.

  -You have written a great deal of traditional styled poetry, is that a matter of personal preference in general?

Yes.  I have very little patience for all-out free verse modern and post-modern academic-style poetry.  I feel as though John Keats (and to some extent, his contemporaries) perfected this craft.  "Harried thought or / mnemonic pulse in verse that cannot fade."  Form and meter have such an extensive impact on any given poem.  I feel as though the absence of form and/or meter often gives free verse poems an awkward, orphaned feel.  By that I mean it is too fragmented or disconnected from the souls of its predecessors for my tastes.

I realize this assertion may anger poets who write entirely in free verse.  It's important for these poets to understand that I do not cast aspersions on the quality of their work.  Our differences lie in the purpose of poetry.  With sonnetry and the old forms I am largely communicating with the canon of the past.  With free verse and fragmentation, you are largely communicating with the wild and exciting nebula of the future.  I feel there is urgency to both purposes.

  -Is there any style of poetry you feel uncomfortable working in?

Free verse.  But remember, meter can mean more than just iambs and pentameter.  I have a great deal of respect for hip-hop and this art is not written in poetic meter so much as it is written in some other kind of metronomic pulse -- something primal, some tribal pulse.  What makes me uncomfortable is inattention to rhythm and a sense that the line breaks are arbitrary.  There's a lot of free verse out there like that.

-What are some experimental forms of poetry you enjoy?

I really like writing and reading interlocking metrics.  Like when you string rubais together to make a rubaiyat.  It's a challenge to write and a pleasure to read.  To some extent, sonnet sequences are fun too.

-Could you describe your writing process?

This is such a large question.  In graduate school there are entire waves of theory that attempt to wrap together a cohesive answer to that very question.  Fortunately for you and for me, I don't have a taste for theory.

Again, I cannot share all of my process with you but I am aware of it.
I can tell you that a given poem begins with a somewhat parenthetical sentiment that smacks of some unresolved or unaddressed issue or grievance.  This is largely because poetry, throughout my formative years in Las Vegas learning the craft, was my way of synthesizing and dealing with totally complex emotional dissonance.  Writing is motivated by a need for discovery -- for new understanding.  My process is rooted, then, in a need to come to small epiphanies within larger grievances.  I have learned something about myself from every poem I've written, and by now that's quite a few.

  -When you get writer's block, do you have any activity or ritual that gets you back in the mood to work?

You're gonna hate this answer, but sometimes the best thing to do is stop for a good long while.  I find that my production goes through waves, dependent on lifestyle and the particular goals you've set for yourself in a given season.  For example, when I was bombarded by upper-level graduate school seminars the fall after the Starfall Tour, my entire poetry production shut down cold.  In these times I become very hard on myself.  There have been many occasions throughout several of these dormant periods where I swore I'd never write poetry again.

I was, of course, on all those occasions, incorrect.

  -What do you see as your greatest strengths in your work?

I spent a lot of years writing unsatisfactory poems until "star of absinthion" and later "redshift" -- when I just knew I had hit the level I'd been working toward for the prior seven years of trial, tribulation, and error.  I now see, in what has become The New Starfall, a trend for the poems to become meaningful to a number of people in different situations.  I hear from readers sometimes how they were affected by a particular poem in a certain way that had nothing to do with my original intent for writing it.  I know this is true, because some of the poems have begun affecting me just as though I were another reader:  I begin to associate a given poem written about a specific experience with another, totally different experience I may have had after composing it.

I know this is a great, fluid, often ineffable result of transmuting our lives into poems.  I can't explain it any better than that, but I feel that the way my work has started carrying so many different meanings to so many different people is its inexplicable greatest strength.

-And your greatest weaknesses?

I have been too bound by form.  At the time of this interview I am looking into ways that change the spatial and sonic relationships in my poems.  This may be a weakness but it could also just be my nature of moving slowly between evolutions.  It took me from 1996-2003 to write anything decent.  I may spend another seven fiddling with my current style before really moving onto something brand new.  I actually wouldn't mind that.

I notice a few occasions where it feels as though I've resorted to formula, especially regarding my sonnets.  "I am in a smoker's lung."
"I'm watching the clouds burn."  "I want to walk through walls" and other assertive and concise opening lines.  At the same time, I couldn't imagine those sonnets any other way so I'm not sure if that's construable as weakness or process.

  -So, you have been a member of the deviantART community for 3 years, do you feel that has affected your work in any way?

Yes.  In fact I feel that the instant-feedback and continuum of regular readers helped shape the final product of The New Starfall in a very real way.  The discussions generated about a given first draft posted vary in utility for me, but it is always useful in a sense to get people's immediate emotional reactions to a piece.  Oftentimes you find that comments do not make as much sense as you'd like or does not really back up or defend its observations with anything in the poem, but on the whole I've been attentive to my comments.

In fact, the title of the book and poem "the new starfall" came from a comment and response regarding "star of absinthion" between me and ~benevolentsoul.  Everything is connected, I have come to believe.

  -What poets and writers do you feel have influenced your work?

Robert Smith of The Cure, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and Jon
Crosby of VAST were in the past and continue to be strong influences.
As far as VAST goes, I could say that their business model of
self-production and promotion influenced me as well.  As far as poets
are concerned, I feel a strong affinity for the Romantics in English
Lit -- particularly (and obviously) John Keats, who died at the same
age I was when I published The New Starfall:  24.

  -As a poet, do you have any particularly favorite lyricist (or band?)

Music is huge.  If you're not listening to Jimmy Eat World you should
be.  VAST too.

  -If you weren't writing, what other path in life do you think you might have taken?

Everything in my life revolves around writing, but now that I am almost
done with a Masters in English Writing I think I would have enjoyed a
career in social work or clinical psychology very much.  I like working
with people in a capacity that creates a direct impact.  Perhaps when I
finish this degree I can match these interests together.

  -Any words of encouragement for those just starting out as poets or considering it as a path?

Paraphrasing that film with Katie Holmes and the Dead Dog, "tell them to keep writing."