Michael Basinski interviewed by Doug Holder
Lucid Moon Interview #5
Mike Basinski:
A poet. A curator. A dishwasher.
As an editor of the
small press, I find myself spending much of my time pushing
my journal and the chapbooks we produce to (for the most part)
an apathetic public. So it was a pleasure when I received a
letter from Mike Basinski, poet and assistant curator at the
University At Buffalo Poetry/Rare Books Collection, requesting
the complete line of Ibbetson St. Press books and journals.
I can't tell you the thrill it was for me and my group of poets
to see our work archived and on their on-line catalogue. Basinski
and the library seem to have an insatiable appetite for the
small press. At a poetry conference in Boston he told me, "Send us
more, whatever you have." That's the first time I ever heard that
line, and probably the last.
The Poetry/Rare Books
Collection at Buffalo is as rare as the poetry it includes in
its diverse archives. Rivaled only by Brown University, it contains
90,000 volumes by every major and more importantly (to this
editor), minor poets working in English. The collection includes
recordings of poets reading their work, notebooks, letters,
manuscripts, and a huge assortment of literary magazines.
About 60 years ago, Charles
Abbot, the head of the Library, began collecting "little" magazines.
He knew, (and scholarship has proven this), that poets start
in the minor leagues of the small press and sometimes advance
to bigger and better things. Currently the Library has 3,500
titles of magazines, 1,100 subscriptions, and about 6,000 broadsides.
When I asked Basinski what
he considers himself, a poet/curator or a curator/poet, he answered
in his characteristic tongue-in-cheek manner, "Labels, again.
I am a dishwasher." Basinski probably was at one time and I
can only assume he used the experience in his poetry. He is
a poet from a working class background, in the once-thriving
industrial city of Buffalo, NY. In 1973 he was a night student
at the University of Buffalo, working a shift job at Buffalo
China, a factory that made cups. Indifferent to his poetry,
his imagination was jump-started by a reading with Robert Creeley.
He writes that he now viewed the cups that he made as being
sipped all over the world, participants in conversations, dramas
that make up the theater of life. In other words the banal took
on a lyrical, transcendent quality. He was hooked, hook, line
and sinker. He involved himself in the poetry scene, made religious
pilgrimages to the poetic holyland of North Beach and Charles Olson's
Gloucester, MA. He wrote poetry that stretched the boundaries
, full of fragmentary word play, odd topography of text, poetry
for music or music for poetry, a host of innovative offbeat
styles and modes. I arranged to do an interview with him, via
the internet. I found the answers were often unconventional,
and as irreverent as his poetry.
Q: Mike, you are not only a curator, but a poet in your
own right. I must say I find your work as a poet, "challenging".
That is, it does not follow a traditional narrative format.
Do you define the body of your work as "experimental"? What
is "experimental poetry"?
A: I don't think my poems are experimental at all. I
know what I'm doing and am not screwing around at all. My notion
has been to expand the material a poet can use in a poem. The
alphabet limits. The dictionary limits (Webster is the anti-christ).
TV limits. Above all these: other poets limit the potential
of poetry. I hear a lot about my "new" work, and then I look
and it is not new at all. Is that sad? My fear is that I am
setting limits. Poetry is a revolutionary tool if it breaks
the mundane of its own existence. Of course, if you make something
new, most poets won't like it. We are all, after all, in the
business of FAME. My favorite poems are those that come back
rejected. I have a picnic basket full of these. Each is an apple
that will cause poetry to be flung from the sofa of Eden. It is great
to be uncomfortable. This entire notion of poems meaning something
or even having meaning of any form is suspect, isn't it? If
all writing/words etc. in any form is poetry then there is not
experimental poetry--all is and has been and will be already
invented. Utilize.
Q: You have written that domesticity is important for
a poet to be "centered". This runs counter to the popular notion
of the poet as the free living Bohemian, footloose and fancy
free. If the poet has the "ball and chain" of family responsibility
around his neck, is his work bound to suffer?
A: No, the free-living, Bohemian, footloose and fancy
free poets are the most mundane. Did you ever watch hamsters
on exercise wheels? Like all immaturity, dressing in personality
is a limit. Domesticity, I say, is Nature. Capital N.
Q: You mention Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski as
seminal influences on you. You write you didn't want to write
like Jack, but that you wanted to be him. Bukowski made you
feel that your experience as a working class kid was valid and
worthy material for poetry. Can you expand on this?
A: I think social class is important to recognize. Both
K and B are not rich kids. Therefore, they represent voices
other than those in control of everything. I wouldn't want to
be anything like these two writers.. I liked Kerouac . I like
Kerouac. I don't hitchhike or etc. He is very romantic. Me-not.
He did have a purity. I think this is the Zen of it. Bukowski
also. Essentially it makes me tired. Like thinking about the
impact of the WEB. Does this have meaning in my life?
Q: Please talk about how you became Assistant Curator
at the University Of Buffalo Poetry/Rare Books Collection?
A: I know something about the poem. I come to work on
time. I have the form of my mind that remembers where certain
objects are. In the middle of all the poetry published in English,
even if it is catalogued, alphabetized etc. a lot of things
still have a place in mind. All of this is pretty much like
a warehouse. I worked in warehouses before I got here. This
isn't a lot different than Walmart or Goodyear Tire. It's a
warehouse of the imagination. Any imaginary spice you need--we
got!
Q: What is your personal mission, and or the mission
of the archive?
A: The collection is above the personal. Our charge
is: To collect first editions of all poetry published in English.
That simple.
Q: What is the criteria for accepting a book, chapbook,
or journal into the collection?
A: A book/chapbook has to be a first edition in English.
A magazine has to be more than fifty percent poetry. We don't
generally collect University, English Department published magazines.
Wisconsin does that. They are great at it.
Q: What projects are you working on?
A: I am working on more collage mailing tubes so I can
do more instrumental poems with scores. I am making this poetry
cartoon called Tarzan Movie. I am fully involved in the performance
and propagation of early FLUXUX and new FLUXUS with ensemble
called THE BUFF/FLUXUS PROJECT. I'm working on multi-voiced
and choral poems, visual and score poems. I am attempting at
times to stay away, but working on not being dead. Also I am
going to paint the bathroom and insulate the attic. I am also
shopping for new rugs. Can't decide if we want green or beige.
What do you think? This week I was deciding to get some concord
grapes. They are in season and my daughter likes them.
Q: Any parting shots?
A: In the end, I deal with the horrible beauty of poetry.
I always was reminded of Acteon sneaking a peak at Diana. He
of course was transformed by that act and was torn to shards
because of it. This then is the tension of poetry. Can you get
a peek without killing yourself? Can you get a way from the
dogs or will they tear you up? What will you see? Not what is
given on a plate. What do you see when you peer into the pine
grotto? And why is Diana so pissed off? Why does Acteon want
to peek? Essentially then, this is my poem. All of them. It
is a moment when both Diana and Acteon realize the future of
their situation. Romance and sorrow. Beauty and destruction. Love
and yearning. Lust and fury. Well, it seems the poem is not beauty
and the beast, but beauty is the creature. It is so marvelous.
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