INTERVIEW WITH POETRY REVOLUTION
December 12, 2009
PR:
Welcome. We're grateful you agreed to an interview.
TF:
It's my pleasure. Glad to speak with you.
PR:
Congratulations on the release of your second book, Crossroads. This book follows quickly on the heals of Umbrageous Embers, which was published last year. It seems like a fruitful time?
TF:
Thank you. Yes, it has been a productive few years. I suppose I'd just filled myself to the brim and needed to clear the decks. A therapeutic purge, of sorts. Writing is a kind of therapy after all. And if you'd pay attention to what's been going the last few years, there's been a lot to wrestle with.
I've been dreaming of writing books for many years and bubbling over with ideas. I wrote a futuristic dystopian novel before these two books, but it wasn't in a publishable form. And before I tried rewriting it, poetry started pouring fourth, so I just ran with it, letting the words and ideas speak the way they wanted, and before I knew it, I had covered all the ideas (and then some) that I was trying to cram into the mouths of various fictional characters in the book. So that novel will forever sleep, while my poems now speak, yet I chalk up that year of work as an important exercise that allowed my writing to evolve.
I have also written socio-political essay for many years, which were published in the alternative press.
PR:
You must like to read? Tell us some of your influences.
TF:
Yes, I read a lot: a book a week; several papers a day; several magazines. I usually have about three or four books going at once: a non-fiction history or social analysis; a novel, of which I prefer underground classics; and some poetry.
As for my specific influences, there are so many, and from such different sources and styles, that I feel confident my writing is uniquely my own rather than a copy of some other writer or writers. My influences range from non-fiction writers such as Nietzsche, Marx, Peter Kropotkin, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Henry Thoreau, Lewis Mumford, H.L. Mencken, Hunters S. Thompson, Murray Bookchin, Eduardo Galleano, Christopher Lash, Mike Davis, Marshall Berman, Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, James Kunstler and Neomi Klein, to novelists such as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Celine, Henry Miller, Knut Hamsun, John Fante, J.G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Joseph Heller, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, John Dos Passos, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Pynchon, Fredrick Exley, Don Carpenter, William Gibson, Chuck Palahniuk, Roberto Bolano...and really this is just a partial list off the top of my head. There are many others. As for poetry, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Carl Sandburg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Pablo Neruada, Ernesto Cardinal, Nicanor Parra, Lee Young Lee, and Bob Dylan are some of my favorites.
I don't know if we have time today for me to tell you why I like all these writers. Maybe some other time. But let me at least say that from this list, Hunter Thompson and Jack Kerouac had the most powerful personal effect on me, in the sense of inspiring me to be a writer. Hunter made me laugh while helping me to understand what was going on behind the curtain in the seventies and eighties. As a kid seeing the Vietnam War and the Watergate hearings on TV made me cynical at young age. So I had basically written off the mainstream system and looked for my utopia in rock and roll. But strange as it might seem, Thompson was one of the first writers to inspire me to learn about what was really going on in politics, which I’ve endeavored to do for the last twenty years. Of course this knowledge has only confirmed my earlier hunches.
As for Kerouac, the poetry of his spontaneous prose inspired me to believe in my own inner voice. And of course, like many others, he also inspired me to explore this big bulging continent. I drove coast to coast six times in the eighties and early nineties, looking for satori in the City of Angels, trying to find my star on Hollywood Boulevard, arriving as a wannabe rock star and eventually departing five years later as a budding "salsero" and soon to be city planner.
PR:
Tell us a bit more about your writing.
TF:
Let me start by saying that my way of writing has no predetermined rules. It's freedom unencumbered by convention. It's opening my mind and heart to let the sun shine in and speak through me. It's connecting to God, I suppose, though I don't "know" who or what that really is, and don't think anyone else does either, or ever will. But I do feel that art gets the closest, especially music, though all art can hover on that higher ground.
I use the term poetry because poetry is wide open. You could call my writing stories, essays, whatever. I'm not hung up on categories, though most people tend to need stereotypes. Most people in the United States probably think of old ladies reading Robert Frost when they think of poetry. And of course most people don't read poetry. I was reluctant to use that term and not call them anything specific. My poems are my attempt at a unique kind of writing that blends all styles. Some of my poems come out traditionally "poetic," that is, tending toward the esthetic and mystical. Some rhyme. Some are conversational. Some make you laugh...they make me laugh anyway, even some of the serious ones. And some are personal. Usually there's a nugget to probe, a point to make, the essence of an idea, a feeling, a vision, or a situation that's expresses a more universal circumstance. Many of my poems/antipoems are social and/or political. I definitely have revolutionary intentions...not in the sense of violent overthrow but in the sense of helping spread a revolution of consciousness. Norman Mailer once said that that was the novelist's ultimate goal, to change the consciousness of their time. I'd say the same for poets. So my poetry sings from multiple scales, from the personal to the local to global. But it's mostly been about the good old USA. The crippled beast that is these divided states of embarrassment.
PR:
How is Crossroads different from Umbrageous Embers?
TF:
I don't think they are that much different. Perhaps Crossroads is a little more aged and polished. Umbrageous Embers and Crossroads are almost like part one and part two, though the poems in Crossroads are assembled more specifically like a book. They're more random in Umbrageous Embers. Of course, you could pop around and read a poem hear or there in either book. They all stand on their own. And I suppose this is how most reading is done in the cyberspace age, though my books are meant to be read cover to cover, the old fashioned way. If you only read a few you won't get the full gist.
PR:
You call your work "radical poetry." What do you mean by radical?
TF:
To get to the root of it all. To awaken the readers to obscured truths or to confirm them if they the already relate. To understand our condition and articulate it in a memorable way. Basically, to take issue with the status quo and its shortcomings and ultimately to inspire people to see through the bullshit so we can redirect the ship before it plunges off the cliff.
I believe strongly in learning and understanding history, especially the history that was left off the curriculum. But though we need to be rational, understand the facts, and see the choices clearly (which means we need real knowledge, not sound-bite simplifications) we also need to dream, and articulate these dreams through art, and then try to realize them.
PR:
Can you explain what you mean by the term "antipoem"?
TF:
The antipoem style is most recognized in the writings of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, but it can also be found in others, such as Charles Bukowski, with his conversational style and low-life affinities, or Celine, with his wild black-humor vernacular. The antipoem breaks with convention and strict form. It's non-academic. It's conversational. It’s writing with rhythm and gusto and mordant comic irony. It's the slang of the street and the found art of everyday life.
PR:
Since you're a drummer who plays Rock, Funk, Rumba and Salsa, obviously your drumming influences your poetry. There's all kinds of beats in there, isn't there.
TF:
But of course. Listen to the rain or a river. Listen to the ocean or the birds. Listen to your heart go boom a da boom a da...life is rhythm and my writing taps right into that.
PR:
You drum for Alex Torres. What's that like?
TF:
The shows, for me, are a spiritual affair. We channel magic energy and make a lot of people happy. And we have a blast doing it. And hey, we're pretty good at it after all. So what more can you ask? To use a misunderstood term, as far as I'm concerned, we've "made it." And we keep making it with each passing year, aging like a fine wine.
As for the specific stories, I'm sure Alex will write them down one of these days. And maybe I'll eventually dream up a novel that involves a salsa band. Who knows what the muse may bring? Anything's possible. We have to mine our selves after all. Life to art and back again.
PR:
You're also an urban planner. And you've become rather well known locally for your popular talk on sprawl and regional growth, which is truly eye opening. The maps and photos are amazing. Tell us about urban and regional planning.
TF:
Thank you. I hope I've had some sort of influence with my work connecting the dots and helping people see the big picture. I have a masters degree in Urban Planning and have been working at a regional planning commission in Albany, New York for 14 years. Before that I worked a few years for a local county planning department. This is how I eat and pay the mortgage, certainly not with poetry or drumming, though they'e my real love. But I'm grateful for this kind of gig. A job that doesn't involve stepping on anyone's back or plundering some resource. I have a constant opportunity to learn and to apply that knowledge trying to make a more sustainable world, corny as that sounds. But it's true.
And as for the term "planner," it's a bit of a misnomer, at least in New York State, because at the regional level we don't really "plan," which is done at the local city, town and village level, if it's done at all. What we do is observe, document, and analyze what it all adds up to at the broader scale. One of the skills I learned in graduate school at UAlbany is to use a Geographic Information System, which is a tool to perform cartography and geographic analysis using computers and spatial information software. I use GIS at the regional commission to map and analyze the patterns of growth and to help protect water quality. I also teach a course in GIS at UAlbany.
PR:
Let's see, a planner, a poet, a drummer, a teacher? Quite a palette.
TF:
Yes, and a father, which for me is the most important of them all. I have two amazing kids, my son Marino, who is twelve, and my daughter Giana, who is six. They have different mothers and they both spend half their time with me. They're my real love. And my hope.
PR:
Well, time is up. Best of luck and thanks so much.
TF:
You're most welcome. Anytime.
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