ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com

Poetic Profile

Jesse Seldess

General Questions

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

When I and my brother were very young, our family lived in the Roger’s Park area of Chicago, but we grew up in Northbrook, a northwest suburb of Chicago. It’s hard to say if the location directed me toward writing or art. My second grade teacher might’ve helped by celebrating with me a story I’d written and then by giving me a notebook. It’s interesting to me now; I remember noticing in my story, after-the-fact, adaptations from a particular Woody Woodpecker cartoon episode, this sense not at all apparent to my teacher, and though I hadn’t yet learned to worry about how material is acquired or presented, I like to think I recognized, to some small extent, the flow between imagination, memory, and the “outside” world. I know it registered with me later, retrospectively, when learning to be careful.

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

Martin Buber, Andrew Levy, Franz Kafka, Stacy Doris, Edmond Jabes, Leslie Scalapino, Gertrude Stein, Shunryu Suzuki, The Torah and Talmud, Norma Cole, Olivier Cadiot, Matthew Goulish, Gins and Arakawa’s Architectural Body, Italo Calvino, Anna Deviere Smith, Celan, so many others. Composers and musicians: Alvin Lucier, Ligeti, Reich, Fugazi, oud music, King Tubby, my brother, Gerhardt Staebler, Bach, The Vandermark Five, Ornette Coleman, Francois Houle, so many others. I was recently blown over by a language improvisation of Steve Benson and a sound performance of Nicolas Collins.

And for sure, my playing in the instrumental rock band Chisel Drill Hammer, the experience of permuting and adjusting, all members to each other at once, to assemble something individually engaging yet cooperatively unlike what could’ve been achieved without the particular mix. Conversations across mediums, and simply interest and exposure across mediums, have been important. Music especially, more and more so as my twin brother grew into a composer and classical guitarist. And the painter, Stacie Johnson, who I lived with for close to six years, helped me – or her paintings, in front of my eyes each day, helped me – to further recognize how saturated anything is, in the making and confronting.

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

I wrote a bit of poetry in high school during a creative writing class. Typically angsty. But I remember one exercise. We began with the opening line of another’s poem. I misread Keats’s “When I have fears that I may cease to be” as “When I have fears that may cease to be.” A nice start, I think. After that, I didn’t read or write poetry until the middle of college, at which time my band mate reintroduced me. 

 
4) Where were you educated? Was this important?

I studied literature as an undergrad at the University of Iowa and then studied toward an MFA at the University of Arizona. Some friends and teachers at Iowa turned me toward poems, toward Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Williams, and others, and I’m grateful for that. The bent was particular and the exposure to 20^th century writing very limited, though, as I noticed more and more after moving away and seeing the many other strains of poetry and contemporary work. Toward the end of my time at Iowa, I met Patrick Durgin in a New Crit reading techniques class, of all places. Then we worked at a record store together. He and his magazine Kenning opened other directions for me in a significant way. At Arizona, though enrolled in the Creative Writing program, I worked more closely with writers on the periphery of the program, in the community and in other areas of the university. I spent many hours with the wonderful poet and gifted teacher Barbara Cully. Tenney Nathanson’s lit classes were wonderful. And my work with Charles Alexander’s Chax Press and POG (initiated by Charles and Tenney) taught me quite a bit about literary activism.

5) You are a pensive writer who is very measured how does this effect your work?

 Speed is an issue, I guess. Most things develop very gradually for me. It’s the way I’ve come together as a person, and it feels to be the way I explore and develop things. I’m fascinated by formation. Formation, suspicion of formation, awe of formation - all very connected to the work I’ve written lately.  

I also want to respond with a line from the beginning of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: “But that’s getting too far ahead of the story, almost to the end, although the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.”

6) What is your favorite food?

A burrito that lasts two meals. Falafel. Indian food, too.

7) Sports Team?

I like to watch gymnastics and skateboarding.
 

8) Vacation Spot?

My sweetheart lives in Berlin, so that’s my favorite vacation spot.

9) Curse Word?

Putz.  

10) What is your Spiritual Position? How does Judaism effect your poetry?

I’m not sure how to articulate my spiritual position. I’m Jewish. And I know I’m very interested in the ethical heritage of my religion and the connection to text, continuous reading, re-forming, dialogue, and action. Right now, in my writing, I’m particularly affected by Judaism’s (my Judaism’s, by way of Martin Buber’s Judaism’s) sense of the inextricably conditioned and unconditioned character of the world, its relation to human formation and conduct. “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted,” says the Talmud, which baffles and fascinates me to no end. Though it makes complete sense, too. Also, a poem of Andrew Levy’s, “the myth of the not her blood,” in his book Curves, seems to address, as an act of love, a resistance to the impulse to delimit, and though I’m not trying to place Andrew or Andrew’s poem in relation to Judaism, for me the approach is related.

Craft Questions
 

1) How do you form a poem?
 

Lately, I approach a dynamic or relationship or environment or circumstance. For example, I wrote “Hum With” for the catalogue of an art exhibit titled “Oops, I did it again,” somehow exploring my experience of popular music and internalization and identification. And “In Contact” arose from my interaction, at work, with seniors afflicted with Alzheimer’s or dementia resulting from other conditions. But then I write toward a few things at once. While developing one poem, I permute language, begin, halt, and extend directions, so that somethings make it into the one poem, and so that I’m also creating a residue of sorts that I later revisit, rework, and arrange. I’m writing heavily in an aural way, a “timed” way.

2) Do you use collage, found language?

I don’t use very much directly found language, in the sense of direct quotation, but the issue of “collage” and “found” is very involved (again, related to the “conditioned” and “unconditioned” mentioned above). Many of the poems in my recent manuscript, “Who Opens,” begin with the line: “Who you have continually overheard”

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

I don’t know. This question is part of the practice for me, I think.

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

I don’t write in any one particular place. Over the past few years, I’ve accepted, even embraced, the irregularity of my writing schedule. That’s involved accepting changing environments and rituals. Too much seclusion, though, doesn’t help. When actually writing, space is necessary, but surrounding my writing I need interaction.

 

5) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall? Do you use many sources?

I’ll point back to question 2 in this section.

6) Your work is very controlled how do you continue to control the evident energy in your work?

Can I point back to question 5 in the first section?

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