Interview: Michael Bazzett

Michael Bazzett's poem "The Limb" appeared in the August issue. His poems have appeared in West Branch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bateau, DIAGRAM, The Los Angeles Review, Rattle and Boxcar Poetry Review, among others. He was the winner of the 2008 Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize & Best New Poets 2011. New poems are forthcoming in The Windsor Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Booth, and Boneshaker: A Bicycling Alamanac. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.

Can you talk about the inspiration for "The Limb"? What was on your mind while you were writing this poem?

My tendency is to follow imagination and instinct while writing, as they clearly won’t follow me.  I try to hand myself over to the impulse, unedited, even if that contains the potential for naughty double-entendre or unwitting psychological revelation, as might be the case here.  The poem is in the lead.  It’s smarter than I am.  So I guess nothing was really on my mind: it’s more that something was under it. 

Once the shape and intelligence of the poem arrive, then I contact my intellect and we revise.  That sense of uncovery helps keep me writing.

What made you publish this piece as a poem? How do its qualities shine when read as a poem?

It arrived with the compression and strangeness and vitality that I ascribe to poetry, I guess. The lyric tendency is still so prevalent in a lot of verse – image, observation, etc. – that the narrative moment, especially as it evokes something larger than itself, can feel fresh.

While humor pops up in “Her only accommodation had been to acknowledge it in her knitting,” the piece as a whole seems veiled in a layer of calm narrative. What elements of this particular poem made it seem that this style could grab the reader in the right way?

I like “veiled in a layer of calm,” as that’s perhaps the best way to approach strangeness.  Deadpan can be good, but I’m wary of irony.  As much as I love a sense of play and playfulness and seeing the world through a lens that’s two degrees off-kilter, I feel the imagination should be taken seriously.  If I don’t love this boy with an extra limb, who will?

Congratulations are certainly in order for your nomination for Best New Poets 2011, an anthology you were selected for in 2008. Please, tell us more about your inclusion in that wonderful anthology and this year's nomination.

Receiving the news in 2008 was a decided high point.  I cracked open a beer and danced with my dog.  Though the word "best" is in many ways a silly & impossible term, it was also helpful, especially when placed beside the endless rejection.  I was nominated this past year by Guernica, which came quite out of the blue.  Given the caliber of writing that Erica Wright consistently manages to bring to that journal, I was delighted & grateful simply to receive the nod.

What other writing projects are you currently working on?

I’m actually working on a translation/verse version of the the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya.  Fascinating stuff.  I’m also trying to wrangle my poems into something resembling a manuscript.  And a teaching memoir called The Art of Disappearing. 

What great books have you read recently? Are there any upcoming releases you're excited about?

I find immense pleasure in reading José Saramago.  All The Names just about took off the top of my head, and I’m currently immersed in Small Memories, which was just released.  The Wrecking Light, by Robin Robertson is stunning – chiseled work.  Two books that have never gotten very far away from me over the past four or five years are the Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert and Wislawa Szymborska.  And Astonishments by Anna Kamien