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| Interview
with Sean Farragher by Elizabeth P. Glixman What is; that is—
On the nature of matter (c) 2006 Sean Farragher Sonnet LIII William Shakespeare 'What is your substance, whereof are you made, That million of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one hath, every one, one shade, And you but one, can every shadow lend.' 1. What is; that is when nothing pales beneath the pressed fire that swallows all to make conception dear. I was witness today, tonight as perpetual bloom. It was neither black nor red, No color charmed to leak. There was no race to pale competition for breath. A million shades of light or ten exponents more lift perfection as I rested in your hands for mirth and pleasure turned scarlet while ships of suns designed by only man and woman as gods gather limbs to fornicate with trees without deceit. Here, long North River wall my silver berry flowers bake into iridescent ships of fate where you have enclosed -- and I have opened with the summary of all -- What is; that is. 2. I am not shark or clam. I cannot open impossible laws with crowbar or awl. Beneath my skin my eyes caress skeleton and frame for ocean's world as rain or dirt we were born. Nothing dies today. No one will fall asleep a loon arrested on its grave. What is; that is. 3. Abandon long ride home; take steps too short for vanity or too distant for modesty to fall down into your lewd teeth with the bite of innocence, thin patience flared before registered bloom of birth and arch of date-- What is; that is. 4. Do not lie about your years; make certainty more actual than its mold. What is; that is. 5. Simmer desire in perpetuity extend wings to still sexual stakes; cut and blend air with iron. Drip foul oil upon the screw; drive joints into last ribald tale and when you finally make truth, when hands strike desperate blows to make that small death quiet when morality plays folds audience with petulant red lips-- what is, that is. John Colman's Journal: [(c) 1975 Sean Farragher Excerpt of Narratives of New Netherland Soldiers in ships with gray sails feed their life to the beach Muskets chatter in blood on the water's skin. I hold my eye to the moon-fed knife, lunge from the lip of the cliff, cut the Gob's neck, plunged in blood I am shot blind. I remember how naked I ran last summer with child and Ska Nee, how rubbed with bear's grease I swam in the river to the next one where Ska Nee was taken in heat when her thighs tremble I did not wait for the Little Fox death, I was left by my crew, I shut my eyes hard, reach the curl in the light from where I rise in Little Fox sails, leave the river, wedged between the spars, I watch the yellow smoke, rectangular blocked wilderness. An Interview with Poet and Editor Sean Farragher Sean Farragher has written poetry and taught creative writing for over thirty years. He is a graduate of Columbia University and City College of New York (MA Creative writing 1974). He also studied writing at Trinity College in Dublin Ireland. He has worked as a web page artist, taxi cab driver, and union organizer. His work has appeared in anthologies (Blue Stones and Salt Hay, an Anthology of Contemporary NJ poets, Rutgers University Press, 1990) and print publications including the Beloit Poetry Journal, The Village Voice, and online at the Adirondack Review, BLAST, FRiGG, Clean Sheets, Samsara Quarterly. He was a Pushcart nominee for his poem "Snowman" and a Pushcart finalist for his narrative poem "The Narratives of New Netherlands." He is currently poetry editor of Frigg Magazine and editor of Blast magazine and Chapbooks. He has four grown children: Edward, Daria, Ian, and Kathleen who like her father is a poet. He lives in Bloomfield, New Jersey and plans to move to Missoula, Montana in October 2006. EG Is there something you want readers to know about your poems? SF I am a lyric poet who writes in layers of images. Allusions keep me in and out of history. I use history without time. It is as if the mass of my writing is zero, which is the point at which time is constant. John Ashbery has been a strong recent influence on my work. EG Please explain lyric poetry. SF Lyric poets depend on imagery, sound, words, how they appear in the ear. In lyric poems cadence is of great importance. I can give you an example. Here is a moment of lyricism in my first coherent poem written in 1972 called “At Yeats’ Grave” published in Dublin Magazine. At Yeats' Grave (c) 1972 Sean Farragher Oh! My life is old and I feel the pain walking nowhere Oh! My father cold. My dandelion, I eat you, and the clover My dandelion why do you insist on granite shells human bones. This is not a great poem but it was written by a young man with a developing voice. I thought metaphorically if I ate the grass above Yeats' Grave maybe the atoms percolating in the grass would allow me to consume some of Yeats. EG What do you like about Yeats? SF His work evolved throughout his life. Matisse as an artist changed from a romantic painter to an abstract expressionist collage master and designed stained glass windows. He was like Yeats a person who never became part of the "dead poet society," or the society of assembly line painters. The work I write now is far superior to the work I wrote as a man in my early thirties, and, of course, my early work is praised, and I will leave it to my daughter to arrange my "fame" for another century. Fame defined: people read your work. Here is a more lyrical and a personal poem written about my son Edward called “Wild child” written around the same time. Wild Child: Autumn For my son, Edward (c) 1972 Sean Farragher Child with suns on your limbs, voices shriek within heaven wet leaves autumn whispers all at once, in my afterthoughts the wood gatherers, near the hill cottage with sand box and swings dangle feet Dazzled we touch with painted brows, railroad clanks and bison guns. A China man calls us with the clatter of kettledrums, It's time, it's time to eat and rest. With a whooping weep, big tops, lions, Tigers, thousand spar sailing ships, whips . . . Within the leaf crock my wild child hypnotized our saints creaking on his shelf, and the wild, ancestral grace, the wood fire taste, the boy folds his grin to his Daddy's lap-- Shiver blue eyes; break at the violet sun— All the children gathered home. In the forest we gather acorns before a winter fire-- a grouse curls with a fox, licking its paws, a wolf guards a foal, the red sky smoothes my child's freckles. My wild child it will be so hard to leave you-- Ride the pony at the General Store. See the snow falls, our wet faces streaked with licorice and our smiles. My lips soften to my son's hair, for a time, I warm his hands in my pocket Edward-- the sun explains "Ten almond suns ablaze, ablaze with twilight, twilight green, swart, white, with the windows drawn, light leaks in the afterglow we are framed, naked with a knife and a spade, Yes, my son don't be afraid" "I no afraid." Outside, over there, with a deer curled under quilts; dew and earth blankets wound with the forest; we rest with friends; pick colors from the barn; the chilled river wakes us, no afraid-- Edward no afraid-- The swart night cools the fodder the wood smoke smells so good, so good the wood smoke dusts our yellow hair, flowers. With my wild child I trail two sparrows, sparrows-- No afraid, Edward, sleep, sleep with the rust fire on your cheeks, I raise my head to the east, I praise the sun, repeat, repeat. EG Some readers familiar with your current work say Sean Farragher writes about sex, often crudely. Where have the "kinder gentler" poems gone? SF Yes they might. What the hell is wrong with crude? We got to beat down walls. I don't write to turn people on. I write to mold the center of the earth into a history of my life both pain and joy. Sex is joy. My work is sexual for the most part, and generally not erotic. EG You do not intend the work to be pornographic. SF Yes, that is right. EG What is the purpose then of writing such graphic work where sex and often abuse play such major roles? SF There is a correlation between all forms of terrorism, the capacity of human beings to hurt each other. This means nation against nation, culture against culture, person against person. I have come to terms with who my mother was and her effect on me. I write about human survival yet my writing is layered as I said like John Ashbery. I write about several things at once. Sometimes there are themes of creation and philosophy in my work entwined with the ideas of incest and sexuality. The abuse I experienced as a child has obsessed me all my life and more so of late in a conscious manner. I am writing a prose piece that shows this obsession. When I write about my mother or any abused person I don't leave them standing out in the street without putting them into a context where there is greater significance in the story than the details of the atrocities. In terms of my mother she was also abused by my father physically. There was period in my life when I was 13 or 14 when I did not see my mother without a bruise on her body or face everyday. My father tried to kill me once. My mother took the blow to protect me. My father worked out. He was six feet two inches tall and weighed 250 pounds. When he hit me my whole body shook. EG Why didn't you or anyone call the police? SF This was the 50's. There was no police intervention. It was a family thing. My mother protected me. EG How do you think this experience of her love and both her abuse toward you, and your father's abuse shaped you as an adult? SF It kept me sane. Or my maternal grandfather and grandmother who were not dysfunctional helped, and then later when I was 17, my mother met (after being divorced several years) a wonderful man, the late Tom Anick. He brought balance to our lives. He was a righteous man. EG Is the purpose of your work to heal your past or is there something beyond that aim, if that is an aim? SF My intention is to write poetry that will be an emblem of my age, and will be read on the Star Ship Enterprise on a holodeck in the year 2500. I am smiling as I say this, but there is a significant part of me that wants my work to last. Seriously, when I first realized as an adult what had happened to me I could not be around my mother. I never visited her anymore. I didn't know what to say. To make matters worse she had dementia. My parents are dead. My father died five years before I knew he was dead in 1992 and my mother in 2002. EG This realization was very recent? SF Yes, but I had had flashes of remembrance for years. Recently after her death it all has come together. I have come to understand who my mother was and how she affected me. I understand she was so dehumanized by my father’s abuse she reached out to me for physical comfort. I was a child. She was my mother. We helped each survive. EG Are your own children aware of what happened to you as a child? SF My daughter, a MFA candidate at U of Montana in poetry, read some of my poems in the December 2005 issue of BLAST, and said she understands. She and my nephew Adam were very close to my mother, and she loved her grandmother, so I was nervous about how she would react to the poems. She told me: "We all have a secret and hidden mind, and why should I be different." EG Why would you talk about it in this interview? SF Nothing is private in a poet's life. EG Have you written any poems about your father? SF I've written two “Snowman” is about my father and my first wife. Snowman (c) 1974, 1990 Sean Farragher One winter my wife and I built a snowman of ice and string the melting snow bled into the Hudson the roots of thin steel beasts watched us from their berth the haze in a yellow arc shivered with glass eyes-- the red wail of sirens bit into our clasped hands that night in our bed her fingers with their many silvered rings sought my hair then my tongue grew into her bristle, into slipping teeth Our baby's hand reached through the womb, and that winter ended. 2. Five years after I write this letter to her old voice in my skin I tie her plaid scarf to my wrist, I watch smoke spring between red/blue gables that Hudson, that old oak shakes the hung dead from arms and canyons of snow belting ice in my hair I remember black stones in the Snowman's face; a scarf and a crooked hat we set between the twigs We hugged snow in our shirts, wrestled with our wet skin until the ice kiss rubbed us to a silent stare, as blood blew my tongue to her blood; our hair shone in crisp pentangles, cut jewels glistened in skin I remember those dry hands that leapt out from my hair. I crawl to the Hudson, to stare at ice sheets, and I play with the photo of her face that haunts my wall. 3. In my window a woodsman bangs his shovel hard into ice to cut steps home, to pack the snow into ruts for boots and sleighs, to gray and melt with cinders and mud, then to drift eventually to that Hudson At my desk I search inside the wooden box where I keep silk and string; pearl buttons from the Snowman’s coat. I remember the holes her red boots cut in clean snow. I speak for an ancient snow-beast I can no longer rub into magic One winter my wife and I built a snowman of ice and string from patches of talk and often lies. EG You also write prose. SF My hypertext novel called Taxi Murders was online. It will be back. I have been working on it for ten years. It is now at one and a half million words. I wanted to write about a female hero who survived multiple abuse in her life. At the end of Taxi Murders the characters are all in the same room in a Shakespearean like scene. Everyone is dead except the main female character, Laurie Fallon. She survived. EG Quite a lot of abuse. SF All kinds of abuse and abductions all her life. The story is not based on true story. I researched newspaper articles to make the story work. Taxi Murders Sextet, more than a carnival and less than titillation, is at its unending curtain, more love than anger, more joy than carnage, and no matter how terrible the course, if you stay it, you could be one more witness for human redemption. EG What is hyper fiction? SF The hyperlink replaces the fixed ordering of a novel. It allows the readers to dance almost the waltz of the virtual truth and lie. EG I can't read much of Taxi Murders without feeling ill. There is really some grotesque stuff in the story. I had the same reaction to one of your Vietnam Stories. SF Here is an example including footnotes of hyper fiction. Letters Home from Vietnam Wednesday, 17 January 1968. Before Tet. My Dear World, especially, Henry, Cheers, my dear Character, "Survival"! Questions I ask, Henry, watching the black sky collapse as we are swallowed by distant leeches inside the green, gray swamp moss of soldiers, weapons ready, saddled up, humping their way through the last and first hours of every day. More than a hundred clicks apart, and we serve similar demons, and love thesame woman, life and courage. First question: if I ask it, I assume, certain facts, not in evidence. When I killed my make believe enemy today (three KIA's, presumably VC, to be exact, and they were real, of course), where did the bodies fall? Why are they counted? Reference: Capt. James Albert Caine IV (1942-75). "Letters to the World"; Hill #1063; Pleiku, January 19, 1968 "Before Tet: Letters to the World" (original mailed to Victoria Ann Bradford to be held unopened for their son, Anthony to be read on his 21st birthday); copy mailed to Tom Whitman, father of Henry, to be held for his son, Henry Ezra Whitman. Henry was Jimmy's life long friend, and former West Point Classmate (Whitman resigned West Point in May 1963 after being falsely accused of failing to report alleged cheating by a roommate). Caine and SPC5 Henry Ezra Whitman, then a combat Medic, Dak To, with 4th Infantry Division had no direct contact during their almost coincident tours. Copy of the Abel Letters as they were called by the media in 1992 was lost by Tom Whitman, who claimed they were destroyed in a fire. Reading them, Tom, disgusted, placed them inside the false bottom of a clothes cabinet. Tom died in 1986, crushed by a Ford, of course. He hated them. Always a Chevy man, he said. Ironic lightning strikes like losing a son to a fantasy. Never told anyone about the lost letters. Afraid, they would implicate his son, Henry. repeating the terrors of false witness. West Point again. I don't give a frig about Caine. The Devil had him, and us too by the throat, he wrote. Long after Tom's death, the letters were discovered in 1995 by Marilyn Dotson Kline, a woman who had bought the cabinet from a used furniture store in 1988. EG Although when I reflected on that story I thought it was exceptional and brave. Is this what soldiers and women did to survive war? I know you were a medic in Vietnam for a year. I also know you went to medical school and wanted to be a pediatric endocrinologist. Can you tell us why you quite medical school? Can you tell us about being a medic? SF War is one cure for the idealist. I never really wanted to be a doctor. My family wanted it, and I was better at it then most. I came back from NAM miserable, angry and fought the war in Vietnam on the streets of New York and Washington DC. Finally, peace came when I discovered poetry at 28 in 1971. EG Do you think people want to read this much truth in a story? SF Truth and imagination are the only story worth reading. During the days of rage in Paris in May/June 1968 a slogan hung from the banners at the L'Ecole des Beau Arts. "L'imagination au pouvoir" : all power to the imagination. Truth, for me is its center and the template for art. EG How do you know so much about people who are deviants? SF I know deviants. I lived with parents who were abusers. I studied them and "Psycopathia Sexualis" when I was a callow youth. EG You are the editor of a new online magazine Blast. The title is in reference to the Blast magazine that came out in 1914. Why did you decide to resurrect the name? SF I want to break boundaries, write more innovative lyric poetry that stretches the real into the imaginary and the reverse. EG How is your magazine similar to the first Blast? SF We will publish worthy chapbooks that no one else will publish. EG Is poetry your first love? SF It is me. I learned from all I studied: mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, mineralogy, mythology, history in detail, sociology, and music and especially painting. I am also an artist. EG Why do you write poetry? SF I have no choice. I think people are born poets. There is not any grandiosity there. I think some people are born with the capacity to hear language in a way that only they can hear and communicate. Sometimes it’s a curse and sometimes a blessing. EG Is it a curse with you? SF No. It's a goddamn blessing. |
| Elizabeth P. Glixman is a poet and writer
who interviews authors and other creative people. Her
interviews can be read at Eclectica and in the archives of southstory, 3 A.M. Magazine, and
The Richmond Review. She can be reached
at epg22@mindspring.com. Sean Farragher is poetry editor of FRiGG magazine and is editor of BLAST/Great River Press. He can be reached through blastchapbooks@aol.com |