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Poetic Profile

Ange Mlinko

General Questions

1. Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix?

I grew up in the suburbs outside Philadelphia. In the house were “Cycle” and “True Story” magazine, and maybe a few Agatha Christie novels. The closest thing to poetry were children’s books and prayers—at one point I recited something like ten prayers a night before I went to bed. “Hail Mary” is an exquisite poem.

2. Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?

20^th Century Modernist painting and poetry. Rock bands. Highly aestheticized film directors like Wong Kar-wai and Peter . Comic novels and sad songs. Beautiful boys. Cities and coastlines. Bicycle excursions. Children.

Right now I’m reading Robert Walser’s short prose writings. I don’t fetishize mad visionaries usually, but then his writings aren’t mad. He has a sharp conceptual brilliance, which I do fetishize.

3. When did you 'become' a poet? When did poetry become part of your everyday life?

I read “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khaayam” and “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” at 15 or 16, and I decided in a relatively short time that this was the apex of human existence.

4. Where were you educated? Was this important?

At St. John's College in Maryland (the "Great Books" program) and Brown University. I guesss it was important that, apart from a couple of workshops at Brown, I never really delved into Creative Writing.

At St. John’s I got to read history of science and math and Plato’s dialogs, which does tend to influence one’s dreams.

5. there are many comparisons made between your work and Frank O'Hara's? are these justified? Do you consider yourself influenced by the new york school?

People might quibble with the label—any label—but as a set of formal strategies I think “New York School” is useful and descriptive. Even superlative. Some days I don’t even acknowledge that anything else in contemporary letters is poetry.

Frank O’Hara is a better orientation point for my work than, say, Czeslaw Milosz. We both happen to be Romantics impatient with melancholy; formalists too impatient to write sestinas just to prove we can.

6) What is your favorite food?

Single-malt Scotch.

7) Sports team or Activity?

None!

8) Vacation spot.

The end of any peninsula, island, or spit. Surly Northeastern oceans.

Alternately, a good dream.

9) Curse word.

“Filha da puta!” still strikes the fear of god in me because my mother grew up in Brazil and cursed at me in Portuguese when I was a child. My parents relished cursing. I on the other hand curb it around my two-year-old. Therein lies a tale of bourgeois assimilation!

10) It seems that hundreds of poets live in Brooklyn and New York do you find that the new york poetry scene is like a habitrail of writers? Is is a close community? Do you find that New York cuts you off from the rest of the world?

My husband is not a poet, and I have a kid now, so I am pretty distanced from the literary scenes. Yet, I do feel NYC is a galaxy apart from the rest of America. I only just got a car, and am just moving out of a one-bedroom apartment where I’ve been raising my baby while my husband works about 100 hours a week. The cost of living is exorbitant, the amenities are few. I half-despise myself for living here.

11) Your book, Starred Wire seems to be lacking the hipster aesthetic that fills so much of today's poetry, the work is made up of prose poems that actually seem to be written by a real person who lives in the real world albeit a world that is rich in images and life how do you achieve this sense in your work?

There’s not that many prose poems in Starred Wire. Long lines, though.

I think that the more you strive for artifice, the more realistic your work becomes. As when John Ashbery points out that Fellini’s use of black plastic sheets to simulate the sea looks more like a real sea than the sea.

Craft Questions

1) How do you form a poem? Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?

I start out with a line that arouses my brain, then I start to riff on it or fiddle with its lingual, logical and oneiric possibilities. It starts out organic and gets progressivly more synthetic.

2. Where do you write? Is ambience important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?

When you have to work for a living, or have to be with a kid 24/7, you lose all pretense to ambience and rituals. I constantly dash down scribbles and descriptions and lines. Later, 1% of that will prove to be useful. Composition occurs most easily during a child’s afternoon nap.

Also, I have to be happy to write. In a really good mood.

3. In the balance between found language and created language where does you work fall?

This is an excellent question. I hate using found language. And yet, I do use a line or two as a germ. For instance: “There indeed was the robin & she thought he looked nicer than ever” is from the child’s book The Secret Garden. On the whole I am a stubborn reactionary with regard to the primacy of created language. Anything else is advertising.