Jessy Randall and Daniel M. Shapiro. Interruptions: Collaborative Poems. Pecan Grove Press, August 2011. 56 pages. $15.00. ISBN: 978-1-931247-90-0.

Some people have asked which of us wrote which poems in the book. The answer is that we both wrote all the poems. Here's a note I sent to a friend who asked for more details:

Dan and I have been close friends since we met in the sixth grade. I introduced him to his wife, who was my best friend in college. We started writing the collaborations in about 2002. Dan thinks it was my idea and I think it was his. At first, we gave ourselves assignments, which we invented together, like "Let's write a 26-line poem where every line has an important word and/or a first word starting with the letters of the alphabet in reverse order." These kinds of assignments yielded things we liked okay, and then as things got rolling we stopped needing rigid rules, and just tried to create the premises together, so neither one of us was wholly or even majorly responsible for any particular poem. We wrote them by email, sometimes taking a month to write a short poem, sometimes writing a long poem in one day. (We still do this, though our pace has slowed down.) So all the poems in Interruptions are by both of us, which makes it different from some collaboration books I've seen, where poets respond to each other's work back-and-forth with individually-written poems.

At some point along the way, Dan and I decided to interview each other just for fun. ("Just for fun" is probably why we did most of our collaborative work, especially our Exploratorium diagrams, which appeared in Menacing Hedge, Toad, Palooka, Scud, Painted Bride Quarterly, Kugelmass, and Red Lightbulbs.) We each came up with a set of questions, asked each other those questions, answered them, and then went back and answered our own questions, too. Here's the result. The numbered questions were Jessy's, originally; the lettered questions were Dan's (if I remember right).

JESSY INTERVIEWS DAN

1. What's one word you try to avoid using in a poem?
I.

2. What would you do if you couldn't be a poet?
I would be a full-time complainer.

3. How is your favorite color poetic?
Purple = blue (sadness) + red (anger).

4. What would you write about if loneliness didn't exist?
Would heavy metal exist if loneliness didn't? If so, heavy metal. If not, I would be too sad to write.

5. What is poetry for?
To evoke rather than explain.

6. Should poets make a lot of money?
Not all of them.

7. Who are your favorite poets?
John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Nikki Giovanni, Etheridge Knight, Richard Hugo, Anne Sexton, Hart Crane, Audre Lorde.

8. What is your favorite poetry topic?
Whatever I hadn't thought of already.

9. When did you first begin writing poems?
Eighth grade. I wrote a poem about splashing in puddles.

10. How does poetry-writing fit in with your day job?
I work with teen-agers.

11. What do you think about online poetry publishing?
I love it. I know that sounds dumb, but I can't think of anything else to say.

12. What trip or vacation do you think would be the most poetry-producing?
Going on a space walk.

A.) Who or what has been your biggest influence?
I never studied poetry in school, so I didn't have a mentor. I used to read several books of poetry each week, though, and they continue to influence what I write or choose not to write.

B.) What do you think will be the next trend in poetry?
I think it will be a full-circle phenomenon based on technology, like PDA poems, text-message poems, or MP3s of people reading poems. People will carry poems around with them the way others did when only books were available.

C.) What's the silliest comment someone has made about your poems?
I got a rejection letter in which an editor wrote, "You have some great ideas, but your language isn't interesting." He proceeded to use the word "interesting" two more times in the letter.

D.) Where would you like to go for a poetry retreat (if poetry retreats are your thing)?
I would go someplace with hustle and bustle, but I would also like access to a quiet room. That way, I could absorb some of the manic energy, such as arguments between drivers and pedestrians, and then go somewhere to let it sink in. (My own neighborhood in Pittsburgh lets me have these settings, so I'm not sure a retreat would make much sense.)

DAN INTERVIEWS JESSY

1. What's one word you try to avoid using in a poem?
Archipelago.

2. What would you do if you couldn't be a poet?
Sing.

3. How is your favorite color poetic?
Green is the most poetic color, because it has a certain magicalness.

4. What would you write about if loneliness didn't exist?
Food.

5. What is poetry for?
Fun. A longer answer: Kenneth Koch said that poetry lets you have your feelings instead of your feelings having you.

6. Should poets make a lot of money?
No.

7. Who are your favorite poets?
Frank O'Hara, Margaret Atwood, Ntozake Shange, Scott Poole, Russell Edson.

8. What is your favorite poetry topic?
Everyday feelings.

A.) Who or what has been your biggest influence?
Kenneth Koch.
 
B.) What do you think will be the next trend in poetry?
Hypertexts and other "netcessary" kinds of poems. (See www.coloradocollege.edu/library/instruction/onlinemags.html for examples.)

C.) What's the silliest comment someone has made about your poems?
One editor told me that a poem I'd written about being the pain-in-the-assness of motherhood "lacked substance."

D.) Where would you like to go for a poetry retreat (if poetry retreats are your thing)?
They are not my thing, and I doubt I will ever go on one, but sometimes I imagine what it would be like to have one of those little cabins where they leave you alone all day but drop off lunch on your doorstep quietly so as not to disturb you. I am pretty sure that I'd spend all morning checking my doorstep for lunch.

9. When did you first begin writing poems?
When I was nine I wrote a poem was about the death of my hamster.

10. How does poetry-writing fit in with your day job?
Library work is ideal for poetry.
 
11. What do you think about online poetry publishing?
I think it's ridiculous that some people think it somehow doesn't count. It actually reaches more people than a lot of paper publishing.

12. What trip or vacation do you think would be the most poetry-producing?
I was going to say the beach, because I just want to go to the beach. But for producing poetry, I would say that any trip that gives you a lot of solitude is good, and so is any trip where you see old friends. Or maybe any trip at all.

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