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Poetic Profile

F. J. Bergmann

General Questions
 
 

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

I grew up in Wisconsin, and, briefly, France. During my childhood I read voraciously beginning at, I am told, the age of 18 months, possibly because I was raised (and continue to live) without television, which made me a pariah amid my peers. My first books were an encyclopedia set, but once I could pick my own, I remember typical kid books: Alice in Wonderland, the Oz books, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, the Black Stallion books, Tarzan and Doc Savage, a brief fascination with horror stories, and a little poetry, mostly 19th- and 20th-century warhorses. This is probably why I can’t distinguish gender, race, or species at a distance of more than 5 feet without glasses. I hated writing and studiously avoided it, but did have one poem published in a national high-school anthology.


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

I've always liked surrealist artists: Dali, Magritte, Tanning, Varos, Bosch, Escher, Dierdre, Giger, Merriam. I read more science fiction than anything else, but I read pretty broadly as well. We subscribe to Scientific American, Science News, the Skeptical Inquirer and Funny Times. Recent poetic influences would include Louis Jenkins, Russell Edson, Ray Gonzalez, and Alain Bosquet; I also have a weakness for Joe Pachinko, Sal Salasin, Billy Collins, Stephen Dobyns, Dorothy Parker, and anybody who writes poems that make fun of poetry. I love Dave Barry and Molly Ivins. Comedians like Steve Martin have been a big influence as well, especially on my spoken-word delivery.


3) When did you 'become' a poet, when did poet become part of your everyday life? 

In August of 1998, when I joined a poetry writing group in Elkton, Maryland. I began reading at open mikes not long after that, although I didn't start getting published until after the turn of the millennium.


4) Where were you educated? Was this important?

Spending time in another country and learning another language was probably the most important thing that happened to me culturally and linguistically; attending the very experimental New College in Florida for less than a year back in 1972, where I crashed and burned, was my most important social and emotional experience. I did finish a B.S. in psychology (and almost all of a second major in biochemistry) at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, managing to get away with writing only two papers during the entire process. This qualification has been of little practical value, but I like ostensibly useless knowledge: Scientia gratia scientiae, as it were. I've been amusing myself in the last few years by taking occasional web design and development classes. You never know when the stuff put away in your brain will come in handy.

 
5) You have been many places and today you are in Wisconsin, again, a hotbed of liberalism; what is it like?

I feel a certain amount of pride at being in a blue state, less at being in a country (to say nothing of a planet) that would allow creatures like Bush and his cabal t0 remain among the living, much less in office. I figure I'm already on the no-fly list, so what the hell.


5.1) Your book, Sauce Robert (Pavement Saw, 2003) is so different from most American poetry books; the French influence is profound. Where does the work originate?

I lived in Paris as a child for two years, attending a French school, and became forcibly bilingual. It must have been the perfect age (6–8 years) because I still retain the language, in spite of having no one to converse with in French for the last 30 years or so. The influence on the poems is subtle, but the chapbook title is taken from the original version of Sleeping Beauty, written by Charles Perrault to entertain the court of Louis XIV: after Sleeping Beauty is awakened, her prince conceals the relationship from his mother, who is an ogress. Eventually Mom finds out about her daughter-in-law and the grandkids, and orders them cooked and served to her with (naturally!) Sauce Robert. I try to cast my net as wide and deep as possible. You wouldn't believe the crud that comes up. Loaded with mercury, too.


6) What is your favorite food?

Steamers (soft-shelled clams). Lobster. Smoked oysters. Chocolate, in reasonable quantities. I'm answering these questions in the middle of the Chriskwanzukkah orgies, and the sugar headache has not yet worn off.


7) Sports Team? or Activity?

Spectator sports are some of the most horrible perversions of human culture, ever. I really enjoyed equestrian sports, mainly eventing and dressage, when I could afford to compete. I still ride, and also play Extreme Croquet. Any word game, especially Dictionary, is my idea of a good time.


8) Vacation spot?

I'd like to go back to Europe some day. Or somewhere with a nice warm beach, seafood, and fruity rum drinks. Unfortunately, I have used up all my vacation days and savings taking my spawn to orthodontic appointments.


9) Curse word?

Due to a long history of riding and working with horses, when stressed I tend to use all the words you can't say on TV strung together. Having a thousand-pound animal step on your toes, or better yet, fall over backward on you, will do that.
  

 

Craft Questions

 

1) How do you form a poem?

Sometimes a line will come to me, usually a first or last line, and then the poem builds from there. Sometimes I notice a phrase that works as an epigraph. I like messing around with assignments, prompts, and limitations. I find that going to hear other poets read always seems to trigger poems.


2) Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?

Huh?
 

3) Where do you write? Is Ambiance important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?  

I like writing in the middle of noise, and other people. But poems seem to form spontaneously, like static electricity. The struck-by-lightning metaphor is more appropriate to fiction, in my experience. I prefer to write fully-clothed, in a chair, under the influence of alcohol or recreational pharmaceuticals, with a disposable small-gauge technical pen (black) and/or Appleworks for the Mac. Word sucks.


4) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall?

I cover the gamut. I've written centos, found poems, and other entirely "borrowed" works; I've also developed my own forms and coined words, although I retain a belligerent distaste for syntactical and spelling errors. However, I think it's naive to pretend that all poetry isn't, in essence, recycled words. The stupidest mistake I ever made, in visual art or writing, was to avoid exposing myself to the works of others because I thought it would contaminate my “personal style.” No one develops aesthetic characterization in a vacuum, just as it's not possible to learn to speak without communicating with others. I think that what we call style and creative individuality is the result of input recombination, and the more input, the richer the resultant yield will be. I understand that there are 200,000 words or so in the English language. In a 10-word poem, say, the average haiku, this gives us the potential for more than ten-to-the-53rd power—that is, 10 followed by 53 zeros—discrete poems. Reusing the same ten words and changing the order results in less than four million combinations. The difference is 47 orders of magnitude—a larger range of magnitude that that of the known universe. I like to aim high.