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Poetic Profile

Julie Otten

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

I grew up in Springfield, Ohio — a town dominated by the International Harvester plant and a small, liberal arts university where my father taught in the English department.  I enjoyed drinking the bad coffee in the department lounge while my father negotiated the mimeograph machine, but the keg-o-rator on Mr. Dobbins’ back porch was far more inspiring in my later development.  I was torn between my self-discovery as a writer and the phallic statuary at Spencer’s Gifts in Upper Valley Mall.
 

2) Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?
 
I spent many, many hours at the local dance studio growing up, a salvaged top floor of a building over a drinking establishment called The Clown Lounge.   Due to my interest in that dance form we called “Jazz,” I was, of course, very interested in mimicking the postures of anorexics in such shows as The Chorus Line  and — importantly — Cats.  And so I took up with T.S. Eliot and the like.  The American Musical was my introduction to Modernism.  At 15, I actually heard a recording of Eliot reading “The Wasteland” and, in the same month, won a small prize officiated by Galway Kinnell at Sinclair Community College -- and so everything changed for me.  But I continue to appreciate the model of Bob Fosse, who had a kind of fire in his gut that appeals to me.
 

3) When did you 'become' a poet, when did poet become part of your everyday life?  
  
I was one of 4 people in my county to apply to become a Rotary Club exchange student in my junior year of high school.  I was selected over a Mennonite girl — just barely — but was not sent to France or Italy as I had requested.  Instead, I spent an entire year in Finland where I navigated school by sitting in the back of the class reading 19th Russian novels in translation from the local library and filling up notebooks with inspired verse about cold, snow, shadows and the lack of dating opportunities.  I no longer write about the weather.
 

4) Where were you educated? Was this important?
 
I attended The American University in Washington, D.C.  for four years and dropped out with less than a semester left toward my degree.  It was important for me to experience failure, but it was rotten at the time — and for many years after.  It was a great thing that I was unfit for admission into any kind of M.F.A. program, as I think it would have made me a miserable person — and a boring, if adept, writer.  I eventually finished my BA and went on recently to get my M.Ed. in order to teach high school.  I would have considered this beneath me as a 21 year-old, drop-out bartender.  
 
 

5) You have been many places and today you are in Ohio, a hotbed for experimental poetry at least four decades, since the days of DA Levy, what is it like?
 
When I first came back to Ohio, after my ill-fated stint in college and 6 subsequent years in NYC, I knew absolutely nobody.  Because I was clueless, I moved into an apartment complex in a close suburb.  The parking lot was always full but I never saw any neighbors.  I did have daily conversations with a strange dude who worked at the Sunoco station on the corner where I bought my cigarettes.  He never remembered which brand of cigarettes I smoked.  One Saturday, I showed up at an advertised Open Mic at some coffeehouse.  Not only was this dude there, but it turned out that he ran the reading series.  I had a hard time reconciling this at the time.  He, on the other hand, seemed to have been expecting me.  This is Ohio.  


5.1) Your book, In It What?s in It (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002) is so different from most American poetry books, the French influence is profound where does the work originate?
 
Nobody ever has or ever will ask me this question.  That makes me feel a little sad.


6) What is your favorite food?

I really like Cheerios.
  

7) Sports Team? or Activity?
  
I would cook all day if I had the time.  I like the idea of running.

 

8) Vacation spot?
  
This is not something our family often experiences, so I would have to say “the beach” for the sheer novelty of the idea.  I do not know which beach, only that it would not resemble Buckeye Lake, where we went this past summer and were unable to swim because of the ratio of goose feces to water.  

 

9) Curse word?

If it counts as one, poop
  
I love the “C” word because it is the only one I can’t bring myself to say or write.  

Craft Questions

 

1) How do you form a poem?
  
I begin with considering a story that I would like to tell, and then gathering multiple side stories and elements that might inform it — obliquely.  If a poem works, it is only due to arrangement --  juxtaposition and threading.  My hope is that the sheer weight of the thing squeezes the most interesting elements out to the edges.  I do not recommend this strategy to anyone.  The question is always poundage — how much is necessary to keep the thing weighted without suffocating it.    

 

2) Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?
  
If it were not synthetic, I am not sure that it would have much value for me or the reader.  Because I essentially tell circuitous stories, the reader’s experience of an “organic” process would be the equivalent of entrapment in an endless conversation with some stranger in the check-out line.  I try to avoid being the crazy with the cart full of RC and expired chicken parts.
  

3) Where do you write? Is Ambiance important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?  
  
I do not like to be around people when I write, but also dislike isolation.  My ideal is to be in a separate room within hearing distance of my family.  And I have to be warm.
 

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

Almost entirely on the found side.  I do not mind this.  I long ago reconciled myself to the fact that I am not a poet of discrete syllables, but a poet of sprawl.  Much like a mall that grotesquely simulates a false sense of collective nostalgia, I am a poet who encourages overindulgence and regret.   In Ohio,  we love how quantity can mask cheapness -- and give it value.  Today is December 27, and my house is a wonderland of garishly-lit holiday cheer purchased exclusively at Big Lots.  I find it terrifying and beautiful.