12 or 20 (second series) questions with Robert van Vliet
Robert van Vliet
grew up in the Twin Cities and spentmany years living in lots of other places. His poetry has appeared in TheSixth Chamber Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Guesthouse, Otoliths, andelsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook, This Folded Path,(above/ground press, 2023) and
Vessels
(Unsolicited Press, 2024). Helives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, Ana.1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life?How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feeldifferent?
I’m not sure my life has changed all that much, really.My daily life as a writer is exactly the same as it ever was. I’m still askingmyself, What the hell am I doing? How am I doing it? Is this a poem? Is itfinished? Do I try to put it out into the world, or just put it in a drawer?I write because I write. I share the results of my work when I can, but if Ididn’t enjoy simply sitting in a room banging words around, then I would havemoved on to something else by now.
As for how the poems in This Folded Path and Vesselscompare to my previous work, they were all composed over a fairly brief periodof time, using a very specific set of constraints, which I think gave them agreater unity of tone and character. I had never sustained such a focused aproject like this for such a length of time so, even though I’m sure they beara resemblance to older poems, they mark the deepest dive into a particular setof “theoretical concerns” (see below) that I’ve ever consciously, deliberatelymaintained.
Oh okay, y’know, now that I’ve been thinking about it,maybe my debut chapbook and debut full-length (which were accepted forpublication within weeks of each other after about fourteen years of submittingmanuscripts to presses with no success) actually did kinda change my life:Having them published was a startling and unprecedented recognition of the workI do.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say,fiction or non-fiction?
Of all the various artistic pursuits that I’ve blunderedthrough, poetry was the very last. The first writing I was drawn to wasfiction, all the way back in elementary school. I goofed around with poetry inhigh school, but I never quite took it seriously until after I began writingsongs in college. Eventually, and rather unconsciously, poetry eclipsedsongwriting and fiction.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writingproject? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Dofirst drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work comeout of copious notes?
Because I have a regular (though not always daily)practice of “doodling” in a notebook, I’m never short of raw materials fromwhich to build poems. In fact, I probably have more raw material than I’ll everbe able to process. All too often, I fail to revisit what I’ve written, optinginstead to keep moving forward with new things. I have several bankers boxes ofspiral notebooks that still need to be looked through. And I recently uncovereda manuscript of several hundred prose poems I wrote about twenty years ago andthen promptly forgot about.
I’ve always been pretty quick with the first drafts, buthow long it takes to arrive at something resembling a final draft has variedwildly over the years. Sometimes I’ve just dropped the thing as soon as it felteven slightly “coherent,” while other times I’ve rewritten something a dozentimes or more, playing with different line breaks, swapping words over and overlike lens settings at the optometrist. On and on. For a long time, I wouldthrow fragments together and then come up with connecting tissue to bridge thegaps. But sometimes I would just leave the gaps. (Less “first thought bestthought” and more “no thought best thought.”
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you anauthor of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are youworking on a “book” from the very beginning?
Poems usually begin with scraps of sounds or some sort oflanguage game. The larger project, if there is one, almost always emerges afterat least some, if not all, of the poems have already been written. I have, fromtime to time, written with larger projects in mind, but I don’t think I’ve everstarted with the goal of “writing a book.”
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to yourcreative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings aren’t exactly part of my process, butthe performative aspect of poetry is very important to me, and I always writewith an ear for how a poem might sound when read aloud. I came to poetry fromthe performing arts (theater and music) so I’ve always thought of the text of apoem as somewhat analogous to a script or score, and that the reading of thetext (aloud or otherwise) is part of what completes the work. This also meansthat I don’t think that my performance of one of my poems is canonical:It’s perfectly likely that someone else might be better at interpreting thetext. And yes, I enjoy doing readings.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind yourwriting? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? Whatdo you even think the current questions are?
I think I probably do have theoretical concerns, butthere’s a sign over my desk that reads: “The work speaks for itself.” This, tome, means that anything I might say about my work would be something like aparaphrase — and I don’t believe art can be paraphrased because I don’t believeart is necessarily trying to say anything. And I certainly don’t think I am agreater authority on my own work than anyone else, so my own theoreticalconcerns are unlikely to shed any valuable light on it. I’d be much more interestedin hearing about what someone else sees in my work.
And, assuming that speaking of art in terms of“questions” and “answers” has any usefulness or validity at all, I think I’mmuch more interested in figuring out how exactly to ask the questions, becauseif we don’t understand our questions, we definitely won’t understand whateveranswers we might stumble upon.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer beingin larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of thewriter should be?
To consider other possibilities; to question the simpleand the seemingly obvious; to reveal the strange within the familiar, and thefamiliar within the strange. No writer should insult anyone’s intelligence, butevery writer must constantly challenge the willfully ignorant.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outsideeditor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. I’ve been lucky so far that the editors I’veworked with had a very light hand, and my work passed through them and intoprint with very little in the way of corrective surgery. I’d like to think thisis partly because I’ve worked as an editor myself and I try to hand in as cleana copy as possible. I’ve welcomed and generally enjoyed working with editors;and I would have been open to considering substantial edits or revisions thathelped clarify the work. It is the mark of an insecure, immature writer whoresists any editorial input. No one’s perfect, and nothing exists in isolation.Everything is connected to everything else, so how others react to your work:that’s everything. Why wouldn’t you want to have an early sense of how yourwork might be interpreted or misunderstood?
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (notnecessarily given to you directly
Trust your luck, but don’t forget to put our your nets.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, ordo you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Early mornings are generally the best time for me towrite, so I try to wake up early enough to give myself a good stretch beforethe day starts its supplications. But it isn’t unwaveringly consistent. And inthe last two or three years, it’s been annoyingly sporadic. Depending on myother work commitments, I might snatch twenty minutes around lunchtime or inthe late afternoon. Mostly, I just try to make sure I’m leaving at least alittle time each day fenced off from other concerns.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn orreturn for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
The only times I’ve ever felt genuinely stalled hadnothing to do with the writing itself and everything to do with work or lifecommitments monopolizing my attention and energy. As long as I’ve been able tocarve out a little time, I’ve been able to get back into it fairly easily.
But I should add that sometimes the blank page can be alittle intimidating, especially if I’m coming back to writing after what feelslike a long while (days, months, whatever). So I’ll tell myself I’m justfooling around, that it’s no big deal. I let myself off the hook by spending mywriting time simply describing whatever I’m seeing or hearing. Crows, clouds,coffee mug, whatever. Just any stupid shit that tumbles out. Now there’s somedumb writing on the page, something has begun, and I have a baseline ofmediocre to surpass.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cold air over snow with a note of thaw to it. Also, loamyair through the metallic tang of a window screen after a thunderstorm.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come frombooks, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature,music, science or visual art?
Music, definitely. Also history, archaeology, comparativereligion, and psychology.
14 - What other writers or writings are important foryour work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I kind of dread being asked this sort of question. I’mcertain I’ll forget someone, or I secretly worry that I’ll include someonewho’s less of an influence and more of a name-drop, just to seem cooler than Iam. (I am, in fact, not remotely cool.) But the fact is, when I was younger,this was the way I made discoveries: writers mentioning their favorite books orbiggest influences, etc.
So in that spirit, here’s a laughably incomplete list, inno particular order, of a few books and writers that have, at one time oranother, been enormously important and influential to me and the kind of work Itry to do:
Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey, AnnieDillard’s Holy the Firm, John Cage, Elaine Pagels, Douglas Hofstadter’s MetamagicalThemas, Robert Bringhurst (both as typographer and poet), the Copper Canyonanthology A Gift of Tongues, Jung’s alchemical writings, Tom Phillips’ AHumument, Thoreau, Epictetus, Han Shan, Guy Davenport, Thomas Pynchon, Morgan’sTarot, Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar, William James’ Varietiesof Religious Experience, Judith Sklar’s Ordinary Vices, Mary Midgley, Russell Hoban (especially The Medusa Frequency and Kleinzeit),Arthur Sze, Hayden Carruth, Joanne Kyger, Jim Harrison, Muriel Rukeyser, Odd Bodkins, Victor Mair’s translation of the Tao Te Ching.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven’t yet done?
Live above the Arctic Circle for a year.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt,what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended updoing had you not been a writer?
Anthropologist or paleontologist. And if I weren’t awriter, I probably would have ended up being a writer.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing somethingelse?
I love playing with pencils and I love how paper takesink. I also love letter forms and typefaces. A writer is also, among otherthings, a performance artist, comedian, philosopher, musician, seer, andscientist, so writing is doing something else. Also, I like sentences.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was thelast great film?
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
I haven’t been much of a film person recently. I’m mostlywatching harmless, heavily formulaic police procedurals, cozy murder mysteries,or old familiar TV shows that I’ve already seen many times. Oh, but I finallysaw La Jetée for the first time last year and it lived up to, orpossibly exceeded, its reputation.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’ve been working on getting all the books out of mybasement office and onto shelves upstairs after we had some minor but deeplyunsettling flooding problems. Books, it turns out, are heavy and I regret nothaving bought a house with an elevator or dumb waiter or something.
Oh, you mean like writing and stuff? Well, I recentlyfinished some of the first poems I’ve written in a few years. As I was editingand revising them, I was trying to discern whether they were a small collectionof thirty stand-alone things or the beginning of a new, very long project. (Orboth.)
By “very long” I mean that if I were to follow the recipethat built the first thirty poems through some chance operations, I would beembarking on a series that would run to a total of 2,156 poems. But if you’reon a vast mosaic floor, and you wish to step on each tile only once, chancecan’t help you: you will almost certainly select the same tile again,potentially many times, unless you remove it from the pool of options somehow.I finally struck on the solution of using a Knight’sTour that stitches togethereleven 14x14 boards to determine my route, step by step, through the sourcematerial. Good grief, randomness takes so much planning! But now the path knowswhere I’m going, but I don’t. Perfect!
So I guess I have my work cut out for me — right after Ifinish loading the new bookshelves in the living room.
