Interview of John Nimmo by AFI* on March 25, 2005
When did you first consider yourself a poet?
I've written poetry since I was a teenager, but I got much more serious about it in 1994, when I was forty.
And by "serious," you mean??
I started applying myself to learn what makes a poem good and to work consistently to be able to write that sort of poem.
And you first considered yourself a "poet"--when?
Maybe in the last three years or so, when I started feeling I could write a poem that someone who doesn't know me could find worth reading--and not as a one-time fluke, but that I could apply myself and sooner or later come up with another poem worth reading.
What teachers and poets have influenced you?
Dick Maxwell, definitely. I was in his workshop for a couple of years when I first got serious about writing poetry. Others I've learned much from are Kim Addonizio, Beth Houston, Nan Cohen, and David Roderick. And of course lots of poets have influenced me through their works. Ones that come to mind right off are William Stafford, Gary Snyder, Brenda Hillman, Wendell Berry, William Carlos Williams, James Wright, Jane Kenyon. And Sharon Olds--she is someone I came to admire first through her work and later in a couple of workshops I was fortunate to be in.
Did you learn any guidelines or maxims early on, that you still find useful?
Yes, lots. One that stands out is something Dick Maxwell said frequently: "Every statement implies its opposite."
And is that a notion that applies to what you say in the poem, or what someone says about the poem?
Both!
The contest you won, the one with the ungodly long name, international city?
The Foster City International Writers' Contest.
Yes that one. You won first prize for rhymed verse. Do you consider yourself to be at root a formalist, or are you a free-verse poet who dabbles a bit in form?
At the core I'm a free-verse poet. I have a weird feeling about poetic forms--mostly I think I don't care much for them, either to read or to write, but sometimes I find myself writing one and sometimes it seems to work out.
You just find yourself writing??
Well, it's usually after I'm with my poet-friends and somebody says 'let's write villanelles next time' or something like that. What I mean is that when I'm actually crafting the poem, I like the activity involved: finding sets of rhyme words, and sorting and playing with them--that sort of thing. And I do have a definite preference among forms for the ones without mandatory repetition.
Like the one that won the contest, a sonnet.
Yes.
Was there an awards ceremony, or publication of the poem?
No publication, in fact the winning poem is one I still haven't published. But the ceremony in Foster City was fun. The mayor is a pleasant, cheerful fellow.
What's so good about writing free verse? It's still the most popular among poets writing today, which I'd think might prejudice you against it.
If you rhyme and you don't do it with great care, it powerfully distracts from whatever else is going on in the poem. I expect this is a bigger danger in English than in languages that are more naturally rich in rhyme. Often those other elements in the poem--line breaks, patterns of sound or emphasis, symbols, metaphor, even the plain dictionary meaning of the words--are more important, so why include a poetic element like rhyme that's sort of unnatural and easily overshadows them?
Yet you don't feel that writing what structurally fits in with what most contemporary American poets are doing makes you just a part of the crowd?
For me, I don't need to write in some unfashionable way just to be an oddball among poets--just being a poet of any ordinary kind is strange enough.
But poets today use slant rhymes and all sorts of subtle near-rhymes instead of full-rhymes, to avoid the overshadowing you're concerned about.
I do that too, and I use a lot of assonance and consonance, even rhyme and half-rhyme, in poetry that I consider free verse. But not in as regular a pattern as the formalists.
Do you write much about what you have experienced as a scientist?
Only a little. Some years ago I read Richard Wilbur's statement that he doesn't write about his work, I mean the work he does to earn money, not his work as a poet. That surprised me, since I felt then as I do now, that anything can provide good subject matter for a poem. So logically, something you throw yourself into for forty hours a week would seem to provide lots of material. But still, I don't often find things from my professional work driving me to write a poem.
But does your immersion in the scientific world influence your poetry?
Yes, that's an influence I couldn't get out of my poetry, or my life, if I tried.
So where do you get most of your material?
I'd like to say "from everywhere," but the fact is, looking back on what I've written, a couple of themes run through a whole lot of them. One is death, particularly of people I'm close to. I'm at a stage of life when my parents and others I'm close to have died somewhat recently. It seems quite natural to write about death and dying, how I handle it, how others handle it. Probably I'm writing somewhat less on that topic in the last couple of years.
So the topic of death is losing interest for you?
Well, maybe it's opening into a broader sort of theme--the fact that we humans have bodies and yet we have an immaterial nature too--spirit, consciousness, self-awareness, whatever. I've always been deeply concerned with the paradoxes in that. So in my poems I often have situations where the tension between the physical and the immaterial aspects of ourselves is heightened.
Such as . . . ?
Like in "Paris Notre Dame" the juxtaposition of the physical aspects of the great cathedral, and the Christian symbolism rooted in bodily sacrifice, and the spiritual aspects of a human being that these things are aiming at. Whether they hit that target or not. Something totally physical like a wooden bas relief, yet it's supposed to pull your attention to what is totally spiritual.
Do you consider yourself a gnostic?
I feel attracted to gnostic ideas and always have, but over and over I see the importance, sometimes a sort of overriding importance, of the concreteness of physical bodies. Imperfect and inconsequential though the bodies might be. I'm not a gnostic. I reject that, even though it attracts me.
And the other theme that runs through much of your work?
Travel. It seems almost a cliche to visit strange places and then write poems about them because they're interesting, but the fact is that quite a number of my poems are just that.
You seem not to be very proud of that, but earlier you said you're content to be "any ordinary sort of poet?"
OK. Yes. There's nothing wrong with writing about death and travel. And to me it feels good to be writing poetry about these things, rather than self-help tracts or guidebooks.
And not so much of a cliche as death and taxes.
I wrote a poem about taxes.
Which one?
If I told you, it'd spoil your potential enjoyment of the poem.
So death comes up in poetry because we feel so strongly about it and it leads to the mind-body dichotomies you were talking about. Why write about travel?
I'm fascinated with the whole concept of encountering something that to me is very strange but is very ordinary to the people who live with it day-to-day, and vice versa. It's a great example of the fact that there are multiple ways of looking at a thing, even though we might be aware of only one. Maybe not just ways of looking at it, but maybe different ways of the thing actually being what it is. That opens new insights on the nature of the thing, as well as on ourselves. And the on strangeness of our perception, which leads to more insights about ourselves, and on and on. I'm a little uncomfortable with using the word "insight" here-it seems too narrow, too goal-oriented, but I'm not sure?
In what you just said a different word jarred me. What do you mean by 'thing'?
A cobblestone, the Sistine Chapel, a herd of goats, a piece of fish, a stone tablet with hieroglyphics praising the Aztec sun god, a Phoenician ruin, a statue of Chairman Mao . . .
OK. I see. [pause] A lot of the things you just mentioned are made of stone or some similar earth-material. Coincidence?
Probably not. Stones pop up in my poems a lot too. If you figure out why, let me know.
Do you think about the reader while you write?
Constantly.
But many poets say you should let the poem . . .
[interrupting] I am sort of a conduit between the poem, or the muse, and the reader. I have to connect with the poem. I have to connect with the reader.
So you're not self-conscious?
I'm extremely self-conscious, pretty much all the time. [Brief pause] Maybe I should let you do more of the talking.
That wouldn't accomplish much.
What are you trying to accomplish?
OK, enough! [pause] Let's get your take on some other questions. What distinguishes poetry from prose?
Prose mainly makes use of the basic meaning of the words--their denotation--and not so much of their other attributes--sound, etymology, figurative meanings, similarity to other words, appearance on the page, multiplicity of meanings, and so on. Poetry makes use of all of these attributes without the strong emphasis on denotation. The sound of the words can be equally or more important than straight-out meaning. By sound I mean not just the usual considerations like rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, but also the almost-tangible feel of the words. In prose you pay a lot less attention to those other things and concentrate on getting the meaning across.
But in prose the sounds of words, symbolism, and so forth can be very important.
Yes, that's why I say prose mainly emphasizes denotation. It's got the others too. It's just a matter of degree whether the other elements act in a big way to push the meaning around or to subjugate it.
This sounds pretty subjective. And some writing could fall between the cracks--you wouldn't know whether it was one or the other.
Yes. What's the difference between a prose poem and a short short short story? A lot of works could be classified either way. But this classification is not important.
But you seem to have put a lot of thought into this issue. Why?
It matters what poetry is. In our culture most people don't really know what poetry is. They say they don't appreciate it, and probably they don't. It's important to relate it to something they are familiar with. It's important to me--I don't think I'd have much interest in poetry if I didn't understand how it differs from the prose we are immersed in all the time.
Do you think you can write poetry that the greater mass of the population can appreciate?
No. I write for the readers of literary journals that publish poetry that appeals to me. And for poets who write poetry that appeals to me. I say poets here, but I'd also include those who read but don't write it. It seems that in poetry nowadays the readers are also the writers. It doesn't have the usual lopsidedness of other arts, like music, where the listeners far outnumber the performers. Back to your question, if I can make my poetry approachable by a wider readership, that's good, I'd like that a lot, but I don't have big expectations there.
Do you write every day?
No. There are few activities I do absolutely every day. I write on weekends and evenings mostly, fit in around my career and everything else.
What's the longest time you go without writing poetry?
Well, for me to go more than a week or two is unusual. And sometimes I'll write almost every day for a while.
Where do you see your writing going from here?
I'm trying hard to improve my craft, to be able to write poems that are tight and dense with language that sounds highly attractive and that feels like it embodies the theme it relates to. I'd like to be able to put more creative surprises into my poems--words or images that seem unrelated or seem to come out of nowhere but somehow become an integral part of the poem.
Thanks for talking with us. Godspeed on your quest.
Thank you. A pleasure talking with you.
----------------------------------------------
* Amalgam of Faux Interviewers.
When did you first consider yourself a poet?
I've written poetry since I was a teenager, but I got much more serious about it in 1994, when I was forty.
And by "serious," you mean??
I started applying myself to learn what makes a poem good and to work consistently to be able to write that sort of poem.
And you first considered yourself a "poet"--when?
Maybe in the last three years or so, when I started feeling I could write a poem that someone who doesn't know me could find worth reading--and not as a one-time fluke, but that I could apply myself and sooner or later come up with another poem worth reading.
What teachers and poets have influenced you?
Dick Maxwell, definitely. I was in his workshop for a couple of years when I first got serious about writing poetry. Others I've learned much from are Kim Addonizio, Beth Houston, Nan Cohen, and David Roderick. And of course lots of poets have influenced me through their works. Ones that come to mind right off are William Stafford, Gary Snyder, Brenda Hillman, Wendell Berry, William Carlos Williams, James Wright, Jane Kenyon. And Sharon Olds--she is someone I came to admire first through her work and later in a couple of workshops I was fortunate to be in.
Did you learn any guidelines or maxims early on, that you still find useful?
Yes, lots. One that stands out is something Dick Maxwell said frequently: "Every statement implies its opposite."
And is that a notion that applies to what you say in the poem, or what someone says about the poem?
Both!
The contest you won, the one with the ungodly long name, international city?
The Foster City International Writers' Contest.
Yes that one. You won first prize for rhymed verse. Do you consider yourself to be at root a formalist, or are you a free-verse poet who dabbles a bit in form?
At the core I'm a free-verse poet. I have a weird feeling about poetic forms--mostly I think I don't care much for them, either to read or to write, but sometimes I find myself writing one and sometimes it seems to work out.
You just find yourself writing??
Well, it's usually after I'm with my poet-friends and somebody says 'let's write villanelles next time' or something like that. What I mean is that when I'm actually crafting the poem, I like the activity involved: finding sets of rhyme words, and sorting and playing with them--that sort of thing. And I do have a definite preference among forms for the ones without mandatory repetition.
Like the one that won the contest, a sonnet.
Yes.
Was there an awards ceremony, or publication of the poem?
No publication, in fact the winning poem is one I still haven't published. But the ceremony in Foster City was fun. The mayor is a pleasant, cheerful fellow.
What's so good about writing free verse? It's still the most popular among poets writing today, which I'd think might prejudice you against it.
If you rhyme and you don't do it with great care, it powerfully distracts from whatever else is going on in the poem. I expect this is a bigger danger in English than in languages that are more naturally rich in rhyme. Often those other elements in the poem--line breaks, patterns of sound or emphasis, symbols, metaphor, even the plain dictionary meaning of the words--are more important, so why include a poetic element like rhyme that's sort of unnatural and easily overshadows them?
Yet you don't feel that writing what structurally fits in with what most contemporary American poets are doing makes you just a part of the crowd?
For me, I don't need to write in some unfashionable way just to be an oddball among poets--just being a poet of any ordinary kind is strange enough.
But poets today use slant rhymes and all sorts of subtle near-rhymes instead of full-rhymes, to avoid the overshadowing you're concerned about.
I do that too, and I use a lot of assonance and consonance, even rhyme and half-rhyme, in poetry that I consider free verse. But not in as regular a pattern as the formalists.
Do you write much about what you have experienced as a scientist?
Only a little. Some years ago I read Richard Wilbur's statement that he doesn't write about his work, I mean the work he does to earn money, not his work as a poet. That surprised me, since I felt then as I do now, that anything can provide good subject matter for a poem. So logically, something you throw yourself into for forty hours a week would seem to provide lots of material. But still, I don't often find things from my professional work driving me to write a poem.
But does your immersion in the scientific world influence your poetry?
Yes, that's an influence I couldn't get out of my poetry, or my life, if I tried.
So where do you get most of your material?
I'd like to say "from everywhere," but the fact is, looking back on what I've written, a couple of themes run through a whole lot of them. One is death, particularly of people I'm close to. I'm at a stage of life when my parents and others I'm close to have died somewhat recently. It seems quite natural to write about death and dying, how I handle it, how others handle it. Probably I'm writing somewhat less on that topic in the last couple of years.
So the topic of death is losing interest for you?
Well, maybe it's opening into a broader sort of theme--the fact that we humans have bodies and yet we have an immaterial nature too--spirit, consciousness, self-awareness, whatever. I've always been deeply concerned with the paradoxes in that. So in my poems I often have situations where the tension between the physical and the immaterial aspects of ourselves is heightened.
Such as . . . ?
Like in "Paris Notre Dame" the juxtaposition of the physical aspects of the great cathedral, and the Christian symbolism rooted in bodily sacrifice, and the spiritual aspects of a human being that these things are aiming at. Whether they hit that target or not. Something totally physical like a wooden bas relief, yet it's supposed to pull your attention to what is totally spiritual.
Do you consider yourself a gnostic?
I feel attracted to gnostic ideas and always have, but over and over I see the importance, sometimes a sort of overriding importance, of the concreteness of physical bodies. Imperfect and inconsequential though the bodies might be. I'm not a gnostic. I reject that, even though it attracts me.
And the other theme that runs through much of your work?
Travel. It seems almost a cliche to visit strange places and then write poems about them because they're interesting, but the fact is that quite a number of my poems are just that.
You seem not to be very proud of that, but earlier you said you're content to be "any ordinary sort of poet?"
OK. Yes. There's nothing wrong with writing about death and travel. And to me it feels good to be writing poetry about these things, rather than self-help tracts or guidebooks.
And not so much of a cliche as death and taxes.
I wrote a poem about taxes.
Which one?
If I told you, it'd spoil your potential enjoyment of the poem.
So death comes up in poetry because we feel so strongly about it and it leads to the mind-body dichotomies you were talking about. Why write about travel?
I'm fascinated with the whole concept of encountering something that to me is very strange but is very ordinary to the people who live with it day-to-day, and vice versa. It's a great example of the fact that there are multiple ways of looking at a thing, even though we might be aware of only one. Maybe not just ways of looking at it, but maybe different ways of the thing actually being what it is. That opens new insights on the nature of the thing, as well as on ourselves. And the on strangeness of our perception, which leads to more insights about ourselves, and on and on. I'm a little uncomfortable with using the word "insight" here-it seems too narrow, too goal-oriented, but I'm not sure?
In what you just said a different word jarred me. What do you mean by 'thing'?
A cobblestone, the Sistine Chapel, a herd of goats, a piece of fish, a stone tablet with hieroglyphics praising the Aztec sun god, a Phoenician ruin, a statue of Chairman Mao . . .
OK. I see. [pause] A lot of the things you just mentioned are made of stone or some similar earth-material. Coincidence?
Probably not. Stones pop up in my poems a lot too. If you figure out why, let me know.
Do you think about the reader while you write?
Constantly.
But many poets say you should let the poem . . .
[interrupting] I am sort of a conduit between the poem, or the muse, and the reader. I have to connect with the poem. I have to connect with the reader.
So you're not self-conscious?
I'm extremely self-conscious, pretty much all the time. [Brief pause] Maybe I should let you do more of the talking.
That wouldn't accomplish much.
What are you trying to accomplish?
OK, enough! [pause] Let's get your take on some other questions. What distinguishes poetry from prose?
Prose mainly makes use of the basic meaning of the words--their denotation--and not so much of their other attributes--sound, etymology, figurative meanings, similarity to other words, appearance on the page, multiplicity of meanings, and so on. Poetry makes use of all of these attributes without the strong emphasis on denotation. The sound of the words can be equally or more important than straight-out meaning. By sound I mean not just the usual considerations like rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, but also the almost-tangible feel of the words. In prose you pay a lot less attention to those other things and concentrate on getting the meaning across.
But in prose the sounds of words, symbolism, and so forth can be very important.
Yes, that's why I say prose mainly emphasizes denotation. It's got the others too. It's just a matter of degree whether the other elements act in a big way to push the meaning around or to subjugate it.
This sounds pretty subjective. And some writing could fall between the cracks--you wouldn't know whether it was one or the other.
Yes. What's the difference between a prose poem and a short short short story? A lot of works could be classified either way. But this classification is not important.
But you seem to have put a lot of thought into this issue. Why?
It matters what poetry is. In our culture most people don't really know what poetry is. They say they don't appreciate it, and probably they don't. It's important to relate it to something they are familiar with. It's important to me--I don't think I'd have much interest in poetry if I didn't understand how it differs from the prose we are immersed in all the time.
Do you think you can write poetry that the greater mass of the population can appreciate?
No. I write for the readers of literary journals that publish poetry that appeals to me. And for poets who write poetry that appeals to me. I say poets here, but I'd also include those who read but don't write it. It seems that in poetry nowadays the readers are also the writers. It doesn't have the usual lopsidedness of other arts, like music, where the listeners far outnumber the performers. Back to your question, if I can make my poetry approachable by a wider readership, that's good, I'd like that a lot, but I don't have big expectations there.
Do you write every day?
No. There are few activities I do absolutely every day. I write on weekends and evenings mostly, fit in around my career and everything else.
What's the longest time you go without writing poetry?
Well, for me to go more than a week or two is unusual. And sometimes I'll write almost every day for a while.
Where do you see your writing going from here?
I'm trying hard to improve my craft, to be able to write poems that are tight and dense with language that sounds highly attractive and that feels like it embodies the theme it relates to. I'd like to be able to put more creative surprises into my poems--words or images that seem unrelated or seem to come out of nowhere but somehow become an integral part of the poem.
Thanks for talking with us. Godspeed on your quest.
Thank you. A pleasure talking with you.
----------------------------------------------
* Amalgam of Faux Interviewers.