By: Blaike Marshall
Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collection Missing You, Metropolis, which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Tin House, The Laurel Review, The Normal School, Tuesday,and elsewhere. He’s also published in Shattered: The Asian-American Comics Anthology,and is the recipient of both a Cave Canem and Bread Loaf fellowship. Jackson currently teaches as an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC. He has been a fierce lover of comics for over twenty years.
Within the first ten minutes of my Poetry I class with Gary Jackson—which also happened to be my first poetry class ever—he made me write a poem. Like the rest of my classmates, I forced out something frantic and anecdotal. As we went around the room sharing our work, I tried to gulp down the severity of my situation—just because my grandfather’s name is Edgar Allen doesn’t mean I get to write poetry. I wanted to drop the class, but then he began reading our syllabus aloud. The end of the mission statement read, “Don’t be afraid of poetry, because poetry ain’t afraid of you.” One year later, I’m preparing to take his Advanced Poetry Workshop class in the spring, and waiting to interview him outside of the Addlestone Library Starbucks. Joaquin is only a category two storm but is beginning to assert itself, and the line for coffee is too long for either of us to commit to the hassle. So we sat down.
Why do you write?
I’ve been writing for about twenty-five years, and I guess the reasoning has always been the same. At its core, I just feel like I have stories that are worth telling, that are about me, that are about the people I know, and the people I grew up with; these are stories that I don’t see published as much in literature. Now, I see a lot more stories that kind of reflect the world I grew up in. But when I was growing up, I just didn’t see a lot of those stories for a variety of reasons, one of which being my own ignorance of what’s out there.
Who are you reading currently?
Gregory Pardlo’s, Digest, Cathy Park Hong’s, Engine Empire. I’m going back and reading Carolyn Rodgers, who was around during the Black Arts Movement in the 60’s and 70’s. The book of hers that I’m reading is called, How I Got Ovah.
How early did you begin writing poetry?
I started as a fiction writer, and eventually my stories got shorter and shorter, until at some point I realized that I could just write a poem. The idea of a poem is that you’re trying to convey something about experience to someone else. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a direct retelling of experience, but just transforming experience so that someone else can understand experience—I think Carl Philips said that once.
Do you feel like you can do that more with poetry as opposed to fiction?
I do, because I like to tell stories that are rooted in some sort of truth; even though fiction is the same way, it’s just a better form for me. And it gives me a lot of freedom to play in a way that I don’t have in fiction—that’s just because of the way I look at fiction, not because fiction has those limits.
Who are some of your early influences, and who still inspires you today?
The first two poets I read in high school—they’re early enough and they still stick with me, so I think I can count them as early influences—were Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I know I’ve probably said this in previous interviews, but when I was in high school reading those poets, they were the first two I really read who made me pay attention to language in a way that I didn’t care about as much when I was reading other poets. At the time I could say it was Plath’s use of Confessionalism as a form, which can only get you so far, but back then I didn’t know that you could write poems about yourself like that, or that you could lie about yourself.
Langston Hughes was talking about the black experience and Harlem at the beginning of the century, and he was one of the first poets I read who utilized rhyme in a way that I liked, which is ironic because I don’t like rhyme that much now, but I’m gaining a new love for it again. Even though I was a high-schooler doing stupid high school shit most of the time, when I wasn’t in the class, those poets weighed on me a lot, and I don’t think I really appreciated them until later when I got into college and started taking more poetry courses.
You once mentioned a conversation you had with Terrance Hayes, in which he said, “I write the same poem over and over again.” Do you think this is a byproduct of developing one’s style?
I’m sure I was paraphrasing—he likes to make jokes and be facetious—but I think it’s just that. With developing a style and the idea that (someone who I’m not going to remember has also said this) as poets, things work on us over and over again and we have to write them out. It’s kind of the only way to get over them. Whether they’re obsessions or not, you can’t ever quite stop; you never get to the point where the last poem you wrote about X was the last poem you’ll ever write about X. And I think that was Terrance’s way of saying, “Hey, I do that in my own poetry all the time and it comes out in different ways every time.” I think we were outside and he overheard me talking with someone about these new poems I was working on and how I was worried about how close they were in relation to my first collection content-wise. He just kind of chimed in and told me not to worry, because really we all write the same stuff.
Any advice to undergrads contemplating pursuing their MFA?
I’m totally a fan of going out of state for your MFA. Even though I know obviously, if you grew up in Charleston, you should totally go to The College for your MFA. But part of what college is for, even if you’re just an undergrad getting your degree, is to go out and experience the world, and to have the opportunity and the advantages of doing things that you otherwise wouldn’t do if you weren’t in college—same applies to studying abroad. So with that said, I absolutely think if you’re going to go get an MFA, or just go to graduate school in general, you might as well go outside of your comfort zone. That’s a big part of college as it is. Some people do their graduate studies at the same place they got their undergraduate degree and it works out fine.
But why not go somewhere new to experience new professors or courses that your university may not offer?
Yeah, especially the new professors thing. It always surprises me when the students that do talk to me don’t even think about looking up the poets they like and seeing where they teach. I think that’s really important. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you can get into those colleges and it doesn’t even necessarily mean that you’ll get to work with those professors, because all kinds of things can happen between finding out that you want to go to a college and possibly getting to work with that person. It may not work out at all; you may end up thinking that you don’t want to work with that person for whatever reason. Look up your idols, and be prepared to not like them. But it’s still important to be aware of the apprenticeship that happens in a lot of MFA programs.
You went to the University of New Mexico for your MFA. How many other places did you apply to?
I only applied to a handful. And I was young and dumb, even back then, so I only applied to a few places in state and a few places out of state. I liked the professors at the University of New Mexico, I had read their work, and I liked the fact that they were giving me money. That’s the other important thing. At the end of the day, if they offer you a full-ride or something comparable, you should very much consider that. So that combined with the fact that I got to go out of state—I got everything I wanted. I got the financial support, got to get away, and got to work with professors I liked.
When you reflect on your time at the University of New Mexico, what about that experience, in terms of your writing, has stuck with you the most?
In terms of knowledge—the work that I did and the work I learned how to do—probably the most useful thing I learned, I learned during my last semester there. I was doing my dissertation work with my professor, Lisa Chavez, who was the chair of my thesis dissertation, and it was so invaluable to have someone there, who for the last year had been telling me how poems worked or didn’t work, and we were discussing how to structure a collection. That was super helpful, because up until my last semester I wasn’t really aware of how my poems talked to each other. I can’t emphasize enough how helpful that was. I try to pass those lessons on to students today that I have the pleasure of working with when they’re working on their books. You don’t get that opportunity a lot because you’re always workshopping, which is driven by producing piece after piece.
What’s your advice on submitting to magazines/online journals?
I think you should have an idea of what journals you really like first, and a subscription to at least six different journals, or at least be reading them regularly. Mostly so you can gain a sense of what journals have aesthetics that you tend to gravitate towards, even if you don’t feel like your own writing isn’t up to par with the content of the journal. I just feel like that as a first step is incredibly helpful because you need to be aware that journals, just like poets, have their own voice and aesthetic. And then from there it’s just a matter of figuring out where is the best home for the pieces you’re sending out. Just be aware of who they’re publishing, what their audience is, and how long it takes to hear back from them. Don’t scattershot and send your poems everywhere. That works up to a point because you’ll probably get in somewhere. But you aren’t really aware of where your work is going, how it speaks to those magazines, who’s reading your work or how they’re interpreting it.
How do you hold yourself accountable for writing on a regular basis?
I don’t have the benefit of a schedule because I’m not taking classes. A lot of students don’t realize that having due dates are beneficial. When you don’t have that anymore, you have to figure out your own way to hold yourself accountable for submitting and things like that. But in terms of just writing as opposed to submitting regularly, I write on a semi-regular basis. I’m not a great model. If I can dedicate a couple hours per week to writing, that’s a win. I count revising as writing. Everybody has this advice about how you should treat it as if you are showing up to work everyday sitting down and writing for two hours, while the other camp preaches: write when you find time. Either of those work fine, it just depends on the individual and overall just making the time to write.
It’s good that you mention revision, because at the end of the day your writing is only as good as your editing.
Yeah, even if I change only one word I count that as revision. But if you want to write, you’ll make the time. And there’s time; there’s always time. The hardest thing is just figuring out how to make that time work for you. I leave the house.
What problems do you often encounter in the writing process?
Just figuring out if what I wrote is going to work. But that’s not actually a problem to me, so I’m hesitant to call it that. I suppose one obstacle when you just start writing is that you’re going to have to reconcile the fact that everything you write will not become anything more than just a shitty draft that you’ll eventually have to throw away. And I think that’s fine. To me that’s not a problem, but I suppose more often than not that choice is difficult to make for others. I mean I have a poem that I just put through twenty revisions, and then I just threw it away because it wasn’t working.
It happens.
Yeah, and I feel like that’s worth knowing about yourself and how many drafts you go through. Just don’t be too possessive and don’t let the market influence you too much.
If you only had one bookshelf in your home, what ten books must it hold?
I’m really terrible at these questions because I don’t really have favorites. My favorite books tend to be the ones I’m reading right now, so it changes all the time.
1. Junot Diaz, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
2. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
3. Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson, X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills
My favorite graphic novel of all time. I’d put that on any bookshelf with any poetry collection.
4. Mark Waid and Alex Ross, Kingdom Come
Jay-Z based his ninth album off of it. It’s about an alternate universe in which Superman and the Justice League retire. They come out of retirement quickly, but it’s disastrous.
5. Cathy Park Hong, Engine Empire
6. Gregory Pardlo, Digest
7. Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars
8. Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec
9. The Collected Works of Lynda Hull
10. Louise Glück, Meadowlands
Blaike Marshall is a sophomore in his hometown at the College of Charleston, where he is majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing. His work was selected for the 2015 Adroit Prize for Poetry: Editor’s List, nominated for Best Undergraduate Writing in Plain China, and also appears in Poetry Quarterly. He refuses to acknowledge and confront his possible narcolepsy.