Jim Moore's Reasonable Gorgeousness

I did not see Jim Moore's Invisible Strings coming. I mean every permutation of that phrase. One of the tricky joys of not seeing something coming is that there's compounded surprise in store, once whatever's coming finally arrives. The doubleness of wow-is-that–wait-it-seems-like–wait-a-second, that multivalent joy of perception, etc.

Here's my favorite line from the book: "After that,/ just attention to detail, plus touch." That's from the poem "How We Got Used," which is short enough to merit copying in full here but which, honestly, you owe it to Mr. Moore and yourself to read it as part of this quietly amazing collection, this collection which tosses sparks so casually it's easy to read through and simply nod along, going yes, yes as the book (seemingly effortlessly) grows larger and larger in spirit, as it gets more and more colossally gorgeous, linguistically, on the page.

Here are the first half-dozen lines from "After Dinner":

For many years, unable to speak the language,

I have sat silently at tables with Italians.

Tonight, too. But this time I don't mind.

Joy enters the voices. Then sadness.

We sit in moonlight, drink wine

until I understand every last word.

One of the things were best equipped for—through songs, movies, pop culture at large—is unreasonable gorgeousness, unreasonable amazement (bitchy beauty, savant brainiac, hyper-competitive athlete). It's less common, seemingly, to experience totally reasonable gorgeousness—to experience beauty which doesn't demand so much to open the doors of its delight. It's weird even talking about this—that old quote All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare comes to mind.

But here's the thing: Maybe for Jim Moore, the excellence he's lassoed and put on the page has been difficult. Certainly, there had to be much work involved in these finely-crafted short-lined marvels. But for us, for the readers: the difficulty includes nothing more than just reading the book.

Here's the first half of "If I Could Have Been a Buddhist,":

I would have accepted humbly,

without judgement, the world

as it was given:

the whisper

of my sister's voice on the phone,

telling me of her friend's murder.

Jim Moore's poems are tricky masterpieces of revelation. There's little that's binary in the work—there's not longing and then longing satisfied. Look again at those lines above, from "After Dinner": As of the moment "Joy enters the voices," the reader's tossed timeless—perhaps joy enters voices every time. Look again: the claimed first-line problem is he can't speak the language; he still can't, by this chunk's end. Maybe every time he can, drunk enough, understand every word. I'm not saying that's what happens in the poem: I'm saying simply look closely at the structures Jim Moore makes, and take just a second and be thankful you're alive in a world in which someone can make such simultaneously rigorous and flexible structures, such perfect little machines of offering.

Jim Moore recently answered some questions, over email, and they're below, and I just want to note, before walking fully from the book, that Invisible Strings is one of the best, most generative and good books of poetry I've read in I don't know how long, and it takes roughly 45 minutes to read through it at a good, adult pace, and I've read it now 1) in bed 2) on a couch 3) standing in the kitchen, and have paged through it lots otherwise, and reader know deep down: this is a massive book of lasting gifts. You're a fool not to read it.

1. First, in the huge/general sense: what are some touchstones/influences for you? Please don't feel like this has to be the name-your-favorite-writers question—any art form applies, any anything applies (if you're hugely influenced by, say, the way the MN Twins are playing, by all means, say that).

I suppose most of my influences do come from the work of other poets. What drew me to poetry initially, as a young man, was that contemporary poets spoke directly and powerfully to things that mattered to me.  It was shocking to me– I had no idea that there was an art form that could do that.

I remember sitting on the floor of a bookstore in Norman, Oklahoma reading Kenneth Rexroth, and feeling that it was such an amazing thing that he was doing, writing passionately about all the things that mattered to me–love, nature, identity–as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And, of course, it WAS the most natural thing in the world. From that moment on I was hooked.

One huge influence is the kind of moment which connects your own personal life to the larger life around you:  being at La Guardia airport when a bomb went off, killing 12 people, going through the Vietnam War (and especially being in prison as a draft resister during that time), and so on.

Anything that takes me out of myself is a major blessing and important  influence:  passion, love, nature, particular cities (Venice, Calcutta, New York, Spoleto) and places.  Blizzards work beautifully this way, as do mountains, the sea, the plains, certain rivers…anything that reminds me forcefully that my own ego is not the be all and end all.  Of course, poems by poets I love do that very well.

1.1. Wait: what? Can you talk more about being a draft resister?

[There's] a longish poem from an earlier book (FREEDOM OF HISTORY) called "For You" which pretty much tells the story of how I ended up in prison. (It appeared in Pushcart and then more recently in the 'best of Pushcart" anthology). I had a teacher exemption but then two of my ex-students were killed in the War and I just felt I couldn't continue to cooperate with the Selective Service/draft system, so I returned my draft card and as a result was drafted. I refused induction and ended up in prison for ten months. I have another long poem, "With Timmy In and Out of Prison," about that experience.

(ed's note: Jim graciously allowed for quotation from his "For You," but lots of that poem's already been quoted at the until-now-to-me-unknown Pirene's Fountain, which had a huge feature on Moore in their last issue, and you'd be a fool to not read every last thing there–they interview Mr. Moore as well, and write an incredible overview of the man's work).

2. You may get to this in the above Q, but it seems like there's a fair dose of Ammons, Jack Gilbert, and Cid Corman in your work—yes? At all? Who knows if this Q'll even work.

Gilbert, yes.  But not Cid Corman (except in his translations from the Japanese), Ammons, not so much.  So many poets have made a huge difference to me, especially poets from other cultures.  Reading poetry in translation has been, for me, a little like leaving the ego behind in the way I describe in the above question:  I get away from American poetry's nervous tics, almost automatic ways of working.  Japanese and Chinese poetry has made a huge difference to me. I certainly couldn't have written INVISIBLE STRINGS without having read Saigyo, Buson, Basho, Taneka, Du Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei and quite a few others. But also Polish poets, Scandinavian poets, Latin American poets and ancient poetry from many cultures.

3. How important is geography to you? It comes up lots in Invisible Strings, and your bio notes list you as dividing time between the cities and Italy, and I'm just curious about your take on place (or landscape, or latitude, whatever).

Geography is extremely important for reasons mentioned above. I do not necessarily write about a place when I am in it, but the place becomes a way for me to gain perspective on my own life and culture. In general, I feel like an outsider wherever I am so living, so that staying in a place where I am a true outsider actually feels very natural to me.  It is easier, in other words, to feel like an outsider when in Calcutta than when in St. Paul where I feel as if I SHOULD feel at home.  Being in a place strange to me reminds me to look, delights me with its surprises, quirks, mysterious ways (mysterious to me) of doing things.

4. Can you talk at all about the structure of your poems? This is one of the really crappy aspects of not knowing more of your stuff—I don't know if this style/pattern you use in your work, the back-and-forth tabbing in Invisible Strings, is something you've always done, or a new thing. But I suppose regardless of how long you've used the form: can you talk about how you came to it? (I'll confess a bit of an obsession about form lately).

The back-and-forth, alternating short lines with longs lines is something new and started about six years ago. I was at the beginning of a period when I knew that I would be travelling a lot and so decided I wanted to write short poems since I was likely to have short periods of time in which to work.  The step ladder, tabbing of lines came unbidden.  At the time I began writing like that I didn't know why, just knew that it felt right. I realized later that the alternating and shifting line length mimics for me the act of walking, long stride, then short stride. Once I started working that way it felt deeply satisfying; for me, there is something more rhythmic about it, like the rhythm that happens when running (I'm a fairly fanatical jogger) rather than having each line start flush left.  Really, it's a body thing probably more than anything else.

This book is also a return to writing shorter poems, something I did a lot when I started working back in the late 1960s. It's a form I've always liked, both as a reader and a writer.

5. There's this way in which Invisible Strings seems (often) to be meditating on ways in which the speaker can earn or deserve the grace he's got. Is that something you're aware of or aiming for? Is there any overarching/-whelming ideational thing driving the poems themselves in this book?

What an interesting observation!  I really hadn't thought about that, but I do believe you are on to something.  As a son of the Scottish-Irish protestant world I may carry around a keener sense of guilt than some.  (Another reason I love Italy is that I can get away from that mentality entirely.) I suppose the poems are partly a way to get out of the "right-and-wrong" way of looking at the world.

6. Can you talk about music's importance to you, particularly the quietness of music (you named Bill Evans, so I have to ask).

Well, I grew up in the 1960s so music was key.  All the usual rock and roll icons, maybe especially Dylan.  I came to jazz later but it's probably the form I feel closest to now though Beethoven's late Quartets and his late sonatas are always ways for me to remember just how powerful art can be. Listening to them is at once humbling and exalting.  I sometimes write to music, but never music with words.  Bach is good for me that way; his poise settles me down.

7. This might get too hairy to be answered clearly, but there's this great aspect of distance in Strings—the "absence courted by strings" in "Viola," thinking June will make you happy in May. I'm not even sure what the question might be in this–maybe it's got to do with geography and you'll have already answered this–but I'd be curious about the generative aspect of distance and longing in your stuff.

Right you are:  I'd more often rather be sitting behind a window looking out at the world rather than being in the world!  I suppose that's something a lot of writers feel.  Distance–that feeling of distance–is a basic to me; a thing to be honored but also sometimes to be left behind. When I sit down to write I am really sitting down to find a way to connect with the world (and with my own interior world) in an intimate way.

One way to do this is to begin by acknowledging how powerful a factor distance is in my life.  It's also why I read poems:  if I connect to a poem in a deep way then distance disappears.  I love travelling because it is a way to begin with distance as a given (you are going far away) but if the travelling goes well at all, you begin to connect with the new place in unexpected ways.  Isn't that what poetry does?  I think of Bishop as an inspiration and mentor in this context.

Oddly enough, I often feel more connected to the world (feel less distance from it) when I am in solitude than when I am with others. I spend too much time, when with others, trying to say the right thing, psyche out the dynamic of the particular social situation.  One reason I love teaching poetry is that it is a way to be simultaneously public and private, to be with others in a social context but at the same time–because we are talking about poetry–solitude/soulfulness/loneliness is an equally important part of the equation.

8. Please, for as much or as little as you'd like, talk about what it's like to live with/love/be married to a visual artists. Does that sort of life make you re-view your own work in ways you find valuable? That sounds awful–I take it back. Here's the thing: you live with someone who 1) takes pictures (and therefore whose art is "real" in ways painting isn't real, in that photos are visual transcriptions, at least as most of us understand them) and 2) takes pictures of you. How's living as both subject and object? This is messy–discard this question if it's going too many directions. I'd just be curious about all of it.

It's a steep learning curve for a writer to live with a visual artist!  I love how we connect at the level of being committed artists, but at the same time we work in such different ways that it sometimes amazes me and makes question, in a helpful way, my own way of working.  It's helpful living with another artist of any kind because they understand the particular obsessiveness of the artist, the crankiness and need for solitude often involved…and all the rest of it.

I don't think photos–at least not an artist's photos–are a visual transcription of the world, but much more an imaginative reshaping of it in the way that writing is.

I'm so used now to being a subject of JoAnn's photos I hardly think about it any more. It's an opportunity for me to zone out, to take a nap, to just be.  At first, of course, it seemed odd and exotic, but that stage is long past. A couple of years ago I wrote a statement about all this for site at the Smithsonian called Click. Here's some of what I said there:

My wife, JoAnn Verburg, has been photographing me for twenty-five years. As soon as we became serious about each other it started and though there are long periods where she doesn't photograph me, eventually she wants to work with me again.

Just as her approach to photographing me has changed over the years, my attitude as the model has changed. At first, when we were falling in love, I felt flattered that she wanted to photograph me. No one had ever looked at me with such intensity and for such long periods of time. I've heard her say that photographing me—some of these pictures were quite large heads—allowed her to get used to the idea of a big head waking up next to her each morning: it was a way to get to know me using her medium as a tool.

I suppose that being her model was also a way for me to get to know her as well: because, after all, she was not just observing me, I was observing her. Over time, my response to how it feels to be photographed has ranged widely: sometimes it has bored the hell out of me, other times it has put me in a meditative state (after all, when you're being photographed with a large format camera and if you can't move for thirty or forty minutes, it does encourage an inner stillness as well as the outer stillness); most often—and most prosaically—it has put me to sleep. Literally. And this has suited her purposes as a photographer since she has focused on photographing me while I sleep.

I don't know that she would agree with what I am about to say but I believe that one of the reasons she so often photographs me asleep is that she is "practicing" for the day when I will die. As a poet, I believe that the most challenging conversations I have in my work are often with death. I think this is true for a lot of artists, whether writers or artists working in other mediums.

Sometimes JoAnn says, "Art is a wish." What her wish is, as an artist, I can't say for sure, but my wish, as a model, is that for the period of the time I am being photographed I might become someone who is somehow different from the man he usually is. While sometimes a nap is just a nap, occasionally it is more than that and I wake from it with a calm kind of clarity that visits rarely but is all the more welcome for that.

9. What's the view out your window?

Right now I am in Colorado Springs. I can see Pike's Peak in the distance, but closer up, railroad tracks and a park, a creek, people running in the park, several homeless people also in the park.  I love this view.  Here's something the wonderful translator David Hinton wrote in his introduction to THE SLECTED POEMS OF TU FU:  "Tu Fu explored the full range of experience, and from this abundance shaped the monumental proportions of being merely human."  Right now there is enough going on outside my window for me to do that for the rest of my life. I feel both grateful for and haunted by "the monumental proportions of being merely human."