Fables of Representation: Essays

A Score for Undetermined Moments

A Score for Undetermined Moments The following interview was conducted by Chad Faries and Jayson Iwen in a small deli in Milwaukee’s historic Third Ward district in November 14, 1999, the morning after Paul Hoover’s visit to the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee where he had done a reading and a Q&A session. It moves sequentially from the deli, to a small, rusty Honda Civic en route to the train station , through a long tunnel at the terminal, and ends at a platform with Paul getting on his train. This physical energy and movement seemed to parallel the intellectual movement of the interview; therefore, the interviewers have attempted to retain “talkiness” and passage through time and space. Chad Faries: Yesterday you talked a little about your inBuences , which are interesting, because they’re probably not what people would expect from someone who edited a postmodern American poetry anthology. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re reading now and about what you’ve been inBuenced by in the past? Paul Hoover: Well, I’m not reading any poetry all that actively at the moment. I tend to do more of my in-depth reading when I’m writing in the spring and summer. My tastes are unexpected and eclectic and that’s reBected in the magazine and to a degree in the anthology. In the contemporary period, my tastes have always run in the direction of the New York School and language poetry, and this is reBected in the editing of New American Writing. But I also love the work of Charles Simic and other writing outside the experimental. I thought the God section of Glass, Irony, and God by Anne Carson was pretty good, and I like 145 From Cream City Review 25, nos. 1–2 (2001): 145–62. Stevie Smith for poems like “Pretty.” I have a weakness for devotional poetry if it’s inventive, probably because of my background in the church. You were asking me about my inBuences. I should be more complete about that. My work lies somewhere between the plainness of William Carlos Williams and the Boribund asceticism of Wallace Stevens, with the balance falling to Stevens. My work is more or less in the vein of the abstract or critical lyric, as it’s been called. So I read Ann Lauterbach and Marjorie Welish with interest. To put it more simply, when I’m down about poetry , Stevens is one of the people who revives my interest. I love Cesar Vallejo, particularly Trilce, and the metaphysical poets, especially George Herbert, and Emily Dickinson. I like Herbert better than Donne. Jayson Iwen: Why is that? PH: I don’t know. The poetry’s quiet and ingenious. He wrote eight hundred poems in his short career as a poet, and six hundred of them were in different forms. I have since become interested in the formal approach, from traditional forms like the cento and terza rima to math-driven forms such as counted verse (a prescribed number of words to the line and lines to the stanza). CF: What is your background in the church, Paul? PH: My father was a pastor in the Church of the Brethren, a paciAst sect which began in Schwarzenau, Germany, in the early 1700s. It’s similar in belief to the Mennonites and Amish. The Old Order Brethren, as they are called, wore prayer coverings and plain clothing like the Amish, and in the church sanctuary men sit to the left and women to the right. We are a more assimilated version of the Brethren and wear everyday clothing of “the world.” The ironies inherent in being German and paciAst may be evident in my work. Behind my reluctance to fully accept performance poetry is a dislike of personal display that comes from my church upbringing. The text—that is, the word—always comes Arst for me. Text and voice are the only actors required. JI: You also mentioned that when you’re “down about poetry.” What gets you down about poetry? PH: Since poets deal in words and in meanings, their efforts will sometime seem insubstantial even to them. Even if the result is 146 satisfying to you, you’re never sure what its effect is on others. The reception isn’t always immediate and clean. And the text itself can be smudged with uncertainty. I always thought the title of Sartre’s essay...