ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com
Poetic Profile
Raymond L Bianchi
General Questions
1) Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix?
We moved to Chicago when I was three years old, and shortly thereafter to the Southwest Suburbs. My Dad grew up the son of a milkman in Jersey City,
NJ my Mom immigrated to the US in 1953 and her Dad was a Knife Grinder, my Dad has a great story he was the first person in his family to go to college
and he always worked very hard for us he is a real man, gentle but strong these are characteristics lacking in many people today. My parents are both readers and as soon as I could read I was one too. My Dad, is a great secret intellectual. My mom is very well read too a person who if born in another circumstance might have been a poetry editor.
There were always lots of books around. I fell in love with poetry in high school. I had a teacher, Mrs. Billone, with whom I took American Literature and she
introduced us to Walt Whitman. Christine Billone was a great teacher she taught me a lot. Then I discovered Dante and Blake I was hooked. Mrs Billone told us that Whitman was gay and that he is America's seminal writer. I was shocked, but I read him and I came to love him and poetry. I said once in an interview that this was the first time that I felt like an American and I think that is true. My family is recent to the USA: The rest of his family was Italian and Italian was the primary culture of my upbringing. Whitman opened my mind to American culture for me and opened up my mind to difference.
Naperville, the suburb I grew up in, of the late 1970s to 1980s was a curious place, today it is a super high end rich suburb but it was not at that time.
Most of the people were transplants from the Chicago or other city places there was lots of 'white flight' attitudes; my high school had 2500 students
and 1 black student now this is 22 miles from downtown Chicago! People moved to Naperville to flee cities and their problems and tried as hard as
possible to lose their ethnicness this was jarring for me as a child. I really did not like it much and was happy to leave after high school;
2) Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?
Dante, The Bible, especially the Psalms , Isaiah, and Gospel of John, Hopkins, Pound especially, Charles Olson, Augustine, Ephraim the Syrian, William Carlos Williams, Latin American poetry, Walt Whitman, Italian Poetry ,Peter Gizzi, Thomas Merton, German Expressionism, Italian Futurism, Byzantine Art, Carlos Drummond De Andrade, Paulo Leminski, Bonaventure, Medieval Provencal Poetry, Regis Bonvicino, Henry Miller, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Federico Lorca, Pierre Joris, Mark Tardi, Jerome Rothenberg, David Antin, Rafael Alberti, Ruben Dario, Brian Clements, Joe Ahearn, Ron Silliman, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Robert Creeley and more and more and more... I love all of these and they mix well to form me as a poet.
3) When did you 'become' a poet when did poet become part of your everyday life?
In Bolivia, I worked as a Lay Volunteer for organization called Justicia y Paz, which is part of the Franciscan Family in Cochabamba from 1993-1995 I worked in the prison of San Sebastian, which is at the same time horrible and divine. San Sebastian is a jail that houses 5000 inmates plus their families in one city block. It was a unique place: the men lived in wood boxes of their own construction; there were no proper cells provided; if you wanted a cell you had to pay for your cell and food; wives and children were forced to lived in he Prison because of this and it was very justice poor situation.
These conditions were the result of the US war on Drugs, which punished coca growers as much as drug kingpins and the whole thing was very justice
poor, but I found a kind of divine poetic scream in the whole thing and there was a worker priest there called Benoit who actually lived in the Jail he challenged me to write and to tell their stories. I had poetic formation before this but I became a poet in San Sebastian and one of the things that undergirds my poetry is a desire to make people uncomfortable and face things directly -- I hate equivocation
Here is the Prison I worked in for two years.
4) Where were you educated? Was this important?
University of Iowa -- GO HAWKS! Iowa was a great place to be an undergraduate. You could be intellectual, see great football get totally drunk and all in a VERY SAFE environment. Iowa exposed me to so much, discovered my first great bookstores, I got to take classes with Jorie Graham (Don't like her poetry much but she is a good teacher), David Hamilton, Paul Engle, Stavros Deligiorgis, and I got to hear so many writers in 4 years, EL Doctorow, Robert Creeley, Susan Howe, Kurt Vonnegut, Milozsc, Rothenburg, and more and more and more it was a real eye opener.
I love Iowa City while I prob, would not go there for an MFA it was a great place to be an undergrad. I always enjoy returning to Iowa City someone asked me once to list my favorite cities, the said Chicago, New York, Verona, Italy, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Iowa City.
I studied theology later in Washington and Chicago I was considering entering the seminary before I went to Bolivia but I did not finish that degree.
5) You are a poet that strongly believes in a sense of community -- do you find this difficult amidst the sea of self-absortion most poets
swim in?
Poetry is not a money genre, it is an influence genre we are the Trappists or Buddhists of the literary world providing a constant poetic critique of the world as it exists like the Trappist or Buddhist meditates keeping watch. If I want to know what is real news I read Peter Gizzi or Lisa Jarnot or Mark Nowak rather than the newspaper. As a contemplative genre we set the tone for the whole literary world and this is not just here in the US but everywhere.
The problem is that most poets are too self-absorbed to realize the power of what they do and they retreat into Librarianland. Poets need to be public figures, public intellectuals. We need to challenge the thinking of our society and make people uncomfortable too many poets write poetry for other poets this is ok but try to write poetry for mall workers, too.
[I digress for a moment: in 1976 the Soviet government allowed Osip Mandelstam's poetry to be read in public for the first time since 1930 and 10,000 people came out to hear them the people were starving for his poetry, and I believe all people are starving for poetry and we need to feed them.]
Anyway back to community.
I think that too many poets look at poetry not as a universal need but a personal artform and it is more than that and we as poets need to be somewhat in concert we need to dialogue we need to create that chain reaction that can change the way things are into what they can become.
If you look at the greatest poets of this century, Pound, Neruda, Akhmatova, Lorca, Williams, Celan, Olson, and more and more they were all people who were in dialogue with other poets and who were part of larger communities of public intellectualism that effected the societies in which they lived and this chain reaction meant something to more than poets. But we poets spend our time fighting over crumbs, being petty and stupid and our infighting destroys the universality of the artform, we are not painters who are going to become millionaires, we are poets and we are too important to allow ourselves to become petty about some stupid contest or magazine publication we need to spend our time challenging each other and the society in which we live this will make poetry news. This will also make poetry relevant and read. It is because we live in our own echo chamber that we are marginalized we need to be public and critical.
5.1) Considering that you've lived amongst a range of literary communities -- South American, the East Coast, the Southwest -- what is most promising about Chicago? What's the biggest challenge poets here face?
Latin America was interesting a real hybrid of Europe and the Americas in a way that the US is not, poets are held in high esteem and they serve as a kind of chorus to the culture. I love Latin American poets for example is there a better poet writing today than Regis Bonvicino in Brazil? I think not! Regis eats Michael Palmer for Lunch and keeps going.
Dallas was a great place to land and the community was good I met some very nurturing people with whom I am still friends, Joe Ahearn, Brian Clements, Michael Puttonan, Solana D'Lamant, Thea Temple, Jack Myers just to name a few were islands of sanity in a Dallas that was filled with Right Wing kooks and gun nuts.
I lived in Princeton for a couple of years which was by far the snobbiest place I have ever lived, New York was 40 miles away but that was too far I loved going to readings though and I met Sina Queyras who is one of the finest poets I know she was an important part in my book being formed I dedicated a poem to her.
Chicago is a great place to be a poet there are little cliques, the Hyde Park Crowd, the UIC crowd, the Discrete Series Crowd, and more and more but on the whole it is a good place and I have met poets here whose work I really admire, Mark Tardi, Kerri Sonnenberg, John Tipton, Peter O’Leary, Chuck Stebelton, Jesse Seldess, Simone Muench and many others.
I wish however that there was more infrastructure here like there is in New York, we don’t have a top notch MFA here we don’t have a writer’s house or a group like the Loft in Minneapolis or the Writer’s Garret in Dallas or the Poetry Project or Bowery Poetry Club in New York that can serve as a nexus and has their own physical space although Ken Clarke and the Poetry Center are trying hard to do this and doing well; maybe our friends at Poetry Magazine, now that they are so rich could open a permanent poetry space ? That is about as likely as them publishing avant garde verse. The biggest challenge we face in Chicago is loss of our best poets because we don’t have enough press infrastructure.
6) What is your favorite food?
Polenta and Spiedo (a Bresciano rottiserie of fowl, pork, chicken and rabbit cooked slowly over coals with butter and sage) with red wine and a then a piece of Gorgonzola for dessert. This the regional dish of my mother’ s part of Italy and I love it. I also like Brazilian Barbeque both of these dishes are better eaten in their place of origin.
7) Of course we all know that the Chicago White Sox is your favorite sports team. Do you have a favorite team in Sox history, a favorite player?
I love the Sox and I grew up loving Carlton Fisk, he was a testament to someone who was not naturally an athlete but became the best. I also loved Bill Veeck the former owner. I fell in love with the White Sox in 1977 my Dad took me to a game and we got to shake Mr Veeck's hand on the concourse as we walked around with his pegleg.
Should Shoeless Joe Jackson be in the Hall of Fame?
Talk about curses, the Cubs are cursed by a Goat but we are cursed by Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver; but I don’t think they belong in the Hall they did something very, very wrong. But I must say that the Black Sox scandal is the greatest Chicago sports story it embodies our city, the game is thrown, the players were acquitted, they were still punished by baseball and the evidence disappeared.
The reason that White Sox fans are bitter is because of collective pain, the Black Sox scandal, the Race Riots of 1919, the opening and closing of the stockyards, the destruction of the steel industry most of the great Chicago writers, Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, Saul Bellow are all Sox fans as Studs Terkel said “The Cubs are Winnetka the Sox are Chicago” Sox fans are the real deal and there are few things I enjoy more than a ball game with my Sox and it is even better when the Winnetka Cubs lose the same day.
8) Vacation Spot?
Vestone Italy where my mom is from or Santa Catarina - Brazil where my wife is from. Both are second homes for me.
Here is my favorite spot in Italia
9) Curse Word?
Jesus Fucking Christ
10) Many actors in Hollywood are card-carrying Scientologists; conversely, many experimental poets eschew religion in favor of atheism and
"vintage" clothing. But despite such fads, you're a practicing Catholic who unabashedly writes about Catholicism, the Holocaust, Max Ernst,
Marcel Duchamp, the history of the Balkans, Saddam Hussein, Italian immigration, working class people -- do you feel like you are treated
like an outsider by other poets?
I am an outsider; a lot of poets who come from my background like to force themselves to become Plathlike pretending they are WASP intellectuals and they forget where they come from. There are poets however that I love who are true to their roots and use them for their work, you Mark Tardi for example, Jesse Seldess, Hoa Nguyen, Brian Clements, David Antin, and many others. I love the fact for example that a poet uses his/her race or religion as a way to illustrate and animate their work.
I am in no way a conservative when it comes to Catholicism, but I like traditional worship and music, I am very much out of the Catholic left of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton but I am still a Catholic I go to Mass and I ask myself all the time where is the Church of St Francis? Where is the Church of Mozart? I stay; it is part of my history and my being but I reject the Church’s position on women, celibacy and power but I believe in the Nicene Creed fully and I could not live without the Eucharist. The recent sex scandal has been a great pain for me but I cannot say I did not see it coming you cannot base an organization’s sexuality on ignorance and not expect problems. I am in Dorothy Day’s words “Angry but Obedient”
I care passionately about a lot of things including my religion I have little patience for people who run from what they are what makes up their personality to create some ‘new’ persona that is made up, invented. My Mom is from a small town in the Brescia region of Italy, my family has lived in that town since 1200 AD to the present day and what ties me to all of them in Catholicism and food.
I could no less leave the church then I could tear out one of my eyes it is a bond of memory for me. I am what I am: Italian, Catholic, American. Poet from Chicago. They asked Mozart once why he remained Catholic and he said he could not bear the fact that if he left he would not be able to take communion in Chartre Cathedral and he could not bear that separation. I will not let stupid, sexist Pedophiles take that away from me.
I often feel like I am the "crazy uncle" to many poets but I don’t care really. I have a very rich set of interests and life experiences and these fill my poetry and it is in the contradictions that I find poetry. I have been very fortunate in life I have lived in four different countries in very interesting circumstances and I have loved my life up to this point.
11) Your website, chicagopostmodernpoetry.com, has received thousands of visitors since you launched it in February -- what do attribute all the success to?
Chicago has allot of poetry websites some good, some not so good. But they tend to be focused on a certain writing group or certain movement. So called
Experimental poetry did not have a site in Chicago. I do not want to denigrate anyone but I personally am interested in poetry that is well written and innovative, poetry that is “New” to use our dear crazy Ezra’s words.
There are some great series in Chicago, Chicago Poetry Project, Animated by John Tipton, Discrete animated by Jesse Seldess and Kerri Sonnenberg, Myopic, Animated by Chuck Stebelton, Poem Present, at the University of Chicago, and the Poetry Center of Chicago Series, Columbia College Series and don’t forget the fabulous series at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee everyone should go to Woodland Pattern it is a satiating experience and many others.
It was hard to separate the mud from the water you had to scroll through 50 open mics to reach the real readings on sites so I decided to do a website that excludes open mics and concentrates on good reading series. I am open to all series but I want the series aforementioned above and any others focused on making Chicago a poetic center to grow and flourish. Chicago needs to be a counterweight to New York and San Francisco and to do this we need poetic infrastructure.
The Poetic Profiles have really drawn readers, to date the following profiles have gotten the most visits, Rodrigo Toscano, John Tipton, Ron Silliman, Rae Armentrout. I wont say who, but one of these got 1200 visits in one day, pretty cool.
Craft Questions
1) How do you form a poem?
I usually do a lot of reading in areas that interest me, then I collect all the language either by writing it down or copying it from the internet or someway. Take all the writing and I put it down and then I put all of it into a cut up machine. Scramble it up and use that reservoir of words and ideas and then I purge it of all the junk. From that I begin the work of poems creating lines and sinews and stanzas or prose poems and I hone this stuff until it comes together. I use allot of source material but it seems to work.
2) Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you? Do you use collage, parataxis, cut ups or other tools?
Totally synthetic, poems are like building bridges or skyscrapers anyone who says that poems are organic is either deluded or not willing to realize that poems are a synthetically crafted thing like nylon.
3) Where do you write? Is ambiance important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?
I like public noisy places. When I lived in Princeton, my wife Waltraud and I would go to Greenwich Village and I would write in Washington Square Park, I like to write here in Chicago in Parks or at the Ball Park. I also tend to write in spurts of 10-15 minutes over a whole day so I would put in 2 hours but over 8 hours.
4) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall? Do you use many sources?
I use tons of sources and it is all found language although I put in sinews that are totally my creation.
5) What I find most powerful about your book CIRCULAR DESCENT is how unapologetic it is. What do you think is most important in
keeping poetry vital?
Poets and Poetry are the most self absorbed of artists and artforms. I like to fuse my passions with what is actually happening in the world to create my own poetics. I am part of a poetic tradition but I have my own concerns and interests and those are my passions. I am not interested in impressing certain people in Poetry or Poetry Business, what I am interested in is work that is raw and unapologetic. I hope that I am able to separate the mud from the water and write good, experimental poetry that of course gets published but is also true to what I am about as poet and a man.
