29 AUG 07

There were quite a few poets I would've interviewed about their first-book experience but couldn't, for this series, because they'd already had their second book published. I really wanted to strictly limit these first-book interviews to poets who hadn't yet had another book come out. When I invited Roberto Harrison to do an interview, I didn't realize he had two books out. But rather than miss the chance to share his answers, I decided to make an exception and include this interview. I guess a way to bring any series to completion is to put something in that breaks the rules that have otherwise defined it.

. . .

How has your first book changed your life?

98. Roberto Harrison

How did Litmus happen to pick up your manuscript? How often had you sent it out before that?

Tracy Grinnell came into town and gave a reading a few years ago. Stacy Szymaszek made that happen. At around that time, suddenly there was a community of younger writers in the area, and things were just coming together. I had given readings of parts of Counter Daemons here and there and found it to be well received. I hadn't really sent the manuscript out much, so I think Tracy was one of the first to see it. Poets in the area, Kerri Sonnenberg and Mark Tardi in particular, knew Tracy from school and had had books published by her. I sent her the manuscript and was happy that she found it of interest.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your finished book for the first time?

I'd asked Tracy to send a copy to me at work, so I could see it as soon as possible. I remember being happy and excited to receive it. I thought it looked beautiful and was very grateful to Tracy for publishing it and to Brenda Iijima for doing the cover. I also remember feeling all kinds of contradictory emotions. In addition to feeling good, I felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean, though not really depressed. And I felt relieved. It added a new dimension to my way of relating with language as the most public as well as the most private thing we share.

Before that day, did you imagine your life would change with your book's arrival?

I expected it would be a monumental event in my life, though how it would change me I wasn't sure. I'd been publishing things for a while, with Crayon, Bronze Skull Press, my old Croton Bug magazine, and other projects, so I had some idea of what it felt like to put things out there. Though I know from knowing amazing people who write amazing things and who don't publish much, that it's the act of writing that counts. Even though this seems to be true, I think publishing can help in bringing some kind of perspective to the writing and in letting the writing go.

Has your life been different since?

Yes, I think so. I've gained some confidence in myself as a writer. I think I've grown as a result of the book coming  out. I feel more determined than ever to do what I feel I need to in my writing and reading, in my life. And I feel more than ever that I'm at the beginning of something, and at the same time it seems that I still have some of the same old difficult terrain to work through, I'm reminded of that every time I try to talk to someone. Even so, I feel that my best writing comes from outside the self, when I get out of my own way.

Actually, another full length collection of my work was published a couple of months after Counter Daemons was--Os (subpress). Os is a collection of work that predates Counter Daemons. It'd been setup to be published for a while. The two are very different books. In Os, I was working mostly with the page, with single page poems, whereas I worked on Counter Daemons with a wider view. Os I think is where a part of me died. On some level I was going through a process of renewal in writing it, renewal from a life too far from poetry to a life more within it, or in a way that doesn't really have anything to do with poetry after all, perhaps. A process that I think continues. So that's significant in discussing Counter Daemons, as Counter Daemons uses the 'i' quite often, though not necessarily in a direct way, and as writing Os was necessary for me before getting to Counter Daemons. The word Os can mean bone, as well as mouth. So, in Counter Daemons, one of the important things that came out of the experience of writing it was that though I'd always self-identified as being Latino, after writing it I felt it important to mark a new place in my life. So I changed the use of my name back to Roberto. To be more clear, I was born to Panamanian parents in Corvallis, Oregon, while my father was going to school there. My birth name was Robert. We'd moved back to Panama before I was six months old, and I grew up there until the age of seven. While there, I was called Robertito, and then as I grew older, Roberto, even though my birth certificate indicated otherwise. When I moved to the states (Delaware, of all places, we were one of the few Latino families there at the time, though now there are many) at age seven, I began using Robert (though my family continued occasionally using the Spanish version of my name--especially when I got yelled at!). That's also when I began learning English. Then in eighth grade I began calling myself Bob in an effort, it turns out, to assimilate. I've had to work through all kinds of ethnic issues, confronting racism and ethnocentrism, etc, alongside these name changes. To make a long story short, I ended up having to deal with other, more overwhelming personal issues as an adult, and so my energy was tied up with that for twenty years, and then after most of that was worked through, I was finally able to come back to understanding myself better in a social context including my ethnicity. I started a new job about 3 years ago, coinciding with finishing up Counter Daemons, and at that time began using my new/old name--it was a convenient point in my life to do that. I really prefer Roberto now as it allows me to better see myself as having come full circle in some meaningful ways. So, basically, with the finishing of Counter Daemons, I'd worked through some psychic processes that made this possible, a coming back to myself to move past my self.

I think another way my life has been different since Counter Daemons appeared is that my writing concerns are now more easily apparent to me. Instead of forever being inside the process of working things out through writing, the book being in the world makes necessary, on my part, some kind of overall view on what I'm doing there. I studied Mathematics and Computer Science as an undergraduate and did some graduate work in Mathematics, and some of these early experiences needed to be addressed in what I found myself doing in writing. Given that Native cultures are more prominent in most Latin American countries, and perhaps because I was raised by an Indian woman, I found myself drawing Indians and horses constantly as a child. (I have some Indian ancestry from both sides of my family, like most Panamanians, though how much or of what kind, I don't know. At the same time, I don't want to overemphasize that.) In retrospect, I think I was trying, in a futile way, to return to my origins by exploring Native cultures from North America partly inspired by what I found in some children's books I had on Native American cultures. And the Math and Computer Science were an effort to reach toward some kind of universal language, the little that I knew of literature at that time being attractive though seemingly overwhelmingly complex given the psychological fabric I was trying to grow out of. In a sense, I didn't feel I could study something like English Literature in school given that English was my second language. And as a child I had a lot of animals: at one point 220 rabbits, 50 guinea pigs, 20 cats, 5 dogs, snakes, 100 or so mice (distributed throughout the house as families in small fish bowls and plastic boxes that they always gnawed through!), gerbils, hamsters, chickens and basically anything I could catch or otherwise find. And I remember there being very few books in our house as I grew up, in a modest suburb, but one stood out, something called Cyclomancy, I think, which I've just found out seconds ago by searching through WorldCat, was subtitled "the secret of psychic power control." Who knows why we had that book, except I remember my dad always telling me that he could read my mind, so I bet he was responsible for it being there. It turns out to be a cheap power-tripping book! But I think my father took it pretty seriously, for whatever that's worth. I use the word Cyclomancy in Os to indicate a divination through circles.

I remember deciding to go to graduate school in Mathematics for some off the wall reasons. I'm not a natural at doing Math as someone like Mark Tardi seems to be. Basically, I didn't want to get a job right away, and so going to grad school seemed like a better alternative. I chose Indiana mostly because of the name, I thought that perhaps there was something especially Indian about the state. Graduate studies in Math turned out to be a bad fit for me, though I met a lot of nice people there in Bloomington, and got turned on to a lot of writing, especially Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller and things associated with those writers.

After my first year in grad school I decided to take a year off and travel. I traveled around the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, and then Europe and Morocco on a total of around $2000 for the year.So my life has been different since Counter Daemons appearing because in it I was able to return to some of the energy of these experience, in the sense that my dreams seem a little more real, or reality seems a little more dreamlike, I feel that my life is more integrated the more I work things out in writing.

Were you involved in designing the cover of Counter Daemons?

I'd asked Brenda Iijima to do the cover. She did a whole series of drawings and I picked from that.

Brenda did the cover art for both of your books. Why was that--or how did it come about?

Brenda visited Milwaukee a few years ago. She'd published my chapbook, Mola, through her Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and did a wonderful job with that. We took a trip together to visit Fort Atkinson and Lorine Niedecker's place, and had a great time driving around the countryside. We became friends and so I asked her to do the covers of my first two books.

What have you been doing to promote Counter Daemons and how do you feel about those experiences?

I've done a few readings here and there. It has been a struggle for me to do readings. I didn't come to it very comfortably, though I think I'm finally starting to get my work across the way I feel I need to. That's a big change for me. On the other hand, I'm not really a promotional kind of guy, so I haven't really promoted anything. One of the better things I think that's happened as a result of the book coming out is that I feel more energetic in hosting my Enemy Rumor reading series, named after the collection of poems by José Lezama Lima. I want to do more to include more writing as part of the discussion in the Midwest.

What influence has the book's publication had on your subsequent writing?

It has allowed me more freedom to explore other modes. Specifically, I've finished another longish manuscript, bicycle, that's structured a lot differently than Counter Daemons and Os are. In that, I'm going further in exploring the bridging of two wholes that has been, it turns out, a concern of mine for a while, and which I think is noticeable in Os and Counter Daemons. I like the metaphor of the bicycle, its good to think of in terms of the New World, with North America and South America, and Central America as a bridge. Of course Panama is considered to be the bridge of the world, and the heart of the universe to some. So I like the bicycle as an integrating of polarities, in whatever forms they might take--Sun and Moon, East and West, male and female, rational and irrational, virtual and real, true and false, Spanish and English, earth and sky, etc. My current project is culebra, a further, more organic in some ways, exploration of this. I used to catch snakes all the time as a kid, it was an incredible thrill, so I feel the need now to address something so primal along with my cyberworld concerns. I think somewhere down the line that everything in my writing is going to fall apart again, but for now, I'm putting things together. Though, actually, in culebra I think that things are coming apart at the same time that they're coming together. So in the future, further further falling apart, maybe, as I see it now.

How do you feel about the critical response so far and has it had any effect on your writing?

I haven't seen any reviews published on it yet, so most of the critical response I've gotten so far has come through correspondence, on blogs, or after I've given readings. Stacy Szymaszek used to tell me that I read like Barry White sang, which I find funny and heartening.

A couple of people have told me that when I read Counter Daemons it sounds like a chant, trance-like and trance inducing. This is meaningful to me because of my Buddhist practice, and I think it's a good reminder for me that my life is coming together around an effort to come to terms with the sacred. Or at least to get a better idea or non-idea of what that is.

Drew Gardner described some of what I'm doing as a "private world colliding with poetic connotation" and that it sounds like something between Vallejo and Creeley. I'm glad to have my work bring to mind Vallejo as his work has been important to me, and continues to be. I admire Creeley's work but can't say at this point that he's been a big influence on me, except early on.

Tim Peterson said something about desire bumping up against technology in relation to Counter Daemons. I think this can be a sort of criticism and funny, but it makes sense. I've somehow spent a lot of time being surrounded by computers while being a sort of Luddite. I don't consider myself really a techie. So I find that I spend a lot of energy trying to rehumanize, reanimalize, and so on, the language that computer use has tried to lock down, and addressing some of the structures growing out of cyberworld, working through them. And I think this implies also a coming to terms with the limitations of this endless prosthetic that we're continually getting more and more dependent on and in some ways blinded by. In some ways I feel that we're not far from being able to psychically communicate with and through computers, and that the way is being paved for that now in how poetry addresses the cyberworld. I think that'll be the real, and the really traumatic, "Information Bomb."

Rodrigo Toscano and Karl Young both said Counter Daemons brought to mind Huidobros. I'm happy that my stuff brings to mind Huidobros, though I think I share with Vallejo more the earthy than the skies of Huidobros. Perhaps the sense of space of cyberspace in my writing is more akin to Huidobros' skies.

Alan Sondheim called it dirge-like and Vedic. There's something definitely funereal about what I'm doing. I'm having to confront death on a daily basis and have needed to do so, in my most honest moments, for a long time.

Peter O'Leary said something about it bringing angels to mind. I was glad of this comment because I'm constantly divided in my work, should I bring to light the evil that I know or not? I think the final answer is yes, to understand and to move through it. There's lots of work for me to do in that regard.

James Sherry said it seemed to concern itself with identity politics. I think this is true to a certain extent, though I don't think it describes the whole of the book.

Bill Fuller said it reminded him of Swinburne. Somehow much of Counter Daemons has a strong sense of a kind of meter. I'm not sure where that came from. It just appeared and made sense one day.

I'm grateful to receive thoughtful response. It helps me to understand what I'm doing and trying to do as a writer.

Do you want your life to change?

Yes, I want to learn to be freer, not just free to choose between products, as most Americans seem to understand freedom, but a freedom that I imagine has always been what life's about.

The time in my life when I was the most free, in some ways, was during my year of traveling twenty some years ago, though I've had many experiences since then, of what we'll call for purposes of this interview, alternate universe experiences, not at all drug induced, more like my natural state of being, where I've gone on to many other places never spoken of and unknown to most for long periods of time. I began my travels from Bloomington, Indiana, the center of the flowering Indian. I use Indian here as in Albert Ayler's 'Universal Indians,' hopefully not in an overly romanticized way, but in a way that I sometimes see the Indian in everyone, the true, and the circular, other country below us and above us, within us. Started there in Indiana and rode in my '72 Plymouth Duster, which I'd bought for $400, that I could sleep in the back of, and made a lemniscate* around the country, to the east coast, up to the northeast, back through Indiana, down to the southwest, to Navajo country, Canyon de Chelly for a few weeks with a friend, down through the mainland of Mexico, through small towns in the country, through large clouds of white butterflies, across on the ferry to the tip of the Baja, La Paz, with flying fish and weirdly colored sharks, up through the Baja, were I'd seen a flat landscape covered with large, perfectly round boulders, through Tijuana, San Diego, through California, Big Sur, to San Francisco. Stayed there for a while, climbed walls in the Mission, lived through some of what I'd only read about. Up through Northern California, to Oregon, where I saw where I'd been born for the first time, to Washington state and Seattle, into British Columbia, back through to the states, making the infinity sign, there with the Indian country always here.

*

Then across to Europe--was at the festival of the Black Virgin at San Marie de la Mer in Southern France, a gypsy festival. Back through to all the shores of Spain, from northeast to southeast, across to Morocco and to the Atlas mountains, Fez, Marrakesh, Al Hoceima, Nador, Melilla, and to Tleta Ketama for a month. Moroccans are the most hospitable people I've ever encountered. Then back through Spain, to Toledo, Madrid, across to Lisbon, up through northern Portugal and into Galicia and Basque country. All of it living in my tent and staying away from Americans, for the most part. Hardly any trains, mostly hitchhiking and walking and buses. Those were some the freest times of my life, along with my excursions into the other worlds. My writing tries to bring all of this together, to integrate for now, to walk on the ground with it.

Given that I came to writing late, in my early twenties, without committing to the practice of writing for another few years, I started off painting and drawing for a number of years after my failed attempt at graduate school, painted houses for a living for many years, made my way back to computers after a long time, found Jackson Mac Low's work, Hannah Weiner, Clark Coolidge, Larry Eigner, Ron Silliman and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets in the library at Bloomington, collected there by Barry Alpert I suppose, grateful to him for that. These writers made English sound like the first time I'd heard it, arriving to the states, without knowing the language, something magical, meaningful, far away and up close at the same time. Then moving to Milwaukee 15 years ago and living less than a mile from Woodland Pattern, my second home for all this time, has changed things further. Given that...

So yes, I want my life to change, in these directions, moving more toward what I know is free, but not necessarily easy. Also, my understanding of freedom is changing, more toward how Buddhists consider it, as being free from conditioning, but the experiences above are hints of this.

Is there something you're doing now that you think will bring about a change that you seek?

I ride my bike 20 miles a day, 6 days a week. It's like riding a lemniscate, an infinity sign. This allows me to engage with the landscape in a way that I hadn't for a very long time. I look at the sky every day, the lake, the ground, people doing their thing, huge prehistoric looking fish being pulled out of the lake, the fish being cleaned, different birds. I once saw a coyote here in town in a park. Joel Felix's "landscape without, landscape within" comes to mind. I generally say a mantra during my ride. I ride the same way every day. And I miss only two or three days a year due to extreme weather. I want to experience how exactly the weather is changing. Being outside so much like that makes me feel that I'm doing something people used to do for ages before being locked up with a TV or a computer.

I meditate an hour a day, 6 days a week. I generally write an hour or so a day, 5 days a week. (I'm into structuring my life these ways at this point, have done so for a few years.) I read on the bus to and from work and during my lunch break. I meet with friends every week to discuss and practice Dzogchen. I go to and rent movies and listen to as much music as I can. I draw pictures on a seasonal basis. I try to learn from and grow with others.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

Yes, I think it can. It's changed me, so I know empirically.

:

A poem from Counter Daemons by Roberto Harrison:

[el camino de mi alma]

i go back
i go forth
i am home

i am crustaceous
in the land of canals
in the knot of 3 rivers

i am the moon
in the shine
of a Quetzal

i am the Choco,
the Cuna,
and the colorless loss
of each Mola--
each wood

i am the flush
in the face
of a veil

i am the colony
gone to die out
in starvation

i am the snake
that with ruins
can fly

i am the double
for northern cremations

i am the mute
that the pace
of the state
cannot gag

i am the Nanticoke
married to Moors

i am the straw
of the past
and the void
of tomorrow

i am the song
the refrain
the gashed neck

i am the shame
that jungles heat up
into sweat

i am the dust
on the roads
in Morocco

i am the water
medinas put out
to clear skies

·

i am the coast
of España
where i walked
every shore

i am the yawner

i am a stain on a cloth,
the deserted spring bath,
the arabic spire

i am the mountainous path
hidden in foliage

i am the mud
on the skin
of a friend

i am the ghost
that brings horses
to dream

i am the isthmus,
the seven,
the homeless

i am the wool
in the promise
of hell

i am the guise
of a magnet

i am the pepper spray
scenting the city

i am the sea
and the sun
of a cousin

i am each memory
shred in machines
for equators

i am the parallel word
that won't meet

i am the flower
that buries
the petals
of autumn
for eggs

i am the radio
filling the sky
with electrodes

i am an ocean of ships,
a broken armada,
a flood of the Latin

i spill words
like the cannons
that crater the planets

i make doors
for the blood
that returns


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