~ Delta Poetry Review ~

 J. Bruce Fuller Interview by Dixon Hearne

Thank  you so much, Bruce, for taking the time to share your creativity and valuable insights. We are so pleased to talk to you about your inspiring poetics and we know our readers will enjoy what you have to share with us.

DPR: Do you think that working as an editor of literary journals and books has influenced the way you view your own creative work — particularly when you are submitting it for publication? If so, how?

JBF: It definitely has affected my submission materials, things like cover letters, bios, etc. I read thousands of these a year and I see the same pet peeves over and over in cover letters and bios. I think short and sweet is the way to go with those types of materials. It is the submitted writing that matters most anyway. Reading a couple of thousand submissions a year, I see a lot of the same themes, tropes, moves, or rhetoric in collections, which helps me keep those out of my work.

DPR: I'm always very interested in this idea of "place" in writing. Eudora Welty once said that one place understood helps us to understand all places better. You have lived in several different places. How has this experience informed and influenced your writing and teaching? Is place an organizing center for much of your poetry writing?

JBF: I value subtlety in poetry. I don't like arbitrariness in a poem's construction or prosody. There are no rules, but I think that the reader has to follow where you are taking them. If I can see why a poet made a certain decision, then it can't be wrong. But unfortunately, I see a lot of poems that were not well thought out.

DPR: I read the following statement in your 2015 interview in MockingHeart Review: “I do love the epistolary form. I think of all the voices/personas in my poems the epistolary voice I use in The Dissenter’s Ground is the closest to my own real voice.” Can you share other examples where we might find this in your writing?

JBF: In the past few years I have actively tried to write closer to my own speaking voice. Maybe it started with The Dissenter's Ground, but at least in my newest work I have consciously made that attempt. Much has been written about "Poet's Voice," and I have been to enough poetry readings to know that this phenomenon is real. Donald Hall called MFA workshop poems "McPoems" because they all feel or sound or move the same. If "poet's voice" is real, it is born in the same way. We hear it, learn it, imitate it.

          I looked at my own work and saw the same moves, heard in my own voice these same generic rhythms and line endings, voice lilts, etc. I wanted to write the way I sound, the way my friends and family sound. This is tricky though for a few reasons. For one, I'm not sure that my "real" voice, or at least the dialect and accent of my youth, is even there anymore. I can't escape the fact that I am a university-trained poet. And I can guarantee that throughout my career as a student and academic I have consciously muted my dialect and accent. So I have had to think carefully about what voice is, and what voice is truly mine. I'm reminded of the lines from the end of Kathryn Stripling Byers's "Southern Fictions," about reading her poems outside the of South, or among "famous poets," and "wish[ing] my words could sound as if I came from someplace else." I'm torn by this idea though, because I no longer want to be ashamed of how I sound and wish I hadn't lost so much of my original accent.

          Another issue with trying to write in dialect is that if done poorly it can be unreadable. It can come across as insincere or problematic. It can cause confusion for the reader. All of these are problems that I have been trying to solve. My new book has some poems where I have come closer to what I am trying to achieve with sound particularly the "they said" poems that end each section of the book. I hope this will continue to develop in my poems over time.

DPR: I’m struck by your deep concern for ecological issues facing Louisiana—witness the following statement:

Many of Louisiana’s problems, in particular, are man-made. We have built a levee complex on the Mississippi River that stretches for over 2,000 miles. We have tried to control flooding not understanding that floods built the land we live on. We have built canals for logging and the oil industry that introduce salt water from the Gulf of Mexico into brackish and freshwater ecosystems. We have traded meager returns on our oil and natural gas reserves for devastation to our wildlife and fisheries.

          And what the outside world must realize is that we didn’t do this because we are stupid hicks that don’t know any better. Louisiana is a poor state with rich resources.

How might poets and artists effect real change?

JBF: My first reaction to this question was cynicism, because it seems sometimes that amongst the internet, and TV and advertisers, and social media, a poem can seem so small compared to all of those powerful influences. But I would be wrong to say that it isn't possible that poets and artists of all kinds can bring attention to things. Maybe my reluctance is due to the phrase "real change." I'm not sure what that looks like, I mean, things are changing all the time, just maybe not how one would want things to. I know that a lot of people back home read my poems, and I know that a lot of times these are people that don't ordinarily read poems. And I know because they tell me this, and it gives me hope sure, and I'm glad to be able to do that work, but no matter how many poems I write about the ecological disaster that is occurring in my state, my poems simply do not have the power to affect the behaviors of the oil and gas industry. To me that would be "real change," but it seems impossible. Besides, these people don't need me to tell them that our ecosystems are in danger because they already know. I don't want to be the guy with the "End is Nigh" sign around his neck, because not only does no one ever listen to that guy, it is insulting to the people I would be trying to help. We're not dumb, just poor, and the oil and gas industry has been a vital resource for my family and countless others. In my work I try to show things how they are, or at least, how I have experienced them. I think artists for the most part try to discover truth, and as long as they do there is the possibility for change.

DPR: In light of all of your responsibilities as teacher, poet, and especially Director at Texas Review Press, how do you manage your time? What helps you unwind?

JBF: I'm lucky in that I have a job that gives me a relatively normal schedule. It's 9-5(ish). I had children right as I started college and by grad school we had toddlers. I decided that I would find a way to treat school/writing/editing as a career, and I would come home from work (or stop working) at a normal time and eat dinner, go to soccer practice. It has been a challenge, but I had a lot of help and a lot of luck. As to what helps me unwind, I watch a lot of football. I read a lot of articles and books that have nothing to do with my areas of expertise, things like economics, paleontology, physics (none of which I understand, which I think may be the point). I like to do landscaping projects and tinker around the yard. My wife would say that I piddle around.

DPR: What has kept you writing poetry?

JBF: It beats roofing...I don't know, I mean, most days I wonder if I should keep going, or if I have written the last poem, like what if I've run out of steam? Patrick Phillips once told me, "there's more where that came from!" and I think he's right, that the poems won't stop coming if you provide the time and opportunity for them to come, but what I think is harder for me is to challenge myself to continue to write and grow, when it is so easy to stop. It is so easy to go watch TV. But I feel too, and I think a lot of writers would agree, that no matter how long you go without writing, eventually you will fill up and new work will push its way out of you. I wrote poems before I knew you could do this as a job, before I had ever heard about MFAs or fellowships, before I understood publishing. I think I would write poems regardless, but sometimes the career aspects of it get burdensome. Maybe it is the age-old human desire to say, "I was here." Maybe that's enough.

DPR: What other interests do you pursue that influence your writing?

JBF: I try to be a student of culture. Make connections. See how things work. Try to understand my place in all of it. Poems are just one way to do that.

DPR: I recently read an article on Lit Hub in which Paul Harding reflects on working with an independent publisher on his debut novel Tinkers, which of course went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. Can you talk about your experience working with university presses? Would you recommend that writers submit their work to smaller presses? What might be the advantages/disadvantages of doing so?

JBF: The collection is called How to Drown a Boy. The book tries to look at how culture, particularly hyper-masculine cultures, affects boys as they grow up. It's about fathers and sons too, especially my relationship with my father, as well as my relationship with my own son. Cycles within cycles, I suppose.

DPR: Thank you J. Bruce, for taking time from your busy life to share your thoughts, interests, and insights with DPR readers—we will be the wiser for it.

          What is the most important advice you think you could give to aspiring writers?

JBF: Stay in the game. Most people quit writing as they get older, or after they are out of school, or as life gets in the way. We all have to make a living somehow, and I just tried to stay in the writing world in any way I could. If I went back to driving a forklift I think I would fade out of writing. Being around it in any way you can keeps it on your mind and keeps you hungry.